I've never been someone to struggle with her mental health. I've always felt that I had a pretty good idea of how to keep myself relaxed and in a good state of mind, especially when it came to times when I was under pressure or had a lot of stress.

Since this past summer, I have felt a complete shift in myself where my mental health is concerned, and it is something that I have to work on constantly now because it is has become a constant roller coaster. I rarely talk to anyone about this, (I don't even acknowledge it to myself, really) but I thought it could be beneficial and therapeutic for me to write about what has been going on in terms of my mental health over the last half of 2017 and into 2018.

To whoever is reading this, I hope that if you're struggling with your mental health, you will be able to read this and identify with me. I've come to think that part of dealing with these struggles and healing from them is to realize that while we might often feel alone, we almost never are. Our minds have a tendency to make us feel isolated and like everyone else is doing so much better than we are, but in truth, the majority of people are also struggling with something, no matter how fantastic and glorious their lives look.

Prepare to get deep in this article, people.

My biggest fear is death. It feels crazy for me to actually type that after keeping it to myself for so long, but I know that it's a much more common fear than what I lead myself to believe (once again with that isolated feeling). LOL at this, but last summer I binge-watched Game of Thrones, (almost always at night) and it really caused my death anxieties to flare up. Isn't that weird? Mental health is so strange and interesting and it is so odd to think that one of my triggers was GoT. Though, if you're a fan, you can probably understand why that is, given the constant gruesome content.

Anyways, it got so bad that I had to stop watching the show and really detox myself for about a week because I just couldn't handle it anymore. I would be up all night long, and I would just fixate on the images on death that were shown in the show. Obviously, the stuff that's generally on it isn't realistic to death now, but for some reason, it just had a really big effect on me (I still finished the whole series, don't you worry).

So, yeah. It was crazy. I had never had an experience like that before because I've never been in that kind of mental state so that was a whole new ballpark for me.

Then, fast forward to this semester, days after I landed in England, and I had my first anxiety attack.

Yes. I had my first anxiety attack. It was beyond scary and I wasn't even certain if that's what I was having but after a little bit of research, it definitely was having an anxiety attack. It was scary and it's something I never want to go through again. If you're someone who gets them regularly, my heart goes out to you because it was pretty exhaustive and scary.

I'm going to keep working on my mental health and just trying to stay mentally healthy. It's hard, it really is, especially since that is never something that I've had to do before, but I'm going to keep trying.

It's a never ending struggle but I'm optimistic that it is going to get easier.