Posts tagged mental health

I am procrastinating.  I have another counsellor’s appointment tomorrow and I am meant to be making a doll for it.  That’s a thing I do with my counsellor…I have a collection now of little dolls and drawings that represent parts of myself, my inner voices and I am meant to be making a doll of myself as a teenager to add to that.  It won’t take a long time, just an hour or so on the sewing machine, but I’m skulking about being a coward about it.

I guess because this is where shit gets real for me.

I’ve been trying to remember what I was like as a teenager.  I think I probably had several rather typical and somewhat unpleasant teenage traits - melodramatic tendencies, self-absorbtion, incredibly poor decision making etc.  

I changed a lot as a teen…My early teen years were spent being spotty and ragingly insecure, I always felt out of place and awkward, so I suppose later on I sort of tried to morph it into deliberately sticking out.  Reminds me of a song lyric

…back in my rebel phase I stood out in all the normal ways…

Not sure I was very good at being rebellious either, just lead to some very poor choices in hair colour (never try and dye your hair blue).

All in all, it’s proving to be a very difficult and unpleasant experience.  I find it hard not to blame myself for bad decisions I made back then that have lead me to where I am now.  It’s also making me feel insanely old and rather depressed about how little I have to show for my life so far.  

Better stick the kettle on and get to work though eh?

Life seems inherently chaotic.  Things happen or don’t happen with no reason, we might look around and think how unfair things are.   As humans we want fairness, order, an understandable pattern, and when there isn’t one we impose it.  We believe in an omnipotent God, a higher being that will distribute ultimate justice, or a universal force that punishes or rewards according to our karma, maybe even just the idea of “luck”.

Sometimes that need to impose order becomes an unhealthy desire to control…We obsess over our weight, diet and exercise regime, we refuse to part with anything and barricade ourselves behind a wall of inanimate objects, we plan and organise and cannot cope when things inevitably go off the rails.  Or maybe we give up entirely, surrender to the surrounding chaos and decide nothing we do is important, so we will do nothing at all.

At the moment I am struggling to control one aspect of my life and that is sleeping.  If it’s possible to be addicted to sleep I think I might be.  For about two weeks I have tried to get up at a sensible time in the morning and get to bed not too late.  It’s been insanely hard.  Some days I have felt so tired and emotional I’ve been on the verge of hysterical tears, desperate to lie down in bed and sleep.  I slept late the past two mornings, which seems reasonable at a weekend, but now I’m hoping that I haven’t ruined what I’ve been trying to achieve.  

I’ve been thinking back to my teenage years quite a lot lately - about who I was, what has changed and what hasn’t.  Perhaps wondering where everything went wrong for me.  Maybe this is because I’m coming up to celebrating a Decade Of Depression.  What really sticks out to me is how I have no idea what normal, independent adult life feels like, and whether I’d be any good at it.  Right now it feels like I wouldn’t be.  Even small things are still hard, but I keep trying to find the motivation to carry on and do…Something.

I have a counsellor’s appointment tomorrow and for the first time in a long time I am dreading going.  I feel like I’ve taken such a huge step backwards the past few weeks that I don’t want to go and rake it all up…But this is the feeling that tells me that it’s doubly important I go.  

So whilst I try and relax myself enough to get some sleep, I thought I would write a blog post!

I’m doing my nails as I type (they’ll end up wrecked because of it probably) because I am a chronic nail biter.  If I don’t paint them I bite them off.  If there’s varnish then somehow it deters me, but I will still bite the skin at the sides…This is a sign of anxiety or neurosis or something I think…It’s a habit I never seem to permanently break myself of.

I have just as much trouble forming good habits.  My sleep schedule is appalling…Most of the time I am asleep until the mid afternoon or later and awake for a good part of the night.  If I try and sleep at night I last for about a week before I revert to being backwards.  I can never keep up with an exercise regime…My beading guild coursework has been untouched since October…I’m not sure what I actually spend my time on anymore!

So long since I wrote.  So little has happened.  For a while I felt better…Bad thoughts were less intrusive, I felt less weighed down, new opportunities arose and I took on tasks.  I sense it is all ending though.

I have a small comfort zone and even in that tiny mental space I’m not completely content, but any attempt to push past those boundaries makes it even worse.  Right now I am heading into a bad place.  The cycle of depression begins again.

I’m less able to shut down my own negative thoughts, and so it is harder to sleep.  I’ve begun to actively dread going to bed and having to be alone with all the terrible things I am saying to myself.  It feels as though they are all true.  I feel so much at once but so little at the same time.  I think I am drowning.

How do I get through this again?

Time is running out, something I always feel acutely aware of.  Right now, I am in a comfortable place, relying on the support of my parents, but my parents will not always be there to provide me with that support.  One day I will be on my own.

