Borderline and Me

Having experienced anxiety and depression for over a decade, navigating life with mental illness is something that I have become very familiar with. But recently, after quite a thorough process, I received a new diagnosis: Borderline Personality Disorder, or BPD for short. Around a year ago I didn’t know much about BPD, and it’s still…

Read More

Diagnoses and Identity

If I wanted to, there are probably a lot of letters that I could put after my name, though only one of them would bear any educational significance. Clare D, BA, BPD, SSA, PCOS, HSP. You may or may not know what all of these stand for, and some are more significant to me than others.

Read More

Self care: Relearning the basics

I am pretty bad at self care. Just to be clear, when I say self care I don’t mean taking a spa day, having some ‘me time’ and buying myself some treats. I mean the kind of self care that is taken for granted. I mean making a bed so that I’m not sleeping an…

Read More

Tempest

When simple words don’t seem to serve justice to the depth of darkness that depression brings, perhaps a metaphor will better suffice, will give a better picture of how it really feels. Like a storm, a hurricane, like being lost out at sea, surrounded by a flood of apathy and despondency, or caught in a…

Read More

The Darkest Valley

Depression has cast a shadow on my life for over five years now. It hit its worst when I was sixteen. I thought that it would never change, that I would never get better. But then I did. And yet it stayed lurking nearby, and I could feel it coming back again last Christmas, sneaking…

Read More