Nearing the end

“Of course there's a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don't take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates.”
- Abbott Lawerence Lowell

Right, it's the last week of uni, all my assingments are done and ready to be handed in, I have two exams to get through and then it's all over.

As most people do, I have gained rather a lot of weight over the course of it. I've heard people talk of the 'freshmen fifteen' and that has most definately happened to me. Not only do I have that excess weight to carry around (which has put me firmly in the overweight BMI range and at my heighest ever weight) but last summer was a tough one and a situation occured that lead to me eating in an incredibly erratic and unhealthy way, neglecting the fact I am vegetarian, binging and gaining and binging and purging yet still gaining. Other than that uni has mostly been okay, I overdosed in October and SI'ed serverely enough to be medically hospitalised overnight last term but mostly I have tried to grit my teeth and get through it. I'm in DBT but still struggling a lot with the BPD diagnosis and the stigma attached. In a way I don't feel like I am treated as someone who has mental health issues but who is just 'awkward', I don't know how much of that is fact and how much is just my own insecurities manifesting themselves.

Anyway, this time next week it will all be over and I will have survived my first year. There have been times when I've felt validated as a writer and those moments alone have made the whole thing worth it. I would have liked to have had flatmates but my accomodation was crap and I only made friends from my course so I got quite lonely and spent a lot of time coming back home. I think that loneliness contributed to a lot of the 'slips' that happenened and increased my depression.

I'm fairly certain that most people didn't expect me to make it but I have done, and I am at least in part a little proud of the fact that I am still in one piece.