Talking Mental Health: 5 Reasons to Talk About Your Mental Health

In this world, it’s always too easy to close yourself off from others and keep your mental health woes to yourself. A lot of the time, you may feel crazy for feeling the way that you do and you can’t relate to others, simply because everybody else seems to have their life together and they project a healthy life; however, the reality of the situation is that many of the people in your day-to-day life can relate to how you are feeling and they will be there for you if you ask for their help.

These are some reasons to talk about your mental health, whether this be with a loved one, a therapist/counsellor or just a voice on the other end of the telephone such as the Samaritans. If you’re struggling to talk, you’ve come to the right place.

1. You Owe it to Yourself

You have been fighting this mental illness on your own for far too long, whether you’ve only recently been stricken with it or you’ve been dealing with it for years. It is mentally exhausting and keeping it bottled up is not doing you any good whatsoever. You owe yourself a break from fighting and the best and healthiest way to do that is to talk to somebody about it. It gives you a feeling of relief and release that nothing else can give. You don’t even need to delve deeply into the subject; you can just tell somebody how you’re feeling to get it off your chest. Once you’ve gotten it out in the open, you will notice an immediate release and you can take a well earned break from stressing about everything. Plus, you never know, whoever you talk to may also be able to give some helpful advice regarding your stresses or your mental health.

2. It Raises Awareness

This is a very important reason for me. If more people talked about their mental health, there would be so much more societal awareness and it would help to fight the stigma. One of the reasons that mental health has been stigmatised is because there is a lack of understanding on the subject. The more that people talk about it, the more that people will understand about it. Whether that just means the number of people suffering with poor mental health becomes more common knowledge or it means that more people come to empathise with others who are struggling, it will be a step in the right direction. Talk about your mental illness and fight the stigma!

3. It Helps Your Loved Ones

Now, don’t get me wrong, your mental health is all about you and nothing will change that. It may be strange at first to think that talking about your mental health could help your loved ones but it really does help them. The reason I say this is because your friends and family worry about you. When you’re closing yourself off, they worry about what might be wrong with you. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell them you’re fine, they’re not stupid and they will always see through it. They can see that you are suffering and if you keep everything to yourself then it will only make them feel worse. Talk to them about whatever is bothering you. Talk to them about your mental illness and how it makes you feel and act. If they even begin to understand what is going on in your head and why you are retreating all the time, they will worry less and they may even get to know how to help you in your dark times.

4. It Puts Things Into Perspective

One of the worst things about keeping things bottled up is that things get blown way out of proportion when they are kept in your head. You will over think things and build them up to the point where it becomes unbearable. That is dangerous. Both for you and for those around you. Your behaviour has the potential to be very unpredictable when you build things up to that point. It has the potential to make you suicidal. Please do everything you can to stop things from building up like that. The first place to start is to talk about it. This puts things into perspective and allows you to see the issue for what it is; not for what it’s been built up to in your mind. Merely talking about how you are feeling will put it into words, which can be analysed. Talking about it also makes it a tangible thing, which can be looked back on with hindsight. If you keep it bottled up, it only exists in your head and can’t be tangible; for you or for your loved ones. Put it out there. Get it into a tangible form and use it as a tool to help your mental health.

5. It Encourages Others to Talk

We all like to relate to other people. There is not another feeling like it. Part of relating to others is being able to imitate good behaviour or take inspiration from somebody else. In my case, it was when I started reading other people’s blogs that I started relating to people from a mental health perspective. I could see that these people were talking about their illnesses, which must have taken a lot of courage. It was this courage from other people that inspired me to talk about my own mental illness. I like to think that other people reading my blog have taken inspiration to do the same. If even one person has been spurred on by my posts to talk about their mental health, that is an amazing thing to me. Now it’s your turn. I hope that reading this post has helped you to see that talking about it is very, very important and I hope that it may inspire you to do so.

