Road to Recovery: Sydney Siege (R.I.P)

You may have heard it on the news but the Lindt cafe in sydney was under siege a few days ago and there were seventeen hostages, two of whom were killed by the gunman.

I think it's interesting how people get so scared about things like this, when in realty it's a possibility all the time. We don't know what could happen to us any minute, but if we live our lives petrified of all the what ifs we will never just live in the moment and we will miss out on life itself.

This was pretty big for Australia though because there is this unspoken belief that nothing bad will happen to us because we are far away and not very threatening. The sige really shook people up because when things like this happen it makes you realise that you aren't living in a protection bubble, bad things happen to people who often don't deserve it.

We are still extremely lucky in Australia because of the very low amount of shootings we have, which is probably largely down to our strict gun laws. Just today 132 children and 8 teachers in a school were massacred in Pakistan, so many more than here. I pray their families are not filled with too much grief.

I guess for me this happening made me think about all the time, pain and effort that has gone into fighting anorexia this year for my family and I. It all seems pointless and looking from an outside perspective with no understanding it doesn't make sense. Why would you be worried about food?? It's not like it's a gunman that could kill you. But what they don't see is that for someone with anorexia it is that severe. It's like the fear of a hostage at every meal, except it's all in our minds. that's what makes mental illness so deadly. You can't solve the problem because it isn't logical in the first place.

I think that love is what overcomes mental illness. For example, anorexia tells you not to love yourself, that no one else loves you and that you are not worthy of love. But once you are able to see that people do love you and that ultimately you are the one that has to come to terms with accepting yourself for who you are, it gets easier to fight the thoughts, although in my case they still come pretty strongly.

It just was a wake up call to make sure I'm spending time with the people I love and making sure they know I love them :)

Also, good news! Out of 160 people in my grade, only three people got full marks in their English speech and I was one of them!! Wooohoooo!!