A majority of people seem surprised when I tell them that no, I didn't go to high school, but instead was educated at home, however after a while they dismiss the fact and just accept it thankfully. Not everyone knows why I was home-schooled and to be honest, at the beginning of that mad roller coaster, nobody really did for certain. I should start at the beginning: my Primary School in the village where I live was considered to be rather small with a number of around 45 pupils but that was all I had ever known and to me, it was the best school in the world. Despite this I was equally as excited to start high school because me and my (small) friendship group felt as if we had completely outgrown our familiar surroundings even though we adored them and the people inside it.
I guess to start with, you could say that I felt fine and was what would be considered a 'normal' pupil when I first started high school - the ordinary first day nerves followed by the exciting anticipation of what was to come of this new journey. Everything was fine for the most part of the first two months that I was there, until the one day that I believe sparked my anxiety. I remember that one day when riding to school in the car (as it was swimming that morning) I felt extremely nauseous and looked ill, so we drove back home again and I had the day off school because of this. I cannot remember the rest of that day but the next I do, instead of waking up and having an extra day off to be on the safe side, I decided that I wanted to go back to school that day, in fear of missing out on something exciting I guess. This was definitely not the right decision and I remember sitting in each of my classes that day feeling very sick however thought it would pass and made it to the end of the day despite how I felt. The weekend followed this and I remember feeling a sense of dread as Monday drew closer and trying to explain how I felt to my mum, although it was difficult to understand for myself, let alone anybody else. I somehow struggle to remember what exactly happened on that particular Monday but what I do know is that from this time onwards I did everything that I could to avoid going to school. One thing that I used to do in the morning was refuse to get out of bed once my mum had shouted me to get up or if that didn't work I would cry continuously for as long as possible before I had to get the bus. Nobody knew what was wrong with me and why I refused to go to school like anybody else but and to tell the truth, neither did I, but what I did know was that I could not go there without it making me feel ill.
This routine carried on for a few weeks I believe before my family decided to take me to the doctors to see what they had to say about everything. Although despite the faith we are supposed to have in our doctors, he pretty much just sat there and told me to 'pull myself together and go to school' after an explanation of my behaviour which is not the response that we wanted to hear. The school suggested that I perhaps went in for just half days for a short amount of time but even this was too much for me to deal with and so I ended up picking and choosing which lessons I went in for on certain days, another idea that I detested at the time. I'm unsure as to whether this was after or before the doctors visit but I remember my dad telling us that his fellow employee thought it could be 'anxiety', a term we had never fully heard of before. Following these events I was transferred to 'family solutions' which are a team of psychologists that are there for both the person suffering and their families of course. Before I go into a bit more detail of this, it's probably a good time to mention how much I dreaded these people coming to our house, it wasn't that they were unkind or had a horrible attitude it was just due to where they had come from and the fact that their aim was to get me back to school - the last thing that I wanted to do at this point. The psychologist I had made a plan of small steps that I could take which would ease me back into the idea of going back to high school like everybody else but I didn't feel comfortable with taking these on board as I knew that whilst I was away from school, I felt fine. The psychologist told me and my family that because I was not willing to face my fears at school, they would likely come into my everyday life which at the time, I did not believe.
Once we had all established that I was more than likely never going to return to high school at all, we had to try and work out how I would be educated and this resulted in me having a home tutor, one of which didn't last too long and the other who did. This routine was fine for me and although I still had the fear of these people as they seemed to be authoritative, I was getting used to the idea of the same lady coming into our home twice a week to teach me. Sadly after a little while, this tutor had to be taken away from us as the council had no funding left and so she was to be employed as a teacher to those that didn't want to learn and had been kicked out of school. I then moved onto 'E-Learning', a website for children that are educated at home and carried on with this up until my GCSE exams, where I decided to go back to the 'dreaded' high school and take the exams.
It was around about a year after I started E-Learning that I began to feel that something wasn't right although I didn't recognise it as the same problem that I had encountered beforehand for some reason. It began by feeling sick at various intervals of the day, before becoming more dominant and getting to the point of feeling this was 24/7. I didn't tell anybody about this because I genuinely believed that after a while it would just disappear and I would soon feel normal again. This of course wasn't the case whatsoever and as I said before, the feeling of panic and sickness emerged into my whole day as well as night time. I remember that I was extremely restless and couldn't sit still for more than a few minutes, at night time I would be hurrying around the house doing whatever I possibly could to distract myself from feeling this way. I would probably say that the nights were the worst, laying in bed attempting to sleep whilst my body never wanted to slow down, I had to lay awake reading a never ending catalog or doing an activity that would keep myself distracted until I fell asleep.