Don’t be afraid to talk. Don’t let the stigma drag you down. Don’t let things build up in your head. Don’t let your loved ones worry about you all the time. Don’t feed the stigma that is stopping others from coming out.

Talk about it.

Love and Peace

The Return of the Beard

I’m Back!

Well, it certainly has been quite some time since I talked about my life. I have missed blogging terribly but my life was so busy that I just could not keep on top of writing, along with everything else.

Since I last wrote a wee update, I’ve started a new job, come off my meds and I’ve been practicing more self care. I am definitely in a much better place than I was the last time I wrote. I guess, in some ways, that makes it a little bit more difficult to write; mainly because I am so used to writing whenever things are going wrong or whenever I am feeling like the pits. Well, inspiration has struck and I will take this wherever it may take me. You all will just need to deal with whatever drivel I unload into this post.

My New Job

I think that this new job has made the biggest difference to my mental health over the last few months. It seems to have been the thing which catapulted me into a better place. That is in no small part thanks to the fact that I seem to have found a job where I feel appreciated. It is also a relatively new development within the company I’m working for, which means there is a lot of room for progression. I am still aiming for a job as a teacher or a trainer and it seems an opportunity like that may come up pretty soon within this project!

I am still doing training, despite starting the job in November 2018. The fact that they provide 12 weeks of training for this role shows me that they are invested in their staff and it is a huge difference from my last employer. It has lead me to feel more relaxed and at peace with my job, which something I have not felt for a very long time. I am nearing the end of training, which is only 2 weeks away and I already feel like I am ready to do the job well. I am excited to work hard and show them what I’m capable of!

Off My Meds?

Yep, you read that right. I am currently cold turkey on my meds and have been for around 2 months now. Don’t get the wrong idea, this was not purely a conscious decision for my mental health. The meds were definitely helping me. The reason I stopped taking them was simply that I ran out and I suddenly became too busy with work that I forgot to refill the prescription. Since then, the new job and better mindset has kept me going and I have not really felt like I need them; however, there have been times when I have felt incredibly intense depression and anxiety. I think my body is telling me that I need that chemical balance again and it is struggling to cope. I haven’t yet decided whether or not I will go back on them but I do feel that it would be a good idea. I will keep you posted on this, for sure.

More Self-Care

I have never been very good at looking after myself. All I have ever been good at is surviving. Well, since I left home and had to look after myself without my parents being there 24/7 anyway. I would always find myself doing the bare minimum in terms of staying clean and healthy and also in keeping myself fed. Lately, however, I have been making sure that I follow a daily routine, which includes washing, looking smart, being productive and and setting aside time to cook meals. I have been making meals that I can take to work, which has made me feel very proud of myself. I have been making lovely meals for dinner in the evening, which has made me feel more creative and just happy in general. I have also been making sure that I change into my PJs when I get home then having some tea and biscuits. This makes me feel a lot more relaxed and content. These may all sound like silly little things to the average person but all of them have added up. All of them together make me feel mentally healthy, even if it is just for brief periods. Long may it continue!

I still feel very much like my mental illness has a vice like grip on me and I don’t think that will change any time soon. The demons are being kept at bay for now but they are still lurking. Can I keep them away long enough each day so that I can continue feeling good about myself? I will certainly try my hardest.

What’s in Store?

Well, now that I am in a better place and feeling motivated, I have decided to continue blogging in my spare time! I will be updating this as often as I can. I also will be doing my Twitter chats, retweets and mental health awareness support on Twitter. I will do my best to upload more content to my YouTube channel, as believe it or not I am still super excited to have that medium available in my fight against the stigma of mental health. I thoroughly enjoyed making my first 2 videos and will definitely be continuing with the project.

This is all a lot to handle and keep on top of so I will of course be keeping an eye on my mental health in case the pressure of everything ends up being too detrimental. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with everything.

Thank You!

I would just like to end this post with a heart-felt thank you to all of you who have stuck by my side whilst I have been away from blogging. You know who you are and I cannot express just how much I really appreciate it.

