Becky's Kitchen | Cauliflower Alfredo Sauce (BEST VEGAN ALFREDO SAUCE EVER!!!!)

Hi! I've recently been experimenting slightly in the kitchen, in regards to finding cheap and healthy recipes that are vegetarian and are something different from the routine of meals I find myself falling into at universtiy. It can be tough to experiment and try new meals when you are on a budget. But over the summer I began experimenting with vegan alternatives to cheese sauce, I tried multiple recipes and whilst they were all okay, they weren't fab and I gave up for a while. I'm not in anyway vegan (there is no way I could give up all the cheeses!), but I was finding that regular cheese sauce took a lot of cheese and time and it wasn't practical to make at university and so I wanted to find a faster, less heavy alternative.

I came across multiple posts on pinterest for vegan cauliflower alfredo sauce and decided that it was worth the try. I wanted to mix up the routine meals I had fallen into and this seemed like a nice way to shake it up (plus I'd just invested in a blender and wanted an excuse to use it!). I've tried a few variations of this recipe and have combined a couple of methods to create what is possibly the best thing I have ever made! Here are the ingredients:

LITERALLY SIX INGREDIENTS! What you will notice up in the middle is the lovely can on Nutritional Yeast (mmmmmm delicious!), it was something I had not heard of really before I started experimenting with vegan dishes. It is basically what gives the sauce a cheesy taste (I promise it is actually really good and not as gross as it sounds!). I bought a bulk of 3 tubs on Amazon for £8.91, which is a really good deal because it lasts FOREVER and I'm still only on my first tub! 

To start, chop your onion and get that sauteing in a frying pan whilst you squish and chop your garlic. I like to give the onions a couple of minutes by themselves because I find that I somehow manage to burn the garlic if I put it all in together at the same time. Anyway, whilst the onion is frying/sauteing (all the fancy terms), prepare your garlic and add to the pan when the onions are starting to become a darker yellow colour (this is the ideal time, as everything is done at the same time).


Whilst the onions and garlic is cooking in the pan, set your kettle to boil and begin to prepare your veg stock cube. This can be done at the beginning too, which I tend to do. Just stick the cube in 250ml (A Cup) of water and give it a stir occasionally to break up the cube. This is a really small amount of water for the cube so it appears really dark but do not panic because it really isn't important as we will be adding some soya milk later on in the process so there will be enough liquid!


Prepare your cauliflower by removing all the green leaves (I also tend to cut the base off the cauliflower too, I don't really know why!). Chop the cauliflower in half and put one half back in the fridge for another day and another alfredo sauce. Chop the half you have remaining however you please, I tend to chop it into rough chunks as it is going to cook in the veg stock so you want it to absorb some of the flavour. But you also need to make sure it is small enough to fit into whatever blender you are using. I have not learnt this through experience...

Once your onions are cooked, add the veg stock and cauliflower, stir and cover with a lid. Let everything simmer together for at least 5 minutes or until the cauliflower is cooked. Then transfer to your blender, depending on what model you use you might want to give your cauliflower/ stock concoction some time to cool down to save explosions or blades being screwed tightly to the bottle with heat (both are not fun!).

Blend together the cauliflower and stock first before adding three tablespoons of nutritional yeast (every recipe specified two but I found that wasn't quite enough!) and 125ml (Half a Cup) of soya milk to the blender. Blend everything together and stick back in the saucepan on a low heat to keep warm whilst you prepare the rest of your meal. I tend to go with pasta, broccoli, peas and spinach with my alfredo sauce and it is by far the most incredible thing! I find that I also have between 1-2 more servings of the sauce left over (depending on how much I put on my dinner), which is really handy as it can be stuck in the freezer for another day!

And there you have it, the best vegan cauliflower alfredo sauce, with some super snazzy food photoshoot photos (trust me there are way more of these photos!). ENJOY!

Ingredients (with supermarket prices):

Makes enough for two servings!

• Half a floret of cauliflower (95p a floret)
• 1 onion (75p for 1kg of onions)
• 3 cloves of garlic (89p for a pack of 4 bulbs)
• 250ml (1 Cup) of veg stock (30p for 10 stock cubes)
• 3 tablespoons of nutritional yeast (£2.97 a tub from Amazon)
• 125ml  (Half a Cup) of Soya Milk (£1.40 a carton) 

Quick Breakdown Instructions:

1. Fry off onions and garlic in pan. Prepare veg stock in jug and chop cauliflower.
2. Add cauliflower and veg stock to pan, stir and cover with lid and let everything simmer for at least 5 minutes.
3. Add cooked ingredients to blender and blend until smooth. Follow with milk and yeast flakes and season. Blend again.
4. Add sauce back to pan and warm through on a low heat until ready to serve.

