Moving House with OCD and Anxieties

If you've been keeping an eye on my twitter lately than you may have noticed that I recently moved house. I knew that this was going to be tough. As someone with OCD and anxiety, change is not easy for me to deal with. But I didn't quite realise just how difficult everything was going to be. I've been putting on a brave face in front of people, because even though I know my mental health does not make me weak, it still makes me feel weak. But in all honesty, this past month I have struggled more than I have in a very long time. It was enough to make me wonder if my meds weren't strong enough.

I want to say that one of the saving graces was that I was moving back to my mum's house but I think actually this made everything - mental health wise at least - that little bit worse. Because as much as I love my mum and my sister and my step dad, living with them is a very different thing. More than that, I know that they know I have issues but they're very much "get over it" people as opposed to "it's okay" people. Which is obviously difficult but totally fine because I know they love me. But living in that environment is quite different to living more or less alone. 

So my brain has had to get used to this and I'm feeling a bit better. Being in the house has definitely made me realise that if things get too much, I can just escape to my bedroom. While we do like to spend time as a family, we are all also very considerate to know that alone time is okay too. And this has helped me to calm my OCD and anxieties about moving home.

But with moving home also came getting rid of stuff. I really wanted to move from my shared flat to my own flat. Then I could have taken all of my belongings with me and it would have been fine. Instead I had to downsize. I moved from a fairly decent sized single (it could have fit a double bed in it) room into what is essentially a box room. It is literally a square room. The length of a single bed, the width of a single bed. This meant that I couldn't have all the furniture I once had. (Bed, bedside cabinet, desk, two bookcases, chest of drawers, double wardrobe) I now have a bed, bedside cabinet, one bookcase, chest of drawers and have since purchased some more plastic storage drawers - NO wardrobe). With less furniture comes less space to store my belongings.

And thus, for the last month and a bit I have had to go through everything I own and decide if I want to keep it or throw it away. And I know for someone without mental health issues this can be tough, so for me it was horrid. It took me longer than it should have because I kept having to stop to collect my thoughts and ground myself. Remind myself that it is okay to get rid of things. That they would be going to better places, potentially helping someone else who needs them.

In the end it took four trips to the recycling centre to get rid of all of the stuff I had to dispose of. Plus it has taken a lot of trips to the post office to send out book post to friends and bloggers and quite a few trips to charity shops to get rid of the rest. Heartbreaking isn't really a big enough word to describe my feelings on it all. I keep panicking that I've made a huge mistake. What if I got rid of the wrong books? What if I got rid of something I really need?

But aside from just the packing and chucking, there was also a massive issue with the actual move. As you may have noticed I took some of my furniture with me to my mums but I wasn't able to sort this on my own. In fact, I didn't really move any of my stuff on my own because ever since getting ill but strength has been sapped away from me. (more on that later, I'm sure), and so I had to enlist people to help. Which is normal and should have been fine, right?

Except it wasn't. Because watching someone else carry my things, no matter how careful they were with them, was soul crushing. My control was gone and I wanted to just sit and cry. I felt uncomfortable and lost. It was so, so difficult. It had to be done but I think a part of me felt like it was dying inside.

Now I have a room that is mostly finished. Most of the boxes have been unpacked and my things have been given new places to live and it feels like mine and me and I like waking up in the morning - and the cats being around is also definitely nice - but there's still a part of me that is devastated that it's not the place I woke up in for the last three years nor that it is my own new place.

As far as I'm concerned, I've gone backwards.

But what is ultimately worse is that the move has been so stressful and soul wrenching that I don't know when I'm going to be ready to do it again. I know I have to because I do not want to live with my mum forever but as much as I don't want to still be there a year from today, I also don't want to have to go through all of this again in a few months time.

For now, I guess I just need to wait and see how it goes. To try and just let myself get settled in the place I'm in and go from there.

I still don't feel okay within myself but maybe one day soon I will be.

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Dealing with Changes With Mental Health

There are some people who deal with change easily. Whatever life throws at them, they just deal with it and get on with it and it barely affects their life. These are the type of people who welcome change as it makes life more interesting and intriguing. It makes them feel like they are actually living their life rather than just being alive. I used to be one of those people.

It feels weird to believe this of myself these days. To remember that I used to dive head first into adventure without knowing anything about what might be around the corner. Because it is something that I find almost impossible these days. Changes now feel overwhelming, terrifying, and cause me intense anxiety issues.

