"Is there something someone could have done?"

Recently I had a friend contact me asking for advice. She is a teacher and has noticed a girl in one of her classes displaying behaviour that fits into the category of anxiety/depression traits (gloomy, not achieving within her abilities, noticeably 'down' body language and facial expressions, negativity, poor self esteem etc etc). My friend asked "Is there something you wish a teacher had done for you?" She added that as part of the health curriculum, the students are addressing things such as self-regulation, resilience and conflict resolution strategies, body language and leadership skills, but she wanted to know if there was anything more that she could do. Was there more than being available to listen, and giving her extra time and support to complete tasks etc?

Firstly, I was surprised to be asked. My friend excused herself for the personal nature of the question, and allowed me the option to decline discussing it, but truth be told I was moved. Someone had recognised someone struggling, and had thought of me, thinking I could help. I have always been open about my struggles, in the hope that this very ripple effect could take place. Now that it's here, though, I'm not really sure what to say.

I didn't know whether I could make any real valuable additions to what was being done, but I offered the below response:

I’d love to be able to say that someone saying or doing any one thing (reminding me that there are people who love me, challenging my negative thoughts) would have pulled me out of the gloom, but the reality is that her brain is likely going to reject any evidence that you give her that says she is liked or capable etc, and it won't be a quick, transformative moment of "Oh. Right. Good point. Thanks." and skipping into the sunshine.

It’s a strong as hell voice in those dark corners of the mind.

Even when the rational side of your brain makes logical and evidence-based arguments that 100% disprove the ideas of ‘nobody likes you, you’re just a failure anyway, everything is pointless’, 9 times out of 10 that tiny, imperceptible voice will override them.

It’s like a gut feeling.

Ever had that sliver of a fear when you’re walking in the darkness of the hallway, and you know, truly and rationally, that you are safe and no one is there, but that little gut feeling says you need to quicken your step and get to the next lightswitch… just in case?

That’s the override.

BUT

That doesn’t mean that your efforts will go unnoticed.

I can vividly remember being called out by another student who gave me a firm but caring ‘not everyone is out to get you!’ and I hear her voice often, even as an adult.

And getting some kind of piece of paper that we had to pass around and write on, and discovering at the end of my school time that so many of my peers actually did like me and found me funny. I remember thinking why the hell did no one say anything before??

Because they felt I wouldn’t hear them. 

I would have heard them. Even if I dismissed it at first, I’d have shelved it.

It's common that your own gloom makes others uncomfortable, and they don't really know how best to approach you, especially if you've knocked back their efforts before. If the voice has spoken through you, biting back at their kindness, dismissing their offerings of any kind of light, it does make people think twice about reaching out again.

So, I guess the only thing I can suggest, as the girl on the other side, is to keep on reaching out. 

Teachers and other school staff were actually the people I took the greatest comfort from during that time.

If she says ‘nobody likes me’, a gentle ‘I think you’d be surprised’ could go a long way.

I was surprised in later life to find out that that inner voice had been lying to me all those years.

The depression and the anxiety go hand in hand. They lock you up and exhaust you, and encourage you that everyone has an agenda, and tell you that the only way to survive is to build walls even if those walls keep out the flowers with the arrows.

Anxiety can say "There are enemies at the door. Lock the windows, be on guard."

Depression can say "This is somehow your fault."

They're best friends, but not to you.

Keep reaching. 

Even if the hand is left hanging, keep it out there.

It will be frustrating, and exhausting, and it will seem like you’re wasting your time. But keep doing it. 

Remind her that you are there. Remind her that you will listen if she needs you to. Remind her that its okay to not be okay. 

I had a teacher who would tell me to smile, to cheer up, to put on a happy face. That last one was done via song so it did make me crack a smile briefly, but no it did not ‘cheer me up’. 

It made grumpy: I was allowed to feel down, I was keeping to myself and not bothering anyone goddammit, and these people were telling me I couldn’t/shouldn’t.

Having permission to not be okay has possibly been the greatest, most helpful thing about this journey. The growing awareness of these types of conditions today means that as an adult, I can now say to my boss or my friends or some of my family “Sorry, I’m not doing okay, but I’m safe.”

