Anxiety and Me

I can’t remember when exactly my anxiety started, but I know I was in next to the last year of Secondary school here in the UK. The earliest memory I have of my mental health issues creeping to the fore was when my father started being unable to walk hardly, his dialogue and co-ordination were starting to impact not only him but me and my mother too. My father was then examined by the oncologists and found to have an incurable brain tumour, a ‘glioblastoma’ type 4, which ultimately meant that his condition was terminal.

That wasn’t all either, going on at the same time, my Grandmother started with dementia she then also had to be relocated into a care-home nearby to enable me and my mother to go and visit her.

Throughout all of this, I was then going to stay with the neighbour near me. Who later abused me when I was 13 years old just before my father passed away, that was the start of a hard year and a half as Police, Social Services and my mother prepared for the impending court case and to make sure that we were doing our absolute best to get him jailed.

Throughout all this, that was happening to those around me at the time, panic attacks were becoming the norm. I was expected to carry on studying at school throughout the turmoil. However, there were times that I couldn’t face going in. That eventually, lead to me taking a 6-month break from education.

There was a light that shone at the end of the tunnel though, as I and my mother ended up moving homes and relocating outside of the town where I had grown up. Still to this day I am continuing to discover my confidence enabling me to widen my acting abilities. Whilst working on social media as a blogger, podcaster, YouTuber and writer.

If I can at least help one person who has been through a similar thing to me, then I’ve done my job.