I thought it was time to tell you all a bit more about my story as I don't think that I have talked about it in its entirety. I have mentioned bits here and there but I've not written my mental health journey on here from start until now. I can see that I'm getting lots of people reading my blogs now so I wanted to let you all know my story a bit more.

** I am a domestic abuse victim and I will touch on parts of my past with my ex, so if any of you reading this and are likely to be triggered by anything related to domestic violence, please don't continue to read this post. Do what's good and right for you. **

Yesterday I had a bad day. My anxiety was high, I felt like I couldn't breathe, I was tired, and I really didn't want to go into work all day. I was on day two of eight consecutive days which is never good for me as I don't get proper rest and get more and more tired anxious and grumpy as the days go on. No one likes grumpy Carol.

May started out with my anxiety bubbling up due to work things. The company I work for has entered into voluntary CVA (Company Voluntary Arrangement) which meant for a few weeks beforehand the company was in what felt limbo to me. So many unknowns and things out of my control that it sent me into a downward spiral which was going on while I had a week off work to take some holiday days, which meant the spiral went down much faster than I thought it would.

I may appear outwardly to be okay, but this is the thing with an invisible illness. I'm very good at hiding it from people with a curtain of smoke and mirrors. I put on a brave face, I laugh and joke, I smile and look like all is good. But if you were to be allowed behind the curtain, you would see a whole different me.

When I was younger I didn't have a good relationship with my body. I was tall and gangly but a little wider around my middle, which I still am. My weight fluctuates, I get spots, I have wobbly bits where I'd prefer there weren't any but not enough to do much more than have a healthy eating plan. Now I have a much better relationship with my body.

I've fallen another day behind. Not that I think there is a falling behind with a self-chosen challenge. It's been a tough few weeks with things going on at work and this week while I've been off my anxiety has been overwhelming. It's been all I can to try and get through the days as best I can by working on lessening my symptoms. Today I'm feeling a bit better and I am more able to share things with you within these blog posts. Some times we need a bit of distance out the other side of things we're going through before we are able to share.

I'm not one for savoury snacks as I have a sweet tooth, my go-to flavour of crisps, however, are lightly salted. I've been avoiding adding salt to my meals where possible so for example, if I have chips, then I don't add salt to them.

Another tricky prompt today. When I first thought of this one I thought of the desert and how I don't often eat doughnuts. If I get a cake type dessert I'm much more likely to get the chocolate cake as my first choice and carrot cake as my second choice.

Then I got to thinking about the doughnuts themselves and how some have a filling inside them and others have a hole and I realised that we as humans are similar. Sometimes we feel filled and other times we feel empty inside like something is missing or not quite right.

There are a few of the prompts for May, Myself and I that I'd not looking forward to and this is one of them ... There are so many different interpretations for these words that it's really difficult to know what I would like to or more likely need to write about. As with the Blurt Foundation Self-Careathon last year, I may not know what I'm going to write until I'm sat in front of the keyboard, and that's exactly what just happened. I've been putting off starting this post today because I don't know which sort of star I was going to talk about.