Could you tell me a time you needed someone else?

It was a day I nearly lost. Waking up early in my, suddenly, messy room, again. I'm locked into bed demanding why things persistently tumble from order to chaos. It's too late, before I realise I'm wasting my time. A day off is a day off, the only one I got. I'm finally feeling lazy enough to get out of my bed, and it becomes clear this is how every day off goes. So to motivate myself I make coffee, cigarettes and food. Essential things to do before leaving the house, but perhaps a little distraction before too. Watch some videos and read some news, make attempts to reach out of this loneliness. If no one close is free, I'll happily go further and further until I'm talking to robots. Before long I realise I'm wasting my time again.

Frustration pushes me to get out and leave for a walk. I suit up, grab the lead and get in the car, I'm going north. Perhaps this beautiful part of the country is bad for my soul, at the drop of a hat I can disappear up a hill, through the woods, along the coast. Perhaps this is why I give myself so much time in the morning. I still hadn't decided where i was going, I had a memory in my head, of a place I wanted to reclaim, but without a clue where it was. This is sometimes why the voice in my head tells me I'm crazy, busy looking for something to reclaim, stumbling around like a fool without that clue.

After over an hour of driving, the pin I dropped in the map was wrong, the road is leading me through a pretty flooded Ford, so I stopped. For all this stressing about relaxing, I achieved little more than wasting petrol. Brilliant, a nice accompaniment of guilt to join the laziness and foolishness this morning has already brought. This is when it hit me the clearest, I'm only here wasting my time again. More time spent in my head justifying, apologising and arguing myself to myself all the while wasting my time from things more productive. I'm impossible, there's a hole in my bucket and I'm annoying myself, out for a walk but not finding one, out for myself and all I do is argue.

Resigned I was about to go home. I put the car in gear and notice someone is walking towards the car from theirs. Suddenly, this woman had arrived at the window of the car and knocked. I had a moment, while I fumbled to open the window, to notice this women must have been in her 50s, with a well worn jacket and that this is the first person I'm going to actually speak to today. As the window opens the lady leans down and arrives at my level. Well this is it, I'm going to have to talk and connect with a stranger.

She asks me straight "do you want to move my car forward so you can park behind mine?"

I'm hesitating, trying to quickly arrive back to the present to reach out and give my response.

"Oh, you know, it's ok, I havent decided where I'm going just yet, dont let me put you out" I finally replied, quietly hoping she didnt notice the vulnerability I'd woven through the words. I'm caught in her friendly face with a feeling that shes looking right through whatever mask I've put on to hide my internal voices. I'm left asking myself, just who is this woman?

Her face breaks into a smile, causing my defences to begin to dissolve, and she tells me I should park and leave for a walk from here.

"There's an old woodland that goes up the valley, it's perfectly quiet and has indications that people from a time long ago lived and worked within this woodland. If you are looking for a walk this is the one to do" she finally said through her smile.

This strange woman, who appeared from nowhere and has an apparent ability to talk straight through the feeble defences I normally put up between strangers, was using all the words that would persuade the child alive within me to get out and really explore. I dont need to hesitate anymore, the idea has been firmly sold, or maybe I'm just happy someone has come and told me what to do.

I move my car and fill the space this woman has created for me, I take a moment to roll a cigarette and process all these unusual feelings meeting this woman has stirred. I've already imagined her as a magical gatekeeper, loitering around the entrance to these woods to encourage, or discourage, individuals on whichever path they need to take that day. I know I'm back wasting time, but I'm inspired into a world that I love wasting time in. This has been what I've been waiting for all day and I feel it.

I'm ready to set off and make sure I thank this woman once again because my gratitude has grown considerably since parking the car and catching up with my thoughts. I confidently stride towards the gate and it barely slows me down as I open it to let me and the dog through. Already, after the first few steps I feel like I've moved far away from the world I woke up in. I find a rocky outcrop, that worked as a quarry at one point in history, and I'm straight up climbing to the top. Ok, it's raining, and my shoes are not appropriate, but it doesnt matter. I've long left the self loathing that would have seen these as hindrance, completely removed from the hindrance the ford presented to me. Completely removed from the guilt, laziness and foolishness that was accumulating within.