And both they and I know it will pass, to give me support or distance if I need, but most importantly, permission. I'm not allowed to apologise to the people who truly understand. Even if I try to, because that voice is saying how much you've disappointed everyone, those who really get it tell me put my apologies away. It's been a long and hard lesson to learn, but permission is a key pointer.

It takes a layer of stress and guilt away. 

Especially as a kid, I felt weighed down by people telling me about how I shouldn’t feel this way or that I didn’t deserve it because someone else had it harder. I found myself saying a friend had died, or it was the anniversary of a death or something similar just to get some peace from the questions. Only then did people say 'oh okay, yeah that’d suck, I’m here if you need/until you stop feeling so down, okay?' when that was all I'd wanted.

So I guess all I can really say in response to the question is:

I wish more people would have kept reminding me that they were there for me, should I ever feel the need/motivation to accept the invitations, and not been discouraged by my initial dismissals. Nothing more than a small reminder, stating that the offer was still open. That voice is quick to interpret the passage of time as a waning interest from others. Sure I probably would have gotten sick of hearing it, but when the time came that I wanted someone, I knew who I could approach.

I wish more people had said that it's okay to not be okay, that they wanted me to be safe but didn't demand that I be happy when I wasn't.

And I wish more people were brave and gentle and tactful enough to call me out when I was being ridiculous in my self-loathing. It's a delicate tap-dance of a kindness, but if the right person can find the right time and do it the right way, then it's something that can be useful down the track, and I thank the girl who first took the time to gauge where I was at and poked a hole in my defensiveness. 

I can't say that all or any of these things will be applicable to the student in question, but these are the things my reflections have brought to mind. 

I wonder if my healing would have started sooner had they been in play.

Musing over.

Related: Four Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Was Struggling With Depression

Crossroads

I am a polymath, a scanner, a renaissance soul.
It means I have not, and likely will not, settle on one career path. I sample at the tapas of life's dinner table.

The great thing is that because I've done a lot, I can do a lot.
But it means that once I've found a niche and I am no longer challenged, I grow bored and listless.

Now imagine that with the looming threat of occasional bouts of depression on the horizon: the lingering laziness and stolen motivation, where even changing from dressing gown to daytime outfit seems daunting.

It means that while I'd like a role where I can constantly be challenged and feel like I'm worth my salt, I know my eventual limitations when the inevitable knocks on the door. The inconsistency of it means it's challenging to navigate. I could fly in my work, and my life, for months with nary a bump in the road, but at some point in the future the black dog invites himself home again, for some undeterminable amount of time.

It's things like this that draw me to factory work. The repetitive mindlessness of it all; it appeals to the safety-seeking moments when I need nothing else but steady work to pay the bills.
But when the days clear up again. I seek challenge and conquest.

I am becoming very good at playing dodgeball in this life.

the dark is where the demons are...

It's nearly 3am and I have work 'tomorrow.'
I sit here on the couch in the darkness, thinking about nothing and everything; just a still, quiet meandering mind in the night.

It conjures up two memories, which revisit me not infrequently.

The first: a brief, fleeting image of being holed up years ago in a roadhouse motel alone by some interstate highway, listening to the trucks drone past as sleep escaped me. I stared into the moonlight and took dark 'artsy' photographs to pass the time, waiting for morning and the new workday, a sentence repeating over and over in my head - the answer to a question I hadn't bothered asking about why I could always sleep better in the daytime:
"The dark is where the demons are..."

The second memory is one from childhood.
I'm at a friend's birthday party. We're all perhaps about eight years old. Maybe younger. We've been playing in the backyard, and I've not been hugely interested in the games but joining in regardless.

Presently we're called inside: the party food is ready, probably cake too.

The other kids, maybe another 5 or 6 children, bustle through the back door to the kitchen and I linger at the back of the single file line. When I get to the door I let it shut in front of me and veer to a chair propped just alongside. I sit and I ponder without pondering - as I am right now - looking out over the now empty yard drenched in sun, and listening to the clamour of munching juveniles just within.

Someone notices I'm missing - the birthday girl, or perhaps her mother, and she opens the door to look for me. Seemingly startled to find me just outside, she asked "What are you doing??"

I reply, distracted "I'm just ...thinking".

Before she can respond her mother calls out to find out what's going on, and my friend relays over her shoulder: "She's thinking"
"Thinking!? What about?" the mother hollers, and my memory lets the rest of her words trail back into my mind and as the image fades to black I recall that I got up then and joined them, embarrassed.


