Hi, I'm Chelsea and I am Aimee's best friend. You may have seen my name pop up in her blog posts from time to time. We met on the ward Aimee is on and we clicked pretty much straight away and our friendship grew and grew until we reached a point where we couldn't live without the other. I was transferred to a different hospital a few months ago, and sometimes in hospital you make friendships whilst your inside, but when separated the friendship just doesn't last because it was made in a false environment. There was that risk when I left the ward, but amazingly (thank God) we are still just as close, she's often the first person I speak to when I wake up and its effortless keeping in touch. When Aimee announced she was doing guest blog posts I knew I had to participate somehow!
Aimee has had her blog for a long time now and she is amazingly honest about her experiences and how she fights every single day to beat her mental illness, but I want to show you what its really like to have Aimee in your life:
- Its about snuggling and watching a Disney film, to then be caught by a guy who later then believed we were a 'couple' and we found that rather hilarious
- If Aimee was struggling and I didn't have the answers to help her, I would just play with her hair instead and I believe that sometimes that worked out better anyway!
- Aimee is extremely accident/illness prone, she doesn't have a lot of luck
- Sometimes Aimee floats away, mentally and physically, so I would sit with her and talk nonsense until she started speaking and replying, which meant that I had brought her back
- I introduced Aimee to mayonnaise and now she's as addicted as I am!
- If Aimee is your friend then you know she will always have your back, she is extremely loyal to the ones she loves
- Me and Aimee have very different tastes in food, fashion and music and people are often surprised that we are so close
- When me and Aimee started to become friends, she started to learn how I tick and what helps me in my moments of distress, she always goes the extra mile and will get me what I need to make things better, like getting me a hat or letting me cry on her. If your Aimee's friend then she will look after you
- If one of us has good news or achieves something either big or small we will always tell the other so we can jump and squeal and dance and celebrate
- Aimee has this amazing ability of coming up with the quickest comebacks in an argument
- I got Aimee loving haribo too! (Only tangfastics but I'll get her to like the other flavours too one day!)
- Aimee hallucinates rabbits, and it is a horrible thing to witness, its written all over her face how scared she is and her eyes will be darting all over the place. One of the things that helps is to almost believe the hallucination and deal with it that way, for example I once walked in front of Aimee as she held on to me, so I could create a path for her then to be able to leave the room. I hate these moments because I hate seeing Aimee in so much distress, but even in those times she shows her huge strength.
- If Aimee went out to the shop when I wasn't going outside at all, she used to bring me back a treat which I used to love!
- Aimee is in love with a cat
- Aimee is one of those people who literally cry with happiness and I must admit I have reduced her to tears on more than a few occasions
-Aimee's dance moves are something special.
I could go on and on (as you can see) but I just wanted people to see a side to Aimee that shows that she's more than just a blog, she's an individual with a personality just like everyone else. Yes, she has mental illnesses. {Yes, she's been through trauma and yes, she has to take medication just to get her through the day but that's not all Aimee is.
I also asked a few people who know Aimee "what is the first thing that pops into your head when I ask what they like about Aimee" just to see what their opinions of her were, this is what they said:
- Her mum: That she's my daughter
- My mum: She has the loveliest eyes
- My dad: Her friendliness
- Corran: She's very pretty
- Condron: The thing I like best about Aimee is that you always know where you stand with her. Not in a horrible way, just in a way that you know she isn't going to pretend what you've said or done is okay, she'll speak out. It means aswell that she's fiercely loyal and will speak out to protect her friends, even when there are possible repercussions for her
So as you can see, Aimee is more than her diagnosis, and I hope that sharing a bit of Aimee's personal life will help others to see past a mental illness to discover who the person really is inside.
Love Chelsea x
Chelsea can be found on Twitter and on Facebook. She also runs a beauty blog which I'm NOT Disordered is partnered with, this can be found here: http://www.chelseasharkie.blogspot.co.uk/
