So here it is. I finally decided to do something productive and start a blog about my experiences, particularity mental health and my journey and experiences of LGBTQ+ stuff. My name is Tom Green, I graduated from the university of Sussex on Monday with a MSci in Biology, although I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped. Despite this, I’m proud of what I achieved, I came close to getting a 2:1 and I know a lot of things contributed to the grade I got in the end. Sometimes, I look back over my 4 years at uni and wonder if things could have been different. Coming to uni with social anxiety isn’t easy and 1st year was pretty much hell in the sense that I didn’t drink I was very shy and socially anxious and this led to me sitting in my room staring at my blank walls wishing that I was out doing things and ‘getting the uni experience’ whilst being terrified of the prospect of actually going out, meeting people and making new friends. I often felt trapped between my social anxiety and the serious depression and regret I would get for not making an effort. Whats more, I lived off campus in a university managed house about 20 minutes to half and hours walk away from most of the activities that were going on (and everyone else who lived in halls on campus). My housemates consisted of two Chinese international students and one Chemistry guy who had some mates from back home who lived on campus. Don’t get me wrong, they were lovely people, but they very much kept themselves to themselves and obviously stuck with the friends they had/had already made at uni. Consequently, I was very disconnected from most of the freshers events that were taking place and moreover, the university and SU didn’t make it particularly clear about the events that were going on and where to find all of the information (although they have since improved this somewhat). On top of this, living in a house is very different to living in halls. Sure, I had a good sized kitchen well kept social spaces and a garden but there was no community feel and it certainly wasn’t the ‘freshers experience’ that everyone seemed to describe. No group of young naive students arriving at uni independent of their parents for the first time. No one to invite me out and give me the push to come sit with them and socialise. No one to recognise my anxiousness and make me at ease about drinking and potentially having to go out to some club in town and no one to go to events and/or societies with. My room often felt like prison, trapped in an endless cycle of anxiousness with no way out and no way to improve my mental situation with it all to easy to say no to things and just sit in my room alone.

I was too scared to see my doctor at the time and my low mood meant that I constantly couldn’t motivate myself to actually look into getting an appointment, switching my GP or looking at any kind of symptoms for the mental problems that I experienced. What’s more, the university were pretty bad at advertising any kind of mental health and student support that they offered and I feel like mental health services at universities in general need a massive overhaul and a lot more focus and attention. For example the number of young people arriving in A&E with psychiatric problems has doubled since 2009 and in the last 25 years the rate of depression and anxiety amongst teenagers has increased by almost 70% according to the independent. This is confounded by the fact that non of the recent Tory leadership candidates were able to properly identify the root causes of mental health issues and most resorted to arguing that tax cuts would unlock funding that would apparently magically solve the mental health crisis. Fortunately for me, I did have some ways to getting out of the spiralling hole I found myself in. I’m a nerd (we stan nerds) and i used to play Warhammer 40K, a table top war game (trust me it has a cool fandom ok). I joined the SWARM society at uni (Wargames, Anime, Role Play & Magic Society for those of you cool enough to care). I also played MAGIC a couple of times and I still have 100% win record plus I’ve always wanted to to start and learn DandD and more recently the ‘One Ring’ and ‘advnetures in middle earth’ Lord of the Rings RPGs. These, alongside the video games I used to play would give a creative outlet and allow me to express myself and give myself a sense of accomplishment after winning games, completing designs and buildings and living out the fantasies and fandoms with the fellow people I played with. I’ve always considered myself a creative person and my creativity often provided me with a way to add some structure to my days and at least temporarily lose myself from the anxiety and struggles that I faced.

For me, another one of the biggest issues that I faced in my early years at university were relationships and my sexuality. I’d known for a while that I was sexually and romantically attracted to both guys and girls and I’d first realised back in year 10 when I started having a crush on one of the guys in my form at school, but that’s a story for another time. Even so, I’d never admitted to myself that I was gay or bisexual let alone tell anyone outside of the few people I’d met on the internet. I often felt like I was living my life a lie all the time not being able to reveal who I really was. Of course, my social anxiety didn’t help this and I never got put in any situations where I might have felt comfortable admitting to my sexuality. I wish I had gone to the LGBT society at uni and as I’ve progressed through my degree I’ve met more and more queer people and they’ve all been so lovely (apart from the odd Grindr weirdo). Recently, I’ve found the courage to go to more queer events both in Brighton town and in relation to the Sussex LGBT society and I’ve found this to be a great safe space to meet other queer people particularly in an alcohol free environment. I feel like this would have been a lifeline for me if I’d have gone when I first came and I think it’s a great way for LGBT people out or not to find their sense of place and meet like minded students when they first arrive at uni.

I know a lot of my friends have gone through similar experiences to me and many of my friends have struggled with serious mental health problems. I also have a lot of queer friends now too and the recent rise of homophobic and transphobic hate crimes only confounds the individual struggles that people face whether is sexuality, gender identity, finding your sense of place or anything else. I want to talk about my experiences of my mental health, university life and queer identity and I hope that by doing so I can help other people too even if it’s just to make them realise that they’re not alone. However, I often consider myself incredibly lucky I come from a stable family with understanding parents who are relatively financially stable and often help with my uni living costs. I don’t have any physical disabilities that might affect my day to day life (other then suspected undiagnosed dyspraxia and ASD but I’m not sure about that). However, I know I can’t speak for everyone either and I want to give people a voice to talk about their experiences and their opinions too. I hope my experiences help people and I hope I can help you find a voice.

Stay safe

Tom

Thanks to my gay Jordan Hewitt for taking the amazing photo!