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So I come here because it’s a bit of a haven in the middle of a busy city and it’s a breath of fresh air.

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There’s butterflies, there’s pretty flowers. It doesn’t feel stressful, it’s very chilled out.

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In my last depression relapse that I had, I’ve never been that low before.

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And I’ve got a lot of memory blanks from that time, so I can’t remember it very well, 

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but my flatmate, who I was living with at the time sort of filled it in

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and I just couldn’t really talk, or move, I was off work, I would just sit on the sofa and watch TV.

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I’ve been in services for a lot of years and have always really struggled to communicate with them 

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because I don’t always have the words to match how I’m feeling or I just can’t describe what’s going on. 

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But a few months ago, I started art journaling and initially it was very prescriptive and very like, 

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“write down all the reasons why you should feel happy”, or “write down all three good things” or things like that, 

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but I didn’t really get on with that very well because I would just stare at a blank page and just not be able to think of anything.

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And then I started putting quotes in and then started adding more images and paint and things like that, and began to be able to paint what was going on… 

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even if it was just a colour or a shape.

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Or if I couldn’t put the words to it I could often find a quote to describe how I felt. 

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Recovery is a word that gets used a lot, and I’ve realised that whenever I’ve tried to recover in the past I’ve done it in the way that I thought Services wanted me to, 

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or that I thought other people wanted me to be, and it’s not worked because I’ve not been happy.

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So, now I’m working really hard on trying to work out what it is that I want and set goals that I actually want to achieve. 

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There’s a phrase that goes around on YouTube called ‘Living my best life’ and I reckon that’s what recovery should be. 

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It’s if you were living what you thought was your best life, what would it look like?

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And I think it’s just being patient, and having trial and error, and just working out, it’s a really slow process, it’s not an overnight thing, 

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but slowly working out where your values are, what you enjoy, what isn’t helpful, and how to say no to the things that aren’t helpful, 

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and just beginning to build the life that you want to live.

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And to me that’s what recovery is, it’s being able to do the things that you want to do, in a way that you want to do them, with the people that you want to be with. 

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And that’s it.