The day that this new bout of anxiety was revealed was when me and three family members were supposed to go shopping somewhere around an hour away from where we live, obviously at the time, they were all oblivious to how I was feeling and so didn't stop to think that perhaps we shouldn't go. The morning arrived and I was unbelievably restless and felt overwhelmingly nauseous to the point were I was nearly physically sick, which is when my mum noticed and I told her how I had felt like this for a while now (nearly a year I believe). As I didn't want to ruin the shopping trip and they assumed I was feeling better after a while, we left the house despite me not wanting to leave and got into the car, whilst walking up to it I felt the most fear and anxiety that I have ever done in my life, I could not physically get into the car however my family forced me to in fear that if not, things could get more difficult. However, the car journey didn't last too long as it got to the point of my hysterical state where we had to turn around and return home.
After this point, I remember that leaving the house got extremely difficult as although I felt anxious wherever I was, going out of my comfort zone made it a lot worse. We still did not fully realise that this was my anxiety but after a call to my psychologist she informed us that this was in fact considered 'normal' due to my past experience, which made me feel a little bit better about my situation as a whole. This time though, we knew that the anxiety could not be ignored as it had taken over almost every aspect of my life and after many trips to the doctors and more psychologists I finally got put onto medication. The medication didn't work immediately and it took a good year or more for me to start feeling like my old self, or the new me as people like to say.
I often wonder whether if I had defeated my initial anxieties surrounding school how different my life would be now but despite all of the above, I am the person that I am today because of everything that has happened to me. How soppy and clique I know but I honestly believe it to be the truth, I have never been as confident and happy as I have been in the past two years and starting college has boosted this completely!
I apologise for the length of this post but my main message is for anybody who is out there suffering in silence with any form of mental health, PLEASE talk to somebody, anybody that you trust and things will get better, I promise. It worked out for me and I plan to use my experience in the favour of others to allow them to get their lives back on track also. Another thing I'd like to add is that although you cannot see a mental illness, it is still very much present to the person that its happening to such as a physical illness is. You don't have to be alone with your anxiety and the help is out there, if you choose to seek it x
I guess to start with, you could say that I felt fine and was what would be considered a 'normal' pupil when I first started high school - the ordinary first day nerves followed by the exciting anticipation of what was to come of this new journey. Everything was fine for the most part of the first two months that I was there, until the one day that I believe sparked my anxiety. I remember that one day when riding to school in the car (as it was swimming that morning) I felt extremely nauseous and looked ill, so we drove back home again and I had the day off school because of this. I cannot remember the rest of that day but the next I do, instead of waking up and having an extra day off to be on the safe side, I decided that I wanted to go back to school that day, in fear of missing out on something exciting I guess. This was definitely not the right decision and I remember sitting in each of my classes that day feeling very sick however thought it would pass and made it to the end of the day despite how I felt. The weekend followed this and I remember feeling a sense of dread as Monday drew closer and trying to explain how I felt to my mum, although it was difficult to understand for myself, let alone anybody else. I somehow struggle to remember what exactly happened on that particular Monday but what I do know is that from this time onwards I did everything that I could to avoid going to school. One thing that I used to do in the morning was refuse to get out of bed once my mum had shouted me to get up or if that didn't work I would cry continuously for as long as possible before I had to get the bus. Nobody knew what was wrong with me and why I refused to go to school like anybody else but and to tell the truth, neither did I, but what I did know was that I could not go there without it making me feel ill.
This routine carried on for a few weeks I believe before my family decided to take me to the doctors to see what they had to say about everything. Although despite the faith we are supposed to have in our doctors, he pretty much just sat there and told me to 'pull myself together and go to school' after an explanation of my behaviour which is not the response that we wanted to hear. The school suggested that I perhaps went in for just half days for a short amount of time but even this was too much for me to deal with and so I ended up picking and choosing which lessons I went in for on certain days, another idea that I detested at the time. I'm unsure as to whether this was after or before the doctors visit but I remember my dad telling us that his fellow employee thought it could be 'anxiety', a term we had never fully heard of before. Following these events I was transferred to 'family solutions' which are a team of psychologists that are there for both the person suffering and their families of course. Before I go into a bit more detail of this, it's probably a good time to mention how much I dreaded these people coming to our house, it wasn't that they were unkind or had a horrible attitude it was just due to where they had come from and the fact that their aim was to get me back to school - the last thing that I wanted to do at this point. The psychologist I had made a plan of small steps that I could take which would ease me back into the idea of going back to high school like everybody else but I didn't feel comfortable with taking these on board as I knew that whilst I was away from school, I felt fine. The psychologist told me and my family that because I was not willing to face my fears at school, they would likely come into my everyday life which at the time, I did not believe.
