Tag: Depression

Posted in About today

I don’t care

Posted on by WeeGee

Since last I wrote I have mostly been being disassociated. That’s not necessarily the way I would describe it, but you know, sometimes you have to put your trust in the White Coat People because at least they’re trying to make you better.

If I had to choose a word, I’d be forced to break the rules and choose three because I DON’T CARE and that’s the only way I can think of to put it. Christmas: I DON’T CARE; new job: I DON’T CARE; my life is infinitely better than it ever has been*: I DON’T FUCKING CARE…… (granted, that’s four words)

All this not caring is difficult to explain. I can say the words and people seem to understand what I mean but I can’t seem to make them know how it feels. I can’t help thinking that I’m just supposed to shrug it off, that somehow what I’m feeling isn’t real or if it is real that it’s just something that everyone feels and that everyone somehow manages to get over. This is the news: I can’t get over it. Trust me. I’m trying.

I know that I’m going to get through this mostly, I guess, because I’ve got through it before. I also know that things aren’t nearly as bleak as I think they are because I’m still out there in the world putting one foot in front of the other. I suppose what I’m saying is that it doesn’t really matter whether I care or not – all the things that are going to be will be and I’ll be there and I might still feel the way I do now or I might feel a whole lot better.

The sun will rise, the tides will ebb and flow, life will go on, and things will be. It doesn’t matter whether they feel good, or bad, or indifferent – because sometimes just being is the best you can hope for. And the best you can hope for is very definitely enough.

I’m trying to set myself targets at the moment – nothing big of course because I DON’T CARE and because it’s important that I don’t ‘overwhelm myself’. Little by little, bite by bite and all that. I’m also trying to connect myself, or re-connect myself, with the things that I care about: books, politics, music, blogging…… Here we have a blog post which is a target met, a pat on the back, and another step forward. Whatever happens, I’m planning on taking another one every single day.

As is traditional I’ll leave you with a song, for the sake of fun, and for the sake of a smile, and for the sake of songs that lift your heart – because those are the songs that matter the most.

http://youtu.be/5w7huOZuZ3M

Love you all lots, like jelly tots,

WeeGee

Posted in About today

Life by increments

Posted on by WeeGee

I’d love to tell you the story of the last three months – you know, start at the beginning, flesh out the middle, and take great pleasure in getting to the end. Sadly, it isn’t going to be as easy as that, not least because I’m not entirely convinced that the end is in sight.

Truth told, I’m not completely sure when it even started. That’s the thing about unravelling: it happens so silently, so slowly, and so subtly, that you really don’t have a cat in hell’s chance of spotting the first stitch getting picked unloose. The fact that it happens RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR NOSE is just your broken brain’s way of ADDING INSULT TO INJURY.

There I was, bowling along in my little life quite happily thank you very much. I’d moved in with Mr Awesome Thing Number Five, I’d started a new job, and I was making a whole lot of progress with that whole being alive thing that had proved so difficult for me in the past. Let’s not make any bones about it: life was good.

And then I was struck down by a severe and chronic case of AWAKENESS. In hindsight, maybe that’s where it started.

I’ve written about my propensity for insomnia before – many times before, in fact. Insomnia is as much a part of my life as the sun setting and it’s been that way for as long as I can remember. Which is really just to say that I’m not going to lay the current bout of the doomy gloomies entirely at its door. But you know, being awake for all but three hours a day FOR WEEKS AT A TIME hasn’t exactly helped matters.

And then there was the winter. Or, more accurately, there was the clocks going back.

If winter was nothing more than five months of shitty weather punctuated by the useful distraction that is Christmas that’d be just fine and dandy by me. It’s the shrinking hours of light – the getting up in the dark, pootling around all day in the dark, coming home in the dark, the fact that the WHOLE OF YOUR LIFE IS DARK – that does for me. Thing is, I can make things dark enough for myself. I don’t need the actual dark filling up the corners I didn’t manage to get to.