Until next time!

Love and Peace

Not Everybody is Like You

I’m sat here, thinking to myself. I’m in danger of my thoughts taking me to somewhere very dark and negative so I thought I would write something meaningful and keep my brain in line.

The thought occurred to me that I often get hurt by other people. The majority of the time, this hurt is not intentional by the offending party but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. How could they have been so thoughtless and inconsiderate that they would do something which would hurt me so much? Am I overreacting? Would another person like myself be hurt in the same way? I like to think that everybody else would feel the same way as I do but that, quite frankly, just isn’t the case.

Although there are bound to be people out there who think and feel the way I do, the reality is that a majority of humankind is so different from me. What is offensive or hurtful to me, will be nothing to a great percentage of my peers. This is quite hard to accept, as we all seek to relate to others in one way or another. If we can’t relate to them because of a differing opinion or feeling over something, it becomes harder to connect with them. Harder but not impossible, I might add.

One thing that I often reinforce for people who are having a difficult time and feel like they are overreacting or just acting crazy, is that their feelings are valid. They are valid because it is what is going on in their mind and they feel that way whether they like or not. Perhaps I should remember that piece of advice when it comes to my own mental health and my own feelings of being hurt. It is valid that I feel hurt because, whether I like it or not, I feel that way. What’s important is how I approach the situation and whether or not I am able to figure out why I’m hurt and if it was justified. There is a difference between something being valid and something being justified. I think we all need to find that line, in all aspects of our lives.

This was a bit of a ramble but I hope it’s been thought provoking. Have a wonderful Saturday evening.

Love and Peace

I’m Back! Wee Life Update

Hello!

I have been very quiet as of late and I feel a little guilty for closing myself off; however, I recognise that it has been for my own mental health and I have to say: I am feeling much better for taking the time off from social media and my blog. Before I get into it, I would like to give a shoutout to the people who have checked in on me whilst I have been quiet. You know who you are and I want you to know that it means the world to me.

Well, I have always said that I will continue to blog as long as I am enjoying it and it is helping me so here I am. I think it’s about time that I give you all a wee life update and let you know how I have been getting on; the good and the bad.

The Downward Spiral

A few weeks ago, I started feeling the side effects of my antedepressants very badly. I was experiencing sickness and diarrhoea. It was horrible and I was off work because of it. I knew that these were possible side effects so I tried to roll with it and wait until I got better; however, it took a little longer than I had anticipated for the side effects to subside. Now, this is where things start to get really bad. The side effects had really affected me physically more than anything else and my sleeping pattern had been badly affected. I was up until all hours of the night and the morning, which obviously did not help with my routine or my mental health. Thus begun the downward spiral.

My mental health began to deteriorate and it only did so quicker and quicker, until my anxiety was so bad that I could not face going into work. I knew by this point that my mental heath was very important and if my brain was telling me that I shouldn’t be in work then I should listen to it and look after myself. I tried this and stayed off work to give my brain as much of a break as I could. Except, I had no idea how much this would eventually affect me in the long run. I was about to hit the lowest point of my struggle with depression up to this point. Days off work turned very quickly into a week and before I knew it, I was off for 3 full weeks. As I started preparing to go back to work, it hit me: I don’t get sick pay from my employer and I have rent and bills to pay at the end of the month. This realisation hit me like a tonne of bricks and I was absolutely floored with my depression. I instantly felt numb, like my brain had just shut down in order to protect me from the anguish that was realising my failure and the impossible situation with which I was now faced. This numbness was very familiar to me by this point but there was something else… something new. I suddenly no longer wanted to be here anymore. I didn’t want to live as somebody who had failed so miserably and fallen so low that I would not be able to pick myself back up. Some of you may be thinking that I was feeling suicidal and you would be forgiven for assuming this; however, I wasn’t suicidal. I wasn’t having feelings of ending my own life; I was having feelings of no longer wanting to exist anymore. It is difficult to explain but I hope that others have felt this as strongly as I have and they will be able to relate to it. If you have, get in touch and tell me about it.