With this new spirit and perseverance I was able to take the good with the bad. One became the other and this motivation encouraged me to ditch my unsuitable shoes and to trust that wet and muddy feet are more practical to me than wet and muddy shoes. This symbolic act of removing my shoes and walking muddy trails and through muddy puddles rescued my fragile mind in a significant way. It represented to me that being ill-prepared is solvable.

My mind is a labyrinth of endless corridors to get lost down, this is something I cannot change. However, it's a dynamic place which can transform in a moment and learning to trust the corridors I find myself roaming through is difficult. Knowing how I see these corridors is never permanent and that fills me with reassurance. I'm learning that the lonely corridors are sometimes the most difficult places to roam, without physical company it can feel impossible to experience the perception change that can inspire or debilitate. So loneliness is not a choice, it's a situation many people find themselves, and if you are open to connection, and willing to let your path cross, even the slightest moment of company can be enough to transform your perception.

So thank you again, wonderful strange lady. I might never get the chance to tell you to what extent you changed my day, or my life, but I'll pass on your intuition to people over again. If it can happen once, it can happen again. You're likely to never know how much you mean to other people, whether close friends or complete strangers, but every day a stranger makes someones world less lonely. Here's to hoping that this wonderful strange lady knows this, I find her worth talking about again and again.

Could you tell me a time you felt insecure?

Insecurity is something that is always there, small and almost inconsequential in the back of my mind. I think that must be the case for almost everyone, you have to be a certain kind of confident to never compare yourself to anyone else and get that feeling you’re not-quite-as-good. I find social media can be a world that exacerbates this problem, there is always going to be someone more attractive/sportier/confident on your timeline that makes you feel lacking. For me I particularly struggle with feelings of insecurity in social situations or stressful times, it takes one lack of an invitation to feel like you’re nowhere near as popular as everyone else going, but that’s where perspective and rationalisation come into play. Yes it is a difficult and frustrating situation but if you take time to think about all the good things that are going on (which are always there, if not always big things or particularly obvious), then the feelings of self-doubt slowly ebb away.

One of the hardest things to do, but something that I’m slowly learning makes an enormous difference in everyday life, is to try and not be envious or compare yourself to other people who appear to have everything easy. I am one of the biggest over-thinkers I know, less than I used to be, but still constantly unsure of myself, and yet I think many people who meet me would be totally unable to see this aspect of my personality. I like to think that is the case for most other people too, so if you are ever feeling insecure for not being quite as good as someone in one aspect, never forget they are probably comparing themselves back against you and thinking they aren’t as good for another reason.

A time recently that I have felt insecure was just a few weeks ago when things got on top of me at university. It got to that point at the start of winter that you’re feeling run down and ill, and deadlines stack up. When I’m tired I find it so much harder to think rationally, and for one particularly challenging piece of coursework I just couldn’t work out what I was supposed to do. I felt like every single other person in my module could understand so much easier and I was in the wrong place, insecure in my intelligence. I felt like if I reached out to my friends and said I was really struggling they would judge me and dismiss me for not understanding it like they did. Reaching a point of overwhelming panic, I had to sit down with one of my friends and just admit I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. She was EXACTLY the same. We sat for about an hour just non-stop complaining about how difficult the module was and how we felt everyone else understood while we didn’t. Next we started actually tackling the questions and while it was still difficult, we made a lot more progress than I had been able to before, and had the confidence to text more friends to help us, some of them who are super bright who got it straight way, but many more others in similar situations.

When it comes to insecurity about things like this, or about your looks, or popularity etc., it is so important to bear in mind that there are so many others who feel the same, and if you reach out to a close friend a problem shared can often be a problem halved. You could spend your whole life comparing yourself to others that appear to be better-off in a whole load of different ways, and it’s so difficult not to, but the more you put yourself out there and stay active – keeping your mind off things that make you feel less-than – the more I find you can start to be grateful and positive about other unique aspects of yourself.

Could you tell me a time you felt optimistic?

Optimism is a hard emotion, in my opinion. Its not just like feeling happy or sad, its deeper than that. It’s telling yourself that you believe you can achieve something. In a lot of situations, I let other emotions push that feeling out of my mind. I’ve recently realised that tapping into that optimism can make me feel better about something that’s happening in a completely different part of my life. It gives me focus and excitement.