And then there was the fact that, and I’m loathe to say it, I miss my old life.

I can’t bring myself to write a whole paragraph about that one. It speaks for itself, doesn’t it? Basically what I’m talking about is nostalgia. Mostly it breaks my heart.

—-

I’m going to call time on this instalment – I’m finding it exhausting and I’m frustrated that my words ran out so soon.

I’m reminded that there were times in my life when I approached the EVERYTHING in increments. Out of bed. Kettle on. Cup of tea. Shower. Clean Pants. Endless trivial tasks, one after the other, and every one of them an achievement.

Life by increments.

It seemed so pointless to me at the time but, hey – it worked. There’s no reason that finding WeeGee and her voice can’t work that way too right? Little by little, step by step, bite by bite. After all. How else am I supposed to eat the elephant?

Stay tuned for the next exciting instalment of WeeGee losing herself and then spending AGES trying to find herself again…..

—–

Meanwhile in other news Frank Turner has a new album today which gives me the perfect excuse to indulge.

Nothing else to report today save that I love you all lots and lots. Like lots and lots of Jelly tots.

WeeGee xoxox

Posted in Moving forwards

Little black submarines

Posted on by WeeGee

Since last I wrote I have mostly been being awake but, looking on the bright side, I have at least been awake at all the usual and required times as well as for THE WHOLE REST OF THE TIME when all the sensible people were fast asleep…..

My last post was one of those bleak affairs that I’m wont to turn out every once in a while. For a while I felt bad about writing it but I’ve had one of my little thinks and decided that if a gloomy post every once in a while is the worst thing my brain can come up with then I’m probably doing fairly well in the main scheme of things. Of course that’s more looking on the bright side. What can I say? Welcome back to WeeGee Land, I guess….

Safe to say my blog has been a little quiet of late. For the most part it has been the worst of times. And it has been the worst of times. And, put simply I couldn’t be arsed to turn my computer on. My broken brain has been misfiring all over the place and I’ve felt like my whole life was under siege. I got to the point of thinking that NOTHING WOULD EVER BE OKAY AGAIN. But it will, in time. I know that because I didn’t spend all the time I spent learning all the things I learned about living with a broken brain to go and forget that when it mattered the most.

When the chips are down time stretches until you think it might never end and you think that’s the problem: time marching on (and on and on and on). The thing is, when the chips are down, the only thing you need is time. Of course it marches on AND THAT’S THE BEAUTY OF IT. The next chapter is just around the corner and I’m starting to remember that I’m going to get to it whether I think I want to or not.

This is yet another toe in the water. There have been a few in recent months but eventually, surely, one of them will be just bold enough. I’ve been living in my own head, hiding from the world and from all the things that are very definitely better in that out. I’m yet to find a better remedy for my hiding than blogging so I happen I might stick with it this time. Or at least try to…..

I thought I’d try and revive an age old tradition and leave you with a song. It’s a whimsical song that doesn’t really mean a whole lot (except of course, those are always the songs that mean the most)

Until next time.

Love you all lots and lots like jelly tots

WeeGee xoxoxo

Posted in About today

I don’t know what to call this…

Posted on by WeeGee

I don’t blog like I used to. Things have changed and time has moved on and no matter how hard I try I can’t find the space anymore. Sure – once in a while I pop up, mostly to lament how much time has passed since my last post, but it doesn’t seem to matter what I write because it’s just not like it used to be.

More than anything I wonder what happened to WeeGee because WeeGee seems to be conspicuously absent from my life right now. I won’t make any bones about it: I made WeeGee up. She wasn’t real. She was a figment of my imagination, and a representation that I wanted to make, and I completely made her up. That said she was as good a representation as ever there was and now she’s gone and it feels a bit empty. I don’t how that happened.

