Content Warning: this article was written for people who are in recovery from an eating disorder and have sought approval from their GP or treatment team to begin safely exercising. If you are currently experiencing disordered eating, always speak to your GP before considering exercise. I struggled with Anorexia as a teenager. Now twenty-five and seven years into my recovery, there is one thing left for me to tackle; my relationship with exercise.

Content Warning: This article contains discussions around sexual violence, PTSD, and medical trauma. I’ve long known that as the owner of a cervix, it’s important to go for my cervical screening. My mother had an abnormal smear when I was a child, and has always been an advocate for me getting the health treatments I’m entitled to. For many people who have vaginas, their first experience with a speculum, a device used to gain access to the cervix via being inserted into the vagina, will be their first smear test. Mine, however, was in the aftermath of a sexual assault, undergoing a medical examination to gather evidence of my abuse.

Watching the prime minister’s announcement of a new lockdown in England on Monday night, I felt an all too familiar sense of panic. University students, at all levels from fresher to newly graduated, have been woefully neglected and jeopardised by the government during the pandemic. A lack of guidelines on examinations and assessments, unrealistic promises of on-campus learning, painful and uncertain separations from families, and entrapment in accommodation with extortionate rents are just the tip of the iceberg. Yet again there was no mention of universities during Boris Johnson’s address to the nation, and government guidance for universities online remains vague and open to interpretation.

As a fan of Louis Theroux, I’ve often wondered how I would feel if he made a documentary that affected me personally. I thought about this even more after I met him at my university in November, when he was awarded an honorary doctorate and took part in a Q&A at the Students’ Union. When asked whether he would consider interviewing someone like Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby, he seemed to know a lot about what survivors of sexual assault go through, and I wondered why.