TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY: PARIS, DECEMBER 2017

Hey everyone, 

Last year, my boyfriend and I decided to celebrate our two-year anniversary in Paris! I thought I would write a post on it to share some pictures in case anyone reading is planning on going soon and would like some recommendations on what to see! 

A CLASSICS TRIP (PART ONE): ROME, OCTOBER 2017

Hey guys,

This week’s blog post is about one of my favourite cities that I had the opportunity to travel to last year – Rome. It should come as no surprise that because I am a Classicist, I have a deep interest and fascination in the history of Rome surrounding many of the ancient archaeology that remains today. And it was me choosing to study the ‘City of Rome’ module last year that allowed me to go on this trip. 

AN END OF SUMMER RETREAT: SUFFOLK, SEPTEMBER 2018

Heya everyone, 

Seeing as my last few posts have been very mental-health orientated, I thought I would upload a few travel posts over the next few weeks, just because I know some people really love reading travel blogs (myself included) and I want something on my blog for everyone!  

At the beginning of this month, myself, Peter and his family went to Dennington in Suffolk for a week. It was a gorgeous few days filled with seaside strolls and countryside walks. An unexpected upside to the trip was that the lovely cottage we were staying in was located in an area which had no signal and very poor WiFi, meaning I spent most of the week off my phone which was surprisingly very refreshing! Being away from London and in the country was such a relaxing end to the summer. It was also a fabulous way to celebrate getting my new job, to teach English in China next year, (which I coincidentally found out the day before we left to go to Suffolk).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Hello everyone, 

This post is a difficult one for me to write. It’s hard to explain to someone that the sight of food used to make me so anxious and even made me feel nauseous. It’s also hard to portray to someone that I used to go without food out of the simple fear that it might have triggered a panic attack. This is why I have not been very open about it, because I struggle to make people understand. I hope I achieve this in this blog post.

Being confronted with a plate of food shouldn’t fill someone with dread. After all, it’s what all of us need to survive and so it confuses me when I think of the times when my mind would tell me that I could go without eating meals. My problems with eating food have always been linked to my anxiety in the respect that whenever I felt overly anxious or was having a panic attack, I refused to eat food out of the fear it would make me feel sick. And because panic attacks used to be a daily occurrence for me, it should come as no surprise that I would skip meals every day. 

LIVING WITH SOMEONE WHO HAS ANXIETY BY PETER MARSHALL

So Peter kindly offered to write a post for my blog! I hope you all enjoy:

Imagine, for a moment, that you are next to a wide river with a friend. You and your friend decide to swim together, going upstream against the current. You’re swimming on opposite sides of the river, when suddenly your friend begins to get pulled downstream by the current, which is now faster and stronger on their side. You try to swim over to them to help them, you want to grab them and ground yourself, so they don’t get pulled away, lost, or get themselves hurt on a rock. Now imagine you have to do this every day, the first few days, you don’t do very well, and they slip out of your grip, sailing downstream and grazing themselves on pebbles and branches. But eventually, you learn how to hold onto them and swim over to a different part of the river together, out of the way of the strong current. You carry on swimming together, and they get exhausted and tired, but you can’t climb out because the river bank is too high and too slippery. So, you try to pull them along to a safe part of the river, but they are almost completely unable to function. As you repeat this, they no longer swim against a fast current and get swept away, but they always get tired, and they always give up before you can get them to safety.

SOMETHING A BIT MORE PERSONAL

Hello everyone, 

Today’s blog post is a bit more of a personal one. It’s about something that has been on my mind a lot over the recent months and I feel as though it is important for me to address it and get it off my chest; it is my weight and my size. 

My ever-decreasing weight and size have been affecting me for a while now. To be honest, to begin with, I didn’t even notice it until it was pointed out by a friend after she hadn’t seen me for a while. I have never been one to regularly check my weight because I have never weighed that much (this is down to my fast metabolism), but after weighing myself a few times over the last several months, I can understand the worry of my friends and family. I have decreased in weight significantly, and while I am by no means anorexic, I am visibly a lot skinnier and even weigh less than my 14-year-old sister. It’s starting to worry myself now.