Two days in a row of constant social activity is too much for me. I know this.
I need breaks; I need a chance to hide in the bedroom and not get out of bed. To pace myself, do what I can when I can, and not what I can't when everything's gotten to be too much. It's the only way that I can manage to do things at all - storing up the willpower and energy and spoons to get it done and then expending them all in one go. I know, full well, that doing too much is not good for me.
But I continue to do it anyway.
This last weekend, which was only the second time I'd been out of the house in the past horrible fortnight, I stepped beyond 'too much' and into the realms of 'this will break you'. On Friday night I saw my brother for the last time before he goes to France for six months; one of the first things he said to me was that he'd been to see dad on the way down, and I felt my brain smash into millions of pieces as I realised that I felt scared of my own brother just because he'd been near that man who was once my father and is now just an imposter wearing his skin.
We had a meal that was nice when I convinced myself not to break down and he went.
I tried to sleep, but was alone because my boyfriend was away. I don't sleep well. I never have done, but these days if I close my eyes all I can think about is how if I fall asleep I won't be cognisant and it will be like death and then I will think of how terrified I am of dying and the world will close in around me. I get to sleep because I can listen to him snoring and breathing and being alive and being there. It shouldn't really have surprised me that when he's not there, I don't sleep. At all. I suppose really it didn't surprise me, just disappointed.
So after tossing and turning for a night I got up and went to play LRP. It was a fun day, except I felt myself overcome by the mid-level and constant nagging feeling that no one likes me and I'm being an utter idiot. Nothing bad happened. I still felt like it. Being the entirely logical and sensible person that I am, I then went to the pub in the evening. Because cramming myself into the corner of a hugely busy room full of noisy and drunk people is totally the best thing to do.
I was doing okay, and then one of my dear friends who is wonderful and meant me not a single ounce of harm in any way whatsoever started talking about how someone we know frustrates him - and although he was talking about them all I could hear was you, it's you we hate and are annoyed by, and then it was like he was talking in my voice - the voice I use on myself. I asked him to stop talking. I burst into tears, and broke down like I hadn't done in front of my brother. I hid in my friend's arms so that I could pretend no one else was there and they weren't seeing me and judging and looking at the useless and weak and stupid mentally ill girl in the corner.
I couldn't get the words out to explain to my friend what was going on. He kept apologising. I couldn't summon the words to tell him that it wasn't him that had upset me, but it was me. He looked after me for the rest of the evening and made sure I got home safely and all I could think was I do not deserve any of this.
I went home and couldn't sleep again.
The next morning I ran an LRP adventure for eight of the most experienced roleplayers I know, including two of my best friends and a good deal of people who utterly terrify me because they are so very much cleverer and better than me. It was just me and a well-meaning but massively irritating 14-year-old. I felt the story I had written falling to pieces around me and everyone judging me and it all going utterly, utterly awfully. I forgot things, screwed things up, it was awful.
All of the players wouldn't stop telling me how good a day they had. I guess my perspective is screwed; but when I came home and finally saw my boyfriend I almost broke down again in front of everyone and it was all I could do to go to bed and log onto my MUD and pretend that absolutely nothing was wrong. (But my boyfriend knew. He can always tell even when I don't say).
I did, however, finally get some sleep - and I've managed to regain composure enough to write this (there's an irony there because I've only just noticed that I've been crying constantly whilst writing). What I wanted to say...well mostly I wanted to vent, I think, and to explain how too much is a relative thing - is that even though I know this weekend was horrendous and more than I could ever do, I will do exactly the same thing again.
Because I have to prove to the world that I'm not utterly broken, and I wish I could do that without just breaking myself more.
Monday, 5 December 2011
Tuesday, 29 November 2011
Achievement and Ambition
Last year I competed in and completed Nanowrimo, a writing contest where the goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in only 30 days. It's one of those things that seems like a huge task as a whole, but when broken down into day-by-day doesn't seem so bad; 1,666 words a day doesn't seem like as much as 50,000 in total. Even still I didn't expect to finish. I'd competed twice before, once abandoning my novel at around 20k and the other time at 15k.
To this day I am not sure what it was about last year that enabled me to get all the way through to the end and finish. I'm sure it's due in large part to the fact that my psychiatrist and I were working on dealing with things one at a time. So taking it day by day, looking at those 1,666 word groups instead of the whole, meant that I worked my way through the thirty days (not without numerous hitches) and came out the other side with a novel.
