It's Raining

I made this blog with the best intentions to post regularly and keep up to date.  Despite the fact that I always intended to blog predominantly about mental health, it completely slipped my mind just how debilitating a depressive phase can be.  

It's scary how quickly you can sink back to the lows that you thought you'd hauled yourself out of.  Sure, you feel yourself slipping, but it's just a bad day.  Okay, maybe it's a bad week, well, at a push, a bad month.  Before you know it you've drawn the conclusion that life is definitely not worth it anymore and are planning your escape route.  

Pretending what's going on isn't happening doesn't make it any less real.  Telling yourself you're fine when you're chest feels like an empty, soulless cavity isn't going to make you feel whole again. Your mood is like your internal weather.  How can you live in the midst of a storm?  

'If it's raining it's no good saying it isn't raining. Water is actually falling from the sky.' - Stephen Fry 

When it rains, it rains, but it can't rain forever.  No one can avoid the odd shower of sadness, but even the most depressive downpours will ease off in time.  

Moods, like the weather can be unpredictable, but nothing happens without a reason.  When the clouds are saturated with water vapour it rains, when positive and negative charges meet there's lightning and when air heats up and expands there's thunder.  What goes on in the atmosphere can be a bit of a mystery and so can what's going on in the subconscious.  

I'm beginning to put the pieces together and figure out why things got so bad, but the truth is it would have been so much easier if I'd opened my eyes to the situation before it escalated.  You mightn't be able to control the rain, but if you know the forecast you can at least have your umbrella ready.    

The Hour of Lead

The past week has been hellish.  At times I've been so numbed out that I didn't actually know how I was feeling.  All the while it was building up behind the floodgates, ready to knock me off my feet when I was least expecting it.  

The days have been long and void of emotion and the nights, thanks to insomnia, have been long too, but it's only then that feelings hit with full force.  Keeping up my pretence is my main goal during the day: if I don't my misery contaminates everyone else's life too.   As soon as the freedom to feel is reinstated and I shut my bedroom door in the evening, the floodgates burst open.  

I can't shut feelings out anymore.  I've gotten good at fooling other people, but I've not figured out how to fool myself yet.  My feelings swamp me completely.  I can feel a dull heavy pain building in my chest, dragging me down as if I'm drowning in my own emotion. It's impossible to change how I feel.  I can't change the fact that it hurts, but that's where the paracetamol comes in.  If I can't make it stop the next best option is to dull the pain.  In my foggy paracetamol induced stupor I'm not drowning anymore: I'm floating.  

Yet another unhealthy coping mechanism, I know, but, yet again, I didn't give a damn.  Why sink when you can swim?  I didn't think it was a big deal, so I mentioned it in therapy, but boy, did the shit hit the fan.  She rang my Mum, then I had to get my Dad to come in to talk about it.  By the time I got home the GP had been called and I got a phone-call from a doctor because it was too late to arrange an appointment.  He told me to go to A&E for urgent blood tests and re-referred me to the CMHT.  I didn't go to A&E and I'm not sure what I'll do when my referral comes through in the post. 

I think I'm beginning to give off crazy person vibes again.  I am apparently not making very good choices because I'm not in a very good place right now.  The medication mafia is on the prowl again and my therapist even asked if it's safe for me to be at home this weekend.  Other people making my decisions for me, putting me in hospital without my consent and insisting that I ingest a host of happy pills morning and evening didn't exactly 'fix' me last time. 

Living seems like a ludicrous prospect.  I'm sure I'm even suicidal - just weary of living.  I’ve experienced as many emotional ups and downs than most people do over the course of a lifetime.  I’m as exhausted as a one hundred year old.  I’ve lived enough now.  I broke down this morning, crying hysterically for hours on end.  I 
don't know what to do anymore; I don't know what I want anymore.
  
Despite how bad things are at the moment, I did see how much progress I have made after the hysteria began to subside.   This time four years ago I was trying to steal my antidepressants and diazepam from my Mum’s bag when she wasn’t looking so I could overdose, three years ago I was burning myself with my curling tongs, two years ago I refused to eat anything but some lettuce every 48hrs and last year I was abusing laxatives, binging and overexercising compulsively.  I’m not going to wake up tomorrow, jump out of bed and be full of the joys of spring, but I won't do anything to stop me waking up tomorrow.  I've outlived the Hour of Lead before, and I'm going to do it again.  I'm not exactly sure how yet, but I'm going to cope somehow.