Crushing The Stigma That Crushed Me

This is the first post I made on Instagram....

I made a promise. A promise that if I summited island peak I would do the scariest thing, I've ever done. And that is write this to show the world.

This time last year if you told me I would be summiting island peak at 6300m I would have hoped , I would have loved the idea but i probally wouldn't believe you. I was in hospital. Being told I would never recover, that I was treatment resistant.

I have suffered from mental health issues for 18 years, been in services for 10 years, of those 10 years spent 5.5 years in hospital with around ×11 psychiatric hospital admissions and x10 general hospital admissions. I have never told anyone, I never spoke about it, not to my family, not to my best friend. I was known to everyone as the smily girl, the gigglerly girl. I was asked how, after a hard shift at work I was still gigglering. The truth, I knew pain, I knew exhaustion, i knew how hard life could be.

I'm not going to lie, last April i almost gave up. I have never ever wanted to give. I've always thought the next thing would get me better, 'if I just did this'. But after being told I have no hope, I believed them. I didnt want to live with illnessness that took everyone and everything from me. I was done.

Then, I'm not sure what happened. I booked a house sit. And that was a catalyst for the first chapter in my life that, for the first time u , actually lived and wanted to live.

Why am I telling you this. I'm not doing this for myself. If I was doing this for myself, I would still live a half life, where people didnt know really what was going on, who thought I was the happy girl that I show everyone I am. I'm doing this to help, support everyone that's suffering from mental health. Who have lost hope. I want NO ONE to go through what I've been though, let alone by themselves. Because I know how hard that is. I believe in every single one of you, no matter what other people think, no matter what your head is telling you.

No i didnt just 'snap out of it' one day. I found what worked after 18 years. Its a process, one I'm still riding and will continue to ride for a long long time to come.

If I'm being honest I get a lot of messages about how amazing my time is here travelling.

It IS amazing. But what you haven't seen you, is how hard it is. I'm using travelling to recover, not to run, not to hide, but to recover. Is been and will be far from easy but for the first time I can see a life not being consumed by mental health.

This is the scariest sentence I have ever written...

I am emma campbell, suffer/fighter/survivor of three eating disorders, OCD, panic attack disorder, PTSD, depression and insomnia. My Instagram will be changed to travelling_though_the_mind_and_world. Hopefully it will give you some support, help comfort that your not alone and your certainly not hopeless.