Dealing With Family Grief

Sorry I haven’t blogged for a while guys, I’ve been very busy over the Summer holidays! And yes, I am now back at school for my last year, but I’m trying to make the best of every day I’ve got. How were all your holidays?

I just wanted to talk about a serious matter which I’m sure a lot of you have had to deal with or are currently dealing with. Over the holidays, one of my cousins (who was only 18) died. It was a tragic accident, I don’t want to go into details, but it has left the entire family distraught. And since then we have all been plunged into a deep sadness, an empty pit that will take a while to climb out of. It’s horrific when someone close to you dies, especially someone young with so much potential.

This is the third experience I’ve had with grief and I wanted to raise it here as a lot of people aren’t sure how to deal with it or find their varying emotions scary. One thing that has cropped up each time for me is the inability to remember things about the person you’ve lost, for example their voice, or their mannerisms or facial expressions. Whatever it may be, this can be really distressing. It’s a dreadful idea to think you may have forgotten that person. But you haven’t. Everything will come back in time. The reason why that person’s features and characteristics seem so easily forgotten is because when you last saw that person, you had no idea it would be the last time. Especially with sudden out of the blue deaths that are completely unpredicted. For example, I can’t remember the sound of my cousin’s voice, but it doesn’t frighten me. I know that I will never forget him, and the shock of the accident is still embedded in my mind, so when that passes I will be able to remember him more clearly. So things will brighten up the more you become accustomed to a life without that special person. It may take months, years, decades even, I don’t know, but it will happen, I promise you.

Grief makes you worry so much more. You suddenly feel overprotective of all your other family members or friends and want to try and keep them as safe as possible. But it’s important to remember that it’s impossible for one person to prevent a random accident happening, or stop an illness being developed. You have to carry on and let your close friends and family live their lives to the full. And the same applies to you. Just because someone was very unlucky to have a certain accident happen to them, doesn’t mean the same thing is going to happen again. It’s difficult, and I know this first hand, but you mustn’t live your life in fear, because then you’re not really living life at all. I’m guilty of this though. For example, I get super worried about anyone close to me going on a plane. I have this massive fear of flying, even though I’ve flown before and it’s been absolutely fine, but every time I get on a plane, I panic. So the thought of someone I love going up in the air without me there makes me panic even more. I don’t know why, seeing as plane travel is far safer than car travel, but there’s something about being off the ground that really distresses me. I’m one of those people that goes online and tracks the flights which have the people I love on them and make sure that they have landed okay. It seems ridiculous, but I couldn’t bear the idea that the plane had crashed. So I live my life in fear to some extent. I am not the most relaxed person when it comes to looking after my loved ones. But I’m doing everything I can to calm myself. I try my best not to annoy or restrict the person I’m worrying about. Okay, I have irrational worries in my head, but if you spread these to other people, you are ruining their enjoyment and making them feel less secure in their own situation. So let you loved ones roam free, don’t try and control them. Accidents are rare and far between, you just have to trust them to be sensible.

I’m sorry that this was such a sad post guys, but I really hope that this has helped some of you. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to comment.

Be strong xxx

Anxiety?

I’m pretty sure I have always suffered with anxiety, but it’s only recently that I have come to terms with what it actually is. I used to worry about every tiny thing that happened, or I predicted would happen, leading me to feel isolated and lonely, separated from society and not able to do any exciting things for fear of something bad happening. Anxiety closed in on me and built a wall around me so I was caged in. I couldn’t leave my bedroom without worrying about something. And then the panic attacks started coming.

I only started having panic attacks a few months ago, so I had no idea what was happening to me. I honestly thought I was going to die. I’m sure many of you have had this before, but at the time I was completely unaware of what was happening to me. Awareness of panic attacks and anxiety needs to be spread globally because so many people, young and old, will be suffering from a similar thing and feel like they are the only people in the world. And that just makes everything worse.

