Today.

I started writing a blog post several days ago, and just deleted every single word of it. I read through it several times, and nothing about it felt right. It wasn’t from the heart. I was afraid that my heart would say too much, but now maybe that would be a good thing. So here I am, laid bare once again, with nothing but honesty.

Admittedly I’m a little out of practice with the whole opening up thing, but now there are things I won’t write for other reasons. I am keeping a tight lip on some things that have happened this year not only because they are not solely things about me, but also because some things are still very raw for me and I am simply not ready to make them public yet.

2013 and particularly the last few months have been incredibly difficult for me. I have found myself thinking and feeling things that I haven’t for years, and I have also found myself thinking and feeling a million new things. Every single one of them has been a challenge, but every single one of them has taught me a lesson.

Something I’ve realized about myself this year is that I have not been true to myself. Every time something has hurt me, I have taken a tiny step backward. Each tiny step has drawn me closer to fear, shame, hatred, and the inability to let go. At the beginning of 2013 I moved away from my family once again, for a job I loved. Whilst on my journey, I made a significant realization that I was not afraid. In comparison to every other move I have made for a job, this was a job role I had known the least about, that I had gained with the least paperwork and effort, and that I would have the most responsibility in. Yet for once in my life, my excitement outweighed my fear. Now as I look back at even last week, that girl is totally unrecognizable.

My heart has been so full of pain, confusion and anger, that I have lost myself. I have forgotten how to love and be proud of myself. I have forgotten how to let things go, and not hurt all the time. I have forgotten how to forgive the simplest mistakes. But most of all, somewhere along the line I forgot how to smile true happiness. I forgot how to be happy. I have taken so many steps backwards and it’s one of those things I never even realized I was doing, until I was right back there in my shell. It’s total deja vu for me, but I was so focussed on the pain and negativity surrounding me, that I lost sight of the beauty, strength and power I once saw in myself. It’s been quite a struggle to even open that shell I’ve been hiding in if I’m honest, let alone step out of it, but today I can say that I am ready. Today, I am ready to not be overwhelmed by pain, fear, and negativity. Today I am ready to learn, love, laugh, and most importantly I am ready to get out there and live my life. 

I am terrified of so many things, but I know that the easy option will never get me anywhere in life, let alone where I want to be. I know that to be proud of myself again, I need to stand up and fight through my obstacles to get myself back on track. After all, it’s not about how many times I fall down, it’s about how many times I pick myself up, dust myself off, and stand up tall, ready to carry on. I know that I am never alone, and I know that there is always somebody worse off than me. I know that I am loved by many and have an incredible support network of people willing to help me through anything and everything. However, I also know that I am too good at pushing people away, and too bad at accepting help, (and often admitting that I even need it). When I hurt as much as I have recently, it terrifies me to let people in, and be close to me. The ‘real me’ might be worn down right now, but I have learnt that I would rather let people see me like this and help me through, than to constantly battle with myself, be alone, and always pretend to be someone I am not.

Everybody has bad days and I’ve no doubt that I will have more, but I believe that for every bad day I get through, there is a brilliant day waiting for me somewhere along the track.

Here’s to stepping out from the darkness. Again.

Here’s to opening my heart. Again.

Here’s to learning to smiling with a heart full of happiness. Again.

Watch this space.
Courtney’s Imagination★

Have you ever loved and lost somebody?

As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently and tragically lost a wonderful friend of mine. So now, as I’m preparing to work in what is probably one of the happiest places on earth this winter, I’m faced with a dilemma. I have found myself stuck in an ultimate funk and I just don’t know how to pull myself together this time. I’ve learned the hard way before and discovered that brushing over what you’re feeling will never work, and it’ll come back to bite you several months later, twice as hard. Therefore I’m feeling very against the idea of waiting until I’m back home after Christmas, to address my grief.