Except I didn't - I got to my 50,000 words and realised, to my surprise, that the plot swimming vaguely around in my head was not even half complete.
Bollocks, said I, and proceeded to ignore the novel for the best part of six months. Eventually at that point I managed to go through and do a rewrite, and was astonished to find that I didn't actually think it was quite the epic pile of shit I remembered. I rewrote and edited and came up with the crazy idea that perhaps there weren't just a few more words in that story - but there were another 50,000.
So November rolled around and I said hey, you know what. Let's see if I can't get this finished. Several friends of mine were also taking part, so spurred on by their companionship, the lingering pride of ever finishing last year at all and a perfectionist's need to get the story told, I started writing. The first couple of weeks went alright; when I missed days, I caught up reasonably quickly. I won't say it was easy. Often I'd sit down and find myself totally unable to write anything purely because I was gripped so terribly by the concept that no matter what I wrote, it would be utter tosh.
Then I got so sick the other weekend that I gave myself the flu. I missed five straight days - just under 10,000 words worth - of writing. I fell utterly behind, managing only about 500 words in those days. I came very close to giving up. I was looking at the graph thinking I am meant to be at 35,000 words and I've written just over 20k. I can't pick myself up from there, surely?
But, largely out of not having anything better to do - and the secret fact that, if I can get through all of the things that annoy me like my fear of failure and the fact that typing for too long gives me this funny feeling in my fingers that makes me want to shake and punch things, I rather enjoy writing - I continued. And then I realised that I was catching up, bit by bit, writing 2,500 words a day instead of 1,666. Then I realised, two days ago, that I was at 45,000 - I was nearly there.
Then yesterday I wrote up to my 47,000 target...realised that I was right near the end of the story, and I pushed on. And I finished. Properly finished, this time - a whole novel, a whole story, 103k words.
What this reminded me of and what I wanted to say, other than to celebrate, is the following:
Depressed people can have ambitions too.
We play life on a higher difficulty setting and have less mana to cast spells with. It's like running the same race as everyone else, but carrying a huge rucksack with you. Our ambitions might not strike as high (or they might aim too high, and that's half the issue), and the things that fill us with the glory of achievement might seem trivial to some people.
But I don't think any achievement, even if it's just getting out of bed - or leaving the house for the first time in a week and a half like I did this morning - is trivial or petty. And even if I can't say that I'm proud* of myself, I can at least say that I did something and there is proof and evidence and even my fucked up psyche cannot deny what I have done and achieved.
So that's what my novel means to me. Victory. Victory through massive adversity.
* Regarding the P-word: this word when spoken to me by anyone makes me instantaneously burst into tears. Following this post I have now discovered that such reactions also apply if I write it about myself.
To this day I am not sure what it was about last year that enabled me to get all the way through to the end and finish. I'm sure it's due in large part to the fact that my psychiatrist and I were working on dealing with things one at a time. So taking it day by day, looking at those 1,666 word groups instead of the whole, meant that I worked my way through the thirty days (not without numerous hitches) and came out the other side with a novel.
Except I didn't - I got to my 50,000 words and realised, to my surprise, that the plot swimming vaguely around in my head was not even half complete.
Bollocks, said I, and proceeded to ignore the novel for the best part of six months. Eventually at that point I managed to go through and do a rewrite, and was astonished to find that I didn't actually think it was quite the epic pile of shit I remembered. I rewrote and edited and came up with the crazy idea that perhaps there weren't just a few more words in that story - but there were another 50,000.
So November rolled around and I said hey, you know what. Let's see if I can't get this finished. Several friends of mine were also taking part, so spurred on by their companionship, the lingering pride of ever finishing last year at all and a perfectionist's need to get the story told, I started writing. The first couple of weeks went alright; when I missed days, I caught up reasonably quickly. I won't say it was easy. Often I'd sit down and find myself totally unable to write anything purely because I was gripped so terribly by the concept that no matter what I wrote, it would be utter tosh.
Then I got so sick the other weekend that I gave myself the flu. I missed five straight days - just under 10,000 words worth - of writing. I fell utterly behind, managing only about 500 words in those days. I came very close to giving up. I was looking at the graph thinking I am meant to be at 35,000 words and I've written just over 20k. I can't pick myself up from there, surely?
