True: Consistent with fact or reality, Not counterfeit; real or genuine.

"If it makes you happy, then why the hell are you so sad?"

I don't know Sheryl. I don't know.

Everyone I know feigns enjoyment from something that truthfully they either hate, or just genuinely aren't interested in. My Dad pretended to love Kate Bush to woo my Mum, I said I was good at RPG gaming to impress a boy and Ned Stark pretended to like the Lannisters, all of which backfired horribly. Dad had to listen to Kate's screechy soprano every Saturday morning, I walked around in circles holding a grenade while being shot at in call of duty and Ned Stark lost his head (spoiler!).
We are a generation of people pleasers and exist purely to impress others. I have always been influenced by what is "cool" or trying to make myself look "successful" without fully grasping what that even means to me. I have lived in the belief that if I am to be worth dating, I have to be a female carbon copy of the person I am interested in, instead of someone with their own hopes/dreams/values etc.

I've been meeting a lot recently with a woman that I look up to as a female mentor and all around amazing person. She is one of those people I feel you don't just meet by chance and exudes bona-fide happiness from within herself. We have been talking a lot about living 'authentically' by identifying values I truely hold dear to me and others that perhaps have purely been impressed upon me.
It's interesting once you start to get to know yourself (albeit via a beautiful Canadian woman) that you realise just how much you hide from the world and how much you've fabricated just to fit in. It also helps you recognise how exhausting and unfulfilling your life is when you are not living authentically and being true to yourself.
      
I've been making lists of the things that make me feel happy such as 'finishing a book' or 'having a bath' as well as core values that are important to me like 'family' and 'honesty'. These are, and should be, different for everyone but if you can incorporate those things into your goals then you can start to live a much more fulfilling life. Ask yourself why you enjoy what you do with your spare time and what you want to do with the rest of the time you have, 'cause if it makes you happy, it can't be that bad.      

Oath: a solemn appeal to speak the truth or to keep a promise.

My body, my temple. Yeah right.

For some reason I thought that because I had quit smoking everything else (health wise) would just fall swiftly into place. I imagined myself dining on spiced quinoa as it rained baby spinach leaves around me, while I ran like Usain on the treadmill and effortlessly lifted dumbells, only stopping to look at my sweet, muscular self in the mirror.
But no, instead I have the most persistent cold in the world and I'm carbo-loading like a fiend. Every pocket of everything I own is filled with either used tissues or chocolate wrappers or more often than not, both. I spend copious amounts of time looking at my mushy body in the mirror and purposely pushing my stomach out before grabbing a fistful of flesh with both hands and shaking it around, mouthing "eat the chocolate, fatty!" through gritted teeth at myself.
I seem to have this idea that I will do 3 sit ups and look down to see the body of my dreams and I refuse to believe that it will take hard work and perseverance (both of which I usually steer clear of). I'm finding it increasingly hard to get out of bed in the mornings with the weather getting colder and I'm beginning to loathe people with motivation in abundance. I want so badly just to siphon from their motivation tank into mine, but I know I must find my own.

I need my inspiration to become my incentive to become more than just another beige fleshy blob eating eating Nutella from the jar. I need to confront myself and let myself feel in order to nurture wellness, but it seems so much easier to ride below the waves of emotion, in a state of nonchalance.
How many times have you told yourself "I can still fit those size-too-small jeans" or "It wasn't me" or even "I am okay" when you know full well its a lie? How many times have you challenged yourself to be honest and discard the fabrications you use as cotton wool?

To cultivate and maintain a healthy well being, sometimes you just have to be barefaced and admit "I solemnly swear I am up to no good".

Forgive: To stop feeling angry or resentful towards someone for an offence, flaw, or mistake.

"Just keep swimming." I think every person who's ever watched finding Nemo can find meaning in this. For me, it is to rise above jealousy, see through insidious people and focus on making myself a better person. Regrettably, I have done a lot of shitty things in my life notwithstanding I have learnt from my mistakes and grown from them. I also find myself empathetically defining my behavior from others mistakes which is not to say I am a better person that them, I was just lucky not to have been first. 

Whether you are a biblical person or not, one thing we are taught from a very young age is to treat others how you want to be treated, yet we rarely ever do. I can say with confidence that I have said and done things to people I care about that have damaged relationships and caused irreversible pain that I choose to be believe I have grown from. I can also say that I haven't always been treated in a mutually acceptable manner but once again, I CHOOSE to rise above it. 