I can’t quite pinpoint exactly what it is I’m feeling, because my emotions seem to be spinning through the cycle of loss. One minute I’m sad, the next I’m in shock, and the one after that I am in denial. I’m extremely lucky to have not been in the position of losing a loved one many times, but this is the worst so far. The problem I am facing this time is not that I am alone-because I know I have a wonderful support network of friends and family-but that I feel it. You see, this friend of mine was a childhood friend but she moved almost 500 miles away shortly after starting high-school. We kept in touch throughout and ironically grew to be closer friends than we ever were whilst living in the same town. She moved so long ago now, and gradually lost contact with most of if not all of her other friends here, and only came back in contact with them a year or so ago. Due to that, the news seems to have hit me the hardest of the people here, and none of them seem to understand why.

Everybody in her ‘new’ town and all her family have each other to lean on and get through this painful time together, because they’re all feeling the same. My issue throughout this process of emotions is that nobody in my support network had memories with her, and they’re not able to say that their lives were better for knowing her. It’s so difficult to have everybody tell me they’re sorry for the loss, but not have them able to remind me of something funny she done, or what she would say to me now, or even how brilliant her life was and all the things she achieved. It’s those little comforts of knowing that a lost loved one was part of your life, that get you through times like this. When you don’t have constant reminders, it’s harder to even acknowledge that it’s real and they’re gone, let alone work through grief and move forward.

Though my heart is a little broken at the moment, it’s not an excuse for me to give up. Most of all, because she wouldn’t want me to. I still believe that everything happens for a reason and that everything will be okay in the end, but sometimes before things can be okay we have to confront the challenges life throws us.

We all inherit tough things that we need to deal with, and we all are faced with loss throughout our lives. We all have our own ways of coping. Today my method has been to blog out the sadness and to remind myself of the greater stuff.

Whatever stage you’re at in life, I want you to take a minute and have a think. I want you to think about all of the things you’ve never said to people because “there’s always tomorrow”.

Tomorrow is never a guarantee. Tell people if you love them, be honest, be true to yourself, smile everyday, and follow your heart.

Life’s too short to hold grudges, have regrets, and tell lies. You never know what’s round the corner, and you never know when a life might shockingly end.

Live your life while you can, and live it to the full. Whether you need a headstone tomorrow, or in 20 years time, give them something to write on it. Give people something to remember you by.

Make yourself proud.

Courtney’s Imagination★

Did you know that he self-harms?

A few weeks ago now, a friend of mine put something on her Facebook profile, asking why people cut themselves. It was a serious question and a fair point, she had never been in that situation and simply didn’t understand what would bring somebody to hurt themselves so profoundly. I know I’ve briefly touched on the subject a couple of times but it got me wondering, how many other people out there are so bewildered by the subject. The UK is shown to have one of the highest rates of self-harm in the whole of Europe, but my friend is proof that there are still so many people who do not understand it. It’s difficult to give exact statistics because the majority of people keep it a secret, but you very probably know somebody who does or has self-harmed. I don’t claim to be a professional or to know everything, but I have experience, and in this post I hope I can help you understand self-harm a little more.

As I was reading through the comments of my friend’s post, it was easy to differentiate between those who had been there, and those who hadn’t. Some people questioned different, less painful techniques and made ‘funny’ comments, and others tried to answer the question by thoughts and theories. It pulled at my anger strings quite remarkably when I read through the comments that made fun of self-harming, but how are people supposed to act, when it is treated as a taboo subject and rarely if ever, spoken about. I knew that from my anger, I had 2 options; I could react to the comments and gain nothing or I could have a good shot at proving them wrong. I chose the second option, and even the ‘comedian’ was impressed.

Self-harming is a cycle:

- You hurt yourself to cause physical pain in an attempt to cover over the emotional pain.

- You feel a release of the tension and pressure that has been building up inside you.

- You are so ashamed with yourself that you keep it a secret from everybody around you.

- You feel guilt over your secret, adding to the emotional pain.

- You repeat the process.

