I let it take me over, to the point that when I eventually moved to a different city for university in September, I was miserable beyond belief. I was miserable every single day, because nobody told me that if you stop taking your medication you are not recovering anymore. Nobody told me that taking medication doesn’t mean you even are recovering, but I definitely hadn’t been. I hadn’t even started my journey, and yet I felt like I’d failed, because nobody told me that recovery is personal to you and that you need to find the right path to follow. Eventually, I decided that enough was enough. The things I do at university will affect my future, and knowing this brought about the realization that I really do want a future. I want it more than anything, and now I know that I’m not going to stop trying until I get it.
I moved home from university at the beginning of November, and made the decision to commute to my lectures instead, as I believed this would make recovery much easier. This was the first real decision I made about my recovery, and it is probably the most important one I’ve made so far. Nobody told me that a huge part of recovery is making your own decisions. I thought I’d just turn up to the doctor’s office and they’d sort it all out for me; I thought they’d tell me to jump and all I had to do was ask how high, but recovery is about choosing when and how high to jump yourself. Doctors and therapists cannot fix you, they can only help you to fix yourself. Nobody told me that I would have to fix myself.
photography by Lauren Clements