Truth told, I’ve lost myself and I’ve lost myself in a way that only I seem to know how. I’ve somehow managed to build a whole world around me and that sounds great, right? Except it isn’t because it strangles me, and stamps on me, and makes me small: it makes it so that I’m lost and silent and resigned to the dullness that surrounds me. You’ll have gathered by now that my tendency for melodramatics hasn’t quite left me….

You’ll also have gathered that This Is Not A Good Time.

I’m writing because I don’t know what else to do. I’m writing because – once upon a time a long time ago – I wrote a lot and it made it right. I’m writing because somehow, in amongst it all, I still desperately hope that I’ve got something to say. I’m writing because maybe it’s just what I do when the chips are down, and the hope has gone, and there’s no other place to go.

More than anything I’m writing to say ‘hello’ to my much loved mental friends. I know that whatever I say here that someone out there will say ‘I get you’. I don’t think too many people in the real world are getting it right now, so, you know.

It’s a tough old path isn’t it? And I’m still treading it. I think I’ll be back tomorrow for some more emotional vomit, which is what you got tonight and I apologise. In the meantime I could sure so with a hug.

Love you all lots like jelly tots,

WeeGee (Gail) xxx

Posted in Some thoughts about my journey

It’s been a wee while

Posted on by WeeGee

My goodness, it’s been a while – so long in fact that I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve gone and forgotten all about me. I’ve been absent for months and months, for lots and lots of different reasons. In the end though, if I had to sum it up, my silence has really come about because I realised that some things in life deserve your absolute and undivided attention……

The last time we spoke I’d just moved to my new flat and, I think, I was getting ready to start my new job. Neither of those things seems very new any more. Such is the nature of time I guess but I’ve been surprised by how quickly I’ve settled in to things. I used to have one life and now I’ve got another. In many ways, it really has been as easy as that: things change, life moves on, WeeGee does her little thing. Yadder, yadder, yadder.

Of course, WeeGee doing her little thing is never REALLY easy. You know me of old and you know that I ALWAYS have to do things the long way round. I think I’ve learned that I’m a master of ‘keeping up appearances’, of being okay when I’m really not, of holding it together when everything starts to unravel. I suppose what it’s really all about is contradictions. I can be absolutely fine at the same time as being absolutely not. Increasingly I think that I’m the only one who knows the difference even though I’m the last person you’d trust to be in charge of stuff like that.

Anyway….

Let’s cut a long story short – if haven’t already cut it too long. The thing that needed my absolute and undivided attention was little old ME. I needed to take time to work out how it all felt, and what it all meant, and how on earth it was ever going to come together. Maybe you remember that I spent a long time figuring out what being ‘me’ was all about when I moved to Surbiton. I guess this past few months has been about me doing the same thing for the next chapter.

I shouldn’t hide it – there have been some pretty grim moments of late, because that’s just how the difficulties I have manifest themselves. My alien brain has been in over drive and it feels like a small miracle that I haven’t jumped out of any windows. Then again, I’ve learned to take my miracles wherever I find them.

There have been new meds. I tell you something, when it comes to the doomy gloomies they’ve been an absolute chuffing miracle – mainly because for the first couple of weeks I felt so UTTERLY NAUSEAUS that I couldn’t even think about the doomy gloomies and ever since then the raging heart burn has been pretty effective in keeping my thoughts focused on other things. Maybe it’s worth mentioning the couple of days when everything was AWESOME. Because that was AWESOME…..

I feel like I’ve checked in to say ‘Hey! Everything is just as wibbly wobbly as it was before’ but I haven’t really. I think maybe I’ve checked in to say that it’s been just as wibbly wobbly as its been before but that all the things I’ve learned up to now made it significantly less awful than it once would have been.

I think perhaps that you have you have to learn to live with yourself, and I think perhaps, that despite the mishaps, that’s still what I’m managing to do. Is it perfect? Well no, its mostly mental. But day by day I’m learning that there is a way to content yourself with that.

