Please say a warm hello to first-time contributor Nigel O’Sullivan, a 44-year-old man from Killarney, Ireland. Nigel has been in and out of the mental health system with various diagnoses including paranoid Schizophrenia, Depression, and Bipolar. He has received many treatments including high levels of medication and ECT. In 2005, he started improving, and over the next two years he weaned off of the medication and married his angel. He was doing better until his life took a nose dive last year. Through counselling and his own realizations he has improved once again, but he feels that he has only been half cured. He found a cause of many of his symptoms relating to his father which has been helpful, but it still has felt like something is missing. This morning he awoke an hour earlier than normal and spent that hour on WordPress where he accidently found Broken Light Collective. He believes everything happens for a reason and now following his intuition he is submitting this photo. Today is taking on a great significance for him, and he is calling it DAY 1 of his ultimate recovery.

About this photo: “It started as a college project a self portrait to reflect who you are, this is what I ended up with, it was submitted in Nov ’13 and up until today this is how I was. It represents the turmoil of my busy mind, a whirlpool of dark, vivid colours, shades of purple representing sadness and confusion all centred on the window to me, my eye, zoom in far enough and my pupil is my family, the goal, the other side. Up until today it has been my profile pic. The title I gave this photo all those months ago “The End” yesterday truly it was. Today, the beginning.”

Find more from Nigel at his blog.

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