A Day in the Life MH Part Four: A Day in My Little Life

It’s Wednesday 26^th August and this is the last of the four days I’m participating in A Day in the life MH. I’m still ill, struggling with persistent low mood over the last three weeks more intensively than I have in the last year, which doesn’t make any sense to me because it’s summer and surely I should be happy in the summer? The sun is shining (well, some of the time), the trees are green (the grass is yellow, despite the fact it keeps pissing it down) and I have September to look forward to, one of my favourite times of the year, when I can wear winter colours again. It reminds me of new shoes, shiny and smelling strongly of leather from their box when I put them on for the first time, the scent bursting out of the tissue paper and up my nose as a symbol of going ‘back to school’. It's good to imagine that actually, to know that I can feel things outside of the numbness, even though rarely.

You can read my other posts here:

• A Day In The Life MH Part One (Friday 7th November)
• A Day In The Life MH Part Two (Tuesday 10th February)
• A Day in The Life MH Part Three (Sunday 10th May)

I've been struggling to write because of being ill, but I really wanted to contribute to the last part of the Day in the Life Project, so here is my entry. My short term memory is completely shot to pieces at present. My short term memory is completely shot to pieces at present. But I wanted to finish this, and since I took the day off and filled it with not much, here it is, my fourth and last entry for this project. It feels good to finish something even though it feels like I'm not up to much right now. 

Done! It feels good to have completed this project. Completing things can be hard when I'm ill.

Today I took the day off from work because things are quiet and I thought since I had holiday left that it might be useful to rest.

I am always trying to get the balance right between resting and being active, because on the one hand, if I do too much (work, socialising ,running, running around doing errands, tidying, cleaning (yes, I actually clean sometimes) then I risk making myself so stressed and exhausted that I feel overwhelmed and the next day, and the next, and the next start to feel harder and tiny little tasks impossible. 

To promote my activity, I went for a run first thing, just under six miles, to try to take advantage of the time to do a long run in the week without having to get up at 5:00am to do it. I washed and changed and put on lovely crisp clean clothes, then went out to the shop to post a card and buy a sandwich. But when I got back to the house and through the front door, I was too exhausted at the thought of picking up the single envelope on the mat to reach down and get it, so I left it there. This wasn’t the six mile run. It was the depression. I’d got through two, three maybe, hours of activity, and after that I was done for the day.

The day before I had given a talk at work as part of a new programme being piloted to help people understand what resilience means and how they can support others. I knew I’d be fine to give the talk, and I was. 

At the end, though, I was struggling a bit to hold back my emotions and from crying and when I left work later that day I was reminded of my own sadness about the life I’ve had and its downs. I was sinking again. Even though people said that it was good, that it was brave, I was still sinking, weighted down by the anchor of all my memories. 

And I was still swimming upwards, but I was caught in the whirls underwater and couldn’t move much in either direction, away from the harmful, hateful thoughts or towards the good.

I stayed in bed for most of the rest of my day off. I read “ALittle Life” by Hanya Yanagihara. This is one of the saddest (if not actually the absolute saddest) books I have ever read. One of those books that takes my breath from me, winds me almost, and when I look up from the page the world takes a couple of moments to come back to me, so lost was I in the world the author had created. I probably shouldn’t have continued reading it.

It resonated with me when the main character says, “I feel like all I do is disappoint you, and I’m sorry for that, I’m sorry for all of it. But I’m really trying. I’m doing the best I can. I’m sorry if it’s not good enough.” I’m talking to myself here. “Why then does he insist on revisiting and replaying events that happened so long ago? Why can he not simply take pleasure in his present?” Why do I? Why can’t I?

All I did for the rest of the day was read the book. It was relaxing and it was saddening. In fact at the end of the day I had allowed myself to be drawn into the world so deeply that I was picking myself apart for all of the failures I could find in myself. I cried over my inability to get better and all the things in my past that had made me what I still consider often to be ‘defective’ and weak and broken and a failure. I rationally know I’m not but sometimes rationality doesn’t win. I wish I could end this Day in the Life process saying that it does, always, but for me riding the waves of depression mean a lot flotsam and jetsam when I expect it and when I don’t. So to bed. And hoping for a better day tomorrow.

