I am definitely mellow and feeling very content at the moment.  I am all pampered out and even though it is very late in the evening I am looking forward to a healthy but luxurious home cooked meal by my boyfriend – currently preping the vegetables!    I have soaked in my new bath tub for the first time since i bought the house with candles lit, nutmeg and vanilla essential oils in by oil burner and a new cream body wash.  then i used a an olive and vitamin E body butter and rubbed it in all over and used a seaweed face mask and moisturiser.  It was so nice just to properly treat myself and enjoy the one great thing I have managed to get since this hell started.  Sat there admiring my home and marveling at how I had a nice home the kind i always wanted and I was sat that having a pampering session.  Then i realised that i wasn't fully enjoying it and that was because i was happy – the reason – i have lost part of myself and that is the go-getter in me.  The part of me that is determined and will go after what she wants, the part that has to be challenged and stretched and working academically, feeling like i am making a change and out in society working.  I have lost that since i have not been able to work and not gone back to university this semester.  Then i remembered how before i went to uni that i looked at what i wanted when I was 21/22 and that was a house with the man i wanted to marry and who treated me right and loved me as much as i loved him and i believed that a degree would be a given.  That is because academia was how i defined myself it was who i was so the next qualification was just a given, but the rest, was the impossible, the things i really wanted but believed that i would never get it or be lucky enought to experience it.  It turns out that i have achieved the impossible, and so realised that getting the probable was the easy part.  i realised that i could go and get the degree i wanted and to do the things i needed.  It just took time to get and a lot of hard work that i could do.    I felt a sense of purpose again and like the dark viel had lifted and could start my life the one i wanted.  i can become the person i want to become.  and then a massive smile broke out across my face and i melted into the hot water of the bath, and felt that maybe i can do this.  Maybe i have overcome the worst part of this illness.  I have hope again, and I am now fully appreciating what it is i have in my life and how wonderful my life really is. 

But none of this would have been possible without the love and support i have found from soooo many people on DT, and even though its only been a short time that i have been using the site, it has made such a great difference to me and helped me sooo sooo sooo much.  I could not have made as much progress as I have unless it was for everyone here on DT.  I have not cleared the woods yet and I know that i will never be truely free of this illness, but i dont think anyone is truely, even the most sane, so i will stay dedicated to DT and help people the way you have helped me.  Thanks again everyone, I really owe you! xxx