On the Up ‘n’ Up!

I was in the pits for what felt like an age but it was actually only a couple of days. I knew that I had to do something positive and at least try to get myself out of this difficult situation so I did. I arranged to go over to my mum and dad’s house for dinner on the Sunday. I have been in situations before where I am hesitant to talk to my mum and dad about certain subjects but let me tell you: this one was a doozy. Not only was I in a financial crisis but I had to tell them the reason why I was. It meant having to talk about my mental health to a degree that I had never had to reach before. This was scary stuff… but I did my best to stay positive and remember that my mum and dad are there for me. They are my family and they always have and always will be. My maw ‘n’ da!

Well, after dinner, I plucked up the courage and spoke to them about everything. The side effects, the spiral into nothingness, the time off work and the financial troubles. I would be lying if I said they weren’t taken aback and a little upset with me; I had, after all, neglected to tell them that I had been suffering. With that being said, they were absolutely wonderful and more supportive than I could ever have imagined. They were my light at the end of the tunnel. My saviours and my heroes. I could see clearer than ever before that tey are my rock. This feeling of love and support filled my heart to the brim but at the same time, it lifted a huge weight off from my shoulders and allowed me to relax for the first time in weeks. This was the beginning of my gradual climb back up towards being myself again and do you know what? I haven’t stoped climbing! To this day, I am feeling better with each day that passes and I can feel my positive outlook coming back. I don’t know if this is due to the dosage of my meds being increased or if I have somehow had some sort of epiphany during all of the anguish or even during my climb back up. All I know is that I feel fantastic. Will this feeling last? No, it wont… but a big part of me now realises that and knows that it won’t be the end of the world when I drop back down a little. I know that I have support in many places and I don’t need to suffer.

What Now?

You might be wondering: what’s going on now that you’ve managed to fight your way back up, Duncan? To be quite honest, not a lot has been going on recently. I have been taking a lot of time for myself. I have been chilling out and getting a good night’s sleep for work as often as I can. I have been eating as well as possible on this tight budget and I have been seeing my friends and family whenever I can. Now that I feel like I am in a better place, I will be able to write more often. I will be able to start making more videos for my YouTube channel. I will be able to enjoy my life, as well as ensure that I am a more active member of this wonderful blogging and Mental Health Awareness community. I want to start really making a difference in the world of mental health and what better time to do it other than when I am feeling positive and productive?

I will probably be looking for other bloggers to collaborate with in the near future. Already, I am in talks with somebody about a few different projects and I have been in touch with one of my favourite bloggers about doing a collab with them very soon. We had planned to publish a post for World Mental Health Day on Wednesday 10th October but life got in the way for both of us and in the end this wasn’t possible. We will be getting together very soon, I hope. It’s going to be a very busy time for me and I couldn’t be happier about that. I will of course still be doing my #BeardedChat and keeping up with my @BeardedRT account, as well as keeping you all updated on my personal/blogging Twitter, @TalesofaBeard. There has never been a better time to follow my blog. I promise you that it will be a very exciting, thought-provoking and even funny time for all of you who are keen to keep up with my goings on.

Why don’t you join me for it all?

Love and Peace

The Next Step: My Vlogging Journey

I have been pretty quiet on my blog for the past week or so. This has really been because I have been in a rut with my mental health and even writing couldn’t bring me out of it. I was just in my pit and not doing anything of any substance. I have managed to scrape by and can say that I am breaking out again. Let’s try to keep that going.

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The Next Step

I have taken a huge step on my blogging journey: I have decided to start a YouTube channel so that I can vlog, as well as keep you updated on this blog.

I am still enjoying writing and will continue to do so for as long as it helps me and it is fun or therapeutic; however, this next step comes at a time when I really want to help other people. The vlog will still be centred around my own life but the stories will be told with the intention of reaching out to others who are going through similar experiences. Talking directly to people who are struggling with mental health issues, particularly men, who are far more likely to conform to the stigma that mental health should not be talked about in any circumstances.