But, largely out of not having anything better to do - and the secret fact that, if I can get through all of the things that annoy me like my fear of failure and the fact that typing for too long gives me this funny feeling in my fingers that makes me want to shake and punch things, I rather enjoy writing - I continued. And then I realised that I was catching up, bit by bit, writing 2,500 words a day instead of 1,666. Then I realised, two days ago, that I was at 45,000 - I was nearly there.
Then yesterday I wrote up to my 47,000 target...realised that I was right near the end of the story, and I pushed on. And I finished. Properly finished, this time - a whole novel, a whole story, 103k words.
What this reminded me of and what I wanted to say, other than to celebrate, is the following:
Depressed people can have ambitions too.
We play life on a higher difficulty setting and have less mana to cast spells with. It's like running the same race as everyone else, but carrying a huge rucksack with you. Our ambitions might not strike as high (or they might aim too high, and that's half the issue), and the things that fill us with the glory of achievement might seem trivial to some people.
But I don't think any achievement, even if it's just getting out of bed - or leaving the house for the first time in a week and a half like I did this morning - is trivial or petty. And even if I can't say that I'm proud* of myself, I can at least say that I did something and there is proof and evidence and even my fucked up psyche cannot deny what I have done and achieved.
So that's what my novel means to me. Victory. Victory through massive adversity.
* Regarding the P-word: this word when spoken to me by anyone makes me instantaneously burst into tears. Following this post I have now discovered that such reactions also apply if I write it about myself.
Monday, 21 November 2011
Powering Through Fear
For many years I've gone with the theory that if I avoid social activities, I will never get into the situation where I feel awful about things I've said, done, or looked like. That if I just don't go out, there's nothing to worry about, because I'm not going out and I'm not thinking about having gone out, or having to go out. For a long time, not only did this work, but it was what was best for me.
Of course the issue with only ever staying at home is that you don't get any positive reinforcement - and since I'm now getting to the point where I can even get my brain to hear the positive reinforcement (not quite at the point where it always goes in and doesn't go out the other ear yet), it's started to mean that going out is better for me than staying in. I'm wholly ready to accept that it's been good for me for a lot longer than I've been able to admit; but that's the nature of being depressed. I don't think I'm capable of things.
Now, however, I've a whole new kettle of fish to fry. Finally I've got to the point where - and there are many caveats here, so bear with me - in a (familiar) social situation with people (who I know and have known for ages, who know about my condition), with the freedom to come and go as I please (now that I'm not too scared to take taxis), I'm able to attend and enjoy social activities such as going to the pub, taking part in LRP, or other things that previously did nothing but strike fear into my heart.
The thing is, the fear is still there - only now in my determination to get better (largely focused around not being a useless and irritating pain in the arse to everyone silly enough to care about me), I sometimes ignore it. I charge in, head on, powered by adrenaline and my determination to prove to myself and other people that I'm still a person.
That doesn't mean I don't get scared.
In fact I would say I actually have worse reactions to doing social things now than I did when I just didn't do them at all. When I didn't go, I felt guilty, a bit useless, but fundamentally placated myself with 'it's okay, you're just not ready yet'. Now I know I can do it, and I know I can do it even when I'm otherwise feeling awful. It's not the motivation I should be using on myself, but to be honest some of the motivations I've use to get myself out of bed aren't ideal but at that point I had to do something otherwise I never would. I keep myself from self-harming by pointing out that it would hurt my mum too much and that I'd be an awful, hideous daughter. Never mind the fact that it used to release some of the hurt in my head and help me.
Anyway, the point is that these days I get nervous before doing things, but during them I'm generally okay. The time that hurts is afterwards. The best way to explain it is to use an example and since the need for catharsis is partly why I'm writing this post, I'll use this weekend as one. On Saturday I played an LRP event, where I was in charge of everyone and telling them what to do. I was comfortable with this until a large part of the story was all about me. I freaked, realised suddenly that I was being horribly arrogant and taking up all of the focus for the event, that I was making it all about me when really I should shut up and get to the back because no one wants to listen to my utterly idiotic drivel.
(You get the no holds barred version of my mental monologue, I'm afraid).
