Welcome to my mind

I am a student in my penultimate year at University in Scotland, and I would guess I'm something like your average student. I drink with my friends, leave essays longer than I should and spend ridiculous amounts of money on frivolous things and then live on toast and baked beans for a week. The only way in which I'm different from your average, is that I suffer from a chronic anxiety disorder. I have had it for around a decade, although I was only really diagnosed sometime last year, in my second year of university. Unfortunately for me, a lot of things about being a student are also things that make me particularly anxious. Exams and assessed work is usually an issue, being in lectures and seminars and any university events can be difficult for me. Then there is the social side-I don't like being in nightclubs, I don't like drinking so much that I don't have complete control and I don't like leaving my very small university town unless its with my family or my boyfriend. 

Luckily for me, or perhaps not depending on how you look at it, I have been living with my anxiety for so long that I have become very good at hiding it. On a night out and feeling anxious? I forgot I had an early class the next day so I simply must go home. Going shopping out of town with friends? I will be in the area anyway so I don't need to get public transport with them, I will meet them there. Fielding questions about why I have missed so many lectures? Oh you know, I'm just lazy, can't be bothered with going to the things!

I suppose the reason I have started this blog is to record the general musings of a student...but with the added twist of living with my anxiety. There will be posts about essay writing and socials, but also about my therapy appointments, or how I am coping with my medication. (30mg of Citalopram, if you're interested.) Most of all I guess I just want to prove that having a mental illness doesn't stop me from being a normal student. A normal girl.