Living life as someone who is deeply effected by mental health issues I wake up every day to a battle, it all makes me so tired sometimes. I have a range of mental health issues that include Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Social Anxiety, Depression and PTSD.

From the moment I wake up every day they are there like a gang of warders keeping me in this prison, they are there when I get out of bed, if I manage to get out of bed. They are there when I put on my clothes, they are there when I use the toilet, when I eat, when I talk to others, when I think, when I feel, there is no escape from them, they stand over me, watching me, keeping me in this hell in my mind from the instant I awake to the instant I fall back asleep again. Sometimes they even wake me up in my sleep, yes, they even get into my dreams.

(Scenes from "A Beautiful Mind"; Professor John Nash learns to keep his demons at distance.)

It can be said for certain that living with these monsters for years has made me a strong person, you must be a strong person to survive what they daily give to you. The worst aspect is the constant ongoing knowledge that these monsters that sap and drain every bit of positivity from my life are self-created. Looking back they may have been a product of the society, surroundings and people that I was with in my past, but today and now they are created and fuelled solely by myself, I feed them every day, I keep them alive and I keep them going. Obviously the preservation of these monsters is not a choice that I have made but simply something that I do not know how to stop from being a reality.

I have tried many times over 26 years to put an end to these monsters that live inside of me, through a wide variety of methods and attempts I have attacked them head-on, I have waged a violent and bloody war against them, I have used radical ideas and radical thinking in several attempts to banish them from my life. Over the years I have won many battles against them and they have cowered and been depleted and I have been set free, but sadly although these battles have been won, the war itself has always later been lost.

I still fight every day now, but at the age of 41, I have now been ill for 26 years, the tiredness with each passing year grows and each time I lose a battle I grow that bit more tired, I still have a lot of fight in me and I am far from needing to give up, but at times I do wonder if this war is even winnable, I have tried so many things over so long but yet they always come back to me, perhaps they will never go, perhaps they will never let me be.

I cannot allow myself to think these things for too long though, as I know the way that type of thinking will end, it can only have one outcome, and I do not want that to be the ending for me.

I do not think those without mental health issues understand what a blatant compromise your life can be when you are in this state, I know deep inside I could have been so much more, I have lived a half life with my hands tied behind my back and I have never known what it is to be truly free.

I hope that victory in this war is soon, I do not want for it all to have been for nothing.

I want to have at least some time on this planet where I know what it is to be free.