Somehow I got through and finished the dungeon. Then it was time for an in-character party. For my birthday this year my wonderful and amazing boyfriend bought me a gown. It's perhaps the most stereotypically feminine thing I've ever owned. It's silver and purple and absolutely beautiful. I was determined to wear it, no matter how scared I felt that everyone was going to be staring at me because I'm fat, ugly, and so short the dress trailed along the ground. Now there are two versions of how I feel about the party itself. Here's the first, more literal one:
I had some interesting IC discussions with people, including getting to produce some of the aspects of my character that don't usually come up when you're being chased by goblins/zombies/whatever, including a long political debate with someone my character hates, and generally I didn't make a fool of myself. I drank wine, but not so much that I was doing more than relaxing. I helped save one of my friends when she fainted (corset too tight) by carrying her out of the venue and making sure she was okay. I know I helped because her husband hugged me and said thank you (this is proof, my brain requires proof).
So that's the first version. Here's the other.
I turned up in that dress which everyone complimented me on because frankly it did say that everyone needed to be looking at me, and I have no idea why I did that because I know I hate being looked at because I am fat and ugly. I drank alcohol which I know makes me feel awful the next day and makes me act like a childish imbecile. The fact that I put certain aspects of my character across is irrelevant because everyone thinks my character concept is stupid anyway, in fact by staying 'faithful' to it I probably made it worse. I was loud, obnoxious, and generally an idiot. The only remotely good thing I did was helping my friend when she fainted, and frankly I should've just buggered off and left her other half to help her instead of assuming it was okay for me to do so. Oh, and on the way home I dropped my mobile phone which got run over because I'm an idiot and even though I noticed that it hadn't gone into my bag properly I didn't stop and check which meant the man that found it phoned loads of people from it who I would never ever dare to call because they don't want to be bothered by me.
That would be the second version. They're slightly at odds, only in my head they're equally loud. They are why yesterday I spent the whole day in bed, only ate when someone put a plate of food in front of me, and did a mixture of trying to sleep it off and staring at the ceiling not answering my boyfriend's questions about how I was.
Today, I've got an awful cold - largely due to not sleeping properly or looking after myself yesterday - and I'm still feeling pretty awful, apart from the times where I stop feeling anything at all (which are the ones that scare me - I'm rather used to feeling awful these days). More than anything now I feel guilty for whining and complaining because there are billions of people in the world and most of them don't become utterly pointless and useless sacks of meat the moment something bad happens to them (and even in this case when nothing bad has happened at all).
So that in summary is why right now I don't want to do anything social for a while, and why powering through fear is not necessarily a good thing. Hopefully it's managed to come across without two much self-targeted vitriol (bar the paragraphs which were made entirely of it as a demonstration), because right now I'm struggling to think anything else. I just wanted to write this now in the hope that it would make me feel better (I think right now it's just made me hate myself more), and in the hope that I could explain in a way that people would understand (I have no idea if I did or not).
Of course the issue with only ever staying at home is that you don't get any positive reinforcement - and since I'm now getting to the point where I can even get my brain to hear the positive reinforcement (not quite at the point where it always goes in and doesn't go out the other ear yet), it's started to mean that going out is better for me than staying in. I'm wholly ready to accept that it's been good for me for a lot longer than I've been able to admit; but that's the nature of being depressed. I don't think I'm capable of things.
Now, however, I've a whole new kettle of fish to fry. Finally I've got to the point where - and there are many caveats here, so bear with me - in a (familiar) social situation with people (who I know and have known for ages, who know about my condition), with the freedom to come and go as I please (now that I'm not too scared to take taxis), I'm able to attend and enjoy social activities such as going to the pub, taking part in LRP, or other things that previously did nothing but strike fear into my heart.
The thing is, the fear is still there - only now in my determination to get better (largely focused around not being a useless and irritating pain in the arse to everyone silly enough to care about me), I sometimes ignore it. I charge in, head on, powered by adrenaline and my determination to prove to myself and other people that I'm still a person.
That doesn't mean I don't get scared.