In my step fathers suicide note he wrote "This is no-ones fault" but for years I blamed myself for his death. I would replay my last moments with him over and over  until I wasn't even sure how much of it was reality or how much I had concocted in my own head. It wasn't until June 2011 after I had been drugged and raped by a friend of a friend that I began to realise you cannot take responsibility for another persons heinous actions. For the months that followed I hated myself and being around other people, particularly men. I wallowed in self loathing and condemnation until I reached the apex of my hate and decided to end my life. Quite clearly my attempt was futile and I couldn't be happier for this fact. I made a list of not what makes me happy but why these things make me happy and attributed them to the importance of my existence. Although I still struggle being alone with male company and have my moments of doubt, I am thankful for my life and remember how lucky I am everyday to have so much love and support. 

Something I have learned from these emotional scars is that you cannot begin to forgive others until you have first forgiven yourself. You cannot live in the grave that is your past, you can either climb out or dig further down. There is no middle ground. I know now that luck does not just happen and forgiveness is not an overnight odyssey. It is a long road of letting in the sunshine that is unequivocal love in and no longer living in the dark.

"He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass." - Confucius

Fear: Something that causes feelings of dread or apprehension; something a person is afraid of.

Fear is the cat fur of life. It gets on everything and you have no idea how it even got there. It follows you around like a physical manifestation of your mind. Fear indulges uncharacteristic behavior and not dissimilar from cat fur, rubs off on other people. Living with Depression and Anxiety, I wake up every morning with fear hanging over me like a one night stand that wouldn't leave. My mental state of mind is driven by the swift realization that I have another day to face and the fear that I may not make it to the end of that day. Eleanor Roosevelt once wrote in her book You Learn by Living that "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look at fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do." So who am I to argue with an esteemed First Lady who went through more shit than a dysentery patient? My intention in this journey is to find answers not from others, but from within myself and to face my fears.

As a child I was scared of trivial things like werewolves or my parents or getting lost. Now I lie awake at night, terrified of bills, becoming a parent and being lost. I stay up listening to things I never said in my head like a persistent "tink tink" of a car engine cooling down and worry that I will always be this way. I had never considered that I too one day, may find myself with the white picket fence and 2.5 children. How am I to raise a young malleable mind when I had my childhood ripped from me at such an early age? Am I to spend my life vicariously recreating the childhood I never had through theirs? Fear creates a longing for something lost that cannot be recovered (seemingly parallel with my debilitating debt) and pulls you and out of reality with its strings of hopeless expectation. I am extremely lucky to have such an overwhelmingly vast amount of  love and support from those that care about me however I know that is not the case for many others. This is where I would like to extend my help to those in similar situations because just like Mary Schmich wrote in her column for the Chicago tribune (later turned into one of my all time favourite songs Wear Sunscreen), "my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience".

Although I am still working on facing my demons with an affirmed confidence, I believe there is nothing more valuable than listening to others and being forthright with your afflictions. There is no shame in having a mental illness and the stigma around it is only created when people are ill advised on the symptoms of those who suffer.

Learn: to acquire knowledge of or skill in by study, instruction, or experience.

I can't swim. I wish I could, just like I wish I liked egg yolk or any music by The Smiths but unfortunately I just wasn't born to do everything. I like to think I have a sound understanding of the world around me but when I really look at something to discuss at great length, all I have is my own alluvion of experience. My attention span is so short that in this world, where we are given information in such quick succession, it is much preferable to find myself at the business end of a chocolate bar watching videos of cats rather than educating myself on Florentine architecture during the Renaissance. I can easily stay afloat in an intellectual conversation by adding quick fire facts and anecdotes but do I really even understand my contribution? For the most part, the answer is no (unless discussing a feline's ability to incite laughter on every level of stupidity) and thus uncorks my crippling social anxiety. Just like my inability to swim, my panic towards amicable "chin-wagging" is driven by fear. My fear of inhaling water and flapping aimlessly in a black abyss psychologically propels me into heavy breathing, sweating and snotty tears.

I spend most of my timing holding malicious thoughts at bay and taking medication to prevent grotesque panic attacks. Medicating mental illness is comparable to wearing inflatable arm bands in deep water; it temporarily stops you from sinking but doesn't actually fix the underlying problem which is of course that you are on a swift course to drowning. How I got so far out of my depth I'm not sure, but the medley of pills on my medical carte du jour for the past decade has created a crutch that I now so desperately cling to. I have been pharmaceutically treated by my GP for depression, grade 2 bi-polar, insomnia, acute anxiety and even Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder yet am still bound to my physician and his team of state-funded psychologists in a merry-go-round of emotion and instability.

To break this cycle I have now decided to try and teach myself to be happy physically, mentally and spiritually through a self-medicated dose of exercise, healthy eating, quitting smoking and trying out the Mantra that is Mark Manson's "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck". I do not intend to undermine any prior help given to me but more to offer myself a chance to live life how I want to live it. I also wish to invite others who similarly have been 'condemned' with ailing mental illness to join me on my bare all quest for happiness in hopes that it may aid them on their journey also. (Cat taxes included with weekly post.)