Meanwhile in other news it’s going to take me at least three million years to catch up on all the blogs I know and love and another squillion to discover all the new ones. Bear with me….

Love you all lots like Jelly Tots,

WeeGee xoxoxoxo

Posted in Welcome to my world

IRL Update

Posted on by WeeGee

 

I can’t believe how much time has passed since my last post. I’m not entirely sure what I’ve mostly been being in the time that’s intervened apart from maybe busy and very definitely not blogging….

One thing’s for sure – it’s been all go here in WeeGee land, which seems to be the norm all of a sudden. In the few short years since I started blogging I seem to have transformed from a small, quiet, insignificant person who just wanted to hide in her bed into a small, quiet significant person who occasionally wishes that she actually had any time to hide in her bed. Maybe that’s the only difference between me when I’m well and me when I’m not well. I don’t know, I guess I’m still trying to figure that one out.

The move seems like a dim and distant memory – we’ve been here almost two months now but if you told me we’d been here FOREVER it wouldn’t seem like an outlandish claim. Fleet became home without me even realising it, and living with Mr Awesome Thing Number Five hasn’t really been the challenge I was expecting. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had our moments, but for the most part we’re just rubbing along together the way we always did. I can’t imagine a time that’ll ever change but I can’t help being on my guard against things suddenly changing. On the one hand that could be a bad thing, but on the other hand all it really means is that I’m aware and that I’m willing to put the work in. I think he is too. So that’s all right then, isn’t it?

Of course there’s the new job to mention. What can I say? Starting a new job is one of the oddest things you can do because for the first few days EVERYTHING is odd. The people are odd, the technology is odd, the office is odd, even the tea making facilities are odd. Of course it’s only odd because it’s different from the old place and in no time at all it’s the old place that seems odd. Such is the nature of change I guess. I’ve only been in the job for a couple of weeks and it still feels new and it still feels odd but I also feel like it’s going to be AWESOME and not just because they use SharePoint properly and have some excellent records management software for me to play with….

Anyway – as far as the IRL update goes, that pretty much covers the headlines. I’m aware that I should think about doing an ‘in WeeGee’s head’ update at some point soon but I don’t think I’m quite ready yet. For the most part everything is absolutely fine, mostly because of the IRL stuff. But there’s this other part, it’s only a teeny tiny little part – the broken part, I guess. Recently, I’ve been thinking that it never goes away. There’s a hole at the heart of me, and it’s always there, no matter how small…..

Meanwhile in other news there is nothing else to report today save that I love you all lots like Jelly Tots.

WeeGee xoxoxo

 

 

 

 

Posted in Some thoughts about my journey

Excuse me…. You. Are. Annoying. Me.

Posted on by WeeGee

Since last I wrote I have mostly been feeling guilty about not writing. I’ve got at least a million and one half written posts kicking about in draft form, and another three squillion notes to try and make sense of but when it came down to it my head was too busy being empty, and I was too busy being busy and every post I tried to write turned in to yet another post that simply wasn’t meant to be….. I’m not sure I’ve got too much to say yet but I’m going to give it a go anyway….

blogw4

Believe it or not it’s been four whole weeks since the big move. Surbiton is no more, living by myself is no more, my lovely little flat is no more, and WeeGee’s old life is pretty much no more. To be honest I think it took a little while for the enormity of things to start to sink in. There was so much to do – leading up to the move, during the move, and after the move – that my poor old broken brain didn’t have so much as a minute to figure out what the hell was hitting it. I think it would be fair to say that the last week or so has been quiet, hidey, and thoughtful because when so much hits your brain all at once it’s hardly surprising that you need a bit of quiet, hidey and thoughtful time to make sense of it all.

Things have changed in my life and even although I am one hundred percent sure that the changes have been for the better I still felt like I needed to recalibrate to how things are now. Changes rarely happen over night and where I am right now has been a very long time coming. I had to get better, I had to get to know myself and I had to find the courage to let other people know me too. I had to be brave enough to make some BIG decisions and strong enough to stand by them. I had to leap and wait to see if the net was going to appear. Thankfully it did but now I feel like I need to step back and take a few deep breaths.