In fact I would say I actually have worse reactions to doing social things now than I did when I just didn't do them at all. When I didn't go, I felt guilty, a bit useless, but fundamentally placated myself with 'it's okay, you're just not ready yet'. Now I know I can do it, and I know I can do it even when I'm otherwise feeling awful. It's not the motivation I should be using on myself, but to be honest some of the motivations I've use to get myself out of bed aren't ideal but at that point I had to do something otherwise I never would. I keep myself from self-harming by pointing out that it would hurt my mum too much and that I'd be an awful, hideous daughter. Never mind the fact that it used to release some of the hurt in my head and help me.
Anyway, the point is that these days I get nervous before doing things, but during them I'm generally okay. The time that hurts is afterwards. The best way to explain it is to use an example and since the need for catharsis is partly why I'm writing this post, I'll use this weekend as one. On Saturday I played an LRP event, where I was in charge of everyone and telling them what to do. I was comfortable with this until a large part of the story was all about me. I freaked, realised suddenly that I was being horribly arrogant and taking up all of the focus for the event, that I was making it all about me when really I should shut up and get to the back because no one wants to listen to my utterly idiotic drivel.
(You get the no holds barred version of my mental monologue, I'm afraid).
Somehow I got through and finished the dungeon. Then it was time for an in-character party. For my birthday this year my wonderful and amazing boyfriend bought me a gown. It's perhaps the most stereotypically feminine thing I've ever owned. It's silver and purple and absolutely beautiful. I was determined to wear it, no matter how scared I felt that everyone was going to be staring at me because I'm fat, ugly, and so short the dress trailed along the ground. Now there are two versions of how I feel about the party itself. Here's the first, more literal one:
I had some interesting IC discussions with people, including getting to produce some of the aspects of my character that don't usually come up when you're being chased by goblins/zombies/whatever, including a long political debate with someone my character hates, and generally I didn't make a fool of myself. I drank wine, but not so much that I was doing more than relaxing. I helped save one of my friends when she fainted (corset too tight) by carrying her out of the venue and making sure she was okay. I know I helped because her husband hugged me and said thank you (this is proof, my brain requires proof).
So that's the first version. Here's the other.
I turned up in that dress which everyone complimented me on because frankly it did say that everyone needed to be looking at me, and I have no idea why I did that because I know I hate being looked at because I am fat and ugly. I drank alcohol which I know makes me feel awful the next day and makes me act like a childish imbecile. The fact that I put certain aspects of my character across is irrelevant because everyone thinks my character concept is stupid anyway, in fact by staying 'faithful' to it I probably made it worse. I was loud, obnoxious, and generally an idiot. The only remotely good thing I did was helping my friend when she fainted, and frankly I should've just buggered off and left her other half to help her instead of assuming it was okay for me to do so. Oh, and on the way home I dropped my mobile phone which got run over because I'm an idiot and even though I noticed that it hadn't gone into my bag properly I didn't stop and check which meant the man that found it phoned loads of people from it who I would never ever dare to call because they don't want to be bothered by me.
That would be the second version. They're slightly at odds, only in my head they're equally loud. They are why yesterday I spent the whole day in bed, only ate when someone put a plate of food in front of me, and did a mixture of trying to sleep it off and staring at the ceiling not answering my boyfriend's questions about how I was.
Today, I've got an awful cold - largely due to not sleeping properly or looking after myself yesterday - and I'm still feeling pretty awful, apart from the times where I stop feeling anything at all (which are the ones that scare me - I'm rather used to feeling awful these days). More than anything now I feel guilty for whining and complaining because there are billions of people in the world and most of them don't become utterly pointless and useless sacks of meat the moment something bad happens to them (and even in this case when nothing bad has happened at all).
So that in summary is why right now I don't want to do anything social for a while, and why powering through fear is not necessarily a good thing. Hopefully it's managed to come across without two much self-targeted vitriol (bar the paragraphs which were made entirely of it as a demonstration), because right now I'm struggling to think anything else. I just wanted to write this now in the hope that it would make me feel better (I think right now it's just made me hate myself more), and in the hope that I could explain in a way that people would understand (I have no idea if I did or not).
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Blogging Through Depression
In the past months since I last updated this blog, more than a few things have happened. This would be normal for most people; it's normal for me too. A lot of the things that have happened to me are, however, not normal.