Change of Plans...

Life has been through some pretty big changes in the past couple of months and I realised I hadn't spoken about anything. So when a big wave of depression hit, I realised it was time to get back to the keyboard and begin writing again. So welcome back, hello!

A couple of months ago, I decided I wasn't happy with my uni and the course I was on, it was pretty devastating to me because I had spent so much time and effort picking the perfect university for me. I loved it there, I loved the people and the town and I was happy. That was until some pretty big changes lefts some pretty big holes and I came to the realisation that if I ever wanted to make it in Radio then staying at that university was not going to benefit me.

I came up to look at Salford, look being the main word in that sentence and was offered a place before I'd even been there an hour. I don't know what it was exactly that gave me the guts to do it, but that afternoon I was packing up everything from my old university and preparing to move to Salford. It was a crazy couple of weeks and something that has shown me that I do have the guts to make these crazy jumps in life. Yes it might be absolutely terrifying at the time but I know that I can do anything and nothing is going to stop me now.

It's been wonderful up here, I'm being pushed and although I am finding it harder, I know it's going to work out better for me in the long run. What I wasn't expecting was the huge black cloud to come rolling over and knock me off my feet a bit. I struggle with depression a lot, I know how to handle it, it's just tough when you're in a new place, further from home, far away from people you know and you can't walk next door to your best friend for a hug.

It's been super tough, my brains had me running through my days, wasting my time in those crappy situations it likes to put me in. When I'm not out and at uni, I'm inside not myself, escaping to somewhere better and somewhere where I don't have to think about my brain (whilst having those little back of the mind thoughts that I'm completely losing my mind). When those paths between reality and this fictional state crossed about a week ago my brain didn't know how to compute it. I met the band that take up that fictional state in my head and I think my brain hoped it would continue to run over.

I've spent the majority of the week, watching the same videos on youtube, obsessing and wondering why I wasn't good enough. I mean the conscious "normal" part of my brain knows exactly why. It was 15 minutes, I am just another media person, they don't know me and I don't know them like I think I do. I hate that the irrational part of my brain hoped that maybe I'd be plucked out of this reality and thrown into that fantasy world because it was never going to happen.

And so my depression has been piling up and up, I don't like talking about it to anyone because I don't want people to worry. The super important, been here forever people are too far away and I don't want to seem weird to my new friends. It's hard, because now I feel so alone. My brain is running all these thoughts and I'm tired. I don't want to be in this crappy state anymore, I want to be out and living my life, but I can't I feel trapped here. It's harder to go out and see the world and I'm less inclined when I don't have my best friend by my side to go and hang out with me. It's difficult.

I know I'll be okay and that I can get through this, I always do. But right now the cloud is there and it's taking a while for the storm to pass, but I know that as the weeks go by that it's going to get better. I just need to get myself out of this storm, brush myself off and go and search for the sunshine.

Rebecca
xxx

Way Over The Word Count - Moon Graffiti - The Truth Podcast

I'm trying a new thing here on the blog. It might not work or it might work wonderfully and you may be swallowed into an abyss of new writing. Don't hold me to it, this could be the first and last attempt at this we ever see on the internet. With a new year of university ahead and a new task of reviewing pieces of audio, we've hit the challenge that if you've been a reader of the blog for a while, you will know I struggle with... keeping things short and simple. I have never been able to stay under a word count in my life, so with the new challenge of 200-400 words of beautiful pieces of audio,  I face the task of not writing 1,000 words on each piece. So 'Way Over The Word Count' has been born, a place for me to write my full review on the pieces I have been tasked with listening to (aren't you lucky?). These are going to be extremely analytical and wordy compared to the usual writing over here so be warned! I'll stop rambling now and dive into it!!! There will be spoilers, I'm sure and completely by mistake so listen first if you don't want me to spoil it for you! For this radio show, I want you to shut yourself in a dark room, with a good pair of headphones or speakers and enjoy:

Our first listening task was an incredible piece called Moon Graffiti by The Truth Podcast. The radio piece is based around what would happen if the first moon landing had gone tragically wrong from the perspective of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. From the word go it was incredibly engaging and the use of sound so pleasing to the listener. We begin in what can only be realised, after the narration, as the Eagle landing on the moon and everything going horrifically wrong. I enjoyed the introduction and the pace because it set the scene incredibly well, despite not really mentioning what was actually happening, or where we were. You knew you were listening to mission control, because of that crackly space communication that we are all so used to hearing (and pretending to replicate as kids with your hands over your mouth?). The use of language really helps bring this story to life, you get the "roger" and the "Houston" and you are suddenly immersed in where you are, you get the generic space language that we hear whenever we look at documentaries or films about space. We might not necessarily always understand the space jargon but I think that really helps in bringing the story to life. I enjoyed the use of actuality (background noises - close your eyes, what can you hear?) in the intro, the beeps of the spaceship, the crackles of the microphones as they talked. It really helped bring us into the ship with Neil and Buzz as they "landed" on the moon.

Something I really loved about this piece, is that it is set around the actual speech prepared for President Nixon in case everything went tragically wrong during the actual moon landing. The little snippets of the speech bring the story to life in such a dramatic and engaging way, that makes you want to keep listening. It's a devastating part of the drama, it grips you in and it's used later on with far more devastating useage (but I will come to that later!). I think that bringing the narrator in to explain the speech was incredibly helpful from a listener's perspective, it really helped carry the story along because he is building the story in front of your eyes. His voice is calming, yet the background music builds that tension and I found it almost was like being read a bedtime story. The little background noises with the narration were incredibly clever and pleasing to the ear, for instance the sound of the little rocket ship that shoots through our ears and crashes really took the story back from the narrator to the characters in a clever and entertaining way.

The Apollo 11 Moon Landing Crew 

So what would it have been like to crash on the moon? The Truth brings this story to life beautifully. I loved the personality between the characters, Buzz being a lot more manic and panicky, always needing to be reassured, almost childlike, whereas Neil is far more calm, collected and really there to get the job done, regardless of the situation they are in. Again the use of actuality for this scene was spectacular, I especially enjoyed the thuds to show them jumping across the moon; just that noise painted that picture of an astronaut moving slowly across the surface of the moon. There was so many little noises, like the camera clicking and the echo's that really brought the story to life and painted that picture for the listener.

 I enjoyed the background music for this piece, it built that tension and also helped show that isolation that they would have faced, but it also had a really nice space/techy undertone that really fit the scene well as it wasn't too in your face for the devastation of the scene. This admittedly is where I cried at least three of the times that I listened to the drama; when it started to get dramatic and emotional. It was beautifully written and some of the lines spoken by the astronauts gave me goosebumps. You root for the characters even though there is no hope and it hits you when Buzz tries to get the radios working desperately for "one last goodbye to the wife and kids", it was hard hitting and emotional and just pulled you in completely. The whole memorial scene to the Apollo 1 disaster is a heartbreaking to listen to, you can really only understand it if you knew what happened and who lost their lives, and admittedly I had to research the astronauts they spoke about before I had any real understanding about this piece of the scene. But the actors brought the emotion to this tribute superbly, it was like listening to Buzz and Neil paying their respect to their fellow astronauts. At times the conversations begun to go on for slightly too long, mainly the space-talk pieces but knowing that this is how it is actually done in space, helped bring the story to life.

I loved the countdown to this whole scene of the drama, Buzz and Neil are running are out of air, they have hours to live and the pace speeds up as we begin to reach the end. A bit I found really helped connect me as a listener to the characters was the footprints speech, when they're discussing how NASA can find their bodies by their footprints and how they will be there forever. It was brought beautifully together with Buzz connecting this to helping his neighbour concrete and their children writing something that will stay there forever. It was devastating to listen as they considered what to leave as their way to be remembered.

What I think was incredibly clever is how writer Jonathan Mitchell still managed to keep the final moments with Buzz and Neil light and somewhat funny. I couldn't help but laugh when the characters were discussing God and Buzz says "Do you think God will find us on the moon?", it showed an innocence and wonder to the situation that they were in. The scene continued to pick up pace and I liked the use of layered conversation to show Buzz starting to have a bit of a freak out, I thought that was a really clever way to bring that sense of overwhelming-ness to the listener.

