Changing & Self Accepting

* TRIGGER WARNING * Discussion of mental health, inc. depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia and eating disorders.

As in WARNING: Shit's about to get dark.

New Hair, New Me

I've had a bit of a rough few years. A rough decade, really. I'm really only just coming to terms with how rough it's actually been.

I've always had a bit of an on-off relationship with myself. I've never really liked the way I looked, and ever since I was a child I always felt "different" - never fully accepted by the social cluster. I was bookish, a deep thinker.

Contrast this with a deeply ingrained desire to be loved by those around me, a dramatic sensibility and a love of being the centre of attention, and it's really no wonder that I never had a coherent sense of identity.

When I hit puberty my feeling of different-ness was only exacerbated by high school bullying, and the slow, painful realisation that I liked girls.

It's only recently that I have come to terms with this fact. In fact, I've only really been aware of it for about a quarter of my life. (That's heteronomativity for ya. If you don't know what that means, google it. Google it now.) When I was little, I would develop weird little obsessions - later acknowledged to be crushes - on actresses.

Natalie Dormer was the main one - something about her enigmatic performance in The Tudors, her unfathomable charisma, drew me in. I watched the first two seasons over and over again, until the DVD disks were scratched and tired...

I told myself I just was just watching it for Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

Weirdly, I achieved my teenage dream of meeting Natalie just a few weeks ago. Needless to say, I was a little bit emosh. We talked working Front of House (she used to work at the Lyceum, just down the road from my own theatre!), body image, running, and getting older. Then she gave me the biggest hug in the world.

My friend Julia, another huge fan, who had come to see the play with me, half-carried me across the street, where I sat. And howled. On the pavement. For about five minutes. Before being soberly led to a bar round the corner to go get a stiff drink.

They say don't meet your heroes. But mine exceeded any expectations of loveliness.

Me (right) with Forever Wife. OR, Alternately, Current Me (right) with Future Me (left) in 10 Years. (Note the tearyness from aforementioned heart to heart!)

It was reading interviews with Natalie that really helped get me into running. It was Natalie who told me that "(...) a woman can be complex, can have ambition, good looks, sexuality, erudition, and common sense. A woman can have all those facets, and yet men, in literature and in drama, seem to need to simplify women, to polarize us as either the whore or the angel. That sensibility is prevalent, even to this day."

Something about those interviews made me feel better; like my weird, patchwork, almost-bipolar personality was okay.

However, as I grew further into my teens (and Natalie stopped appearing in The Tudors - COINCIDENCE?!???) I fell heavily mentally ill. I felt like my brain was beating against my skull, trying to escape it's physical cage. I suffered from bouts of terrible high-functioning depression and anxiety. If my writings from the time are to be believed, there were moments when I truly, truly wanted to die.

These tempestuous internal symptoms manifested themselves in self-harm and, for almost five years, quite severe Bulimia. My teeth were so acid-damaged and worn down that one time I chipped my front two (the most important ones!) on an apple (I never bite straight into an apple anymore - I'll only eat it if I can slice it.) I was once so sick that all I vomited up was water - with congealed red and brown blood in it.

It hurts to write about this time in my life, about 15-18 years old, because I don't remember vast swathes of it (mostly by sheer will to block it out of my thoughts) and most of what I do remember is pretty bad. But I feel like it needs to be written. It needs to be put out there. Because if I had read this whilst I was going through it, I might have realised I wasn't alone. Because at the time I felt absolutely alone.

Think Laika the Space Dog: whimpering, confused. Slowly suffocating, as the temperature rises in a tiny, claustrophobic casket.

All you need to know is, within about a year, I went from a pretty happy, ordinary, confident, outgoing child to a socially awkward, desperate and rage-filled child, who hated every little thing about herself, and would occasionally explode - to the point of literally scratching at my face and tearing my own hair out.

The Last Time I Was Happy With My Body!!

