I don't really know where to begin or what to say.
I've sat and thought about what to write for days and everything just feels so lacking. 
How can I write what thoughts are swirling around my mind when the truth is I don't really know for myself?

Let's call this post July Mind, sounds fitting enough...

Sitting here at home, in my cozily beautiful shed, I feel lost. 
I know where I am but I have no idea where I have gone.
These past few months I envisage as a huge blur, like a rogue paint stroke upon a canvas with no intention of being or going, abstract I suppose.
I slowly fell away from myself and the worst part is, I knew I was.

Everything felt like an effort, everything felt unrewarding, everything felt like it would crumble and I coped by ignoring, everything. I ignored the things I used to do, the way I used to be and slowly masked the passionate, adventurous and intellectual Lucy Jane with someone I didn't know.
My excuse was 'I am ill' and truthfully, I am.


My illness is the disease Ulcerative Colitis, I was diagnosed in March and it has severely progressed in recent weeks. For now I want to skip over the technicalities as I want to start posts about my journey soon but I will say this much; it drained me, made normal daily life the biggest struggle and effected me so much more than just having a diseased bowel! 
When you're ill, life feels like a cycle and eventually, the cycle needs to be broken.

This was my cycle...

1. I became de-motivated, unenthusiastic about 99% of things in life. I'd fall into slumps previously but I started to struggle to get out, I couldn't understand why I was so effortless because thats not like me. I was questioning why my lack of energy was declining so rapidly, I wanted to do things but there was 0 drive to push me.

2. I got diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis, accepted my illness and started treatment. Throughout these few weeks in April I felt happy, we knew the problem, there was a reason I had become so lacking and I was certain this disease would soon be maintained. 

3. I pretended. I knew my symptoms weren't improving but I felt like they should be. I was conscious  as to everything with my health spiralling downwards but I wanted to carry on as normal. I wanted to go to college, sit my exams and have the summer I'd dreamed of. I was trying different medications, going to constant doctors appointments and feeling awful. My treatment was showing no obvious differences so I had no idea at what stage my disease was at, I kept on going.
Through May and June I braved it and pretended, the world had bigger issues and I thought ignoring mine could me make me better when instead it made me worse. 

4. So this is now, today, this present moment.
I was urgently admitted to hospital last week as my disease had reached a severe stage of Ulcerative Colitis. I stayed in for 4 days on infusion drips of steroids and anti-biotics. My body had been unresponsive to all treatment used since March which is why the disease had spread so violently. My body was 'on fire' as the nurses politely described, a fire that had been building and building since February.
I finally reached the point where I realised 'Oh shit, I am actually ill'.
Laying in a hospital bed there really is no way of pretending that 'you're fine' because the whole world can see that you need help. 

I break the cycle here and say lets make it stop.  

My life has to be put on hold for now, effecting summer plans, University plans and the big, scary future plans. I am ill and I need to get better before I embark on the life healthy Lucy Jane imagined she would have now.  I am trying to accept the process, the disease and everything that is going to come with it because I did too much pretending before. 

I think that my July Mind feels lost because it is at the beginning of a journey I never really planned. I don't feel like myself because I didn't accept myself for being 'ill', my mind couldn't fathom it. 
I need to create, connect and be more than I was because I was feeling nothing, numb.
When you ignore someone for so long, they eventually forget about you and live an independent life yet a spark will always remember what you once had, think if that happened through ignoring yourself. 
My spark feels like its bouncing back and I am shining out through it, I really really hope I am right.

Lucy Jane