Just being. Just seeing and feeling and thinking without thought. Numb, without the hopeless undertones, - though, she's still there somewhere.

Earlier this evening my partner and I had argued, and I suspect I am simply drained as always after such a challenging time. So I just sit. And am. My body claiming to want sleep, but my mind not surrendering to it, and my body only mildly convincing anyway.
I am not exhausted, I am just being. Just thinking.

A third commonly recounted memory surfaces:
I am in early highschool and the deputy principal has become a sort of mediator between another student and I in the midst of an emotional quarrel. She asks me what I do when I go home, after the conflict at school, and I reply that I do nothing: I do my homework and what tasks needs doing, but otherwise I just sit and think about things. Perhaps I include that I stare at the ceiling and think, I don't remember.
"Hmm" She nods slightly as she considers this. "That's dangerous."

I didn't reply at the time, and don't recall anything else as clearly from that conversation in her office.

"Is it?" my head still asks her today.

Are the quiet moments like this really dangerous? Do they really cause me as much harm as being emotionally heightened sprawled on the floor? Or kicking furniture and yelling?

Usually this type of quiet is the shell that's left when I'm tired and I've spent all the fight in me. I'm not depleted of anything but some energy, and lots of fight.
I'm submissive, passive, pliable.

If my partner is patient enough to wait for the objection to burn out of me in the form of tears and fists into floors, sometimes for hours... in this quiet time, even after the flares of shame and guilt if there's any to spare, I will do whatever it was I was rebelling against to begin with. Whatever tiny, insignificant last camel straw set my balanced brain on fire in the first place.
I become obedient, for the sheer reason that there's nothing left in me in this moment.

Dangerous?

Sometimes I agree with her. But this is not one of those times.
I think she means those times when the darkness is like a vacuum. When your head is not quiet, but full and noisy and repetitive. When the broken record tells you how hopeless and useless you are, and how selfish you are for feeling hopeless and useless. When the dark is where the demons are.

But this is not one of those times.

The demons are still here on nights like this, but they sit beside me. Not tormenting me, but not ignoring me either. We sit together and gaze out into the shadows like two strangers watching the same sunset on the same park bench, in polite silence.

Quietly appraising and respecting each other.

It's as though we have a truce this night: I don't try to stifle my demons, and they don't try to suffocate me.
This must be a sample of what living in peace with your inner demons must feel like.

I pause from finishing this post on that note as one last thought strikes me:
It's not as though I am scared of the dark, but quite the opposite. The night makes no demands. It is peaceful and quiet, and so, so many people are asleep. The day, however, brings harsh light to renewed worries. People and their demands awake. The world stirs.
It's easier to sleep past it all. With a bonus of a soul-lifting charge that only sleeping in sunlight can bring.

Perhaps I've had it wrong all these years, where my demons sleep.

My Black Dog

It's been a few months since I've been motivated enough to write here. Even my personal diary hasn't seen a pen for a while.

A quick recap before I get into the flow of what I want to write about.
In the past 3 months:

• I got the job I was interviewed for last time we spoke. My manager is nice and they are flexible with my hours, since sometimes of late I haven't been up to working (more on that later). The work is simple and repetitive. I excel in the tasks, to the point that it irks me somewhat because I see a lot of coworkers doing the same thing alongside me, but sacrificing good results for speed. It's frustrating to see products going out the door that are woefully put together, yet I've been passive-aggressively told I'm too slow. Sigh. Well, screw you. At least I can see the art in what I'm doing, and I will never be dragged over the coals for creating something sub-standard.
• My second shift in, I was carpooling a workmate and I home when a man using his mobile phone rear ended  my car and shoved us into the back of the car in front of us. My car was a write-off, and after much back-and-forth between the insurance company and myself, I have finally only now bought myself an acceptable second-hand car.
• I started anti-depressants, which is much of the reason I will rant later in this post. I have tried 2 variants of pain-killer/anti-depressant drugs, and aside from having my joint pain reduced I am not thrilled with the results.
• I enrolled in an online course studying Training & Education. It's a field I've been curious about for a while now so with my leftover dollars from the purchase of my new car, I signed myself up to an at-your-own-pace 12month run. The 6month course was cheaper, but I'm a realist. I'm probably already behind schedule.