Breaking the Stigma

The main goal of getting my vlog out there is to try to break the stigma surrounding mental health. I want to show people, through talking about my own problems and suggesting ways to improve mental health, that it is absolutely fine to talk about your mental health and you are not alone in your struggle. We are all human and our brains are all susceptible to mental illnesses. This is just a fact of life and the more that people realise this, the better chance we have of breaking the stigma surrounding it all. Mental health can no longer be a taboo subject. There are too many people suffering and even dying because of this.

My Vlog

Here is my first video, which is an introduction to the kind of content I will be posting and my goals with the vlog. Give it a watch, visit my channel and like and subscribe to receive more updates. I am so excited to continue with this project:

Love and Peace

A Few Thoughts on Anxiety

Although I’ve always had a lot of empathy for people who suffered from anxiety disorders and always tried to understand it, I never knew just how constantly debilitating it could be. I had an image in my head that it was something which reared its head from time to time.

Now that I am struggling with anxiety, I have a whole new level of empathy for people who have previously struggled or are still struggling. Rather than anxiety being something that has will appear on occasion and make me feel terrible for a brief period, it has actually been something which I deal with 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The thing which makes an occasional appearance is the feeling of calm but that is very rare. More often than not, if I have a brief period of not feeling anxious, all I feel is indifference because I am working on a menial task and am focused but not invested in it. It really has opened my eyes up to how some of my dear friends are feeling on a daily basis.

One of the things which has made me realise that anxiety is a constant state of being for me has been an annoying and painful side effect: clenching or grinding my teeth. My face is always very sore because the muscles in it, which are normally hardly used, are now being used at almost every moment of every day. The ironic thing about this is that it becomes painful to laugh or smile too much. It’s really rather sad, in a way.

I guess this realisation has made me more determined to find ways of reducing the anxiety that I am feeling in any way that I can, no matter how small it may be. Thinking about it logically, this would tie in with self-care, which I realise I realise I have not been great at practising recently. I think I need to make self-care my main focus right now.

Oh, and as I finish off this post, I’ve realised that my face also hurts because my anxiety makes me bite my lips more often. Isn’t it a strange feeling when you catch yourself absent-mindedly doing something?

Love and Peace

I Am Terrified

My head is spinning. I am over thinking. My heart is racing. I feel very low and I am terrified that I am going to hit rock bottom again.

I am rocking back and forth and I have absolutely no idea why. I cant get myself out of this mindset that I am inadequate and nobody likes me. I feel like I am an absolute failure in my life and I won’t get better.

I am hungry but my brain is refusing to give me the motivation to eat. I haven’t drank any water today or taken my meds. All I have done is smoke cigarettes. I want to get up, wash, eat and sort my life out but my brain is fighting me. It’s fighting hard and I don’t know if I have enough willpower to keep fighting back.

This is going to defeat me.

Today is a Good Day

I woke up today, earlier than I had planned, feeling very different to how I normally feel.

Usually, I wake up feeling very anxious and feeling like I am a worthless piece of crap. Today, however, I woke up feeling very calm. I wasn’t worrying about anything and I saw something that I hadn’t seen in a while: I saw the potential to make today whatever I wanted to make it. I am not a piece of crap and the things that I do matter. They matter greatly, to me and to the people who care about me. Today, I can see this very clearly and I think it is time to start taking responsibility again.

As I got out my laptop and set out to write a blog post, I had no idea what I wanted to write. Rather than feeling anxious and frustrated about this, I decided just to breathe and write whatever came to mind. I decided to take it back to basics and look at this platform as that which it was originally intended: something I could use to get my thoughts down on paper and clear my head. I shouldn’t worry about writing things which will be meaningful or will attract viewers. I am doing this for myself, first and foremost and if it also helps a few people along the way then that is a bonus.

