Over a period of time I wrote these cards. They are a reflection of support that I require from myself. At a time in my life whereby I didn’t have any support – other than my friend at the time. So I had to learn to research my own method of recovery.

Firstly I had to identify how to engage myself in the interest of life.  What inspired me? what made me want to stay at home and forget the world existed? what was it that would make me feel like wanting to achieve something.  What was it that made me feel like I wanted to participate in life and be who I am without the “stigma” of the media telling me what I should be.  Success to me is not measured by the material assets I have, so what was going to inspire me to succeed? the first step was recognising the seed.  I had to nourish the word “seed” for that was my soul being.  That was the beginning and still is the beginning of each naked moment that exists without knowing what will happen next.

I soon realised that recovery occurred more than what I had thought. I have been exposed to the same fear and harm that most in society have. We all experience these harms in different environments with different situations encompassing differing depths within quantum chunks of “time”.

I wanted to know how it was that I was going to re-connect myself to a frequency that would allow me the language of progression within recovery. Communication – ofcourse is everything. Admitting I had to communicate with myself to understand what it was that I required for my social learning to evolve into the dynamic of changes that had to come into affect due to the tiny differences within my competency to learn from my lived experience of an unwellness they call, in society “mental illness”.

The framework that supported my recovery was the value I placed upon the knowledge I gained. The resilience I learned to overcome adversity was intense and very challenging in terms of “oh my god – I am exposing myself with the reality of my owned thoughts” – will they accept me, what will they say? How will they re-act? Over and through time I understood that those personal questions I tortured myself with were really – only imperfections of my mind, hoping that others would accept me as I was – imperfect with wonder filled intention.

The construction of recovery is self-assessment and self-acceptance. I had to know which tools to implement and when – what was going to work for me, and what was not. What were the benefits of these tools? Who would know about them? Would they care? Would I care? I came to the point of thinking “I care only about myself” and who cares what they think because it is about “what I think that will empower me to re-solve my being into the community, into society.

When I was admitted to a mental health unit I was told to take these “pills” which unknowingly known to me was a synthetic response to real issues that I masked in my sub-conscious. Only I knew the painful thoughts were there and I let them be there because the pain of their rise was much too painful to cope with in daily life.

Having trust and belief in others has given me the ability to create momentum in my recovery process. I say process because I believe life is a “process” and recovery happens every second, if one is clearly aware of that reality. I mean – if we fall over on the way out of the door, trip up and stumble, we don’t sit down and cry and if we did, recovery from that period of time would occur otherwise we wouldn’t go on. Recover.

Recover means to uncover the realms of covering up things that annoy, irritate and anger us. Take stress for example, stress occurs and then recovery takes place at a time thereafter. It may occur using an outside aspect – by that I mean, light up a cigarette (which I used to do). It cleared the air by polluting it some more. Until I understood my recovery model was not consistent with a long term goal – I gained momentum in making changes to my “mood” but not changing the programmes model (my thinking). The role of the model was to recognize the mask not mask the recognition by smoking out the fear.

I believe fear is an analogy. An analogy of False Evidence Appearing Real. Saying Oh! I am fine – just give me a few minutes to smoke and then I shall be over it. False Evidence Appearing Real. I should have said – let me find someone whom is interested in my mental wellbeing so I can drop the smokescreen and have someone “listen” to my words instead.

There never was anyone who would just listen. I Just cope, oh don’t worry! Get over it! … yea right! If I had something that bothered me how do I get “over” it when I can not even identify it? That is where listening comes in. The talker speaks the listener listens and in time going through this process helps overcome the issue/s.

The vehicle of life does not drive itself. If it did it would take off with out me.  What is the point in that? If I need to get to the Doctor I need to be in control of the machinery I drive.

Much like I need to be in control of the leader who empowers the conductor in the orchestra of my life.