Give It A Rest. Back To Work or Back To Bed?

I'm thinking about going back to work.

I'm thinking about it because it's the end of the day on Friday and it's time to write my blog. Well, nearly time. Usually I reserve 4:00pm (my time of writing) for last minute bids which have been in the works for two weeks or so but which land on my desk with an hour or so to go of the working week. I laugh in the face of last minute bids. Seriously, nothing comes up as top of my Christmas list on a Friday afternoon work-wise, but actually these last minute things are quite fun because I have to supercharge my mental faculties and go for it.

It's nice sometimes. To feel one is to an extent the heroine of the hour. 'Elastigirl' (see below) swoops in with the slides at the eleventh hour. Delivers the goods. Writes beautiful slides. Creates a lovely balance between graphics and language. I say lovely. We're still talking about technology-related change. I love my job and all, but these slides are not Shakespeare I confess. I wonder what he might think of Power Point... Definitely up there with my desert island fly on the wall moments.

Shakespeare didn't consent to this by the way

Anyway, no bids or other work at the moment. I'm off. I may be the MVP (most valuable player) for my inability to sit still, (I learned that abbreviation via a process of elimination whilst reading Tina Fey's "Bossypants" this week) but I also know that if you don't rest (and by you I mean me) then you (I) don't get better.

I read this, but for feel good 

I'd recommend The Year of Yes - Shonda Rhimes. 

You go girl, I mean, highly successful award-winning writer.

Rest then. 

But rest can be bad for the mind even if good for the body. I've stacked up what I feel is a fairly impressive range of TV Boxsets, films and books over the last two weeks. I've also written a few notes to self, scribbled using my wonderful iPhone microphone which I discovered during my first back surgery. And I've slept a fair amount.

Netflix, I salute you. except it would be great if you showed all the 

shows available in the USA. Apart from that, you're, pretty okay.

I've also done my fair share of navel gazing. I really would prefer not to talk about that here, because I'm shaking a figurative finger at myself for that, and also I didn't plan on my navel featuring much in these web pages. Not as such. But the above does make me pause because it's rather unfortunate for my mental health suddenly being at home and forced to spend too much time on my own. My overall recovery could be disrupted by a dip in my mood, and I have felt that these two weeks.

Yep. This is me. And generous at it. This woman has super powers after all.

Unfortunately although the surgical procedure went really well and I even said goodbye to my stitches (staples even) yesterday, I have been struck with severe stomach cramps on the right hand side - apparently gas trapped inside me made worse by past stomach surgery. And not going anywhere despite a lot of muscle relaxants. I feel like I should be dropping around the house like Morph or Elastigirl. In reality I've got more hot air than both the Montgolfier brothers put together.

Pain that has come from a known but supposedly temporary source is unpredictable but unlike my mental health, because this is supposed to dissipate in days rather than months or years even it is annoying for each day it remains as a guest, tolerated but ever out- staying its welcome.

My mental health in the other hand. I wasn't exactly surprised to feel deflated (ironically) to be stuck at home with even washing my hair a now painful as well as seemingly gigantic task. But it had to raise its ugly head and remind me it was still there. "Oooh me! Me! Me! Me! Me!" as if jumping up and down and leaping for the chance to receive the ball pass.

Whereas in reality...

This.

Yeah, don't worry Depression, it's not easy to forget about you. And thanks for reminding me that staying away from work is not the way to further my career. You're right, it won't. I won't do anything at home while off sick because I'm ill and that, my dear, is the whole idea.

Hey there. You, know, I'm feeling a little big boned today.

But I also know that I won't get better hurtling back into work when I can still not stand without bending over in puffball agony. Not just because it won't be my most attractive pose. But also because I've been to the wellness centre at work and it's fab, but the duvets at home are within much easier reach thanks, and I can also wear my very cute jumper with the rabbits on. These are important considerations.

This is the exact style of jumper that I mean.

