For some reason the thought of running a proper blog (aside from my Tumblr, obviously) never really crossed my mind. As a dormant writer I suppose I limited myself to (fan)fiction only and I've found it hard to pick fiction writing back up over the past year or so.

But anyway. Hello. I'm Catherine, I'm nineteen and I live in London with my parents and younger brother. Slash Leeds, where I'm 1/3 through an English Literature degree. How fancy. I'm also 1/3 through Paradise Lost and I'm already struggling. Why did I decide to pick the most demanding text from my summer reading to do first?

That is me, though. Make decisions and look back and go 'Oh, hang on. I could have done that.' Then I frantically ensure I haven't ruined my life. Casual day to day events. I do think I picked the right degree; I definitely would have said 'Hang on, I should be reading plays and arguing for Sylvia Plath's legacy at this exact moment' had I picked History or Politics. I feel at home in an English lecture or seminar. The process of reading is often taxing (possibly an issue...?) but once I have read and understood a text I love having Opinions and Expressing them. I think lessons are the only time I really feel comfortable expressing how I feel, maybe because I feel it's more acceptable there.

One thing I should probably mention in this very rambly introductory post is that I suffer from a pretty major anxiety disorder and everything that could and does come with it. I think I spent most of my late teenager-hood in a state of social anxiety and then I moved to university and developed Proper Grown-Up generalised anxiety disorder. Panic attacks and shit. It's really glamorous.

Panic attacks make you strong, I think. Somehow you have to sit and bear this feeling of crushing doom and horror while you feel hot, cold, nauseous, on edge. And then it's over and you just....get back to what you were doing. How do us panic attack sufferers do that? You're left with remnants of that panic attack for the rest of the day; I mainly feel like a failure because I can't stop my body from freaking out when I least expect it. I am on propranolol as of five days ago and I think it's helping? My mum was quite reluctant for me to take medication because when she was a teenager she was basically put on tranquilizers - don't blame her.

I'm not sure what I wanted to say in this introduction. I think I want anybody who reads this to know a little bit about me. I haven't really written anything like this before (though I could argue that this post is an amalgamation of all my Tumblr text posts) and I don't know how good I'll be at writing anything regularly. But I think it's nice to have a personal outlet. I also (try to) make YouTube videos when nobody is around and I can sneak my Dad's camera, which pretty much functions as the same thing except my channel is very much focused around anxiety. I'm really decided on that - my channel is about mental health, particularly anxiety. This blog, ideally, would be for life updates, my love of makeup and some recipes. I'll probably talk about my favourite TV shows too. (Right now - Rookie Blue and Pretty Little Liars. Though GBBO is back next week which takes over EVERYTHING)

I'll link to this post on Tumblr and Twitter, but not before I make sure my theme is pretty and I've sorted out links and things. If you like, let me know a little bit about you and how on earth you start a blog!!!

Catherine
xxx