Today will be a good day. I will make today a good day. I will practice some self-care and make sure anything that needs done around the house is done. A few weeks ago, I started doing this. I started taking responsibility for my life; however, my brain didn’t want me to do that and it sabotaged all of my attempts to get things back on track. Well, brain, I hope you haven’t forgotten about that letter I wrote to you. I have taken steps to help you get better so I hope you will be doing the same once the meds kick in. We’ve got this and I won’t stop fighting.

Today is a good day. I am feeling happy. I am feeling motivated. I am feeling more myself again than I have in a long time. Let’s not waste this opportunity to move forward. Let’s do this.

Love and Peace

Growing Up a Shadow

I have been asked by someone close to me to write about my lifestyle growing up. It was pretty hard to pick a part of my youth that would be interesting enough to put on paper (or the internet) but I have decided to write about my life as a shadow to one of my [former] best friends. Before I get to this, I feel like I need to give you a brief history of my childhood into adolescence.

When I was growing up and going through the earlier years of high school, I didn’t have many friends. My best friend from the age of 3 years old had moved away when we were 10 with his parents quite suddenly and I was left without any close friends for a while. I was quite a solitary kid anyway so this didn’t really bother me at the time (apart from the fact I’d just lost a very close friend). I went to school and worked hard in my classes and as far as I can remember I was quite content with life on my own. My family life was good, as my parents never left me or my brothers wanting for anything and they always made sure we had plenty to do at home. I played video games and (as was very popular at the time I was growing up) read Harry Potter for hours on end. The fact that I managed to read all of these books myself from a very young age meant that I am still a Potterhead even to this day, as sad as it may be. I don’t care; I am who I am and I like what I like.

Other than Harry Potter (which, surprisingly, wasn’t very popular among my peers), video games and a wee bit of guitar, I didn’t have any common interests. This obviously made it difficult to relate to anybody in my school; however, I didn’t really pay much attention to it at the time. Until, of course, I hit puberty and started becoming that awkward kid who didn’t have any pals. Yeah, that wasn’t fun. It hit me like a tonne of bricks and I all of a sudden became very aware of what people thought of me. I am sure many of you can relate, whether you want to admit it or not. For a while, I was pretty much the stereotypical outcast teenager and I was very aware of it. At one point, some other kids could see what I was going through and they asked me to hang out with them. Well, I had been asked to hang out before but it was usually a trap, in order to make me look like an idiot. I was very cautious when I accepted but it actually turned out to be a great thing for me. They were the “moshers” of the school and welcomed me in with open arms. They always met me before school and asked me to sit with them in classes. Pretty soon, we were hanging out after school, although not at weekends because I usually spent that time with my family. We would go to a youth club on a Wednesday night, where we would take the money given to us by our parents and (you guessed it) bought sugary sweets and energy drinks! Now, I know a lot of you were probably expecting there to be alcohol involved and for a few people at the club this was the case but we didn’t drink at this stage and if any of us ever did it was always away from the group. We would still get up to the usual young kid antics. Daring each other to do stupid stuff, play fighting, pranks, etc. I remember having the best time and I always looked forward to a Wednesday. There was just one thing that I couldn’t shake: I was a quiet kid. I was always there but I would hardly ever contribute to conversations or take part in any of the pranks. I was so quiet that, on a few occasions, I “met” the same people for the first time almost every week, as they could never remember meeting me. I didn’t really care, I just laughed it off with my friends. I mean, I obviously did enough to still be considered a part of the group, otherwise people wouldn’t have kept asking me to come back.