I own one of these!

Seriously, I cannot count the number of sick days I had off from school when I desperately didn't want to go and did and then felt awful, nor the days I didn't go and didn't feel good either. I also have had days when I went in to school or work or university when I didn't want to and it has been fine. Mentally I have to decide every time whether it's bad enough to be off or whether work (of whatever sort) will help to distract me and manoeuvre me into a better state of mind. 

This is not an exact science, but physically it's easier to determine. I can't move without being in fairly extreme pain. Okay. That means no work. Or at least if it subsides the smallest chance to work at home but absolutely no travelling, no carting a heavy laptop around and no uncomfortable clothing. My laptop's video camera will not be in use. I would not wish my frankly fabulous mouse pyjamas to distract people from the seriousness of my "message".

I don't have these exact ones. But like these.

And mentally while this is going on I have to do what I can (as always) as we all do to take care of the physical stuff so it's as unobtrusive as possible and provide some sort of active rest - watching, reading, writing... Okay I admit, also playing Angry Birds. Active rest meaning something that isn't too much or stressful (okay, might have to take out Angry Birds) but keeps my mind going and away from my navel.

Which is currently covered in an attractive range of winter woollen leggings and an assortment of sweatshirts people in the eighties might have thought appropriate for callisthenics. (My iPhone just spelled that for me, I take no credit.)

All this and more. I am an eighties icon

(lying down without the trainers)

So, it's now 6pm and would usually be time for clocking off. So clock off I shall. From my blog post. I have no idea how I'll feel on Monday but there are two whole days in between, including your favourite and mine, consumer goods made up price-hoiking day of the year, or Valentine's Day if you must. But as I always say at the end of these posts take care. Health is precious. Take that from me. Michelin man. Take care. X

(This was created by adventuregamestudio.co.uk

Those people have serious time on their hands

and even more serious coding enthusiasm!)

Out of the Blue and In The Pink

It comes, it goes, it stays, it leaves...

My last weekend's post is fragmented with ups and downs, and therefore late because my mental health has been fluctuating, but knowing that writing helps, here it is.

Monday 18th January.

I'm feeling so so about the day ahead. Neither good nor bad, neither despairing or excited, at least right now. Right now I'm concentrating on the essentials: getting out of bed. Making the bed. Showering. Drying my hair. Dressing for the day and packing up my rucksack. Then there's the rush or swift pacing towards the train. And on the platform beside me are hundreds of others who have just gone through all those same things and probably more. They might have children to rouse and cajole and chastise through all of those steps above, parents or other relatives to care for, or perhaps they have already been up for hours exercising. (It is, after all, still January.)

Last week I wrote a blog post for Mind on the so-called and fictitious Blue Monday, explaining as clearly as I could that anyone with with depression could be #blueanyday.

There's No Such Thing As A Depression Day

So here's a look at my week.

Monday last, I performed all of the above. With a new year goal to try to be healthy and fit, with a hope that as a side effect I would lose some of the two stone I've gained since breaking my back and being on a cocktail of drugs, at least one of which appears to have beaten down with a stick my ability to eat well, exercise regularly and manage (to a better extent, at least) my weight.

I was extremely busy all day with a number of meetings with team members, colleagues leading projects I'm involved with, my boss and with others. On these days I know I won't have created a document (or 'deliverable', the word my business seems - inexplicably - to prefer) in my hand at the end of the day, the management consultant's equivalent of a painting to take home to mummy and daddy to put on the fridge with proud faces. I rush around the building, knowing that I will certainly meet my daily target of 10,000 steps as my meetings are randomly situated over the fourteen-storey two-building expanse that is my office.

