My mental health goes around in ever decreasing circles. I don’t like my mental health, it’s ongoing and my diagnosis is that of recurrent depressive episodes. My mental health affects my entire being. The biggest drawback that can be observed on the outside is that it affects my speech on a daily basis. A neurologist told me, that my symptoms are drawn inside (this means that on the outside I may look okay) the result is that I stutter regularly, the slightest stress causes me to stammer. As a fluent chatterer all my life, this really makes me withdraw. I’m lucky that I’m amongst people that know me, understand me ‘they often say what I can’t’ I know them well now, this doesn’t cause me any issues! I cannot ever gauge how my day will pan out; I can go from fluent to sounding like I’m drunk (this has caused more distress to me – I find it frustrating). A lot of my paintings reflect this aspect of me, it feels like I’m in a constant storm of emotions.

