The Ideal Summer...

Good evening. I promised that some of my posts would be... lighthearted. So today I wanted to talk about my summer in a response to a question. But first I just wanted to say thank you to the people who read my first post, I got some nice messages about it for some reason and even a few questions.
Someone asked me how I "solved" my depression and I shall try and provide an answer without going into the nasty horrible details. Remember this is a fun blog!

You can solve depression but it't not easy. For me it was like solving a puzzle. You add a few pieces, get pissed off when you can't find a specific piece, leave it for a few days and then come back to it and before you know it... you have yourself a completed puzzle.
Now what I mean by this is that during my experience, I tried to act but occasionally I gave up and got annoyed so I left it for a while. But I like to think that whoever else suffers with depression will eventually complete their puzzle, for some people it may be a quick process but for others it may be the largest puzzle in the world (mine was the Game of Thrones 1000 piece puzzle and my god was that a bitch to complete)

So during the worst stage I didn't do much apart from watch TV and movies and mope around. This was during my exams which is not advised (revise loads! you won't regret it). Binge watching TV and movies sounds like fun... a lot of fun but I did some math and... well you can judge!
This was roughly a 2-3 month period and I watched a lot, here are some:
Game of Thrones season 1-4 (3 times)
Arrow 1-3
Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy
Mission Impossibles
Bourne
Breaking Bad
All the X-mens
And I went to the cinema 6 times on my own (laugh it up)
In total I watched roughly 28000 minutes of TV
which is 466 hours
which is just under 20 days
I promise this is no exaggeration... I wrote a list of everything I watched and found out the running time.
Honestly, I wouldn't advise indulging yourself movie after movie, TV show after TV show but watching all these was slightly entertaining and now I can talk about it with other people and its formed the person I am now. I'm a Game of Thrones maniac and I can happily say I watched every single episode in 2 weeks- I'm proud of that and I think its something to add to my CV.
I watched a lot of new things and I feel like less of an outsider from the realm of society. I closed myself in and suddenly NETFLIX became my new best friend.
Of course I'm not going to tell you what to do, but maybe I can offer some advise if you don't know what to do with yourself.
1) seek help- above all make sure you are willing to discuss it with someone, letting go of everything is a nice feeling.
2) whatever you do... make sure it doesn't put your health at risk. Do something that you can look forward to, it takes your mind off things.
3) keep your friends and family close.
4) never think that you're alone or your reasons for your state of mind are silly
5) find something that makes you happy. If it is watching films then do it but remember there is a world outside.
6) be patient with yourself
7) have an open mind. I tried meditation.
It was only until Uni I finally got out of my shell, I made friends and I learnt more about myself. I think one of the hardest things about depression is that people who know you have an image of you stored in their head and depression distorts that image. Someone told me that I wasn't 'James' anymore, I was almost unrecognizable and that had a horrific domino effect.
I pushed my family away. I was always very close to my twin and I felt in that period I hardly spoke to him.
I felt I had lost my purpose.What was I doing here, I was clearing dragging the people around me down.
I deserted my friends, I kept a few and I'm forever grateful that they stood by me. I use to speak to quite a lot of people at college but I stopped. Now I believe it's too late to do anything about it, there are people I'd love to speak to because I miss them a lot but... they are probably better off without me. There are things I need to let go of and I'm struggling still but I'm human and unfortunately being human sucks sometimes. I'd like to hope one day I'll have the courage to say hello to them and make amends. Nothing bothers more than knowing that I hurt others without realizing and I wish I could change a lot, maybe then I'd still have the people I care about in my life... they're gone because I forced them out, why would they want me back.
Am I a better person from all of this? I dunno, maybe.
The thing is... and this is for everyone... I don't want anyone (not matter who or where you are) to do what I did. Life is extremely precious and I wasted some of it and even endangered my own life. Charity work isn't going to amend all the things I did, but its a start and I hope people can strive towards positive things instead of floating in the past. The bravest of people are the ones who can turn a dark experience into a positive force. I'm slowly accepting that and I still have bad days where I have reminders or just a crushing feeling of missing someone.
Burying it doesn't work, embrace it and confront it. Just don't give up. Aspire to a new purpose, whether its helping others or discovering something new.

If you made it to the end... Thank you for reading!! I think next week I am going to talk about my charity work with The Meningitis Research Foundation and the future. I thought this would work better as a weekly blog.
If any of you have any questions... feel free to ask or go onto to google, it's a lot smarter than I am and a hell of a lot quicker.