Working my brain into an oiled machine...it gets a little rusty over the weekends at time

There is a reason that I schedule all these meetings together though. One after the other the meetings happen, and I take "a mindful breath" before each one, and get through them. during the first I might feel my gears or cognitive cogs creaking into life after the weekend of luxurious lie-ins (till 7:45!). But as the first meets progresses my clanking cranium starts to move more steadily and stronger, the oil of my breathing and breakfast silently slithering around inside me so I start functioning properly. My point is: once the wheels are turning, I want to keep going as much as I can. 

It's worth it to get my brain in gear and be productive

My mind is whirring eventually and I can actually think about each topic on the agenda and bring something valuable into what we discuss. And my second point is, that, I can't get any detailed work document compiled in a snatched half hour where I should also try to grab my lunch. So, at the end of Monday I feel surprised that it has arrived. I don't have anything in my hand to show for it, to prove I've done anything worthwhile, except a notebook of actions and considerations; but I did get through the day, which I always try to see as something positive these days, and attending so many meetings in a way makes the most of my mental and physical energy reserves to speak and contribute and to be in front of people.

My day can end with notes on a piece of paper, 

but those notes lead to decisions and - finally - to 'deliverables'

I go home and eat something for dinner. Something healthy, and watch television and then to bed. I didn't sleep properly on Sunday night so today, I hope, things will be different.

Tuesday 19th January

Just keep going. Get dressed, and do the things that come after that. 

Tuesday is usually the same, but last week a combination of needing to spend a large amount of time on teleconferences with colleagues in other locations meant I decided to stay at home. Without a three-hour round trip commute I can just get so much more done. Unfortunately I didn't sleep well again, so I indulged in an additional 45 minutes in bed. Some attempt that when I rose, finally, I would be able to push my mind into a state where I could work. I had more listening to do rather than talking, more notes to take, then, but also more time to be quiet even while listening to others talking.

The structure of Monday (with all its meetings stacked up) works for me, but I need both company and solitude to balance my mental health, and time away from the office is a great way to be fully involved in my work but not exposed to the anxieties of travel, dressing up, all the above "start the day" activities. Plus, no one can see my face or any part of me; I could be wearing my pyjamas or my jeans. (If I'm at home as I was for most of Tuesday, I'll likely be wearing jeans, thick socks, a woollen t shirt, two jumpers, a woolly snood, a rug-like scarf and a hat. Our central heating is either on and not very hot or off. Either way sitting still for hours is not the best if you want to stay warm.) the point of this alone time is to be able to carry on working on terms that help my mental health not get in the way of progress.

I ended the day with a treat to see a film - Room - at the cinema, alone. I love solo cinema trips, since it was always too late to organise spontaneous visits with friends most weekends. Alone in the cinema I can think whatever I want and it doesn't matter if others disagree. I won't need to be polite and listen and broker my way through the discussion; it's just me on my own in the dark watching a story unfold, and my review is in my head, not open for discussion or critique.

Wednesday 20th January

Wednesday was similar in form to Tuesday. I spent my working hours at home on calls and producing some documents in the time in between. I can't remember whether I slept well on Tuesday night or not, but I suspect I didn't. Somewhere along the way through Wednesday morning a combination of feeling numb and feeling desperate seep in and I notice by lunchtime that I feel like going to bed and not getting up for the rest of the day. 

I wasn't overworked, I was overwhelmed by depression.

Not the same thing. It can happen through over work,

but I'm still working on understanding this skittish illness

Where does it come from? I had therapy coming up later and so, so wanted to stay at home and slip under the duvet away from everything and everyone in the world until Mat finally got home. But the practical part of me somehow wrestled me into boots and out of the door. I didn't enjoy the fresh air on the walk as I felt the despair of myself - the self I cannot love - in spades. But I know that the exercise and air are natural remedies for better mental health. And luckily for me, it was beautiful. Rationally and unobjectionably beautiful.