After primary school, I went to secondary school on my own and everything was fine. After secondary school, I went to college on my own and it was good. During secondary school when I was just 15, I went to Denmark without an adult and with just three friends. After college, I went on a gap year to Canada with just my brother and five strangers with me. It was the first time I had ever been to Canada. After Canada I went to university on my own and threw myself into new activities I had never done before, such as Waterpolo and Journalism.

I craved change in the past. I hated it when it felt like my life was still and not moving anywhere. I needed to try new things and go different places and live life to the fullest.

I’m not sure when it changed. I wish I knew so that I could go back to that day and shake my past self. But now change terrifies me. Eating in new restaurants fills me with anxious worries, going abroad seems like something I will never be able to do again (unless it is to a country I have been to before and can orient myself into something familiar but new places is a big no-no). Trying a new activity seems daunting and bizarre.

Change is no longer easy and is something that I have to really gear myself up for. This can sometimes take me a long time just to make a decision and even then I might back out before it comes to pass. As happened last year when I kept agreeing to meet new people in new places to try and be social and meet people and always cancelled the day before due to not dealing with the anxious feelings that coursed through my veins.

So, if you follow me on twitter or on my personal blog, you might know that I actually had a very big change happen in my life this week. I started a new job. But not only that. I started a new job in an entirely new city – two hours away from where I actually live.

Now as you can imagine, this has not been easy for me.

It actually took me five days to accept the offer for which I am entirely grateful to the employer for still keeping aside for me while I took the time to decide. I then had four weeks to get used to the idea of everything.

Those four weeks were full of planning and organising. They were also full of anxiety and panic. I had moments when I wanted to go back on my acceptance. Moments where I was sure that I was making a huge mistake and that I would hate both the job and the city and my life would be entirely ruined – naturally.

There was also excitement. Something different was going to happen in my life. Someone had seen me as worth investing in. Someone believed in me.

And I think that is what really helped get my anxious thoughts in order. That and having the most amazing friends and family around to help keep me grounded but to also continually remind me how wonderful this opportunity is and how proud they were of me, and all that wonderful good stuff that filled me with hope and that bit of strength I needed.

This week has been tough. On Monday I ended up having the biggest anxiety attack I’ve had in months. For two hours I struggled with my thoughts and my fears and the panic. I ended up driving to my mums house so that she could calm me down which led to further fears about what I would do when my mum wasn’t 30minutes down the road. But I got through it and I knew that underneath it all, I was just struggling with the change about to occur.

Tuesday was actually okay. This was actually the first day of actual change in my life but I managed to get through it easily enough. Wednesday came with a few blips and my heart raced a few times and I struggled to sleep in the evening. Not to mention I got stressed and a bit snappy as well. Fortunately, those I snapped at where very aware that the next day was the day of the big change so let me get away with it without too many repercussions.

And then yesterday. Yesterday was terrifying. But I planned and I prepared and I did everything I could to make sure I felt as comfortable as I could, including arriving at the job 15 minutes before shift started. And then the new job started and I met what seems like a very friendly and welcoming team who I am more than sure I will really like working with. I was shown the building I’d be working with and fell in love so very completely. I was also shown a few of the things I would be doing on the job and I knew that I could do everything I was asked and that I would most likely enjoy it too.

So now I still feel a little anxious about my next shift which starts tomorrow but I also feel better too. Because I did it. I made a change in my life. This is just the start. I have some more changes to make in the next few months but now I know that I can just get on with it when it happens.

I simply need to feel the fear and do it anyway. 

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Changes, Welcomed Changes

I’ve always been known as someone who doesn’t do things by halves.

Some examples?

-          I have the most progressive disease my Gastroenterologist has seen.

-          In a three-month period, my colon disintegrated but I didn’t present with a flare up of IBD!

-          My GYN surgeon removed a tennis ball cyst off my ovary which should have been causing tons of problems, but wasn’t

-          When I got sick, I was really sick; without much indication.

See? Didn’t I tell you?

Things for me come all at once or not at all.

I am currently sat doing not much because I cleared my to-do list to have a couple days of down time. Why?

Well, in a couple weeks I start a new job. Almost 70 miles away from home. And this weekend, my OH and I go there to find my rental property for the first six months.

All the scary, big, life changing feels, right?

