Confessions

In last night's Doctor Who, the Doctor escaped from a prison. His escape, by punching against a wall (4x stronger than diamond) for literally millions of years, is an almost perfect metaphor for how to climb out of the pit of depression.

It take millions of punches, painful and sometimes traumatic punches, to get yourself out. There is no quick fix, not even pills. I am not fixed from being on more of a plateau. The plateau, the numbness, allows me to access a smidgen more of the person I should be, the person I normally am. But sometimes, that connection fails. 

Sometimes, you have to step outside and cry because your mask of happiness and competence is at risk of crumbling. You phone your mum because you're having vivid and violent imaginations of falling from rooftops. 

Your legs feel like lead. And then they feel like jelly.

And your heart turns to stone. Then it disintegrates like ash. 

All the while your mind just spins.

It makes everything possible and uncertain at the same time. 

It makes recovery possible and uncertain at the same time.

It makes life amazing and soul-destroying at the same time.

It makes you want to live, and makes you want to die, at the same time.

It makes no sense. It makes it impossible to go forward, and impossible to go back.

It works very hard to eradicate your future.

It works very hard to eradicate the very essence of who you are.

The only thing you can do, in the face of something that painfully makes no sense working very hard to destroy you, is to painfully work very hard to destroy it back. 

But this is not a war. You cannot destroy depression with hate.

You can only destroy it with love. 

Yearning to stop yawning

There are good days and bad days. Good hours and bad hours. 

I'm learning what it's like to live with this.

It's relying on caffeine to stem the yawning that comes from being depressed, being on anti depressants and just not sleeping well. Yawns that come unbidden and to accommodate them you try to unhinge your jaw. An exhaustion you can almost feel in your blood. 

Half zombie, half fidget.

It's forcing a smile on your face and a spring in your step that you can only manage for short periods of time - and afterwards, you're left exhausted. Nearly tearful. As if you weren't already on the edge anyway.

It's a physiological change in who you are, fundamentally, as a person. It's going from a morning person to dragging yourself out of bed after snoozing your alarm for 45 minutes.
It's changing from enjoying the gym to struggling through a personal training session like you're being forced to do algebra 10 years after you left school.

Your tastebuds change. Things taste bitter, or of nothing at all. There's never anything you really want to eat; you eat because you have to. Like the way you're living because you have to.

You're sensitive to hot and cold and loud noises. It's a sudden and brutal change to your world when the phone rings; you begin to dread the noise. You hold things gingerly. 

You don't want to be dead necessarily; you just want to close your eyes and not exist.  

This is horrible. There's no other way to describe it. I'm always uncomfortable. I'm uncomfortable not just in my own skin, but in my own brain. I want to get out. I pound on the walls as if someone outside could rescue me from this. 

That same brain that I feel trapped in, it doesn't work the way it used to, the way it's supposed to. It takes minutes, even hours to process things. It feels steeped in fog, and I have to work overtime to push through it. 

I don't recognise myself. I don't like myself - no, it's more than that: I don't even care about myself. But I still worry about others. I'm worried that my problems will hurt other people. I don't want to let people down. 

It's having a good day, then a really bad day, then a pretty ok day but at the end of the pretty ok you realise just how hard you had to work to be ok and being left totally exhausted.

So excuse me while I yawn until I gag. 

Eye of the Storm

The last two months have been a storm, and my mind has been at the centre of it.

I have now reached the eye of the storm. Not because there's peace and calm inside my mind. But because I actually can't get my mind to do anything.

It's stopped really thinking, stopped really feeling. It's numb most of the time now, with peaks and troughs of sadness and happiness.
I think this is preferable to the overwhelming sadness I have been feeling. Sadness that came in waves, gushing over me and ebbing away, only to return once I'd managed to dry my eyes and carry on for a bit.

So this is my diary of depression. 

I don't make my bed like I normally do. 

The curtains don't really get opened.

And the mirror is back to being covered up because I can barely stand to look at myself.

Now, as an adult, I realise that everything I went through from the ages of 8-16 weren't all because of puberty. I have had trouble with anxiety, with expressing emotion, with feelings of self-hatred that go far beyond being a teenager and hating the world because that's the cool thing to do. 

This time it feels so much more like a failure, and there's so much more pressure to get better. No one is directly putting pressure on me, but it's pressure I feel personally because I'm an adult, and I have a place in the world. A place I have been carving out for myself. I have a job, and some responsibilities. Ones I have been struggling to carry out and maintain. When I can barely get out of bed and wash my hair, how can I be made responsible for the duties of my job?

