Dear my future partner

Dear my future partner,

In an effort of full disclosure, I wanted to announce the following to you and be upfront and honest.

I have depression and anxiety.

Please don't confuse this with sadness and nervousness that pass with time. I unfortunately am stuck with this condition for the rest of my lifetime and with you choosing to be with me seriously, it will be for the rest of yours.

Sometimes (hopefully more often than not) I am the girl you will fall in love with. A fun loving, bubbly, life loving girl who has got a crazy amount of love to give you and everyone else who touches my life. This is not a fake me, this version exists and believe me, she will love you with everything she has.

But you must be made aware of the other version of me. The one that struggles to wake up in the morning, the one that has anxiety attacks because the crowd is too large or the dog whines too much or there isn't enough milk. The one that retreats into pits of despair for no apparent reason, the one that struggles with life's small tasks like eating or showering or talking. This version of me can be needy, in need of praise, support, love, commitment, patience but can also want nothing to do with anyone including you. Some of the time you won't know which until it's too late and I'm either crying because you are too close or crying because you are too far away or sometimes crying due to both if that's even possible. I can be irrational and have an over active imagination for the worse. It's times like these where I'm easily offended and nothing you say or do will be right no matter how hard I try.

I'm aware that I haven't made myself sound like a very appealing person to date in the last paragraph but I say this to make you aware that this is my life, as hard as it may sound to you, living with this is much harder.

I can promise though that I will try to be the best version of myself for you but mostly and more importantly for me. I'm still the girl who wants a wonderful life full of love and light and happiness. I will always strive for the feeling of contentment even if it seems unattainable and hopefully that feeling includes you.


I really hope that you are my person, please understand my being skeptical in the beginning. I've been told before that my someone would be there through thick and thin and I've been shattered by the fallout. I'm looking for the love of my life and if you can't be that person for me then I would rather say goodbye now.


I write this letter because I need someone who will stick by me through good and bad and will love me for all of the pieces that make up my chaotic life. I need someone that will try to understand the darkness but who will provide the light at the end of the tunnel when I struggle to see it so that we can be happy together in mutual understanding and respect. I want a love that is deeper on all levels that someone can accept all of the flaws and nastiness that comes with depression and anxiety because they know that when we are amazing, nothing in the world will be able to stop us from conquering it.


Together is what I want because together, we are infinite.


With all my love,


Salina xx

Life... a year after the fall

A year ago... many would say that a year is a long time, that it's enough time to recover, to heal, to live and thrive knowing you got through the worst. To me, a year is so short and frustratingly I feel as lost and alone as I ever have.

This time last year I was in the middle of a mental, emotional, nervous, heartbroken, soul destroying breakdown and I will say that although the trigger was heart break like I'd never experienced before, the breakdown had been brewing under the surface for quite some time just waiting for its chance to destroy me.

A year ago today I wanted to sleep, I wanted to close my eyes and I didn't have a care whether I opened them again. Today I use sleep as my escape, a way to avoid dealing with the constant crappiness that depression keeps rolling out to me.

There's been some progress since, I've made it off Mum's and Dad's couch, I've made it out of my pajamas, I'm no longer heartbroken and after 8 long months I made it back to work. For most people, these things are a piece of cake. For me, they were some of the hardest things I've ever had to do and yet still I feel as though my life is sitting stagnant, waiting for this dreaded black dog to give up, to get off my back and allow me to experience happiness.

When I look back over this past year I have learnt more about myself than I could ever have imagined. I have worked harder than I ever have before to just get by in this life and the road ahead will be paved with much more personal growth and much more work for something others find so easy to have. Sometimes, like the past few weeks, I want to give up, out of exhaustion, out of despair but other times my will to fight gets me through the days. This fight is long, this is a fight I will be battling for the rest of my hopefully long and happy life but the rewards I hope will outweigh this illness, will outweigh my need to crawl up into an emotional ball and stay there.

It's times like these that I urge my family and friends to stick with me... I'm still me, the fun loving me... she is just currently stuck under a doona, behind a mask waiting to be found again. Hopefully... she is worth the wait...