Signs of recovery; a clearing in the cloud
I could spend this whole post telling you about how bad the last few months have been. I could tell you about one of the most crushing lows of my life so far, a low that saw me isolate myself from the friends that I love, the job that I feel priveleged to have ever been given and the project I was so determined to complete.
It can wait however for another day. This is the first time since February, maybe even longer that I have felt like myself. It is selfish and unprofessional I know to have offered no explanation for my sudden silence over the last few months and for this I do apologise and I will explain all in full. Just not right now.
Today is a day for jubilation. After months of misery, messed up mood, flat shoes and a flat face today I am smiling. I smile at simple normal every day things like ladybirds and bumble bees. A beautiful happy woman passes me by and rather than silently sob at the fact that once upon a long time ago I knew how to smile, I smile back at her and just feel glad that there is some sunshine in my day.
The Psych told me that I would be feeling better this week but I doubted him and that night spent hours on the bathroom floor toying with the idea of ending it all. Just days ago I was having dark suicidal thoughts and yet today I cannot imagine ever having wanted my life to end.
There is a possibility that today is just a fluke and that tomorrow I will wake up with the cloud coming down again, but today I can’t contemplate it. I have to believe that this truly is the start of me getting better and that I can return to my life and to the pen once again.
Day 56, 57, 58, 59 – Struck down by sickness
I apologise for the lack of posts and photos but I have been rather unwell all weekend and had to take time off work. It seems strange to say but it makes a nice change for my illness to be down to my body rather than my mind.
Normal posts and pictures will resume from tomorrow but last week I was wearing a pair of peter pan style brown velvet boots and this week so far I have mainly been wearing slippers!
Day 55 – Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Yesterday I started on a course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. It will do little as I understand it to help with the highs but it does have an excellent rate of preventing recurrent episodes of depression. There is something about going to the course that I find quite upsetting and by the time the boy comes home this evening I am quite tearful about the whole thing.
What upsets me is that it feels like there is something almost shameful in going to a course like this, an admission that I am not normal. I know that it is an irrational thought and really rather silly but I cannot help it.
The course itself is quite good really and the people I must admit do seem to all extents and purposes just like anyone else. One of them seems so normal that I actually mistake him for a doctor.
I suppose that it just goes to show how mistaken my idea of normal really is but I still feel like a freak and having to meditate over a raisin does little to remove such a thought from my head.
Day 54 – The delinquent dog
My parents are away for a long weekend leaving me to take care of the house, and more importantly, the dog. As much as I love our West Highland Terrier whose name is Bonnie looking after her is definitely not one of my favourite tasks. I have found it difficult to warm to the dog over the years mainly because she has a few terrible habits that include destroying much of my property.
It all started when she came into our lives ten years ago as a scruff of a pup who was crying for her family. Although my mother’s first words on seeing her were, ‘My life has gone down the toilet’ she has since warmed to the dog. Our relationship has been rather fraught however due to her beginning life by destroying my best shoes which she went on to do three more times. Over the years I have become more careful with my shoe collection, storing it well out of the reach of her mischievous jaws but lately she has developed a new and far more disturbing habit.
I do not know if this is something that other dog owners have a problem with but I am just putting it out there in the hope of finding other sufferers. My dog is a determined destroyer of knickers. And not just any knickers, she seems to deliberately seek out any that are expensive, matching or silk. The dog is selective in what she shreds it must be said.
This is something that I try to avoid by having a steel washing basket and leaving none around. I had hoped she would instead target the boy’s underwear which he frequently leaves unattended all around my bedroom but it seems she is after only kickers.
All this makes it difficult to have a healthy relationship with an animal which has cost me the best part of £300 over the years, shoes included. Despite this however when she pulls her lead off the table and starts dragging it desperately around the kitchen my heart melts and I take the delinquent for a walk. I have been watching The Killing this evening and am a little jumpy as I walk through the church yard. What turns out to be even more disturbing is the dog who leaves a mes which I have to clean up. I find myself wondering whether there are special flags one can leave that say, the owner of the dog is away but will be back on Monday to collect this unsightly deposit. Alas I fear these may just be in my imagination and am forced to pick up the poo.