The only thing I can think of ito explain what has become a regular mood dip is that the middle of the week is when I have involved myself in the work equivalent of a mess of wool and knitting needles of activity, and if I stop every stitch will perhaps unravel, or if I continue I must be unrelenting in my commitment to progress. You can't make an omelette, etc. Perhaps that is it. It's the second Wednesday in a row when I have felt like this. I can't remember if it came on at the same time, but by the time I'm through with crying in therapy and back at home in the evening, still crying, I did remember how it feels to feel desperate and that things won't get better.

TV. Food. Sleep. I think the sleep worked this time. I didn't have anxiety in my stomach and tingling all over me the next day. That's all I've got. So that has to be good enough.

Thursday 21st January

Thursday was unusual. I had to go to Tooting for a hospital appointment and walked all the way there from home, rising very early, to try to use the walking and fresh air I know - rationally - that I have to include in my life for better mental health. My feet hurt by the time I arrived but I focussed more on hope that my brain would be flooded with positive endorphins of the exercise rather than the dull, murky and lumpy vessels of whatever chemicals are causing my depression to come back and dip my mood again. I also wondered whether two days at home consecutively had made me lonely, so I` don't know. I'm just trying a lot of things I know are good for me and hoping for a better day tomorrow if today is rubbish.

 

I had a reason to feel somewhat abnormal. I was nervous about seeing my neuro-spinal surgeon a whole year after our last meeting. He is both a brilliant surgeon and a thoroughly nice man but I was terrified that I wouldn't be deemed fit and well to have the screws taken out of my spine and afraid in equal measure that I would. I had to call my health insurer to gain an authorisation code for the surgery which is another worry for me, as the representatives are trained to the precise words that come from their mouths to offer a balance of sympathy and firmness, the latter in particular when one of them tells you that you aren't covered for that and that there is nothing that they can do, even if you might find your life at risk because of that seemingly irrational and quite silly conclusion. (To be fair this has only happened once, for suspected sleep apnoea.)

When I've got a lot on my mind, my thoughts

weight twice as much as my body

The rest of Thursday was part triumph and part disappointment. There are so many days like that, where hour to hour I feel elated one moment, but the next in a slough of despond. I had a couple of great meetings but also several where no one showed up. If this happens once, great, I can use the time to get things updated for one project or another, find the resources to fee fulfilled. Three or four cancellations, though, and I'm slightly panicked that I won't be able to achieve the things I was meant to, feeling sick. These things happen; I have to tell myself that, and that there's no reason that it's me. 

This sometimes worries me... 

I am, after all a control freak... so I can control scheduling the meeting,

but not who attends them!

Sunday 23rd January

I'm skipping forward to Sunday as its getting late and I'm very tired. Even blogging, which I love, takes energy, and I need some reserves for Monday. Continuing to try exercise for health, I  had run on Saturday morning and struggled but running on Sunday was easier. Reading through the above makes me feel sad, because it really wasn't a bad week at all, but I hate how a small thing can make me feel really dragged down. Meeting up with two lovely women from the In The Pink a cappella group to discuss International Women's Day and their performance at my work was a delight and so much fun. We laughed and shared our love of music and its powerful means to make me (and everyone) feel good. and walking around beautiful Oxford with Mat lifted me up again. Not necessarily forever, but the inspiration of music and beautiful buildings, happy memories and fantastic people are always going to be magical medication, and make me feel well again. 

Doing what I can to stay in the pink and out of the blue

So here's to another week of ups and downs that leave me somewhere along the narrow road to tomorrow. Take care. x

I Got That Summertime, Summertime Sadness: Fragments of Two Weeks of Severe Depression

This blog post is a fragmentary group of paragraphs that don't hang together. That's because I'm not 
hanging together very well. I could use a number of similes or metaphors to describe it.

Oh my God, I feel it in the air, telephone wires above, are sizzling...

I am a bag of marbles (I haven't lost them) that are clacking against each other noisily and awkwardly and painfully. I am a collection of smiles and tears and laughter and sleeping and wakefulness. I am lost. I am feeling nothing. I am feeling too much. I still am...but what I am I cannot say...

