Life is a journey not a destination so .....my story isn't over yet;...me

 My blog is about mental health but joining choir has been a big part in helping me manage my mental health better in alot of ways. Choir has helped my confidence improve massively just by being around friendly supportive friends who believe in me and we support each other. Choir also gives me a purpose, a reason to not act on self destructive thoughts relating to my eating and personality disorders, i'm open in this blog so I admit those thoughts never go away but I can now have the thoughts and not act on them. I still have down days where I stay in bed or end up crying but I have been struggling with my physical health and fatigue since I had covid last year too. I still struggle with my eating disorder and am due to start therapy next year but I can manage it enough to make sure I eat regularly if I'm driving or anything like choir gigs or teaching horse riding, days I'm struggling eating I take soya milkshakes because I keep feeling faint which I never used to do. It&#

 In 2015 I was sectioned in hospital for a year and before that had lived with my parents after a failed attempt of living on my own at 21 when my bulimia really took hold so my mental health made me lack confidence in my own ability to live alone. At the beginning of 2016 I was discharged to a mental health rehab where I had my own flat but with staff on site who gave me my meds and who ran activity groups etc. to help service users live more independently after being in hospital.  I lived at the rehab for a year then moved into a council flat but the tenancy was to the rehab rather than me directly for a year before it became my tenancy. I think I got Alfred for my birthday 2018 just before the tenancy became mine but my dad turned up with Alfred, I can remember I was really depressed and anxious at the time and Arthur the cat and Alfred came to live with me, I had wanted a guinea pig for ages and the rehab staff had kept trying to blackmail with if I went so long without self harmin

 I was reading a friends blog about how much she hates herself and feels she deserves to hurt herself because of her weight as she has a history of eating disorders, It makes me feel so sad to hear of others in the same cycle I was in until 3 years ago of feeling you deserve to die or hurt yourself because of not feeling good enough to be alive. I was always trying to find ways to justify being alive, I thought if I trained to be a nurse and was helping others I deserved to live but then I felt I wouldn't be good enough to do it and so I kept trying to kill myself. I was a good support worker in mental health and learning disabilities and was a good horse riding instructor but I always put myself down for everything I ever did wrong and I would self harm to punish myself every time I did something wrong, I hated myself for my weight always hating I was too fat but then hated everything else about me too, socially I always felt I wasn't good enough or academically but I have soc