Optimism for me, at the moment, is directed towards my future and career. It feels great knowing that I’m doing everything possible to set myself up for success in the future. I’m not focussing on only one thing; I’m trying to set myself up with options through my studies and work experience. It may be hard work, but it gives me that belief for the things to come and distracts me from other things that may not be going so well right now.

There is always something that can get in the way of feeling optimistic, but there is always room in life to do something that can give you that feeling and its worth every minute. Giving myself time to think about what I am doing well so I can focus on feeling optimistic isn’t something that comes naturally to me, but I hope I can keep doing it in more parts of my life.

Could you tell me a time you reached out?

Recently one of my closest friends from school reached out to me and opened up about his mental health. He didn’t go into great detail or make it out as a big thing, he simply mentioned he had been in a dark place recently but he was getting the help and support he needed. I didn’t know how to feel at first. Then I reflected just on the fact he had reached out and opened up to me, it was inspiring. His honesty and bravery to reach out really took me back, as although there is a huge push now for men to talk more about their mental health, I’d never experienced it firsthand.

This made me think deeply about opening up to others and the role friends play in supporting us when we’re struggling. Even though my friend and I were not anyway near as close as we were when at school 5 years ago, he was still able to reach out. I think that’s what friendship is all about - It’s not about being there everyday but being there the day they need you - whether that be just a quick phone call, text, coffee or a more in-depth open conversation altogether. My friends openness and the casualness in which he told me, encouraged me to have conversations with other friends who I knew might be struggling. We didn’t make it a big thing, just a simple open conversation. Again, it amazed me how straightforward and normal the conversation went. I think that’s the thing with mental health, internally we build It up to be something too big to mention, when in reality, between friends, it’s the opposite.

My friend then opened up and shared that he had started a blog, called “Tell me a time…”. I opened the link he sent and was blown away. I think this blog is a brilliant platform for individuals to open up and share their experiences, in an unpressurised and warm environment. Every post tells a different a story from a different perspective, and I really enjoyed reading the other entries. The process of writing my own post was hugely rewarding and evoked some much needed self-reflection. I would strongly encourage you to write your own entry and help this amazing blog to continue growing.

Could you tell me a time you laughed until you cried?

I was in Hamburg a couple of months ago with two friends, James and Kyle. One of the highlights of the holiday was a trip to ‘Miniatur Wunderland’, the largest miniature museum in the world! Instead of a model village it’s like a model world you can wander round. We tried to go early afternoon but due to the overwhelming popularity of tiny stuff we had to book tickets and come back later. The man in the ticket office told us there would be a wait time of 100 minutes, a perfectly normal and often used interval of time. We decided to spend our 100 minutes in the pub and returned for our miniature experience full of beer and excitement. Every five or ten minutes the lights would fade on and off, allowing us to enjoy the wunderland scenes at both day and night. After a while exploring miniature scenes from around the world, talk turned to souvenirs. After much daring and false protesting, we started competing to see who could pocket the best miniature figurine. We waited for nightfall. Things started small with James picking up a stray barrel the size of a peanut but escalated quickly. Emboldened by our early success I made off with a tiny dog, bike, car, cow, tree and sunbather. Things got interesting when James shared the exciting news that he’d managed to grab Spiderman. Unable to show each other our spoils until we’d left the museum, the big reveal was left till we sat down for a beer. Initial disappointment in Kyle’s poor haul of one guy was blown out the water when James emptied his pockets. In his anxious haste to snatch a miniature superhero he had overshot. I laughed until I cried looking at James forlornly clutching not tiny Spiderman, but just a man in an orange jumper grabbed with such force that his legs had been left behind.

Could you tell me a time you felt sad?

Unfortunately, it's quite an easy one for me to answer at the moment because quite recently I really let someone down. Someone I had been with for the best part of four years, absolutely loved every second of it and then one morning you wake up and everything is different. Whole world gets flipped upside down, didn't feel the same way, all very sudden and after about a month it hadn't changed. So had to call it a day, as otherwise it would just be unfair for everyone involved and it was pretty horrible. The worst part was really feeling like I had let her down, I think that's the part which made me the saddest. When you let someone down you feel like you can't do anything about it, which is the horrible part.