Why I love writing (and why you should too)

My story starts with a grieved history of mental illness, not thoughout all of my life have I dealt with this, but through my late teens I suffered severely from anxiety, which lead to depression.

when I was 18 I left home to go and live in the wonderful city of Leeds. My friends were all at uni, studying (if you could call it that ;) and I had the magical work/life balance of a student living with an adults wallet - it was great. But then came the anxiety.

My job meant working for a multinational conglomerate and it was my role to keep the systems running. IT was my forte, and while you may think it fun and nerdy to work in the tech industry, trust me, it can be very stressful at times. There was a lot of stress placed on my shoulders, working in such a highly professional corporate environment and being such a young adult at the age of 18, it was a big change for me to adapt to.

Serving the employees and businesses needs was the role and customer service was the second largest part of what I did. This meant lots of face-to-face interactions so having social anxiety probably wasn’t the most practical feat I held. Only then did I start to procure facial tics and that boosted my anxiety through the roof, especially when in public. One day I was on the bus home, when I almost couldn’t take it anymore - I became paranoid that the people on the bus could see my facial tics, and I wanted to hide my face.

unfortunately anxiety and depression go hand in hand, and by this time in my life the depression that was looming over me started to take over. I didn’t want to go to bed at night, I would stay up and play video games or watch videos even though I had work the next day, and when I did try to sleep, I couldn’t. The depression and anxiety were enough to cause anyone to be sick, but the feelings they brought on made me not want to get up in the morning and there were many times when I took a day off work ‘ill’ because I couldn’t face going in.

Throughout my time living and working in Leeds, I gradually got better as I took up fitness, started cycling, took a martial arts class, and eventually went to the gym. Doing these things helped me so much, and I would recommend them to anyone suffering from anxiety and/or depression, but it wasnt until later that I discovered my passion for writing. At first it was just notes, but this grew into passages and then I decided to write a novel. The notes in my notepad were just thought provoking lines from books that I was reading, which turned into quotes from my favourite authors and artists who I had either researched or read about - one line I recall, was “A man is few words” but I can’t recall who this came from. The notes stick with me as I live and age and I carry them with me as memoirs from times that I felt inspired. It‘s good to have these things as they built who you are as a person, and that is exactly what it did for me. unfortunately I have lost these notepads over the years, which is a sad shame as I would like to look over them. It’s like, once you’ve written a passage, you can’t write it again because you lose the place that it came from; perhaps the book you took a quote from was returned to its owner, or you lost it, so keep this in mind and store your notepads in one place.

“Be the man you once were” is something I keep telling myself, and talking and writing is how I achieve that. If recovery is something you want then I hope I have inspired you to pick up a pen and start reading a good biography to take notes on.

Peace out.