In the past months, I moved in with my boyfriend, stopped taking anti-depressant medication, managed several months without therapy, started group therapy, watched my family fall apart when my dad left, watched those of us who remained knit ourselves back together as a new unit, told my grandparents about my illness, went to the gym every week for two months, then stopped going to the gym because my back was hurting, started playing MMORPGs again, went back into London to see friends from uni for the first time in years, went on impromptu trips to things like the Proms, and generally had a whole world of up down and sideways feelings.
A lot of stuff happened, and when lots of stuff happens I get overwhelmed. I both need to and cannot talk and vent about it. Recently though I've started writing again (thank you Nanowrimo) and it's gotten me back into that bug. Poetry has even happened, which is usually reserved for brief bouts of artistic interest that grip me for a week or so every few years. Although it's very hard to talk about things I can see that I've gotten to a point where I need to talk about things.
But it's not just that, there is something more to it that I've never felt quite the same way before. I need people to read it. I want to tell people what it's like to live with this disability and these illnesses and I want to show people that it's possible to recover enough to live a happy life - even though I'm nowhere near that at the moment. I want people to read things I say and feel heartened by them, feel like they're not alone. More than anything, group therapy has taught me that there is a huge amount of strength in unity and solidarity and recognising that whatever you have felt there is at least one other person in the world who understands - and in fact, it's a hell of a lot more than just one person.
I have no idea how one goes about getting people to read and frankly, I'm terrified of the idea of it - but I need this, it will be good for me, so here you go. Bear with me on this, it'll be a bumpy ride and doubtless quite slow, but we'll get there.
In the past months, I moved in with my boyfriend, stopped taking anti-depressant medication, managed several months without therapy, started group therapy, watched my family fall apart when my dad left, watched those of us who remained knit ourselves back together as a new unit, told my grandparents about my illness, went to the gym every week for two months, then stopped going to the gym because my back was hurting, started playing MMORPGs again, went back into London to see friends from uni for the first time in years, went on impromptu trips to things like the Proms, and generally had a whole world of up down and sideways feelings.
A lot of stuff happened, and when lots of stuff happens I get overwhelmed. I both need to and cannot talk and vent about it. Recently though I've started writing again (thank you Nanowrimo) and it's gotten me back into that bug. Poetry has even happened, which is usually reserved for brief bouts of artistic interest that grip me for a week or so every few years. Although it's very hard to talk about things I can see that I've gotten to a point where I need to talk about things.
But it's not just that, there is something more to it that I've never felt quite the same way before. I need people to read it. I want to tell people what it's like to live with this disability and these illnesses and I want to show people that it's possible to recover enough to live a happy life - even though I'm nowhere near that at the moment. I want people to read things I say and feel heartened by them, feel like they're not alone. More than anything, group therapy has taught me that there is a huge amount of strength in unity and solidarity and recognising that whatever you have felt there is at least one other person in the world who understands - and in fact, it's a hell of a lot more than just one person.
I have no idea how one goes about getting people to read and frankly, I'm terrified of the idea of it - but I need this, it will be good for me, so here you go. Bear with me on this, it'll be a bumpy ride and doubtless quite slow, but we'll get there.
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
My Therapist
I have four more sessions with my psychotherapist.
Four more blocks of fifty minutes where I can say anything, anything at all and know that I'm not being judged. Four more times when I can be nudged gently towards the deepest, darkest parts of myself and get the catharsis that is the wretched, painful sobs of realising just how acutely I feel the pain that I do. Four more times that I can see the face of my therapist who is not just a therapist but a friend and know that she will never, ever think badly of me. That she will tell me when I am exaggerating and not, when I am reading things wrong, when it's okay to say good things about myself and that it's important to be able to say the bad.
She can see through the loud and energetic persona that I put on to hide the other me, the shy and soft-spoken and terrified little mouse, and she can bring out the real me which is a combination of all those other things that I am. She will never push me to do things that I cannot do or do not want to, but will help me to push myself towards the life that I dearly and truly want. There is no person more understanding or trustworthy in the world than this woman.
And in four weeks she's being taken away from me because the NHS will only give a year of one-to-one psychotherapy to people like me, regardless of whether I need more time to heal or not. This woman is one of the single most important people in my entire life and she is being taken away from me. She is so important and yet I know hardly anything about her at all, while she knows absolutely everything that I am and never ever speaks badly of me.