So that pretty much brings you up to speed.

The weather is slowly turning Springward. I have been feeling the winter a lot more than usual this year: trouble getting and keeping warm, more joint pain than usual, and the to-be-expected Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Today I took the day off work due to a few reasons; my hip is very sore and I need to see my chiro again, plus I had a rough night with a lot of tears and a foot through the wall, plus my partner has had some bad news regarding one of her clients at her work also. So we've declared ourselves unfit for anything too taxing today.
She currently has a workmate over and they are enjoying a cup of tea in the almost-spring weather, talking about the unfortunate events. I took it as a good opportunity to gather my thoughts here, since I was overdue.

When I started working again, we made a game plan. It involved who was responsible for which bills and financial obligations, whilst also outlining what self-care measures we each must apply ourselves to. Mine were to continue to see my chiro, GP and psych, as well as trialling medication to improve my moods and mental state. Aside from the chiro visits, which were on hiatus while I predominantly relied on public transport, I have been keeping up my end of the bargain.

I have never taken anti-depressants before. I was agreeable enough to start taking birth-control pills to counter the PMDD symptoms brought on by my menstrual cycle, but I have been resistant to anti-depressants for as long as I have known about them.

If you had asked me a year ago what I thought was 'wrong with me' I would have listed PMDD, then Social Anxiety, then Anxiety, but I would have bitten your head off if you included Depression in the suggestions.

I was/am swamped in self-stigma about Depression.

"No, I DON'T have Depression"
"I'm just tired/sore"
"I was fine until *insert reason here*"

Depression, in my mind, was/is the unkempt, dressing-gown draped, sad-and-sorry moocher who sits on the couch and watches TV all day. 'Every second person has fucking Depression. I don't have that!' I would spit the word out, as if it were a sour dob of snot on my tongue. My denial would/does frustrate me into a rage, lashing out at the label, fighting with all my strength against being associated with the pathetic images of Depression my brain held.
At the same time, I was ignoring every other day that I had spent in my pyjamas eating biscuits on the couch, staring blankly at the television watching movie after movie after movie. I was raging against an image I was filling nigh perfectly.

Some days are better than others, like the adventures in Depression themselves. Some days I exhaust myself into a sullen acceptance, and I retrospectively recognise all the signs from the past 15 years that undeniably pointed to the black dog* but I had looked the other way. My first clear memory of being depressed I was about 12 or 13, but I'm sure it even pre-dates that.

I came up with a story to cover my inexplicable 'down days' growing up in a close-knit school: Someone had died, it was the birthday of a lost loved one, I had a cold, I didn't sleep well, etc etc etc. I knew that if I just said 'I'm feeling a bit down' the next question would be 'why?'... and I didn't have an honest answer. I knew that was crazy, to be sad for no reason.

Other days I lock myself up, numbing out everyone around me as much as I dared. I kept up the facades to friends and family, so that they wouldn't pry. It's something I've noticed a lot since those years: my motivation for keeping it together was/is simply to avoid all the probing questions that would follow if I didn't.

I ruefully chuckle, even now, and think "What a reason! The only reason I don't snap completely is because I don't want to have to deal with the aftermath? Meaning, were there no aftermath, I would let myself go entirely?"

It's a sad realisation, to know that you're only passing for okay because you're not committed enough to the crazy label.

I feel like I'm in a painful purgatory. The good days taunt me with the possibility that this could be a reality: a happy, normal life, I'm capable of so much. Then the bad days swamp me and my brain laughs at having imagined anything so foolish.

The anti-depressants aren't working, and I go back to the doctor in a few days to discuss another option. They are actually making me worse. I have been lower in these last few months, on these pills supposedly designed to do the opposite, than I have ever managed by myself. I had been reluctant, but had been swayed into giving them a try, if nothing else, to at least write off the possibility that this could be what I need to feel better.

It's horrible, to have to feel so bad before you can say with certainty 'I knew this wasn't the answer.'

I had rebelled against them for so long, and the possibility that I may indeed need them, and now that I had finally been convinced by my partner and my health team to give them a try, they turn out to exactly as I had anticipated: a waste of time, a waste of money, and filling my body and brain with chemicals that alter me.
I have seen too many people I know and love become completely different people whilst taking medications and it had frightened me to think the same could happen to me... and yet here I am, on the end of a 3 month rollercoaster involving meds and withdrawals and moods like any crooked ferris wheel.