The scene finishes and over the crackling of the helmets, the speech comes back to us. I really took this as the final moments of Buzz and Neil. As depressing as it sounds, the noise of the helmet microphones still cracking and no talking really gave me the impression that the characters had passed away. The actual speech written for President Nixon is incredibly moving and is read incredibly well John Ottavino. It is spoken clearly and perfectly in the style for that time period, the pauses are timed perfectly to produce that emotion in the listener and it feels almost as if we are listening to a real obituary. There is a roughly seven second pause between the end of the speech and the final music which I think is an incredible use of silence in radio. I really enjoyed that moment to think.

In conclusion, if you couldn't tell I really enjoyed the piece. It was not an overly complicated 10 minutes that was easy to follow. I liked that you could dip in and out of the drama and still know what was going on with the story. Overall I found Moon Graffiti by The Truth podcast incredibly gripping. As a listener I found myself hooked in and the time passed incredibly quickly. Acknowledgments must go to the incredible work of writer and producer Jonathan Mitchell, the wonderful editing of Hillary Frank and the voices of Matt Evans as Neil Armstrong, Ed Herbstman as Buzz Aldrin and John Ottavino as President Richard Nixon.

Off the Meds...

So about 2 weeks ago, without telling anyone, I decided to come off of my meds and see if anyone noticed. Or even if I noticed any difference at all. I've been on Fluoxetine for almost two years and after an already two year battle they were the first medications that didn't make my mental health issues worse. They were a lifesaver and it made me so happy that I was finally starting to feel somewhat normal again. They helped me incredibly. I no longer felt extremely depressed and suicidal each day and I started to feel as though I had a little control again. If I missed a day and forgot to take them, I could feel it that evening and into the next day, I became extremely dependant on them.

"Why did you stop then?" I hear you ask. To be fair, it just felt like the right step to take. I've been on some form of medication since I was 16 and I was approaching my 21st birthday and although it helped me improve it didn't find it was "helping" me anymore. Yes it was keeping the depression at bay, with those infrequent patches, but I will always have those. But I felt numb. I didn't feel anything anymore and I had forgotten what it was like to feel happy or even sad, I just felt empty. It was something I had always attributed to my bad patches of depression but then I begun to realise that I was waking up every day feeling this way and I didn't like it.

I've heard about how mental health issues can cause you to do impulsive things and I have always fallen victim to this but this was my biggest impulsive move that I have ever taken. It started off with me just forgetting by accident, breaking out of my two year habit until one day I just realised that it had been a couple of days and I was still feeling okay. So I made the jump, I stopped taking my meds and I have been so incredibly lucky to have had no real repercussions. I feel 100x better than I did when I was so heavily medicated, I feel free.

I've had this new wave of confidence, I feel I can take on any challenge set before me now. My mental health issues are no longer a barrier for me and instead of turning things down, I am finally saying yes and feeling like I mean it, instead of just pushing myself to say yes to things. I haven't felt like I needed my anxiety meds to attempt everyday situations, so my diazepam (emergency panic attacks/ anxiety meds) has been sitting deserted in my bag, something I feel incredibly proud about because for so long, I was so dependant on them when I was thrown into unknown or stressful situations.

I feel like a new me, ready to take on any situations thrown at me, instead of worrying that I can't do things anymore, I know I can do anything, with just a little extra work in the face of my anxiety. My illnesses no longer have a hold on me, they no longer are me and I am ready to finally become my own person, away from my past. In no way I am saying do the same, don't do what I did, get some expert advice. But know that one day things will start to look like they are heading up!

Lots of Love,
Rebecca
xxx  

Greetings from the Garden...

Hi, it's been a while and whilst sitting in the garden in the glorious English sunshine, I thought it would be nice for a catch up. I have just come from an intense hula-hooping competition and I'm now watching both of the younger siblings compete at who is better whilst trying to encourage the dog to jump through it as though she is one of those hilarious small agility dogs, instead of her usual goldendoodle size. And of course it's sunny so Tilly must have her celebratory sunshine photo:

 

It's been awhile since we've had a sit down and a chat, I've been blogging for the university over at: http://blogs.staffs.ac.uk/student-blogs/author/b015586f/ and have some what neglected my own personal outlet. University is finished for the year and I am now safely back home. Admittedly I've not been live blogging like this one and a lot of what you have heard from me, was back-ups that I never really knew when to post. But now that the year is over, I am once again ready to be the best I can be for the blog.