There are many different names for self-harming, and many different methods of it. You may find it referred to as self-injury, self-abuse, self-inflicted violence, or self-mutilation. Whatever it is called it means the same, but there are many ways to hurt yourself, and different methods work for different people. The most recognised forms are cutting, burning, scratching, hitting/slapping yourself, banging against walls or furniture, pulling hair, breaking bones purposefully, and generally picking at your body/old wounds or injuries. They are all ways which inflict immediate pain or damage, but there are also forms which inflict gradual, long-term damage. Eating disorders, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, excessive risk taking, neglecting physical health, and general destructive behaviour are all less obvious forms of harm, but they all cause damage.

Contrary to popular belief, people don’t hurt themselves because they want to die, they hurt themselves because they want to live. They inflict pain on themselves as a coping mechanism, to try and get through the mental pain in their lives.  Most people who self-harm are depressed, and depression is a physical and mental problem because it's caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. It's often triggered by negative and traumatic events or situations and continued by stress, pressure, and shame. It doesn't arrive lightly, and it doesn't leave lightly either. It’s one of those things that turns to an addiction and an obsession, and it becomes like a lifeline; something you do just to get by. It's easy to say to a self-harmer that there isn't a reason to do it, but the things they feel caused by the depression can be so ridiculously strong and poignant, that nothing else seems to matter. They feel so hopeless about themselves and their life, that pain is all they are able to focus on. 

To the people around them it may seem selfish and pointless, but when you get into such a bad emotional/mental state, you're blind to pretty much everything around you. Sometimes I could see what was going on around me and I wanted to cling to it and be pulled back up, but I was so far into my downward spiral that I couldn’t leave the cutting behind. It was my safety net and my shield from the rest of the world. It was the only way I had discovered to feel like I wasn’t so trapped, and to feel something different from the intense emotional pain. For some people just the physical pain is enough of a release to focus on rather than the emotional pain they're feeling, but others feel like cutting to bleed helps them because as they bleed, the pressure of their pain is released. Sure, to a lot of people it seems insane, but it’s one of those things you'll only ever truly understand if you've been there, done it, and got the t-shirt. (Okay, okay, the t-shirt is optional!)

People self-harm because they don't want to feel emotional pain anymore. They WANT to stop hurting. They need help. They WANT help. Addictions are hard to quit, especially on your own. If you know somebody who self-harms,  reassure them. Make sure they know you’re there for them, and make sure they know that help is available, and recovery is real. If you suspect that somebody you know self-harms, do the same. Never be a pushy friend; you’ll make them feel worthless and like nothing they do will ever be right. It may seem dramatic, but it’s true. When somebody in mentally unwell, everything like feel seems fifteen times greater than 'normal' emotions. Be gentle, self-harmers are fragile.

Hope is real, and help is real. There are so many different people, places, and websites out there that are ready to help you get your life back on track, but you need to make the first move. You need to admit to yourself that there’s a problem. Even if you want to continue protecting your life from your loved ones, there are professionals you can talk to. Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger, because you’re not emotionally connected to them.

If you’d like to know more about self-harm and mental health or want to take that first step to make a change in your life, here are a few websites to help you...

• http://www.twloha.com/facts/
• http://www.recoveryourlife.com/index.php?categoryid=148
• http://www.mind.org.uk/help/diagnoses_and_conditions/self-harm
• http://www.selfharm.co.uk/home
• http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Self-injury/Pages/Introduction.aspx
• http://www.thesite.org/healthandwellbeing/mentalhealth/selfharm
• http://www.selfharm.net/

Whether you help yourself, or someone else, always remember that you’re not alone. You will thank yourself for that, in the future.

Living proof that recovery is possible...
Courtney’s Imagination★

“I wear my scars proudly. They represent the battles through which I have gone, and I am proud because those battles I have won.” - Aly

Why am I terrified?

Over the past few days, I’ve found myself reflecting on some of my thoughts and actions from the past. I am by no means digging up the past, I just felt that there was a question I needed to answer for myself. So often, I have been the girl that gives in to her fear and it’s held me back from so many amazing things in my life, that I’m quite tired of it. Sometimes even when I just tell myself ‘go for it!’, or ask myself ‘what’s the worst that can happen?’, in the back of my mind I am still crippled with fear. I’ve been thinking about it and decided that I’d like to kind of conclude why I am so petrified, and why I let it hold me back and run away from things.