I love her. I love her so acutely and painfully that while writing this I have sobbed hopelessly and with abandon, not tempering my tears like I usually would. And the thing that makes me cry the most is that I cannot express in words the immense gratitude and veritable awe that I have for her, for this woman who has stood besides me as I lay in the pits of despair and said 'It's alright. It hurts, but together we can build you a ladder, and you can start to see the sky'.
No one that I have loved, no one in my family whilst I have lived, has died - but I think I am beginning to know what it is like to be bereaved.
Four more blocks of fifty minutes where I can say anything, anything at all and know that I'm not being judged. Four more times when I can be nudged gently towards the deepest, darkest parts of myself and get the catharsis that is the wretched, painful sobs of realising just how acutely I feel the pain that I do. Four more times that I can see the face of my therapist who is not just a therapist but a friend and know that she will never, ever think badly of me. That she will tell me when I am exaggerating and not, when I am reading things wrong, when it's okay to say good things about myself and that it's important to be able to say the bad.
She can see through the loud and energetic persona that I put on to hide the other me, the shy and soft-spoken and terrified little mouse, and she can bring out the real me which is a combination of all those other things that I am. She will never push me to do things that I cannot do or do not want to, but will help me to push myself towards the life that I dearly and truly want. There is no person more understanding or trustworthy in the world than this woman.
And in four weeks she's being taken away from me because the NHS will only give a year of one-to-one psychotherapy to people like me, regardless of whether I need more time to heal or not. This woman is one of the single most important people in my entire life and she is being taken away from me. She is so important and yet I know hardly anything about her at all, while she knows absolutely everything that I am and never ever speaks badly of me.
I love her. I love her so acutely and painfully that while writing this I have sobbed hopelessly and with abandon, not tempering my tears like I usually would. And the thing that makes me cry the most is that I cannot express in words the immense gratitude and veritable awe that I have for her, for this woman who has stood besides me as I lay in the pits of despair and said 'It's alright. It hurts, but together we can build you a ladder, and you can start to see the sky'.
No one that I have loved, no one in my family whilst I have lived, has died - but I think I am beginning to know what it is like to be bereaved.
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Progress
Often I will think of things that I could do that would help me get better. For example, this week I had to start a diet consisting purely of soluble fibres - to find out what food intolerances I have that are causing my IBS. Unfortunately I'd just been shopping a couple of days before, so I was left with a fridge full of perishables that I couldn't eat. Luckily this is not a hugely painful point financially (as I just got basically all of January's money that I should've had then in one go...), so I didn't have to eat it anyway because there was nothing else to do.
I thought to myself, well I don't really want to throw this all out - I did pay money for it, after all. In the end I came up with the idea of cooking dinner for all of my friends with it. Usually at that point I'd consider the idea, maybe put one or two steps towards doing it; but fundamentally I'd probably bottle out of it, especially if it involved other people.
This time I didn't. Last night I went over to my friends' house and cooked dinner for them and left them the spare food. Whilst today went kind of badly in several ways, it makes it much easier to bear knowing that not only are my friends pretty awesome, but I'm doing well enough to have actually done something. Hooray.
I thought to myself, well I don't really want to throw this all out - I did pay money for it, after all. In the end I came up with the idea of cooking dinner for all of my friends with it. Usually at that point I'd consider the idea, maybe put one or two steps towards doing it; but fundamentally I'd probably bottle out of it, especially if it involved other people.
This time I didn't. Last night I went over to my friends' house and cooked dinner for them and left them the spare food. Whilst today went kind of badly in several ways, it makes it much easier to bear knowing that not only are my friends pretty awesome, but I'm doing well enough to have actually done something. Hooray.
Friday, 11 February 2011
Complaining
As I've written before I've had some issues with the flat above me being obnoxiously loud and putting offensive notes through my door. I promised myself when it happened that I'd make a formal complaint if it happened again - with a single incident I didn't deem it worth the fear that I'd feel as a response of 'telling on them'. Doubtless it harks back to telling the teachers when I was bullied at school, but any time I complain about someone to an official body - even anonymously - I get absolutely terrified that the person I'm complaining about is going to find out that it was me that made the complaint and come and shout at me.