So life updates, starting with the most important thing, my brain... I've faced a med change since we last spoke and that has made me rather poorly for the past few weeks. I've become a hermit that doesn't want to leave the house and is still struggling to even get out of bed in the morning. It could be better but we've hit the scary patch of suicidal thoughts and questioning my very existence head on and taken minimal damage from the blow. It's been a while since I felt like this and with such a change at home from when I moved away it's hard to have the courage to talk about how I am truly feeling. It's my brain over thinking and telling me a load of horrible things to make the situations so much worse in my head.

Outside update, I have now made a bird friend called Jeremy, he is sitting by my foot and regardless of how cute he actually is, I am slightly terrified of a rogue bird attack. Robin's are friendly right? 

My brain is making me feel rather out of it and very much in that fish-bowl again. Nothing feels real which is terrifying. I've never been drunk or high but I can imagine that is totally what this must feel like and that is the biggest, don't drink, don't do drugs a person could ever need in their life. Life in the fish-bowl isn't fun, life is continuing on around me and here I am stuck in the same rut that I have been for the past two weeks. My paranoia is increasing daily and I'm wondering when I'm just going to explode and destroy everything around me, I'm waiting to ruin every relationship I have because I can't stop the 10,000 thoughts rushing through my brain every second. 

I keep thinking about how this is my life now, I don't have that golden ticket to get me out of this never-ending cycle of up's and down's. I'm trapped with mental health issues until I die and that is so terrifying. I hate it enough now, but 20 or 30 years down the line how much more am I going to loath and despise this illness that I have. It's scary and I wish I could just make it go away but I can't and I hate that for the rest of my life I will have patches where I feel as crappy as this. 

The first year of university is officially over and with all my work handed in, I can now reflect on the past 9 months. It's been a long journey, that hasn't been easy but I did it, which is something I never thought I was going to be able to say. To be fair I am surprised I even got to university to begin with. Should we have a show of hands on who is surprised too? I cannot believe a year has passed and that it wasn't a completely awful and terrifying experience like I expected. Far from it, I have loved my new freedom and all that it has given to me. 

I've done things I never thought I'd do by myself without my family besides me like I used to need it to be. I've grown up and have been able to overcome things on my own. I've been on nights out and done far more socially than I have done in years. University made me realised how deprived of necessary social time I had become since dropping out of school when I was 12. I never got those experiences of growing up with friends and having them there for years and years, but I have finally had the chance to meet new people who love me for who I am and who don't care about my past or my brain crap and I love it.

I still can't quite believe I have done it and the year is over. It's gone scarily quick and I look at the guys graduating, realising that that is really only around the corner and knowing how quickly that time will go. I still can't believe the people that looked after me at the start and took me under their wings will be gone when I return next year and I cannot thank them enough for the support that they have given me this year. 

So you are all caught up. I'm unsure of where my summer will go and what I want to do with the spare time I will have but we will figure it out along the way, I am sure of it. Until next time, enjoy the sunshine.

Lots of Love,

Rebecca

xxx

Things I Wish My Parents Knew When I Was Little...

I wasn't a naughty child and I didn't have a bad childhood but I have suffered all my life with mental health issues and that made my growing up very difficult. This isn't a mean post about my parents because they are and they were the most incredible parents. But I wasn't an easy child to look after and so I wanted to write a letter to my parents when they had those tough times with me as I was growing up.

Dear Mum and Dad,
I wanted to write to you in the past because I know that whatever time in my life you are dealing with that this may help you. I'm so sorry that things weren't easy and now that we have my mental health diagnosis we continuously look back at things that could have changed and you could have do to help me. I've sat with mum as she's got teary over things she could have done differently and I just wish that she could see that she didn't know and now she is the most incredible mother in the world.

There's been things that you will be faced with that are clear signs of my illness that we hadn't realised and it left me frustrated and upset and thinking that I may end up no longer with my family. I get frustrated a lot at the boys if things aren't going right and I maybe shouldn't have shouted as loud and gotten so angry but with my anxiety and OCD my brain can't handle things that I can't control. I can't really remember how that felt as a child but I know now that it is so hard to deal with things out of my control.

I wish we had known about my illnesses when I was little, we could have stopped so many arguments and so many words that we regret speaking. I don't remember much of my childhood and I put that down to my illness but I want you to know that I don't hold a grudge with you for how my childhood was lived. We didn't know what I was going through. I was a scared child who didn't know what was happening inside my head, I could describe it and it made me behave in ways that I really truly regret.