For as long as I can remember, I would live my life as my own person and not talk about it with people. I became such a private and enclosed person, and as I got older, it became more and more difficult to want to change that habit. I think I had the opinion that it would protect me from getting hurt in a way, and that if I didn’t share my life with people, it meant there’d be less people to judge me or hate me. As I was bullied, I was so naive and caught up in my own little world that I never saw it as being that ‘b’ word. For years and years, all I knew was that it hurt me so much, and I thought it would never stop. I was so young when it started that it was just my life, every day, and I didn’t know that it wasn’t normal for someone to make you hurt so much. Besides, what in this world would ever make me want to admit that I didn’t wanna live through it, when I thought their lives had been the same? 

I think that explains to me the reason I begun to not talk about the things happening in my life, but saying that it was hard to break the habit just doesn’t seem enough. It feels like nothing but an excuse. Or maybe that’s just me being hard on myself?

I’d say I was most scared of myself out of anything; what I said, what I did,  what I felt, etc. As different people came into my life and impacted it, each of them would give me a new attitude. Some would bring inspiration, some: motivation, and others would make me not care. That’s right, the girl who cared way too much about everything in her life, discovered it was possible to not give a damn about something. It was a different feeling which was freeing, but the feeling these people brought me was self destruction. When I got tired of being terrified, I would become extremely impulsive. I would know perfectly the things that were no good for me, but would embrace them to their full extent anyway and somehow, love it. I think it was the element of control that I loved, after feeling so out of control about the rest of my life. Anything I regretted I would block out, so that it didn’t take away that tiny piece of twisted happiness I’d have.

With so many people meaning such different things to me, I thought that maybe it was the people who scared me, rather than the situation. I’d grown a habit to never let anybody grow too close to me, so they couldn’t hurt me. I had such trouble trying to fit people into my life because I would never let them break down my guard. I was scared of being loved, and couldn’t embrace it so at the first sign of seeing the possibility of more pain, I would always run. For me, it seemed a pretty big thing that other people could love me, when I was far from loving myself. As I began to love myself more, it became a challenge I set myself, to not run away from someone trying to love me. So far I have only completed that challenge a few times.

Writing this has opened my own eyes to the reality of my life, but I’m glad I could realise so many things whilst I’m still so young and have my entire life to embrace the changes I can make. Fear doesn’t just disappear and I’ll probably be battling with it for a while, but I definitely need to think about things less.

Take that leap for yourself, and share it with everyone you love. Try not to think about the fear, and never let it swallow up your life.

‘Never let the fear of striking out, keep you from playing the game.’ - A Cinderella Story.


“To me, “FEARLESS” is not the absence of fear. It’s not being completely unafraid. To me, FEARLESS is having fears. FEARLESS is having doubts. Lots of them. To me, FEARLESS is living in spite of those things that scare you to death. FEARLESS is falling madly in love again, even though you’ve been hurt before. FEARLESS is walking into your freshmen year of high school at fifteen. FEARLESS is getting back up and fighting for what you want over and over again… even though every time you’ve tried before, you’ve lost. It’s FEARLESS to have faith that someday things will change. FEARLESS is having the courage to say goodbye to someone who only hurts you, even if you can’t breathe without them. I think it’s FEARLESS to fall for your best friend, even though he’s in love with someone else. And when someone apologizes to you enough times for things they’ll never stop doing, I think it’s FEARLESS to stop believing them. It’s FEARLESS to say “you’re NOT sorry”, and walk away. I think loving someone despite what people think is FEARLESS. I think allowing yourself to cry on the bathroom floor is FEARLESS. Letting go is FEARLESS. Then, moving on and being alright…That’s FEARLESS too. But no matter what love throws at you, you have to believe in it. You have to believe in love stories and prince charmings and happily ever after. That’s why I write these songs. Because I think love is FEARLESS.”
― Taylor Swift

Be fearless.

Next time I’ll be braver...

Courtney’s Imagination★