Being on my own frightens me.  I’ve never had much faith in myself to get things on track and do what needs to be done to provide a life for myself.  For a very long time my plan was to slowly vanish from the lives of my friends, wait until my parents were no more, and then I would kill myself.  That is not something I say casually, or for dramatic effect, it just seemed to be the simplest, most logical solution to my problems.

Sometimes I still feel that way, but there are parts of me, maybe increasingly, that want to do the difficult thing - to get things sorted out and become independent.  

A couple of years ago my Mother had a (second) cancer scare.  We didn’t know if she would be OK (thankfully she is and only slightly worse for wear), and for a long time my thoughts revolved around how sad it would be for her to leave behind a daughter that was so broken.  Even looking back on that now makes me incredibly emotional.  Don’t I owe it to this woman to sort myself out and be happy?

People who don’t know me very well always seem to be surprised if I tell them about my struggles with depression and anxiety.  ”But you come across as so normal!”.  Well yeah, it’s pretty easy for me to pretend to be absolutely fine for a couple of hours, and I’m grateful for it, because some people don’t even have that luxury.  I can’t keep it up forever though, and that’s what is on my mind at the moment.

I was brave, and I applied for a job this week.  Only the third time I’ve ever done it, and I couldn’t have done it without help and support from certain people (thank you, if you are reading this).  For most people this is the difficult part - the CV and then the interview…Having to make a good impression, come across as professional and likeable and competent.  I find it the easy part.  I know how to make a good first impression.  I dread actually getting the job, because then I have to keep it up and live up to that front I first put forward.

People say you fake it till you make it, but what happens if it never comes?

No man is an island entire of itself

As much as I try to cultivate the persona of some grumpy old misanthrope, I don’t think it’s really me.  I don’t hate people, and I do like to spend time with them.  Some of them.  Some of the time.  I don’t have many friends though.  The few I have are far away, and how long they would want to be friends with me I don’t know.  After all, what does someone like me have to offer them?

It’s a double standard to think that way I know, because I don’t choose friends based on what they can “offer” me.  I just like them and that is that.  Unfortunately I don’t feel very likeable.  What I do feel is afraid.

I’ve given up on the idea of ever having a romantic relationship again, which makes me incredibly sad.  On one hand I’m resigned to being a miserable old cat lady, but it’s not exactly something I feel like I’m choosing for myself.  Some people just have cat-lady-ness thrust upon them.

It’s hard to make new friends.  When I was at school I made friends with classmates, and I did the same at university.  Now I don’t even have a job to force me out of the house.  I’m sure sometimes I can go for days without setting foot outside the door.  There’s nothing out there for me, I live in a town better suited to people 40 years older than I am.  My hobbies are solitary ones.

I feel awkward in the friendships I do have.  I doubt myself.  I second-guess my behaviour.  Am I being too distant?  Am I being too clingy?  Sometimes I feel like I go too far to be a “good friend” and end up as a desperate weirdo instead.  Sometimes I try to reach out to people and end up ignored and hurt.  Maybe sometimes I’ve made people feel that way.

The only solution seems to be to get out of my current dead-end town, which means finding a job somewhere and then finding the courage to actually do it.  And both of those things are in short supply these days.

Today is a bad day.  I had to go and cry in my bathroom, and that is never a good sign. 

Even though I think of myself as a “recovering depressive” most of the time, things still get tough.  It feels like classing myself as “recovering” is being a bit too optimistic right now.  I try hard not to let my day-to-day life suffer too much from what’s going on under the surface, but it’s still a pretty big mess under there.  I wrote about identity before - we all have a persona we present to the world - I try to be a character I’ve created for myself, but that can be exhausting.

You might think that I should just “be myself”, but unfortunately myself might not be all that likeable, and having so few friends in the world means I would prefer not to drive them away.

I don’t have a real theme or topic for my post today, no advice or helpful observations, just my feelings, which aren’t things I share all that readily or honestly, because they are unpleasant.  Counselling has tried to teach me to cope with these onslaughts - because that is what they feel like - by “unpacking” my feelings.  Sitting calmly, maybe writing things out or drawing them, getting down into the root of what is upsetting my balance.  I can’t do that today.  I don’t know where it’s coming from because I’m too busy being knocked about by the feelings.  

There’s a sort of tension to it, and all that I can do is release some pressure valve inside myself and let go of everything.  I sob into a tissue and let it all wash over me - the depression, the anger, the resentment and the frustration, and eventually it’s all emptied out and ready for the next cycle to begin.

My consolation in all of this is that I recognise it will ease off again, and that for a while at least, balance will be restored, and that every time it happens is another chance to conquer whatever demon is lurking behind it all.