Eat Street fundraising

I have only really ever been depressed once in my life. I have felt lonely, sad, low self esteem but only truly depressed once. It wasn’t that long ago, 3 years actually. I had been engaged to my ex after 8 years together. The wedding was booked.  I won’t go into the details but it ended and everything in my life changed in 3 days. I didn’t feel in control of any of it. My world was shaken and it was a huge shock, one which took me a long time to get over. I didn’t want to get out of bed, I didn’t feel I was worth anything, I was rejected and cast aside. It hurt a lot. I didn’t look after myself and I didn’t care that I wasn’t looking after myself.

My solution was therapy and buying a house. I had wanted to buy for years and I finally could so it was a fresh start and I had a project to obsess over. That’s what I need in my life, I am obsessive and I need to be looking ahead all the time to the next project. Distraction and time was to be the biggest healer for me. I bought the house and worked hard, then I bought a kitten and then lockdown happened. The detachment from my life as it was saved me and so did Laurel as we (friends at the time) were locked down together. We were both made redundant and obviously that brought it’s own stresses and worries but generally I can honestly say I loved lockdown. We had a great time as friends and with the cat and it was a much simpler life. The only time in my life I really stopped and didn’t ‘carry on’ because we couldn’t. We didn’t have work pressures or certain friendship groups making us feel like we had to ‘catch up’. There wasn’t much to discuss, no one was doing anything and we couldn’t see anyone physically. Social media was full of Covid-19, zoom, family quizzes so we didn’t look at it. Stripping out a lot of those influences in your life really focusses you on what you truly want (or so it did for me). I had been on dating apps trying to fill a gap in my life and it was not doing my mental health any good. I was feeling constantly rejected or judged. But then it came to the point where it was a waste of time – you couldn’t meet up with anyone anyway. It was the best remedy for me. I deleted my dating apps and just started to relax for the first time. Then came Eat Street…..and Laurel.