I hate that I got so angry with my brothers and that I still have moments where I just explode and I know that there is no justifying what I have done and still do but I want you to know that I explode when I have held a lot inside, when my anxiety is bad and I can't control my surroundings or if it is too noisy and I can't get my brain to focus. I wish I could take back all the times I was a horrible child and all the times that I messed up. I hate that I was so vile growing up and I really am truly sorry. Life gets easier as we grow and learn and I just want you to know that I love you so much and you do the most fantastic job.

I love you.
Rebecca
xxx

Paranoia...

My mental health issues vary and change depend on the situation. I have found myself with a lot more paranoia than I did before I started university. It's a trait that seems to have been brought out from being on my own, away from home without my voice of reason, my mum to push those stupid thoughts aside. My brain has always been able to convince me that things aren't what they seem. With a history of suicide, an example is that at that moment you aren't thinking about reality, your brain is telling you that those people most important in your life would be better off without you. That they hate you and you might as well just give up. But that is never the truth even if your little voice of reason in your head can tell you that.

I've struggled a lot with my paranoia in the last couple of weeks and days. I started my checking routine from my OCD again in the past couple of months that I hadn't done for a good year and had spent six years working on, to get rid of that compulsion. They are back and as difficult as ever, your brain is saying, but you might have missed something do it again, but you are just tired and wanting to just get into bed and sleep but you find yourself checking at least four more times before you can settle down again.

Last night my brain had convinced me that I was going to die in the night. I was terrified and of course didn't want to sleep at all and it took me a good three hours to settle down and actually sleep. I begun my pacing again which sucked because having to get up and pace to get the panic attacks to stop was exhausting.

The delusions have gotten worse in the past couple of weeks. I have always been able to convince myself that things were happening that actually weren't at all. But in the past couple of weeks I have my found more easily wrapped up in stupid scenarios and think I am somebody else. It's horrible because I can find myself in public, thinking that I am somebody that I am not. It sounds so stupid and silly when I discuss it but in that moment it is terrifying because one half of your brain is playing out this storyline and a tiny voice is trying take the control back and come back to reality.

I cannot wait to see the psychiatrist this month and finally begin to work over everything that has happened in the past few months. I'm hoping that they will be able to help me move on and continue working on getting better instead of feeling like I am stuck on the top of a rollercoaster with no control as to when it is going to fall back to earth again.

Rebecca

From the Inside of The Depression Bubble.

I am depressed. I have depression. I'm not ashamed to admit it. But I need to talk about it, because I need a little bit of an outlet for a moment. It's not for attention, far from it, I just want people to understand what depression can be like. I like the "black dog" description that is used. That there is a huge dark monster stuck to your back, following you wherever you are going, holding you back from anything and everything you want to or are trying to do.


I've been trapped in a bubble for a few days where I am stuck at the bottom of this rubbish pit and can't pull myself out. The world is existing with everyone living their lives and I am stuck in that fish bowl, watching the world continue on with out a lot of control on what is happening. It is like watching a film, but the film is the life and what is happening and I am stuck in the cinema, unable to escape and waiting for something to pull be back into reality.

Life doesn't feel real, I go through days thinking I am someone else and it can be hard to stay focused on who I actually am and to stay true to myself. I struggle to control what I do or say and it drives me nuts because I am saying things to people that I don't actually want to say. I behave in a way that I am ashamed of and I embarrass myself with my own actions. It's like having a child mis-behave in public and you are doing everything you can to try and control them and you are struggling and people are noticing the child but not seeing how much work is going in to trying to control the situation.

I feel empty. I can't remember what emotions feel like and I can't remember ever feeling emotion. I feel broken because I want to remember how things felt, I want to remember happiness and love and pride but I physically cannot remember what it felt to have those emotions. It's scary because not being able to remember feeling them makes you worry that you will never feel those emotions. I want to feel love and happiness and pride but I am scared my illness will stop me from ever feeling anything ever again. I begin to feel isolated and I can never understand why I want to push people away. I feel alone, even in the mental health community because your brain convinces you that you don't deserve the time that people want to give you. You are alone and your brain wants you to remain that way.