I feel ashamed. I feel so ashamed that it has gone this far. I feel ashamed and guilty that I feel like this when the world is in the state that it is. I feel so self-centred. I feel like I have sunk so low. I feel like I have absolutely failed because I have been put on anti-depressants. Have I not been working hard enough with my counsellor? Did I not keep myself busy enough? 

Why me?

I'm also relieved. I am protected now, in a way. 

Do you know what the last straw was? The tipping point? Other than dragging myself to work and being unable to hold back the tears?
It was not being able to enjoy exercise. Not wanting to go the gym not because I was tired or being lazy, but because I didn't see the point in exercising because my life is worthless.

I've reached my tipping point. Or have I? It could get worse, I know that from experience. It feels right now as though I am in the eye of the storm, and the only thing ahead of me are rocky times as I make it through. Up, not down. Through and out. 

Are you there deity? It's me, Emma.

Good evening deity, I trust you are well. I hope you enjoyed the fascination we all had with your fog, and the great photo galleries it created. 

Do you like the winter? Do you even have a favourite season? I'm not a fan of winter, but there is one jumper I am looking forward to wearing. It belonged to my granddad. 

You would already know that, if you existed, because you know everything. Deities are all-seeing, all-knowing. Some of them even preside over a heaven, in which case you might be hanging out with my granddad. Not that my granddad ever "hung out", but you know what I mean right? Of course you do. 

It's been a year. I can't say it's been an easy year, and I know I've been so busy at times to stop and reflect. I know I'm lucky to have the family I do, and the friends that I have. But I still miss my granddad. We all do. And one of the hardest things I've had to get my head around as an Agnostic verging on Atheist, is the utter absolution of death. That's it. You die, you're dead. No heaven, no multiple brides, not even a purgatory. My granddad is just gone. 

So it's on days like this when I want to believe in a deity. I appeal to you, if you exist, to let my granddad know that we miss him. That we loved him very much, and he will forever be in our hearts. 

Also please tell him that setting up a Facebook account was the best thing he could have done to encourage my nana's stalking tendencies. Thanks a bunch, Terence! 

Misty-eyed and surrounded by fog

Tears. I try to blink them back- dog walkers are coming towards me. I let the water pool in my eyes until they pass, then they spill down my cheeks. 

It was just a rabbit disappearing through a hole in the hedge. A flash of brilliant white that caught my attention, so I crouched down to peer in. I couldn't see anything at first, except a clearing in the bushes. Then it bounced into the clearing from where it had sat, hidden from view. Hidden from me. Ears long, and all a tawny brown except for that white tail. Like a bit that had been missed by the painters. 

I panic. I'm not sure where this path is going and I'm rapidly running out of time. I pick up speed, my feet wet from morning dew and numb from the cold. Not as numb as my hands though. I look at them: the nails aren't blue but a rosy pink beneath the flecks of leftover polish. I shove them deep into my pockets. 

It feels like ages, but it's not long until I get to a part of the path I recognise, and soon I'm back at the lodges. I feel peaceful, despite the sudden panic. It was fleeting, unlike normally. But things aren't normal anymore. I felt it, by the lake. A monumental shift in my spirit. 

I ran down this path only 24 hours before and yet now I have seen so much more. Before the rabbit, I came across a side trail, down to the edge of the lake. Covered in yellow leaves, the ground gives way to two small jetties. Jutting out onto the water, dark brown and bright yellow against the grey water. In fact, everything is grey - the water, the sky, everything in between. The fog surrounds me here and in this space, I feel cocooned. I feel like I am the only person that on the planet, and with that comes a deep sense of calm. I breathe in; I listen intently to the hooting of moorhens that have no idea that they are my own private theatre. A stage of dancers, gliding across their marble surface.  

I cry. I cry with sadness, relief, anger, and joy. This place, this wonderful grey place, it's mine. I'm aware I'm literally steps away from the outside world but I feel so at peace it doesn't feel like an intrusion. Merely that this place of my own is a small piece of real estate in a world I don't and can't own or control. I have never been more in love with a place. And I've been to New Zealand. 

Now, away from my place and back in the real world, I have such a strong sense of self that I can't believe I ever lost it. I have a weight off my shoulders. I am beginning again to understand what is important, what I need as a person. What my body needs, what my soul needs. 

I haven't felt it in such a long time I didn't think I'd recognise it when it finally returned. 

But "it" is unmistakable: This is pure happiness. 

And I feel so blessed.