Going Through The Most

What have I achieved, am I doing well for a man my age, am I happy?  I remember when I turned 21 I had these similar thoughts, I had conversations with family members who would always tell me. “Once you get to 21 the time flies” and that has proven correct now that it is four years later, having felt as if a few months have passed.  I recently had a conversation with some friends about relationships where I made a passing comment that I want my partner to be my “peace” one of my friends then came back with a comment saying that I need to be my peace, this opened my mind to thinking about a lot. My mental health is something I have always found important, so things like these that challenge me to think about how I am treating myself is important to me. It brings me back to the questions I ask myself as I turn 25, What have I achieved, am I a good person, am I happy? At The start of each New Year, my Mum and I write down some goals that we want to complete for the year, in the n...

I have tried my best in everything I have done, growing up I felt that I was entitled to good things because I was a good person. Now that I have been in the “real world” for a while now I’ve realised how wrong I was. Seeing good people who have passed away or those who have life-changing illnesses just like mine has truly humbled me.   It doesn’t matter what you do as a person challenging things can happen to anyone, it is up to you as a person to take what you are given and learn lessons from it. The human body is so fragile, but we often forget about how much the mind takes a battering, we are constantly seeing things and going through situations where we have bad experiences and make us think negatively.   We all have different things that we turn to when we are feeling negative. For me my main passion and outlet is music. I turn to music when I want to cry, laugh, feel angry or calm down. It brings me so many different emotions when I listen to music. Having come from a v...

It has been maybe a year or so since I have written a blog. Since recovering from surgery it’s been as if I have got off one rollercoaster and stepped onto another.   As we have all come out of coronavirus restrictions it's been amazing to see the world get back to 'normal' I see my friends and family on social media posting their adventures and I am filled with joy seeing everyone have enjoyment.   I to have tried to get out more, having to isolate myself for nearly a year and a half was difficult, being able to see and spend time with friends and family was so important for my mental health. I decided to start dating again and found someone with who I connected. I enjoyed having someone to speak to and spend time going on dates whilst having intellectual conversations was good to have once again. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out. The time spent after the 'break up' really hit me hard, it has been maybe two months since that relationship ended and it still makes m...

6 months on from surgery my recovery is going well. I have a healthy balanced diet and I have taken up exercising in my home trying to build muscle weight.  Coronavirus has put a hold on meeting up with friends and family I am in the high-risk category which has meant that I have kept shielding for 12 weeks from when the government put on the national lockdown. My physical health has been good. My mental health has been all over the place during the lockdown, I have taken up several different hobbies trying to keep busy and my mind active.  Over this period I have been doing a lot of thinking. After The break up of my relationship and having surgery I wondered if anyone would ever want to be with me romantically again. I am a 23-year-old with a scar on my stomach, who goes to the hospital every 6 weeks sometimes more for various appointments. I now have to take immunosuppression medication for the rest of my life. Although I am doing well physically its difficult to completely...

Post-transplant I had to learn how to look at my self differently, I have gone through different phases in my journey. Learning that I would have a scar of my body that would mostly be visible, I had plans of getting a tattoo to hide it, I’ve now learnt to love it, its a reminder to me of what I’ve gone through but also it makes me even more unique, not many people can say they have had a liver transplant.  I read a study of someone calls Kubler- Ross, he looks at the different stages of grief, Denial - Anger - Bargaining - Depression - Acceptance. The beginning of the journey in the hospital was surreal, it all happened quickly and I didn’t have much time to process the situation at all I couldn’t comprehend that I had someone else liver inside me and that my liver had been sent off for research.  I came home and was in a state of shock as the days went on I became angrier with everything that was going on. I remember having a conversation about it with my mum as...

I’ve had many people tell me over the years to tell the story I have been going through, I wasn’t comfortable to tell anyone what I was going through.  In April 2017 I was baptised, I had felt that at this point in my life I had gone through so much, I had been in situations where I couldn’t even deny that there was a God. Although my battle with the illnesses continued I put my life in God's hands and asked for forgiveness and to be reborn. The baptism was the first time I opened up about the things I was going through, I had a lot of issues and I felt as if I had to release some of the troubles I was going through. It felt good as if a load lifted off of my shoulders, and from this point, I tried to be transparent as possible.  But I still had difficulties in other parts of my life letting people know how I felt. The relationship I was I seemed perfect we had good days and bad like most couples but overall we were both happy. When Ulcerative Colitis (UC) was a...

When you go through a situation that is life-changing you can’t help but look to past moments where things were better. I try not to have regrets but I do wish that in those moments that I was better that I took more time to do the things that I enjoyed. I spent a lot of my time working and doing things for others I never really done anything for myself.  Whilst in hospital I took the time to look at myself and see what I had achieved, and although I was proud with what I had done for myself I felt that I wasn’t in the place where I thought I would be everything had drastically changed. I was at a place where I was sitting in the ward and had lost confidence in myself, I had no sense of normality. Things that I wanted to do I may not ever be able to do. I was learning to inject insulin when my blood sugar levels were too high. The new diabetes diagnoses brought a kind of chaos. My mum was so very worried she couldn’t comprehend what I was now going through. I was getting frustrated...