a graduate.

its been over three months since i last wrote here.
three months. it seems insane that something that was once so precious to me, documenting my life here, could slip away so easily. but things have been insane lately. so i'll break it down for you.

may was exams. it felt like my brain was being scrambled every day. now i love to learn. i do. i love to find out new things and read about new things and increase my knowledge so that one day, when (God willing) i have children, i will be able to answer their questions to the best of my ability. but i hate being examinated on it. i can't write essays, i can't write projects and i suck at memorising dates and names. so examination periods are really stressful for me. combine that with my anxiety, there were a few days that chris came home to me hiding in the bedroom hyperventilating.
i just need to take a minute here and highlight how blessed i am to have him. never have i been so comfortable with one person; he knows me inside and out and knows exactly what i need. he has been my support the past few months (read: years) and has dilligently worked alongside me to learn how to manage my anxiety and panic attacks. they still awful at times, and can strike at any point without a moment's notice, but i'm learning.

june was transition. june was hard, potentially the hardest so far. i was unemployed. no longer a student, my exams were over forever, and i had nothing to do. i was un.em.ployed. so rather than taking this as a hint and starting to job hunt, i sank into depression. some days i wouldn't get out of bed. i barely ate, i slept 12-14 hours a day, and my panic attacks grew worse. needless to say, rock bottom came flying towards me, so chris took me (read: frog-marched) me to the doctors and sat and made me tell her everything. i don't deal well with tension, so i spent most of it laughing or joking. the doctor clearly didn't think i was taking this very seriously until i explained what a panic attack felt like. then she took me seriously.
for those of you who have never experienced anything like that, it can feel like this.
you feel the air becoming more solid; its too close for comfort and you can't take deep breaths in. you can feel yourself getting nervous, like just before you make a big speech. your heart isn't exactly racing or pumping loudly, but you're aware of everything that is going on in your body. you need to get out of there. right now. but you can't. you can't walk calmly, you can't even walk. you can only freeze or run.
it is literal fight or flight for me.  and it sucks ass. chris and i have a terminology now for our arguments: angry arguing and panicky arguing. when i have an anxiety attack, i dont necessarily hyperventilate. everything just tenses up and i am hyperaware. so i lash out because the last thing i want to do at that point in time is be trapped in a corner. that is panicky arguing; i have little control over what i do or say because all i am trying to do is escape.
note: they feel like this to me. anxiety is a funny thing, and its never the same twice. i rarely hyperventilate, but i had a friend who never seemed to stop hyperventilating now.
so june was hard. we were broke, i was doing little else but sleep and we never seemed to stop arguing.
in short, june sucked ass.

july was better. july was graduation and anniversary. i'll go into deeper detail about graduation in a different post because this one already feels like an epic, but it was pretty freaking cool.
our anniversary was very low-key, mainly due to the fact that as of right now (12 days before payday), we have £49.02 left to pay two phone bills and food bills. it wont stretch. it never freaking does. and despite the fact that it pisses me off beyond measure, i know that we are blessed. our parents are willing to help out. we have a roof over our head and our landlord is the tits. one reason our landlord is epic is due to various different reasons, we missed rent this month. so we let him know, so he wouldn't be AS angry with us. and he just said "don't worry, just pay when you can". we paid two weeks later, after scrimping and saving and scrounging from both sets of parents but oh my word are we blessed. i was terrified that he would flip....
anyway, anniversary. chris and i have been seeking counsel from two beloved friends recently; we never really (i never really) took the pre-marital counselling stuff seriously because i was already fairly confident i knew him well enough to live with him. if there are any engaged people reading this, TAKE IT SERIOUSLY. the first few months of marriage are bliss, and then you argue like crazy. chris does things that piss me off. i do things that piss him off. we didn't know about these things until we got married. so joel and lynette are walking with us through some of these issues, and we spent our anniversary with them, chatting about communication and discussing ways in which chris and i can improve on our communication with eachother. there were some awkward and tough conversations but all was softened by love, friendship and the fact that there was really good chinese food.

i'm sorry that this is a very text heavy post. a lot has happened in the past three months, and it feels good to get some of it out so that in ten years time, i can look back and track where my life has been and the path it has taken.

k. x