Here are some fragments. This is what I wrote last week, and below that what I wrote before.

Last week - Friday 14th August, 6:38 pm

This week was one of the worst that I've had over the last two years - nearly two years since I have been back in the UK and supposedly back to normality. It makes me sad to write that sentence, knowing that just over a year ago I came out of hospital and was filled with being rested, re-educated about the things I can do to support myself, and understanding what my 'rights' were as an individual, even if I couldn't define them for myself, and found it impossible to say what I needed at any level.

This week my husband went back to work and we gave up our enjoyable daily routine of working in our two different bedrooms/studies and 'not talking' but 'being' together in our one dwelling. I still work from home quite a bit, but have to try and find a balance between being in the office to feel connected to my colleagues and like I have a place in the world outside, and being at home so I don't have to see anyone, to feel disconnected from the world outside.

While I'm at home I stay with all of the usual trappings that entails: running (maybe, if I can get up and make myself do it), juicing, (on a good day, and if I hadn't broken my juicer like I did yesterday), making a list for the day (so that I can compartmentalise the tasks into small, manageable chunks and prevent myself from feeling overwhelmed by the entire picture by tackling one thing at a time) and then working through that list and postponing decisions on anything else until I reach the end of the day so that I can ensure that I reach the end of the day and then can do whatever I need to to feel safe, protected, and free from worry.

This week I couldn't cope. One of the things that I am most susceptible to with depression is the fact that I have developed over my entire life an inability to cope with separation from others. My subconscious (i.e. the bit of me that makes the decisions about how I'll feel about anything, which the rational me doesn't get a say in) smashes the alarm glass and sets off the sirens when I'm left alone by people who are a supportive presence in my life. Whether for this or for other reasons, I crashed back into full scale depressive symptoms:

• Waking up at 4 am without a hope of getting back to sleep because the 'On' button in my brain is stuck down permanently
• Loss of interest in doing anything other than making it through the day, in a haze of numbness where I can't feel anything
• Loss of appetite, so that even the nicest freshly-baked chocolate chip cookie might as well be cardboard going into my mouth
• Short term memory: I'm writing absolutely everything down because I can't remember what I'm saying. I frequently lose my thread mid sentence and can't get to the end of it without having to be reminded what I was saying in the first place.
• Low frustration tolerance. I cried in anger when I couldn't get the zip done up on one of my dresses. I was enraged when I dropped a plastic food box on the floor which meant I had to clean it. I felt inexplicably irritated when I realised we had run out of loo roll. 

And, for the last one, I cried and cried and cried about the fact that I was back down the rabbit hole of depression, with the medication and therapies that have been helping me to recover feeling like worthless placebos (which rationally I know they're not) and I cried because I was still alive feeling like this and there might never be an end to it.

Thursday 20^th August, 4:27pm.

I suppose I’m still alive, but …ugh what cost? At the cost of feeling absolutely crap most of the time at the moment. I hate to say that but the next thirty years don’t feel so great. Is there really any point?

I went to hospital last week and confessed I spent at least four days out of seven wanting to be dead. They worried about me and offered admission, which I didn't want, advised me to take extra sedatives, which I felt wasn't that helpful- feeling like "Let's keep her alive by making her even more numb to the world outside". That's not living in my book.

Yes, there is a point, I know, rationally, that it must be so. But I am still all of the above, numb, frustrated, short tempered, sick of it all. I might be useful at work and get through each day with projects on track and employees supported, but I come home or leave work and I feel empty. I have nothing much left for the evening except to feed myself and then sleep. I can manage to eat (although I don’t have an appetite). I can manage to talk a little with Mat (though I lose track of what I’m saying and don’t feel I have a good grip on what’s going on in the world or that I have anything interesting to say). I can perhaps write a few tweets, respond to a couple of texts, and try to stay connected to the outside world.

