Thank you for choosing to read my blog! My name is Beth and I’m a 21 year old student living in England. I’d like to share this crazy thing called life with you wonderful people who somehow stumble upon my blog! I have ups and downs, and my posts will probably reflect this, so don’t be alarmed if I fall off the face of the earth between posting. I’ll probably be hiding in my duvet cocoon with Netflix, avoiding human contact and most likely my responsibilities. I have depression and borderline personality disorder so this happens quite frequently. I want to share my journey of coping with life in general, the good and bad. I find it difficult to express my thoughts/feelings and telling a bunch of strangers is more appealing to me than telling people I actually know. Gossip travels quickly in my home town and I don’t want the drama 🤷‍♀️

A few fun facts quickly before my first ramble so you can get to know me!

– I have a huge, ever growing family of 18 people! 5 wonderful siblings who have partners and 6 beautiful children between them. I also have an amazing mum who is unfortunately very unwell. My family are super close and they all mean the world to me! (I dont really speak to my dad and I’ll probably go off on tangents about him from time to time).

– I’m a hamster mum. I’m completely and utterly obsessed with them and genuinely treat them like children. Don’t worry, I don’t dress them up or anything. I’m not quite that weird!

– I’m a student mental health nurse who has mental health issues. Ironic hey?

– I’m a black belt in taekwondo, but I couldn’t fight my way out of a wet paper bag.

– I’m a super sickly person who’s ill with something probably 90% of the time. You’ll hopefully find it interesting to read about my illnesses, surgeries and how I cope with minor and more serious health conditions.

Anyway, down to the nitty-gritty!

So, the reason I’ve been wanting to start a blog is to just talk about my life, day-to-day and also the past. I’ve always felt as though good and bad things happen to people for a reason, and it shapes you as a person in the future. However that doesn’t make it easier to deal with when you’re actually going through it.

I hope for this to be a safe space and informal way to share my experiences and for others to comment and share their own. These may be good or bad, and my aim is to help people who are in similar situations, or have friends or family going through difficult times. Having a supportive community around you is extremely helpful and healing. If I can help as little as one person by starting this blog and sharing my experience I will see it as a huge success!

I’ll be discussing things that require a trigger warning, and I promise to always mention this at the beginning of any post!

So here’s a list of things I’ll be talking about throughout my blog;

– My mental health – as previously stated I have depression and borderline personality disorder. How I manage (or don’t), day-to-day and how it impacts the ones I love.

– My mum’s year long battle of lung cancer, how it’s impacted our family and the ins and out of her treatment.

– My physical health, including (but not limited to) my ME/CFS, and various surgeries such as my sistrunk procedure to remove my thyroglossal duct cyst and laparoscopy to remove an ovarian cyst, and yes, I will be including pictures of my recoveries so enjoy that!

– How I’ve found support within a rape crisis team following being raped by my first (ex) boyfriend 5 years ago, what happened and how it has impacted not only my life but also my past and current relationship(s). A more serious topic but an important one none the less.

– My experience of school, college and university. How my physical and mental health has impacted my education.

– General ramblings about my day, thoughts and anything else I fancy ranting about that day!

I hope you can find peace in reading about my experiences. I’ll always try to use humour to lighten up the mood throughout my posts and I intend to blog how I would speak in person. As I said, I’m new to this so please be patient with me until I know what on earth I’m doing! 😂

Take care, Beth xo

PS Sorry to anyone who knows me in person who doesn’t already know some of this stuff (lol). Please don’t spread my business around, I’m solely using this as a port to get stuff off my chest and help others. So please respect my privacy and especially my families privacy regarding mum as this is obviously an extremely difficult time for us. Thanks xxx