A while ago I wrote about how everything in my life was up for grabs – where I lived, who I lived with, how I lived, and how I went about making that living. It seemed bonkers at the time because I liked where I lived, and who I lived with* and how I lived and how I made my living. As for now – well, it’s all changed and I definitely like it a whole lot better now. As for what next – it’s time for a new routine, and different plans and most of all it’s about my future. I don’t know what it’s going to be like but for the first time in a very long time I’m looking forward to every single minute of it…..

Meanwhile in other news I would like to report that Mr Awesome Thing Number Five does indeed have a number of annoying habits that I’m doing my very best to learn to live with.

blogw5

Nothing else to report today save that it’s okay, because I know I have just as many, if not more, annoying habits than him.

blogw6

Love you all lots like Jelly tots,

 

WeeGee xoxox

 

*Which was myself and my cat. What else does a WeeGee need?!

 

 

 

 

Posted in Some thoughts about my journey

Hard work, but good work

Posted on by WeeGee

Since last I wrote I have mostly been being busy. I have also mostly been being without broadband – for TWENTY WHOLE DAYS. I swear to god you cannot begin to imagine how TRULY AWFUL that actually was. I spent days and days of my life trying not to be sarcastic to the tech dudes on the phone, but they were TOTAL freaking idiots and they were VERY VERY lucky not to get a poke in the chuffing eye….

blog tech

Anyways – I’m back online now*, I’ve written my highly sarcastic email of complaint, and I’m starting to run out of busy so I decided that now was as good a time as any for a little update from WeeGee land.

I suppose the headline is that I’m all moved in and pretty much settled here in the new place with Mr Awesome Thing Number Five and, to cut a long story short, it’s AWESOME. Don’t get me wrong, the unpacking was a right royal pain in the backside, and there are still a few stray boxes kicking about but, you know, it feels a lot like home and he and I are rubbing along quite nicely together. We’re a pretty good team when all’s said and done.

I won’t lie – all this living together stuff is making for one heck of an adjustment. I knew I’d gotten used to living by myself, and I knew living with Mr Awesome Thing Number Five was going to be a HUGE change and a HUGE challenge. I’m working hard to mitigate, to make allowances, to compromise. I’m also working hard to look after myself and to give myself the priorities and space that I need. The thing is, it feels like working hard is worth every single ounce of effort it takes at the moment. Put simply – I’m having to work at life right now but life is good regardless.

It’s been a while since my last post and I’m a little rusty at this blogging lark so this was only ever going to be a short one. Will it do?

I’ll be back again in no time at all, just you wait and see. In the meantime, here’s a pretty little song:

Love you all lots like jelly tots

WeeGee xoxo

 

 

 

*Praise be

 

Posted in Welcome to my world

A teeny tiny post from my new home

Posted on by WeeGee

Since last I wrote, a little over a week ago, I have mostly been moving into my shiny new flat with Mr Awesome Thing Number Five. It’s been a funny old week filled with mostly highs, a couple of lows, and the occasional outbreak of wibbly wobbly wobbling…..

As it turned out, leaving my old flat behind wasn’t anywhere close to the emotional roller coaster I’d prepared myself for. In the end I pulled the door shut behind me and stepped out into my new life without so much as a second thought. Yet more proof, I think, that fear of ‘the thing’ is nearly always worse than ‘the thing’ itself. As for how I’m feeling now we’ve been in the place for a little while? I suppose it’s a fairly standard mixture of nerves and excitement.

blog 1

I’m excited because I’m in my shiny new flat and sharing my life with Mr Awesome Thing Number Five and I’m nervous because, you know, I have no idea how this is going to turn out and if it turns out badly I might not be able to cope and if I can’t cope I might get unwell again and if I get unwell again I might not be able to get better again and……blah blah blah. It doesn’t matter how awesome things are the same old worries swim around in your head if you let them.