I feel like a responsible dog owner but am very much looking forward to when the boy gets here as he is always willing, well sort of, to take the dog out and it is a job that I will not miss at all.
Day 53 – Victory at the pub quiz
The Mail team has been preparing for weeks for a pub quiz called Battle of the Businesses. I am not terribly good at quizzes and was concerned that I would be kicked off the team. Imagine my delight then when the day came round I actually managed to answer some of the questions correctly.
We do extremely well in the quiz and end up coming third out of a total of nine teams. We have been swatting up on quiz questions since the quiz was announced in January and it all seems to have paid off on the night. There is a round about Great Britains, a picture round about dragons and an impossibly difficult music round in which I think I’ve got one but end up submitting the answer for the cover rather than the original. Whoopsadaisy!
Considering that I have been so nervous about socialising in general of late I have a great night and even end up getting really rather tipsy, especially for a school night.
Lots of things have been going right of late, my mortgage offer has been progressing nicely and although I don’t think I will truly believe it until I have the keys to the house it has given me back a bit of bounce in my step that was much needed.
Day 52 – A better day
Depression is a funny thing. One day it can consume you to the point that you think life is no longer worth living and then the next day it lifts and you are left wondering what all that fuss was about. Yesterday I thought I had hit into a downward spiral and I was on the verge of starting back on the Fluoxetine to try to control it. Today though, relatively speaking I have been fine. I have laughed and joked and although I don’t feel completely well it seems to have faded.
To me this is a lesson that no matter how hard things get I must keep on trying. I was at the stage where I thought I was no longer able to do my job, should give up on the idea of ever living alone and was generally just a being that should be left out with the rubbish. If I had allowed this train of thought to take over completely I don’t suppose it would have been very long before I reached the stage where suicide was a real option.
It is dangerous thinking that descends upon me when I get depressed and it is something that I am hoping this course I am due to start on Thursday will help me to deal with and prevent it from getting to a more sinister stage. I am understandably nervous about it as I have found in the past that therapies can actually cause me to descend into a depression and with all the stresses of buying a house I simply cannot afford to let it consume me.
I am trying hard to keep it at bay and hopefully I will manage to but there are days that are easier than others and thankfully today was one of those days.
Day 51 – Withdrawal
Depression can creep up on you so slowly that you barely notice it arrive or it can come down on you like a wall suddenly overnight while you’re sleeping in bed with no idea that your world is darkening outside your dreams. The first sign for me is a withdrawal from everything and everyone. It starts with every day people that pass me by, I stop making eye contact and start huddling into my coat, head down, then it spreads to friends and eventually to even family.
I cannot bear company because everyone just seems far too darn ordinary and cheerful. Laughter may be the best medicine for some but for me, when I am depressed at least, it is like the sound of nails drawing down a chalkboard. It seems amazing that life carries on and cruel somehow that while you are trapped in a prism inside yourself that the world is carrying on as always.
I stop reading the paper, stop caring about politics and cannot abide radio. I stop wanting to be a part of anything and my only comfort is to be alone. Even books cannot give me any relief from my condition and I detest magazines where women are going about their day reading about skincare and top ways to redefine one’s waist.
The world becomes increasingly infuriating and I long to be far away. It is times like this that I long to be a hermit crab, scuttling away to a place as dark as the mood that engulfs me. I am alone but people are all around me.
Day 50 – Cry me a river
It is ridiculous and makes me feel like a child but everything is making me cry at the moment. I do my best to hold it together all day as the boy is leaving back up to Manchester and I don’t want him to worry but by the time dinner comes round I am so distant that I can barely even engage with the waitress.
I speak to the boy and he tells me that he couldn’t get a seat on the train and I cry because I cannot bear to think of him like that. The fact that I am too tired to do any exercise makes me cry, the fact that I am tired makes me cry and the fact that the boy is no longer here all makes me cry.
I hate it when I get like this. I am no good to anyone and all I want to do is hide away and I have no idea how I am going to cope with work or the week ahead. I am meant to be starting the CBT course on Thursday but I barely even have the energy to think about it let alone to do it.