The night before last my boyfriend was here, and whilst we were in bed there were three loud knocks on the ceiling - or the floor, to the person that did it. We weren't being loud at all; my bed creaks a bit because there's no carpet in there (which is not my fault) and because, you know, beds creak - and as my support worker put it earlier, 'unless your boyfriend is some sort of stallion or you like literally screaming then it's not a nuisance'. Which amused me. Despite not being at all embarrassed about my sexual activity, there's something a bit difficult about saying that someone's getting upset because my boyfriend comes over once a week. I end up sort of sheepishly shuffling and going "umm I'm not noisy, honest...we do our best to be quiet and considerate".
But frankly, I have to live in this building too, and I will not extend my consideration to stopping doing something that I enjoy quite a lot and am already trying to be considerate about. It's not like it's waking people up or at obscene times of night either. If I systematically hoovered my entire flat at 3am on a weekday morning then I'd understand the complaint. I wouldn't mind so much but whoever it is that lives there is hugely hypocritical; because most days they've got their music on so loud that my living room literally vibrates. They've had parties there, not frequently but sometimes. I don't mind hearing noise; we live in a block of flats, we are going to hear noise - but there's a level of consideration that needs to happen.
So when those three loud knocks came onto my ceiling, I had a panic attack. I burst into tears and I am so, so glad my boyfriend was there because I felt absolutely terrified. I still do now, though in a more controlled way. It's like discovering that your armour has a potentially fatal crack in it. All I can keep thinking is that I am not safe, I am not alone, I can't escape the people who want to bully and harass me. Obviously I'm fully aware that a lot of this is exaggerated by my condition and lack of logic, but anyone would be distressed by it.
Originally I wasn't going to complain. But my support worker came over and I just...I needed to do it. I needed to hold in the acute terror of being caught telling, of confrontation. I need to accept that it's okay to be annoyed with people who aren't being considerate towards you or are harassing you - like hey, putting threatening and offensive letters through someone's door! Delivered by hand, just to add that extra degree of threat. Every time I hear a door go in the building I freeze. Every time I hear voices I feel like running and hiding, like turning all the lights off so that no one knows I'm here.
I hate it here. I cannot leave soon enough - but I shouldn't let people walk all over me whilst I'm waiting to escape.
The night before last my boyfriend was here, and whilst we were in bed there were three loud knocks on the ceiling - or the floor, to the person that did it. We weren't being loud at all; my bed creaks a bit because there's no carpet in there (which is not my fault) and because, you know, beds creak - and as my support worker put it earlier, 'unless your boyfriend is some sort of stallion or you like literally screaming then it's not a nuisance'. Which amused me. Despite not being at all embarrassed about my sexual activity, there's something a bit difficult about saying that someone's getting upset because my boyfriend comes over once a week. I end up sort of sheepishly shuffling and going "umm I'm not noisy, honest...we do our best to be quiet and considerate".
But frankly, I have to live in this building too, and I will not extend my consideration to stopping doing something that I enjoy quite a lot and am already trying to be considerate about. It's not like it's waking people up or at obscene times of night either. If I systematically hoovered my entire flat at 3am on a weekday morning then I'd understand the complaint. I wouldn't mind so much but whoever it is that lives there is hugely hypocritical; because most days they've got their music on so loud that my living room literally vibrates. They've had parties there, not frequently but sometimes. I don't mind hearing noise; we live in a block of flats, we are going to hear noise - but there's a level of consideration that needs to happen.
So when those three loud knocks came onto my ceiling, I had a panic attack. I burst into tears and I am so, so glad my boyfriend was there because I felt absolutely terrified. I still do now, though in a more controlled way. It's like discovering that your armour has a potentially fatal crack in it. All I can keep thinking is that I am not safe, I am not alone, I can't escape the people who want to bully and harass me. Obviously I'm fully aware that a lot of this is exaggerated by my condition and lack of logic, but anyone would be distressed by it.
Originally I wasn't going to complain. But my support worker came over and I just...I needed to do it. I needed to hold in the acute terror of being caught telling, of confrontation. I need to accept that it's okay to be annoyed with people who aren't being considerate towards you or are harassing you - like hey, putting threatening and offensive letters through someone's door! Delivered by hand, just to add that extra degree of threat. Every time I hear a door go in the building I freeze. Every time I hear voices I feel like running and hiding, like turning all the lights off so that no one knows I'm here.
I hate it here. I cannot leave soon enough - but I shouldn't let people walk all over me whilst I'm waiting to escape.
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