Being Left Behind

It's so easy to scroll through instagram and watch everyone around you getting on with their lives, doing amazing things, being out and about and moving away from their illness whilst you're spending every piece of free time that you have, laying in bed with no energy to move or even attempt to do something else. We're so hooked on everyone else, how everyone else lives their life, how everyone else is recovering and it is just as easy to sit there, scrolling through instagram and putting yourself down over the fact that you aren't where they are, that your progress is slower than theirs and getting frustrated over things that are out of your control. But, no matter how hard I try, I always find myself repeating this process over and over again, it is as though I am so hooked on trying to find my own happiness, that I get jealous of everyone else's but in reality, who says that their life is amazing, who really knows how good or bad they are feeling and how many people are telling themselves the same things about my instagram feed? We just don't know.

And then there are the times, every so often when you'll reconnect with old friends who also struggled with their mental health and you hear about how well they're doing and how much better they're feeling which is such a bittersweet moment, because you are so happy that their life is looking up but at the same time, you're so sad that you're still in a similar situation to what you were five years ago and you just wonder how you'd be doing if you took the same turnings in life as they did, but we're all unique, and some peoples recovery is quicker than others. You also wonder how and why you managed to drift so far when you were so close, and now you're almost strangers. Did they get sick of you? Were you both too unwell to sustain the friendship? What went so wrong? When did it all go so wrong? 

I think that although it can be incredibly difficult, it is so essential that we are not always comparing ourselves to everyone else, we are all unique, with different stories and different methods of healing and it is quite ironic that we put ourselves down for not being as 'well' as someone else, when at our worst, we'd put ourselves down for not being as 'ill' as them. We don't always know what is going on in someones life behind the camera, behind the text message or even behind the phone just like others don't know what is going on in ours and it is so important to remember that, because if we keep comparing ourselves to everyone else, then we'll never get better. 

It may often feel like you are being left behind, that everyone else is going to University before you, that everyone is getting on with their lives without you and that everyone got sick of you, but we've all got our own lives, our own demons and our own goals. We must keep moving forward to reach them, and we must not allow ourselves to feel like we are being left behind because we're not, we're just prioritising other things, like our health first.

Thank-you for reading, Tay x