So, I am a big fan of making New Year's Resolutions. Every year I make some ridiculous resolution like 'Go Skydiving', which I will most likely never do, unless I suffer from some sort of personality transplant, because heights scare the living shit out of me. Ever since I was a kid, I'd make some unbelievable resolution, that is so much more like a wish or a dream (for example; win the lottery? You can thank 9 year old Becca for that fantastic one) and then when the new year rolled around, I'd be so disappointed in myself that I didn't succeed. I'd set myself up for a massive fail before the year even began. 

As I got older, my resolutions began to reflect more of what I thought about myself and my self-worth. They turned from things like 'skydiving' (I mean, honestly 10 year old me, why!?), to things like 'get a boyfriend', 'lose weight', 'be less of a loser'. My resolutions turned into ways I could change myself, mould myself into the people I so desperately wanted to be like, who I so desperately wanted to like me. Needless to say, resolutions started with that mentality are doomed to fail from the start, how can you succeed in 'bettering' yourself when you don't even believe you can? If you think you're shit, you'll only treat yourself as such. Again, I'd set myself up for disaster before it had even began, and it made it impossible to pull myself out of my negative way of thinking. I'd spend the year in this constant cycle of knowing I was heading for failure in my mind, but doing nothing about it because I didn't know what to do. It took me a very long time to pull myself out of this repetitive, useless cycle, but this year it appears I've turned a corner. It was a Christmas miracle!

This year my Resolutions aren't anything big or fancy, I still have high aims for the year because I am the eternal dreamer, but to me they are achievable, and that's all they need to be. Without further rambling (of course there'll be further rambling) here's my resolutions;

1) Get my Passport
I've been putting this off forever because it seems too grown up and I am apparently the laziest of all the shits, but I AM going to do this.

2) Go Travelling
This links nicely with point one, obviously. I already have a bucket list, god help my bank account.

3) Write more
Last year I made big claims about 2016 being 'the year of the blog', turns out 2016 was actually the year of the mental breakdown, so we'll just pretend that didn't happen. I'm not necessarily saying I'll be a top blogger, I mean, I am still me, and I am still Queen of the Procrastinators, but I am saying I'll try better. I would like to possibly finish any one of the three writing projects I have been working on for forever.

4) Get Organised
I think this also links well with point three, I'm doing a very good job linking things together. To help me with my whole 'getting organised' thing, I have started a Bullet Journal, which looked so pretty in the youtube videos and tumblr pictures I looked at, but good grief it is time-consuming. Like, I enjoy it, but in my determination to make it look Pinterest-tastic, it apparently takes me 34 years to do anything.This will definitely be a work in progress because I over-complicate things, but I'm oddly excited about it, which must mean I am officially middle aged. 

5) Be happy and healthy
This is a constant wish, rather than just a resolution. This is something I always overlooked when I was younger, even up to last year. I'd write down all my aspirations and hopes, but I'd forget the most important one. There's no point in having all these dreams if I'm miserable, so this year, I'm taking better care of my mental health and physical health. I'm not aiming to all of a sudden be cured of depression, and I'm certainly not aiming to 'be skinny', I'm just aiming to handle it. All I want is to be happy, healthy and confident in myself. I say 'all I want', when I'm aware that's actually quite a lot to ask of myself, but I think it's important that I ask it of myself. To me, it's important that I take stock in how I feel in myself, rather than focusing on everyone else around me. I spend a lot of time worrying about how other people view me, and whether other people like me, when I should've really been worrying about my own view of myself. 2016 was not a great year for my mental health, I wasn't in a particularly good place in my mind, but I am determined for 2017 to be better. 



Okay, that's me! Resolutions that would make any grown up proud! I know it's late, but I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas surrounded by the people you love, and I hope you've made resolutions that make you feel good about yourself, even if that includes skydiving, you mentalist. 
You can find all my links on the side, I am forever on Instagram, much to the bane of everyone I know. I hope you're all well, and I'll chat to you soon.

Be happy, and be kind.
Becca xo 

Hi,

It's been a while, I suck, I know. 

I've had a tough time dealing with my depression the past few weeks. This was the longest spell I've gone without having a depressive episode, which meant that when the bad day hit, it hit hard. I had lulled myself into a false sense of security, it had been months since I'd had a really bad day, I was cured! It was a Christmas miracle. At least, I thought it was, until one day I woke up and felt the familiar painful ache in my bones, the weight in my stomach and the unending dread. There isn't really an easy way to describe the feeling of this kind of bad day. It's like waking up underwater and constantly having to tread water to keep your head above the level. It's exhausting, and there's a part of your brain that can't help wondering 'what if I just stopped?'. Being sad isn't the worst part about depression, it's the thoughts that sneak their way across your mind like lightening, without permission, that tease and taunt you. It's the single, pervasive thought of 'what if it all just stopped?'. That thought, out of all the bad thoughts I've ever had about myself, is the most frightening, because it's the most tempting. 