I fixated on getting my weight down, as this was something I felt I could control. My goal weight was six stone. I made it as low as seven stone (bear in mind I'm nine stone now, and I consider myself pretty much in shape!) but, due to an infuriatingly slow metabolism (probably not helped by all the body abuse), I never did get down to six.

Between all the depressed binging and frantic purging, my weight yo-yo-ed from seven to ten stone, and back again.

A Couple of Photos of Me at My Smallest... (7st, Feb 2012)

And My Biggest (10st, August 2012, barely six months later!)

Then, when I got to uni in Sep 2012, without adult supervision, I went straight back down to about 8st.

Aaaaaand round and round it goes. Back to about 10st, in Disneyland Paris, June 2014

...

Aaaand Me as I Am Now: 9st, Toned, Healthier and Happier

As you can see, even my biggest was not that big! And my smallest was not even that small!! But these crashing waves of weight fluctuations had a catastrophic effect on my developing body and mind.

When I finally got out, moved to London as I'd always wanted to, and went to uni, the whole experience was marred because of how sick I got.

For three years I muddled through with doctor's appointments, hospital appointments and blood test. They came to the conclusion that my disparate symptoms - including constant exhaustion, a crappered immune system, constant pounding headaches and near-constant nausea - were caused by Glandular Fever.

Then they told me I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. They even thought I had Meningitis for a hot minute, even though there was ne'r a rash to be seen. Then they went back to their original Glandular Fever theory.

However, almost two years on (though still not 100% recovered! I still get almost every bloody bug that I come into contact with. Even though I've massively cleaned up my lifestyle, and take multivitamins and Doctors' advice religiously. Sniffle.) in retrospect, it seems quite clear to me now that these health problems have their root long before I went to university.

It was the abuse and neglect I put my body through back when I was in high school, I think, that knackered my immune system. And it makes me shiver thinking about how many people must have known something was going on with me, but let me slip through the cracks.

I come from a very British family. Their opinion on mental health is pretty much "there's nothing a cup of tea and a good stiff upper lip can't fix." Which is excellent, in some situations. It's a brilliant attitude to take, for example, towards a bad grade, a schoolyard bully or a troublesome teacher. Not so good for a teenager's existential despair and suicidal tendencies, however.

I didn't even get put on a waiting list for any kind of therapy or counselling til my third year of uni. That's right. Three whole years after I moved out of my parents house. A good five years since the trouble started.

So, back to the reason I'm writing this quite frankly horrible post. We live in a time in which, thank heavens, it's finally becoming normalised to talk about these things. My mental health issues. My sexuality. My eating disorder. Even ten years ago, it would have set any actress' career teetering on a cliff edge.

However, now, with strong LGBT role models such as Kate McKinnon, Jodie Foster, Amber Heard, Annie Clark, Kristen Stewart, Ellen Page (not forgetting the main Ellen, ofc, which is DEGENERES) and Stella Maxwell, showing you CAN be queer AND feminine AND creatively successful AND multifaceted, I feel like I can truly relax into myself. I'm beginning to bloom like a snowdrop. To explore my identity, and just... like... stop panicking about it.

Me at Pride 2017 - Look How Happy I Am!!! (except that last one where I'm just super drunk)

So it's more important than ever for people to speak out about their experiences. To normalise these conversations, to become familiar with the symptoms of someone struggling, and to make it easier - both practically and emotionally - to get help.

You know that old exercise where you try and visualise yourself in five years? Well if you'd have gone up to me five years ago, at 18, and asked me to do it, I'd have stared at you blankly. I wouldn't have had a clue. For years, I couldn't see a life for myself past high school, and then I couldn't see a life for myself past graduating uni.

But here I am. And for the first time since childhood, I am happy in my own skin. I am Proud with a capital P. I may not be who I'm meant to be, yet, but I know I'm on my way to becoming her.

I'm cookie dough. I'm just not quite done baking.

And, like it says in the Desiderata, the prose poem my Dad and I live by: "whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."

Yours,

Char

xxx