I tell myself to snap out of it. The stigma and my self-talk get together and tell me that I'm just weak, and a normal person wouldn't be reacted to the things I do the way that I do. It doesn't matter what anyone else says to me to make me feel better, my spinning thoughts command my attention far more than any outside voice.

My partner tries to help, but her voice simply adds to the constant noise in my head and I am quickly overwhelmed and get snappy. All I want anyone to do is to hug me, regardless of what good advice/intentions they may have.

I am an audience of one to a very loud disharmony. Like trying to listen to a live band play a song while wearing headphone that are playing a different genre of music entirely. The constant duality is tiring, and it's hard to explain thoroughly because no one hears it but me. The word 'hear' doesn't even seem to fit because it's not how I imagine hearing voices to be, just thoughts. Like when you get used to playing a particular album, and you expect the next song before it even starts playing, so much so that your brain actually starts playing it in your head... and then something else starts playing because this is a mix-tape not your favourite album, and for a moment you get confused because your brain is singing one song and your ears are hearing another.

Sigh.

And this is where the exhaustion settles in.

I'm tired of explaining myself, tired of trying to find the magic formula to 'get well', tired of labels, of justifications and explanations, of the black dog and all his friends. I'm tired of battling myself like I have these nearly-two decades.

I forget what my initial point was. Or if I had one.

For now I will simply leave you with the hardest words I have ever spoken:
I have Depression.

Black Dog Institute - What is Depression?
 

My Treacherous Past

After spending some time on my laptop reading travel blog posts of a friend-of-friend, and looking at some of my old photos, I decide I've had enough.

I close the laptop briefly to gather my thoughts, a chance to reflect on the sudden disgust and regret that's bubbled up in me.

The photos flash before my mind's eye again, and I realise that I was feeling taunted by them. They represent memories that frolic about and tease me about happier times. I had looked at the photographs -either taken by me, or of me, or both - and ruefully grimaced "That feels like the last time of my life I was ever truly happy".

I tell myself that I know this is not true.
I know what my mind is like: it has an uncanny ability to summarise over-positively. Unless speaking of a particularly turbulent time of my life, my mind recalls everything as rainbows and sunshine and happiness, and glosses over (or leaves out entirely) any negative feelings or experiences that were present at that time.

It's a survival mechanism, I know. I am a healer. If I could make visible how well and how often this trick has put me back together, I would look like a patchwork doll. It probably accounts for the lifelong feeling of never really identifying with past versions of my self - I am remade so often, I'm not the same person for more than a group of years.

And it's this very lifesaving thing that bothers me now.

I look around me at my nest, something a past-self would have envied, and I make a face.
"Is this who I am now? Is this what I represent?"

I feel weak, and wasted.

Less than a decade ago I was - felt - remember feeling - seemed fearless.

I try to brush it off as a side-effect to my recent 30th. But I've never really been bothered by age or numbers, and I know this is just a convenient excuse; a way to avoid explaining my dysphoria should another person question it.

I recall adventures of recent times: physical challenges, and mental and emotional ones. I remember feeling uncertain and afraid.

"Was I always so hesitant?"
My memory fails me as I try to answer myself. It spits out the usual list of victories and triumphs and happy memories. When I try to force it to focus on something I know must have been hard, but not quite life upheaving, it refuses to give me any more than a cursory acknowledgement of tribulation.

This is where my diaries or old blogs play a part, and it is shame that I fell out of the habit for some years. When I read back, especially those entries that are so vague they only really depict my bad feelings and not the particular issue I was wrestling with at the time, I am amazed to see how anguished I had been... for I have no recollection of it now.

It's frustrating.

But it's also hopeful.

I sit and think about what this means, and how am I feeling now compared to half an hour ago.
Still bummed, but calmer. At least I know that when I do pull myself out of this rut, I won't have much memory of just how low I felt at the time until I read my own words back.

I look at the scars on my body and soul and think about how they came to be; how the bad things have failed to beat me, whether I remember them properly or not.
A fond proverb floats to mind and I smile ruefully at the fact that I only ever remember it in times like these:

This too shall pass.