Could you tell me a time you felt proud?

Right now :) This time last year I was battling the worst mental health I have ever experienced. I was struggling to even get out of bed during a time I was supposed to be on my A game. I was trying and failing to write a dissertation and get my degree. It was my last year of uni, this was it, this was the last push and I had nothing left in me to give. I also lost any ounce of motivation or drive to exercise - the one thing that keeps me sane most of the time and something that held a special place in my life for as long as I can remember. At the same time I was giving my all to a relationship that gave me nothing back. I lost who I was as a person through all of this. I lost sense of what I stood for and I felt like I couldn’t even recognise myself. During that time I also made a lot of mistakes and wasn’t a great person at times to those I cared about the most.

Only in September last year did I decide I had had enough of feeling this way and things had to change. I can’t quite pin point why it happened but I decided it was time to heal. I went through a lot of growth during that time. I put a lot of effort into working through my emotions and how to begin letting go of the things that continued to affect me. This was never a linear progress, some times I thought I’d cracked it and other days I felt lost and overwhelmed all over again. Eventually I became in love with the process. For the first time since I was a teenager I felt happy and comfortable by myself, not seeking attention or affection from others to fill any voids - I can’t describe how it felt when I realised this was the first time I had felt this way in my adult life, it was so empowering - sad that I’d been trying to fill a void for so long but grateful that I realised that now when I’m still so young and have so much to learn. For the first time I was truly taking care of myself, not for a short-term fix to feel happy for a month or so and then just feel the same again, but I really wanted to do this for myself, to really heal and better my life. It sounds so cliche and almost like empty words when I say I was ‘working on myself’ but thats exactly what I did and I did it with my chest. It wasn’t half-hearted, I wanted better for myself and I deserved better.

I looked at it as helping a friend - I’d do that in a heart beat and do the best job that I can. Why not do that for yourself? You’re in your body and brain your whole life (sounds obvious), so why not treat yourself like your best friend and take care of that person, help that person, try to make them happy? That’s who/what gets you through each waking moment, every sad moment, every happy moment, every tough moment.. give back to yourself for taking on each day no matter how easy or hard. Thinking like this helped me a lot, I really took care of my mind and my body. I gained so much closure and inner peace through the time and effort I dedicated to myself. I gained that drive for fitness again - my PT deserves a huge chunk of credit for that but at the end of the day its me who decided to continue investing in that service - I see it as an investment to myself, what better way to spend money than on improving your physical AND mental health.

Now this is going to seem like a tangent but bare with.. I consider myself quite a selfless person most of the time. Others would call it a push over but I don’t see it as a weak or negative thing. I don’t put myself first a lot of the time. In the past 6 months I’ve found myself in very difficult and serious positions where I’ve had to choose between protecting other peoples feelings or protecting my own. If you’d ask the old Jess what she’d do, she’d most often choose others at the cost of her own happiness. I look at myself now and how I handle decisions and I am in awe of the growth. It’s still difficult for me to choose myself. Especially when it can be at the cost of someone else’s feelings - it’s a very mentally challenging thing to question whether putting yourself first is selfish or whether you’re a bad person for doing so. But I’m getting better at putting myself first - a lot of the time I do it for that girl a year ago that couldn’t do anything for herself. I feel like a completely different person, almost detached from that girl a year ago.

Right now, as I’m writing this post, I can say with full honesty that I am the happiest and healthiest I have felt within myself. All that hard work of healing and challenging my emotions, learning to take care of myself with INTENTION, has made me a person I am wholeheartedly proud to be. I never thought I’d see the day where I felt I wasn’t struggling with my mental health, it seemed before like I just accepted my poor mental health was with me for life. Luckily, that wasn’t the case for me. I wish I could tell January 2021 Jess that she’d get there eventually, because she needed it. But we got there bestie and we are better than ever, truly. To say this out loud is INSANE, it still feels literally UNbelievable. I didn’t think it was possible for me to view life in this way or to view myself in this way. But I’m a hard-working bad B and when I really want something I go get it. I’ve never felt so much meaning to feeling proud of myself until now. To me: JESS GIRL IM SO PROUD OF YOU AND I LOVE YOU.