 My brain hurts. It feels as though my brain is pushing against my skull and the pressure is painful. I find this picture a really good way of showing what it feels like because your whole head feels like it has been filled with depression and sadness. I describe it to my mum as like having a cold when your head feels bunged up, it's that pressure in your skull with depression that can sometimes make you want to throw the towel in and give up but you know that you can't.


I hate that I am going to have these illnesses for the rest of my life and that I don't have a choice about that. I hate that I will always have these bad points that I can't control when they strike and what devastation they cause. I dread to think of a time when my meds stop working and where I will have to go from then. Being so young and having this illness makes the future so terrifying because with this illness you can't see that future, and if you can, it is covered in all the aspects of this illness that you hate.

Rebecca
xxx

Disappearance...

I've been gone for a little while and I planned to blog about my first year at university. Something I have clearly done when looking at my saved posts, that are half written and I can't quite remember where I was going with them. I'll look at them one day and figure out what was happening and what was going on. A lot of it is homesickness related but I have been doing the majority of my blogging work for the university. Which has been the reason I somewhat abandoned my own blog (I am so sorry).

Uni has been a great learning curve and a great experience. It's something I never thought I would achieve and to be sitting at the dining room table in my uni flat is still somewhat bizarre to me. I have been thrown completely out of my comfort zone and to say that I am almost at the end of my first year feels like one hell of an achievement. It's not been easy, I give it that, but I think that is what your first year is about. You get told all the time that everyone will be in the same boat and you brush it off, thinking how can anyone be as stressed as you are about the change, but they are right, you are all together in this next step.

My flat has changed incredibly since I started, we lost a few and gained some more and now it is the most welcoming and caring environment that I love coming "home" to every evening. I love this slightly new family that has been created and as the time moves on the more and more I want to be in the kitchen then hiding nervously in my room. I am accepted and loved for who I am by the people around me and that is the most wonderful feeling when you are so far away from home.

I have experienced so much. I've been out and experienced a somewhat normal uni life and instead of being completely overwhelmed it has been so fun. I love my lessons and being able to learn again has been so exciting. It's changed who I am but I am so happy that I decided to make the jump and to experience university instead of completely giving up on the idea all together. With all the rubbish I have to deal with, with my mental health I am so proud that I have achieved what has been such a huge achievement!

Rebecca
xxx

I'm Not Stupid...

Mental health services in the uk for young people are appalling. I've needed help from them since I was 17 years old and it's not been the easiest of journeys. I've fallen through the net of psychologists multiple times, I get forgotten and then not checked up on and god know what would have happened if I didn't have such a caring supportive safety net to fall on to. It shouldn't take me trying multiple different numbers just to get a hold of my psychologists because they have forgotten to see me for nearly a year, it should be them making sure that the patients that they look after are okay. 

It is ridiculous how much stigma still falls in the mental health services that I have dealt with. Gp's treat me like I don't have a clue what medication I have been taking for the past two years, tell me "don't take them all at once" jokingly after I've told them I've been feeling suicidal. They think they know how to handle mental health issues when really, I just feel like I'm being judged for the illnesses I have and being told my psychologist, who I have seen for years more then our 10 minute GP meeting has been giving me the wrong medication.

I get treated like I know nothing about the illnesses I have. That I chose to remain uneducated about the conditions that plague my every day life, when in fact for the first three months of my diagnosis, I was up until ridiculous hours each night learning as much as I can in the hopes that I could fix myself and get rid of this horrible extra baggage that I have to live with. 

I call a mental health service for help and get talked to as though I am a toddler who is still learning words. Just because I'm asking for an appointment at your service does not mean that you instantly assume that because of my mental health issues I am stupid. I am not stupid. Yes I may have multiple conditions to my name, but I can still understand you and what you are saying. You. Don't. Have. To. Talk. Like. This. 

My illnesses do not make me stupid. Yes sometimes, they may make it harder for me to make rational decisions or to control my thoughts but I have always been able to understand what you are saying to me. I understand a lot more about all of this then you would think, because for years this has been my life and I was determined to try and make myself better, the one thing I falsely hoped would work. 

I know I might ramble on the phone or panic and over explain things, but patience is key and when you are working in a mental health service you should understand that. Phone calls are not easy with a panic and anxiety disorder. You should see the amount of notes I have laid out in front of me, just so I can try and talk normally to you. It's not easy for me to do it but I wanted to be treated as normally as possible, not as though I understand nothing.

Don't judge people by their mental health issues, you never know what they are going through at any given moment.