Anxiety needs to be promoted so that people understand just how horrible and life changing it is. After a lot of work on my mental state, I am out of my worst lapse of anxiety, but it still haunts me, follows me around like a shadow, I can’t quite shake myself of the feeling of being enclosed and isolated. And I am writing this blog post because I want other people to be aware of what is happening to them if they are experiencing a similar thing. I had no idea to begin with and I feel like that made it a whole lot worse. You are not the only one out there, there is a whole forum of other people right here on the internet who can help and guide you because they have experienced the same or a similar thing. Get help while you can. It’s never too late.

I’d love to hear from you about your anxiety and how you are coping with it.

What are your methods for calming down after a panic attack?

How does anxiety make you feel?

What have you done to overcome anxiety?

Together, we can overcome anxiety for good.

Myself and Proud

Coming up through school has got to be the most difficult period of your life. You are suddenly bombarded with sights, smells, tastes, sounds, feelings that you have never experienced before. It’s like stepping into a new world. A world full of fear. But it doesn’t have to be like that.

My journey into schooling was very difficult. I was home educated from reception all the way through to the end of year six. So as you can imagine, entering an all girls private school in year seven was never going to be easy for me. Turns out it was even harder than I anticipated. When you have been raised with minimal social interaction and you are suddenly plunged in at the deep end, things can get a little tricky. I was soon considered a complete outcast with very few friends, and no one at school who appreciated me or took time out just to talk to me. Those school days were some of the loneliest days of my life.

Sorry, that got deep very quickly. Getting closer to the point, as I moved up the school through year 8, 9 and 10, I became very image aware. I started to hate things about myself that I’d never even considered before because I hadn’t been exposed to the harsh concept namely ‘society’. But all of a sudden I felt too fat, too round faced, my hair was too long, too thick, too curly, my face was too spotty, too bare, too pale. Nothing looked good in my eyes. And I plummeted into the whirlpool of society pretty quickly as I experimented with straightening my hair, trying out makeup, only choosing flattering clothes and spending hours choosing them. But it was all so much effort to go to. How could I balance my insecurities with the want to just be myself and carefree?

I was so stressed and anxious and self conscious, I so wanted to impress. I wasn’t always strong enough to ignore peer pressure. For example, I was eventually bullied into shaving my legs in year 10, not that the hair particularly bothered me or seemingly anyone that I spent a lot of my time with, just because my peers judged me, saying to was ‘disgusting’ and ‘unattractive’. Why has society created this image of women? Why should women shave their legs and not men? A lot of you are going to throw that question away as completely stupid I’m sure, but think about it. Men have set the bar so high for women, so high that they could never be expected to meet it. Yet they are. Women are constantly out to impress men to the best of their ability. But shouldn’t they just be themselves and if men like it then they are liked for who they truly are?

I have always had this opinion deep down, however much society has tried to change me. However much I have tried to change myself. I have always come back to being exactly who I am. Because wouldn’t it be dull if everyone was the same? It’s your quirky personality, your dry sense of humour, your facial expressions, your opinions, your feelings that make you who you are. Don’t let anyone or anything tell you otherwise.

I’d love to know your opinion on this so please let me know in the comments!

After a long journey, I am myself and proud.

Hello world!

I have long been wanting to start a blog. I feel like I have so much to say that is left unheard. Like all my thoughts and feelings are fizzing up inside me, a bomb waiting to explode. And now I can share with you my innermost thoughts that may otherwise be difficult to express.

I am a female teenager who is currently in year 12 in England. There is so much pressure nowadays on young girls to always look perfect and act perfect and be perfect, which is simply not humanly possible. I have felt the pressure, like everyone else I’m sure, but I think I am slightly different to the average teenage girl. And that’s why I’ve started this blog. To promote my ideas to other people of a similar age and situation to see if I can help people out. That’s my one sturdy goal in life. To help other people. Because by helping others, I make them happy, and that automatically makes me happy too.

So I’m going to give this blogging thing a go, in the hope that my thoughts and ideas as a teenager may spread to others and help them discover who they truly are.

Thanks for reading!

P.S. for those of you thinking I can’t spell ‘anxiety’, I decided to go for a cross between ‘anxiety’ and ‘society’ because I feel the two are very closely related!