Thing is, I could have found a job closer to home. I could have found a job which would mean me and my OH could have lived together next year. I could have found a job that was just a job nothing more. And that would have been me, this time last year; pre-surgery, pre-ostomy. I would have settled for a job because it was money and I needed money. It was low risk, low responsibility and it was just a means to an end. I’ve felt like this about many jobs in the past; always thought it was safe to take a job I didn’t like because who would want anyone to work for them who was chronically ill, unable to show true commitment?

But it’s not me now.

The last six months I have felt incredibly well. I wasn’t expecting it and I admit, it was beginning to freak me out; I’ve never been that well with my Crohn’s in all the years I’ve had it so far, I hadn’t expected surgery to be so… life changing. So, by being so well, I’ve pushed myself. I’ve worked hard on my own blog, reached out to people and sought opportunities I would never have dreamed of before. Admittedly, I’ve had the free time to be flexible and explore these opportunities, and finally, it’s all paid off.

My job offer was 40% luck and chance and 60% recommendation and me, in all my gutsy glory.

I don’t mean to be big headed, I hope this does not come of like that, but jeez I still can’t believe it, all of this is happening and its happening to me.

So, in between all the stress of finding a place to live, moving to a new part of the country, starting a new job – it’s been 14 months since my last one, yikes! – I am incredibly proud of myself. I am internalising all of that so that on my first day I don’t bolt – panic and lose all confidence. And to anyone else, this is just a job and it’s not a big deal but it is to me. I have worked hard since surgery, whilst recovering, I’ll add, to figure out my plan; of what I hope to have my life be. It’s a solid picture now, instead of the blur it used to be. It’s filled with a house, my OH, some dogs and plenty of food. And it feels achievable for the first time in five years, since the diagnosis. Things finally feel stable, when I once felt so unsure about my life, myself and what I was actually doing. I don’t question things these days, my mellow attitude comes from – I hope – of years of learning to live with a chronic illness.

And maybe this will change if I get sick again – which is a possibility, a chance it could happen – but I am hopeful my ‘new’ attitude doesn’t falter if it does.

I hope this change, this welcomed change, is going to stick.

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Where is Home?

Until very recently, I had always been very firm about where my home was. I had always lived in a little corner of North West London, and had only moved once in my life about 5 miles down the road. Then in the space of a month, my parents uprooted to the South Coast, and I moved again back up to the Midlands. It was a bit hectic and rather confusing, and I’m still trying to process it all.

I’ve been at University here for about 6 weeks now, and I seem to be coping relatively well so far. Things are busy, but I quite like them being busy and I’ve made a group of friends and enjoying my course. There is one thing that has been bothering me since I’ve moved here though, and that’s that I’m not really sure where home even is anymore.

For most of my friends here, it’s simple; they’ve always lived in the same area and still do, and that’s home. It’s a little more complicated on my side. For me, I think, London will always be my home. It’s my favourite city in the world, it’s where I grew up and where so many life-changing events happened to me. It’s where all of my friends are in the holidays and everything is familiar. I don’t have to think about how the tube works or the times of the buses, how late everything is open or where I need to go to get something. It’s a diverse and open-minded city with things going on all the time that I can just escape into and find something new. I’ve been to visit a few times since I’ve been at University, and every time I step off at St. Pancras station, I feel so happy and relaxed.

I did spend three weeks in that town on the south coast, and whilst I know all my stuff and some of my family is there, I just can’t call it home. The house is unfamiliar and not mine, it takes a half hour walk to get to any form of civilisation and I have nobody there besides my dad and some of my stepfamily. Part of this struggle, I think, is that I haven’t been able to go back since I moved to University, for a number of reasons. The first is that, I just find it easier to settle into a place if I don’t leave it for a while. Second is money and time; a train from the midlands to the south coast is not direct, nor cheap and I can’t really afford the train tickets nor the 5 hour journey to get there. There have been many weekends here my friends have headed off home and it’s been making me think about where that is a lot.

Last weekend I spent my first nights away from my University town, in the centre of London with a friend. I was worried that it was going to make me homesick and not want to go back, that I was going to go back to University and hate every minute I wasn’t back in London.

But, as I boarded the train due north and sat in my seat, I had an odd, comforting thought that I couldn’t wait to get back to my pokey student room and see my friends and get back to the town. I was filled with relief that my excursion back to my home city hadn’t made me incredibly sad, and in fact had made me realise how attached I had become to this little city in a few short weeks. It’s definitely no London, and I have to say I do miss being able to attend all the book events I used to when I lived in London. But for now, this little city in the middle of the country really isn’t such a bad place to call my new temporary home.

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