Unraveling and trying to keep it together at the same time

Saturday 2nd August, 07:28am

I'm up and ready in my running gear for the park run. I've carried on doing what I can through this - I've kept going to work (from home a few days and in the office some days). This is to combine the need to hide my tear-stained face from the world at times and my need to get out there and show myself to jog myself a little back into the norms of the day and try and feel something other than nothing as I do it. I've kept running every day, and although I cried (again. So much crying these last two weeks) in anger because I managed to fall on a rainy morning and injure my elbow again, as well as develop impressive bruises all over and not be able to run the 5 miles I was planning, I didn't actually break it x-ray confirmed) so I can go and do the park run this morning. 

I've put my makeup on and met friends a couple of times, which was a struggle but probably did me a lot of good. And I have rested with books, with my beloved Netflix, and eaten sandwiches at 5pm to close the day, heading to bed to read at 6 and shutting out the world so I can draw that day to a close and rest before the next one. 

And I have done other things: I've recorded another interview for the BBC, written an article for Metro online (watch this space for that) and applied to go on Campaign Bootcamp, in spite of not being accepted last time. 

#spoonie 

I'm recognising that my depression makes me a #spoonie and I need to select what to do and not to do when I'm really poorly. Unfortunately my social life usually is the first to go as I want to make it through work as a semblance of a normal existence. It's my choice though, and I choose how to allocate whatever energy or mixture of numbness and feeling comes to me on any of those days.

So, yes, I am alive, and I'm carrying on. I have seen from Twitter that a lot of my Twitter friends with mental illness are also having a really bad time. I'm hoping the summertime sadness will pass. As always I recognise how lucky I am to have supportive family and friends around me, and medical professionals who want to help me get better, not get (even more) lost. I hope I can write a more together post for next week. But I'll just settle for what I can manage today for now.

Dear Stranger: My letter to the world on the theme of happiness (Mind Charity)

"Dear Stranger is a collection of inspirational, honest and heartfelt letters from authors, bloggers and Mind ambassadors to an imagined stranger. Insightful and uplifting, Dear Stranger is a humbling glimpse into different interpretations of happiness, and how despite sometimes seeming unobtainable happiness can, in the smallest of ways, become and achievable goal..."

...And when I read that summary provided on the Penguin website it seems that with the positive messages in the book, provided by the collection of writers, many of whom I greatly respect, that happiness which – to me – so often – does seem unattainable (or it does when I define it as being the end of depression) – starts to feel less vaporous.

Click here to buy Dear Stranger on Amazon.co.uk

Reading further on Mind’s website, the book describes the letters as a collection of the thoughts of a number of (named) authors, who “offer their innermost thoughts on what happiness means to them.”

After a lovely meeting today with someone who represents one of the clients which the company I work for works with to talk about what we are doing as a firm about our approach to raising awareness and lessening stigma around mental health, I offer this small missive to the world of the city, as my wish for happiness in the strange world in which I work.

Dear stranger,

This is a story about two little girls who grew up. Both began life as little girls who liked running around, reading stories and singing nursery rhymes. One of the little girls had bad nightmares, though, and found sleeping often terrifying. The other little girl loved imagination and reading and creating stories, and could sing nursery rhymes with all the actions almost as soon as she could talk.

The little girls went off to school. One of the little girls loved school, she loved painting and writing and playing hopscotch. She learned to wink from the dinner lady Mrs. Keene and loved using it as part of her cheeky personality. The other girl cried when she was dropped off at school. She didn't want to leave her mother and spend the day in the company of other children or adults who were not safe. She sometimes got horrible headaches and couldn't wait for the day to be over so she could go home.

The girls went to junior school. The first little girl wrote a poem about a daffodil which was put up on the wall. She learned to play the piano and the trumpet, she sang songs in the playground at break time and played ball games and elastic band games and cats' cradle. She made lots of friends and had great fun learning to roller skate, ballet (and then giving up ballet because it was boring to "point and close" on and on), ice skate, horse ride and take part in the school's winning speech and drama group. She could run and swim really well. Breast stroke was her best stroke. Once she showed all the other girls how to do it because her teacher singled her out as one of the best swimmers.