Once we had all established that I was more than likely never going to return to high school at all, we had to try and work out how I would be educated and this resulted in me having a home tutor, one of which didn't last too long and the other who did. This routine was fine for me and although I still had the fear of these people as they seemed to be authoritative, I was getting used to the idea of the same lady coming into our home twice a week to teach me. Sadly after a little while, this tutor had to be taken away from us as the council had no funding left and so she was to be employed as a teacher to those that didn't want to learn and had been kicked out of school. I then moved onto 'E-Learning', a website for children that are educated at home and carried on with this up until my GCSE exams, where I decided to go back to the 'dreaded' high school and take the exams.
It was around about a year after I started E-Learning that I began to feel that something wasn't right although I didn't recognise it as the same problem that I had encountered beforehand for some reason. It began by feeling sick at various intervals of the day, before becoming more dominant and getting to the point of feeling this was 24/7. I didn't tell anybody about this because I genuinely believed that after a while it would just disappear and I would soon feel normal again. This of course wasn't the case whatsoever and as I said before, the feeling of panic and sickness emerged into my whole day as well as night time. I remember that I was extremely restless and couldn't sit still for more than a few minutes, at night time I would be hurrying around the house doing whatever I possibly could to distract myself from feeling this way. I would probably say that the nights were the worst, laying in bed attempting to sleep whilst my body never wanted to slow down, I had to lay awake reading a never ending catalog or doing an activity that would keep myself distracted until I fell asleep.
The day that this new bout of anxiety was revealed was when me and three family members were supposed to go shopping somewhere around an hour away from where we live, obviously at the time, they were all oblivious to how I was feeling and so didn't stop to think that perhaps we shouldn't go. The morning arrived and I was unbelievably restless and felt overwhelmingly nauseous to the point were I was nearly physically sick, which is when my mum noticed and I told her how I had felt like this for a while now (nearly a year I believe). As I didn't want to ruin the shopping trip and they assumed I was feeling better after a while, we left the house despite me not wanting to leave and got into the car, whilst walking up to it I felt the most fear and anxiety that I have ever done in my life, I could not physically get into the car however my family forced me to in fear that if not, things could get more difficult. However, the car journey didn't last too long as it got to the point of my hysterical state where we had to turn around and return home.
After this point, I remember that leaving the house got extremely difficult as although I felt anxious wherever I was, going out of my comfort zone made it a lot worse. We still did not fully realise that this was my anxiety but after a call to my psychologist she informed us that this was in fact considered 'normal' due to my past experience, which made me feel a little bit better about my situation as a whole. This time though, we knew that the anxiety could not be ignored as it had taken over almost every aspect of my life and after many trips to the doctors and more psychologists I finally got put onto medication. The medication didn't work immediately and it took a good year or more for me to start feeling like my old self, or the new me as people like to say.
I often wonder whether if I had defeated my initial anxieties surrounding school how different my life would be now but despite all of the above, I am the person that I am today because of everything that has happened to me. How soppy and clique I know but I honestly believe it to be the truth, I have never been as confident and happy as I have been in the past two years and starting college has boosted this completely!
I apologise for the length of this post but my main message is for anybody who is out there suffering in silence with any form of mental health, PLEASE talk to somebody, anybody that you trust and things will get better, I promise. It worked out for me and I plan to use my experience in the favour of others to allow them to get their lives back on track also. Another thing I'd like to add is that although you cannot see a mental illness, it is still very much present to the person that its happening to such as a physical illness is. You don't have to be alone with your anxiety and the help is out there, if you choose to seek it x
Hi Heidi, we came across your blog because we have a new website where people tell their stories. As it's quite new the stories so far have been quite neutral, general life, but we would like some more 'meaningful' stories as well, that can help people understand other people and at the same time be inspirational. We would also like to link them to relevant support groups or charities. Have you ever considered recording your story? If you're interested, please email us at admin@cradle2gravestories.com (or indeed anybody else reading this who might be interested. Thanks, Elina www.cradle2gravestories.com
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment Elina! I would love to do that, do you mean in the form of a video? If so, I could do that.
ReplyDeleteHeidi x