It's New Year's, Eve, Time to Get Anxious!

Anxiety, moi?

On the day after Boxing day I started to write and posted something the day after, but what I actually wrote was much longer, because my feelings post Boxing day, post fat+sugar+alcohol+sugar+fat etc. were more than one blog could contain. I wrote this:

"It's a delicate balance. If I'm in the slew of a deep depression there's not much I can bring myself to do other than stay in bed and perhaps watch something on TV. If I'm a little better I might be able to read something - fiction definitely, not too taxing. Or I could eat something unhealthy (or healthy) or I could drink something healthy (or unhealthy) and then I could... "And don't I want this darned depression to vamoose? Yes I do," I tell myself, and the internal monologue continues. Unfortunately I've got more consciences in my head than a plague of Jiminy Crickets and the discussion goes on for quite some time. I won't bore you with all the repetitions, but on and on they go. 

In the meantime my anxiety might come back right after Christmas with the special worries about the fact that the day we're supposed to eat the most is 6 days away from the night we're supposed to look better than we ever have; apart from our wedding days. Well, anyway, the depression and rumination about what I've just eaten mixes with the worry and anxiety about which outfit on earth I'm going to be able to wear, and this fills up a good amount of time. I never have so much of the two so beautifully blended in their toxic potion than at this time of year.

Last year even though I was on no medication and wasn't receiving any help from a doctor or counsellor, I managed to make it out for a run on Boxing day because I knew that needed to try to curtail the depression caused by chemicals and topped up by me at times with more in alcoholic form, with as vigorous a form of exercise as I could manage. I went running every day from Boxing day to New Year's day (inclusive, almost certainly fuelled by prosecco). This year I can't do that and it's already 27th and I've barely moved from sofa to bed; pre-Christmas Day, I did all my shopping either online or through the local high street shops; I wrapped on the table with lots of cushions to support my back and took a rest afterwards, so all in all, my physical activity has been spectacularly low. 

All in all, I guess I'm saying that I don't have the usual physical aspects of running to help me out, and I've not done too well in making myself get up off the sofa and out into the world. (And the rain hasn't helped either, so no thanks to you, weather gods.) "

Now it's just under twenty four hours in which I will be buttoning myself up in something. I don't know what. Perhaps straight-jacket and comfy sweater will have a stand off. I'm not sure where we'll get to but we shall see. I'm going to a dinner so it would be great if I could eat something without exploding, à la Monsieur Creosote, avant les entrées.

I have had a horrid day of anxiety which I have not self-medicated with any unhealthy food or drink (although I am am going to have a Chinese for dinner. I'll try to eat in moderate proportions. That's 'try'...)

I've felt sick, I've felt miserable, I've stayed in bed and gone for a walk and slept and just waited for it to go away. It might be going now, and I hope they don't put too many additives in the food - I really hope that it doesn't come back. And tonight I get to take the most medication I'm allowed in my weekly cycle to try to stop my legs fidgeting and my arms trembling or whatever the main medication throws at me. "But it will pass", I tell myself. "This will pass. I have to just wait. So wait." And I will. And I do.

I wish you all a happy new year's eve. I've had some where I've made resolutions and some where I've kept those resolutions. And others not. I am going to go into this one a bit more neutrally. I can't resolve to run a marathon this year as I don't know what my neuro-spinal surgeon will say about the metal work and screws in my back, and now I know that these wretched wires in my arm will have to go, but only to be replaced with a rather large and nasty-looking screw instead to have a chance of fixing my arm. Again. 

Hopefully it will work this time. So more hospital for physical conditions. I don't know about what's going on in my head, but I'm back at work, albeit getting there part time and from home, and will be working hard to make sure I try to stay healthy. I suppose that is something like resolve; I just need to remember to not beat myself up on the days where I need to stay in bed because my arm kills or my back prevents me getting up, or my head won't let me leave the house. Resolve, but not regret. I would like, no more, to regret being me.