The second little girl was scared of the playground. She was made to stand on the playground wall all break time by three older girls and wasn't allowed to get down. It happened every playtime and in the end, she pretended to be ill and asked for permission not to go to school. She didn't say why. Her parents didn't find out for a while that she was being bullied. Aged nine it happened again with a different bully. The second little girl thought it was probably get fault, because she had, after all, been bullied before. She started to believe there must be something wrong with her. She also couldn't breathe very well and often felt too tired to go to school. Eventually she was diagnosed with asthma and started to have trouble with sports.

At senior school the first little girl made more friends and enjoyed the new clubs, the different subjects and the new uniform. She made sure she understood the right tights to wear, the right shoes, bag and everything else. She went to sleepover parties and pool parties and all sorts of other parties. She met boys at the boys' school, and enjoyed life in the "big" school. She found it exciting to be growing up. She enjoyed swimming and drama, she loved going to the cinema. She didn't always work hard at all her subjects but she still did pretty well in her school exams, especially in English and Latin, her favourite subjects. Her teachers told her she was doing well and could do very well. She knew she could do well enough in the subjects she cared about and she didn't try too hard at the other subjects because she didn't want the teachers to push her too much and stop her having fun.

The second little girl found it hard to adjust to big school. She got very tired and overwhelmed by all the new teachers. It was hard to learn every different teacher's sets of rules. It was hard to manage all the homework. She found it frightening and tiring to be growing up. It was hard. She found homework confusing and exhausting at times. She didn't get top marks in her exams. Sometimes she did badly. Her teachers told her she wasn't working hard enough. She needed to work harder. She tried to please the teachers but sometimes she found it too hard and because she didn't concentrate in lessons or understand everything, and because she was often too ill with asthma she had to go to hospital and she fell behind.

These little girls have different lists of achievements, as you can see, and on they went. One of them went to university and got a degree. She got a job with a prestigious graduate charity and then a job in the city, all in her twenties.The other one had health problems with stress, grief, depression and anxiety throughout her twenties and got a degree with difficulty. They both fell in love with a wonderful man, but one of them - now a young woman - seemed to find it easier to have a great time and enjoy every moment together; the other young woman was plagued by anxieties about herself and worried about their relationship frequently. One was promoted several times at work, worked internationally and was recognised a number of times for her achievements; the other found the depression returning at intervals and spent some holidays resting in bed for fear of confessing her illness to a world she feared would not understand, and because she could not accept the weaknesses and failures she saw in herself.

So, reader, what do you think happened to those two little girls? As you have probably guessed, because you are wise and discerning, and used to stories like these, those two little girls were one and the same. In fact those two little girls grew up to be me.

Now you will say to me, "Writer, you have not told a tale of happiness, which I thought was your purpose?" And I will say this to you: I read my own story back again and again, and I remind myself that I am the happy little girl alongside the sad; I am the confident high achiever alongside the shy, fearful and tearful teenager. I am the woman who has made a successful career in spite of suffering episodic depression, anxiety and trauma. I am she. 

When I need a reminder of the definition of happiness, I can look at parts of my own life. (And when I want a reminder of sadness and hurt, I can do the same, but enough of that for now.) I shall celebrate the happiness when I can, and be thankful for every happy moment past, present, and yet to come. And throughout my life, as you have seen, there have been threads and strands and patches of happiness, alongside any sadness you may see or know of. So, please, dear stranger, remember that. And lastly, I wish a wish for you: yards of happiness of your own, among all the threads of sorrow. Keep looking backwards and forwards for happiness because it can and will find you, somehow, somewhere, and treat others with the kindness that you try to show yourself.

With love, Jessica