The life I have is not the life I want. But this is okay. I have been dealing with mental illness since I was a child and throughout adulthood. I am only just learning how to be a person in the world and what it means to be me. I’ve never had an identity that hasn’t been bound up in mental health problems. As long as I have been alive my existence has been defined by sadness, depression, fear, anxiety, turmoil, self-loathing and destruction. Learning how to survive in the absence of these things is wonderful but also immensely scary. It is the great unknown for me- but it is also something I am finally prepared to confront. I have turned a corner, and I don’t want to go back. Onwards is the only way now.