Anyway – the headline for today is that we’re in, we seem to have managed to get in without any major mishaps, and we don’t seem to be driving one another mad yet. There’ll be more soon but for now, I’m afraid the only thing I’ve got going on here is happily ever after (so far).

blog five

Love you all lots like jelly tots,

WeeGee xoxox

Posted in Recovery?

What the heartbreak left behind

Posted on by WeeGee

Since last I wrote I have mostly been being sentimental because when all’s said I’m done the WeeGee is nothing if not a sentimental old fool….

As I write I’m sitting in my packed up living room, trying to come to terms with the fact that it very nearly isn’t my living room anymore. It’s worth mentioning, I think, that tonight is the LAST EVER night I will spend alone in this little flat that I’ve come to call home.

I moved in here a little over three years ago at a time when (and I don’t mean to be melodramatic) it felt like my whole life was falling apart. It wasn’t just that a relationship had come to an end – although with hindsight I know that the grief that came with that was a large part of it – I’d lost friendships, support structures, routines, every single reference point that I thought I could rely on. I was all at sea and there was no shore, or at least no shore that I could find. I’d been lost before, plenty of times in fact, but when I moved here I was lost in a whole new way – mostly because I was lost alone.

Of course the heartbreak subsided because that’s what it does – it was that thing that people talked about when it first happened ‘time’. I didn’t believe them then and if it happened all over again I still wouldn’t believe them because the heart doesn’t learn lessons nearly as well as the brain does. I guess you need the time to happen before you believe it’s going to help.

Once the heartbreak was over I didn’t feel like I’d been left with very much – a silent flat and a WeeGee who not only had no idea who she was anymore but who also didn’t really care was pretty much all I had in my head for the longest time. It was the worst of me – the worst of who I’ve been and worst of who I can be. Everything was nothing and it wasn’t so much that I wanted to be dead. I just didn’t care one way or another. My brain has taken me to some spectacularly awful places but this was the first time that I didn’t feel that I had anything to get better for. I’d been unwell before, sure, but there had always been people around to save me. This time, all I had was myself and I’d never much cared for her

Needless to say, I’ve learned an awful lot since I moved to Kingston. I learned how to be with myself, and how to let myself be who I am, and, to a certain extent, how to forgive myself. I’ve learned how to put one foot in front of the other JUST FOR ME. Most importantly of all, I’ve learned how to save myself from the worst my brain has to throw at me.

I thought I was going to hate living alone, and for a long time, I did. But eventually I realised that I needed to be alone because I’d become so used to fitting in around other people that I had no idea how to be me when the other people weren’t around anymore. On reflection, maybe that’s the most important lesson I learned here: I matter. And I matter whether there is anyone else in my life or not.

—

At this point, it seems worth a bit of fast forwarding because the time I spent alone, coming to terms with myself and working out who I might be if I ever grow up put me in a new place. It put me in a place where I was ready to meet Mr Awesome Thing Number Five, who, I would like to put on record, is the love of my life. I don’t love Mr Awesome Thing Number Five because he loves me and I don’t adapt myself or lose anything of me in loving him. I bring as much to his life as he brings to mine – I’ve never had that before because I never cared enough for myself before. I’ve always been too willing to please and too quick to compromise no matter what the consequences. Who knew that you had to learn to love yourself before you could make space to love any one else?

—

Living in this little flat gave me my life back and helped me to learn lessons that I might not otherwise have learned. What it also did is give me the opportunity to move on sensibly in a grown up and deeply loving relationship that has a future. Being heartbroken seems like a lifetime ago but it gave me things that I never thought I would have. Nothing you ever feel is wasted; everything you survive is significant. Hope is the most important thing of all.

Lots of love, WeeGee xoxoxo