Now that you know a little bit about the direction I was headed in with this crowd and what I was like as a kid, I can introduce you to the person who would be my best friend for a good number of years. For the purposes of the blog and keeping things anonymous, I will refer to him only as Archie. I met Archie during a period of P.E. doing weight training. We started talking about music and bands that we liked. Now, although I had been hanging out with moshers, I hadn’t listened to much in the way of alternative music so I couldn’t name Archie many bands that I would have heard. To be honest, music wasn’t a huge part of my life at this point. That was about to drastically change. Archie introduced me to the heavier side of music with bands like Rammstein, Slipknot and a few others. We very quickly started hanging out outside of school and we would listen to music and even play guitar. I had played on and off since I was 8 years old but this was the first time I took a keen interest in it. As well as the guitar playing, going to gigs was a huge thing that happened almost every month. He actually took me to my first gig, which was Rammstein. Imagine your first live band being Rammstein at the age of 14!

As it was just the two of us hanging out and we were spending a lot of time together, we quite often had very deep conversations about life and we realised we had a lot in common as human beings. The way we thought and the way we treated people, as well as our taste in food and our interest in video games, particularly Final Fantasy. It was incredible to have a best friend at that teen stage of my life who not only understood me but who also was very similar. The thing is, by this point, Archie had already established something without me even realising: he was the alpha of the two of us. He would always be the one who decided what we were doing on any given day. I didn’t care or even notice at that point, as I was just so happy to have a best friend. I really wish I’d noticed sooner because it turned out this kind of alpha behaviour left unchallenged was going to take over the friendship completely.

We continued hanging out right the way through school, with Archie being the centre of attention 100% of the time. If we hung out with other people, Archie was always the one who would act up and make a fool of himself so that everybody else would laugh at him and he would stand out. He was also a fan of “peacocking” which was just to dress as brightly and ridiculously (but also stylishly) as possible so that you attract attention. Of course, the kind of attention he wanted was female, as he was a mad shagger. This became very apparent when we reached the age of 18 and started drinking. He was out every weekend on the pull. With Archie being the centre of attention all the time, you may think that I had a pretty easy time of it. This was unfortunately not the case. Socially, I had a pretty rough time. I mean, I was meeting new people all the time; however, they never paid any attention to who I was, as they were always just smitten with Archie. I would bump into people when I was on my own and they would recognise me but it would always be “oh hey, you’re Archie’s pal!” and they would never remember my name. I usually just brushed it off.

Well, things were pretty much like that for the majority of my adolescent and young adult life. I felt like I was Archie’s shadow all of the time. When we were at college, at the pub, at house parties. Even when we did karaoke, I never felt like I was good enough to do it on my own and only ever sang a duet with Archie. It was pretty bad, looking back on it. Then came a momentous change that I was not expecting: Archie disappeared. When I say he disappeared, I mean I knew exactly where he was but he just lost contact with everybody. You see, he had gotten into a relationship with the girl he’d come to love. I was happy for the 2 of them, as I could see how smitten they were with each other. Until she took full control over him and he fell off the radar. He wasn’t allowed to see anybody, use any social media, go on any nights out. I felt bad for him, given his situation but at the same time, I felt incredibly hurt that he made no effort to keep in touch with me, his best friend.

There was a huge change that happened within myself too: I found myself and began making friends with people for who I was, rather than for who I had as my friends. When I went out to the pub, I started chatting to people who were interested in talking to me. When I went to parties, I was able to hold a conversation with people without Archie being there to suddenly steal the attention of the whole room by being an idiot. I started making friends with people, rather than just becoming acquaintances… and do you know what? I was no longer just Archie’s pal; I was Duncan. People love me for who I was and I finally had a life. I was no longer somebody’s shadow, in fact, I may have been creating my own shadows with the amount of confidence that I had gained in such a short space of time. I started singing on my own at the karaoke and nowadays I’m praised for my vocal talent. I’m still quite humble but it’s nice to hear that people appreciate something you do. I started talking to strangers in social settings, no longer worried that they won’t like me and instead just going in with the right foot forward and being myself.

My advice from all of this: don’t be anybody’s shadow. Always be yourself and people will like you for you who are. If you allow somebody to overshadow you that much, you will lose yourself. Don’t let it happen.

Love and Peace.