Kristian Nygård

When I have a bad day, I constantly ask myself; 'why are you sad?', and I'm really asking myself; 'what the hell is wrong with you?'. And it's this question that bothers me most. I don't know why I'm sad. Nothing terrible has happened to me recently. I'm healthier than ever, I can look in the mirror without wanting to cry most days, and I have wonderful friends and family, so what's with the never-ending urge to cry for 64 years? The answer is, there is no answer. There is no reason for my sadness, there is just sadness, and this is one of the shittiest parts of depression. When you're sad for a reason, you can indulge your grief, you can sit in your room and cry and let it all out and move forward. When there's no reason, you can sit and cry, but then all you're left with after is confusion. Why am I crying? Why can I not stop? That confusion in my case, more often than not, leads to anger, because I can't stand feeling that out of control with my emotions. Then after the anger comes the guilt, what right do I even have to be sad when there are people out there suffering so much more? These emotions play with your head, you feel like you have to hide them, because how would you even explain that to people when you can't even explain it to yourself?

Elysian-Dreams

Often depression is simplified to just being really fucking sad, but it's so much more than that, it's so much more overwhelming. There's the loneliness, the isolation, the fear, the confusion, the unending exhaustion, the fact that you don't even know how to function as a human being anymore, the utter emptiness, the not caring about the things you used to love, the just not caring in general. When you simplify depression to sadness, to take away all the other factors that change you from the person you used to be, into the shell that you become. 

Depression Comix

There is something incredibly narcissistic about depression, all you can think about is yourself and your feelings, and the worst thing is, when it comes to actually talking about those feelings, the words fail. You end up isolated in this bubble of horrible thoughts, and fears that eat you alive, but on the outside you carry on as though you don't feel like you're dying. It's a lonely experience. It feels like you're talking to people through a glass wall and you can't find a way through it. You want to get involved, you want to laugh and have fun, but all you can hear is the voice in your head saying they don't want you around. And it's so much easier to give into that voice, because fighting it is exhausting. So you stumble around the glass wall, lost in a state of confusion and disorientation, but looking like a 'normal' human being and hiding the storm that is killing you inside.
I'm, generally speaking, an incredibly sensitive person, I don't know if it's the depression, or me just being a delicate flower, but I take everything to heart. This becomes so much worse when I'm having a bad day. The worry that somebody doesn't like me anymore is one of my most pervasive fears. I wish I was one of those people who didn't care what people thought. I have wished that more than anything for as long as I can remember. I've always wanted to be that badass who stands up for themselves and tells everyone else to go fuck themselves, but the most I can muster up is an arched brow and a quick scuttle away from confrontation. Even when people hurt my feelings, or make me feel shit, I'll go out of my way to avoid confronting the problem because I'm too scared of them not liking me. It's pathetic, but it's just the way my mind works. If people don't invite me out, I'll automatically assume they don't like me anymore and I won't know how to act around them because I won't know what I've done wrong. Hell, if I'm not even included in a tagged post I'll assume that we aren't pals anymore. It's an incredibly exhausting train of thought that leaves you scared of everyone and makes me an emotional nightmare to deal with. I don't know how my friends and family have put up with it for so long. 

Sylvie Reuter

Sometimes I'll have these brief, glorious moments on the bad days where it feels like the clouds of parted, and I can smile without feeling like my face is tearing itself apart, but then the next second, that little insidious voice is back. With feelings as mercurial as that, it's very hard to grasp how you feel at any point of the day. When people say 'just tell someone', it's so much harder than that; how can you articulate something that you don't fully understand, how can I tell someone how I feel, when I'm not entirely sure how I feel? The anxiety makes it even harder, because as understanding as society is now, it's very hard for people to fully sympathise with someone who doesn't like answering the phone, going new places, or even talking to new people. It's incredibly frustrating being too scared to do the simplest things that are easy to everyone else, imagine having to talk to somebody about something that terrifies you. 

I don't know if I really have a concise point to this ramble, I think I just find it easier to type out my feelings than chat about them. I can find more words when I'm typing than when I speak, when I speak it feels like the words get lost on their way to my mouth and nothing I say makes sense. This, I guess, is my way of trying to make sense of my thoughts and my broken brain. I don't know why I'm sad, I wish I did, because at least then I could do something about it. I don't know why I feel so alone, or lost, or confused. I don't know why I feel like everyone hates me. I don't know why I'm so confused, disorientated or scared 75% of the time. I just don't know. If I knew, I wouldn't be spewing my thoughts all over the internet, I would be out having a life, I would be living the dream.   

Shannon Sophia

I'll leave it there, I hope you're all having a better day than I am. If you want to chat, you can leave a comment below, or find me on any of my social media links on the side. Thanks for reading my ramble, if you made it all the way down here.

EDIT: Alright, I feel like I ended this on a really negative note, so I'll just add; I won't give up, I'll never give up and I live in perpetual hope that tomorrow will be a better day than today. I am the eternal dreamer haha.