I am depressed and it is at this point that the boy stands in and insists that we make an appointment for me to see my CPN. Early intervention I guess is key but I just don’t even want to pick up the phone to anyone let alone tell them how I’m feeling. I wish there was a magic legal tablet that I could take that would make it all go away and just lift me from this lull but there isn’t and it sucks so so much.
I don’t understand why the depression is back but then when I think about it when I am feeling this way I cannot understand why it didn’t stay in the first place. I am so sad and fed-up and down that everything, including the idea of living alone just feels like an insurmountable task. I am useless at conversation, at my job, at making dinner and everything else beside. I don’t know how to cope or how to get through another day and in the car I feel the return of an all too familiar wish of not wanting to be here. This is the danger that I am trying to avoid but it is not easy and I am feeling so alone.
This week’s first shoes are a pair of sandals from Dune. I am struggling to walk in them but this is probably because I am predictably dragging my feet. It is times like this when I understand why people want to wear Uggs. Slippers is all that I want to wear and if I had my choice I would be wearing a dressing gown as well.
Day 49 – Dealing with the dips
Today has been a bit of a strange one. The boy was looking at a drumming website today and I just felt so irritable at all the tapping that I had to leave the room. I was sat there reading the paper when all of a sudden I was overcome by despondency and what felt like the familiar dip of the start of a depression. I continued to read the paper, trying to focus on the cheerier articles but by the time the boy came in I was severely blue.
We had discussed going out for dinner but all I wanted to do was go to bed. It is very hard when one is depressed to know what is best to do. Do you wallow in your mood, go to sleep and hope it lifts by the morning or try to distract yourself in the hope that it fades. Every part of me today said wallow but in the end I forced myself to go out despite the dip.
It was not an easy decision to make and I felt conscious while out at dinner that maybe I wasn’t being entertaining enough. It was hard to leave the house and I ended up spending far too much time putting make-up on, brushing my hair into various different styles and fretting about the state of my body.
The boy is a sweetheart, the kind of man who tells you that you don’t need make-up and that you look lovely as you are. Usually it’s sweet but tonight I just find it annoying as I feel so negative about myself that I just can’t believe anything he says.
The night out is not too bad, I struggle through and even manage a few laughs. We have a good time and the dip it seems has lifted at least for now.
I worry that it is coming back and how I’m going to cope if it does. There is the blog of course, and this time there is support but what if I get too low to take it. These are all silly little what ifs but when I am feeling this way it is hard not to dwell on them in this way.
Day 48 – Technical difficulties
My laptop has stood me in good stead for some years now, so much so that when the photographer came from The Sun to take my picture for the paper and dared to suggest I use his Apple laptop for a pose I was slightly offended. I got it the Christmas before the blog started and it has seen me through several depressions and a nervous breakdown.
It comes in great use when I am low and too sad to do anything but watch Sopranos, West Wing or The Wire. I get into bed, pull the duvet up to my chin and sat back on as many pillows as possible indulge in a fantasy far removed from my near comatose existence. I eat and I sleep and I watch and until I start to come out of it that is pretty much all that my life is.
This then is why I am so sad today. My poor little laptop has been on its last legs for some time now and today has finally given up the ghost. It may be something to do with the orange juice I spilled near it, well, on it, or the cold weather or the way it got handled by customs but it is refusing to turn on.
I do not really know what this means for the project but it is going to make it a whole lot harder for me to get through a depression.
Technology has long thwarted me and the boy becomes increasingly frustrated with my general attitude of if I can write with it and go on-line what more do I need.
This comes in contrast to the fact that I am now the proud owner of an i-Phone. Apparently there are all kinds of things I can do with it but at the moment I have become hooked on The Sims. Even when I am feeling blue and under the weather at least I can make my five little people happy by instructing them to dance, read pulp fiction or even whoo hoo, don’t ask.
Hopefully my laptop will fix itself but in the meanwhile if posts are a bit late or haphazard this is the reason for it. Thanks for understanding.
Forgot to mention the other day but this week’s second pair of shoes are boots by Kurt Geiger. They are lovely, warm and slouchy but a little bit on the battered side but I still love them.
