Jennifer Charlton, Nathan, First Edition 1/10, Hahnemuhle P...

Estimate

£250 - £300

Jennifer Charlton, Nathan, First Edition 1/10, Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Pearl 320GSM, framed, 56.5cm x 46cm overall, her mental health project ‘A Hidden Community’. This ongoing personal project was also placed in the finals of the prestigious AOP student awards and runner up at the Photo North Student Photography competition and garnered attention from ITV, the BBC and the broadsheets.

Nathan:

'My mum got diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called Sarcoma in the April of 2016, she passed away in the August, it was very aggressive. We believed a miracle could still happen and in hindsight, were probably in denial about the severity of it all; it was a very painful time.

I moved back down to Manchester on my own a week after my Mums funeral to train at the boxing gym, to go and fight in the championships that September. I just needed something to take my mind off it. I broke both my hands in the first round and got beat in that fight on points, spending the next 12 weeks in plaster casts after they operated on me.

My next fight would be early February 2017, where I won the British University Championships.
I won the Northwest Championships later that year, I felt that was my way of showing my family that I was okay, trying to be strong for them and keep ‘moving forward’. But running on that type of fuel only gets you so far, it all came crashing down at the end of 2017.

I wasn't speaking to anyone my mental health. What mental health? I wasn't processing it. Because I was making weight all the time, I started to pick up this OCD-like behaviour, adding up my calories, subtracting how many I've burned, checking my weight. It was beyond ‘organised’, it was obsessive. It consumed my thoughts from the moment I woke, until I could fall asleep.

In November 2017, I got to the semi-finals of the Nationals. I had to aggressively cut weight for the fight, because I was binge-eating in-between fights. I got beat and then went and binged on a load of food as per. I was due to be fighting the following week in Brazil. I’ll never forget stepping on the scales seeing I was 5kg over the weight I was meant to box at. So I starved myself and made weight again. I got beat out there and my eardrum was perforated. The next day I found out my Mum’s sister Liz, my aunt, had died. It was a huge shock. I went home and replayed out my Mums funeral, this time with my aunty Liz. Same people, same Crematorium, holding another coffin. At that point, I think I dissociated from my own feelings. I was numb.

The injury meant I couldn’t fight, which is the one thing that I was obsessed with. The only thing that I felt like I could control at that moment was my food and my weight. So the OCD ramped up and I started to become emaciated, walking around lighter than my fighting weight when I wasn’t even fighting. By this time I had developed an eating disorder.

What I came to learn is that the two sides of the brain, you've got an emotional side and a rational side when the emotional side is in turmoil, the rational side will try and take over, it is sometimes a grief response, which manifests in OCD. A sort of catharsis, and as a boxer I had the perfect excuse so I could hide it. ‘I’m just keeping my weight right’ is what I would tell anyone who questioned me.

I was depressed. I resented everything, I lost faith and I pushed a lot of people away. All the women in my life were gone. I lost these two angels and I felt so alone. By the summer of 2018, I accepted my mental state was a shambles. I spoke to my family, I went to the GP, I stopped boxing and went to therapy where I started to unpack it all, within about a year, I got healthy again. I started eating again. I started boxing again. The intrusive thoughts dissipated.

I spent three years in therapy, when I finished, I turned professional. It’s been some journey and I should note, I’ve been back to therapy since, grief/depression/OCD/ADHD/anxiety, these are not things that you can ‘complete’. Mental Health is like physical health, something you must consistently work at. That, I will never overlook. Deep down, if you know that if you've been there once, you could go back there again. If you have been rock bottom, that should motivate you to never go back. You know what lies in wait for you, and it’s not pretty.

I now have a lot of tools that I use to manage my mental health. I exercise my body daily, I meditate most days, I walk my dog, I’ve learned to play the guitar, I have enough time off my phone. I see my friends regularly and have a support network of amazing people. My story is just one of so many, but if I could speak to the young man that just lost his Mum, who felt like he lost everything. I would tell him that the best days of his life are ahead of him, just as long as he stays in the game. That, would not be a lie'.