Tag: Mental health

Posted in Welcome to my world

I am disappeared

Posted on by WeeGee

Before anybody points it out, I know that the title of this post is something of a grammatical car-crash. In my defence I didn’t make it up – it’s the title of a song I’ve been listening to a lot recently. If you have any problems with the grammar, please take them up with Frank Turner (but do be aware that I am a little bit in love with him and will certainly fight to the death to defend his honour…..)

One of my friends pointed out that I’ve ‘gone dark’ over the past week or so. I think he might be right because as far as everything is concerned at the moment, I’d be equally happy with taking it or leaving it. Nothing seems to matter.

I know I’m in a bad place because the following three things have taken place over the past couple of days:

  • I almost left the house wearing underwear that didn’t match. That’s a big deal, not because of being run over by buses, but because I’m a firm believer that if things are capable of matching they should. Matching underwear is absolutely critical to my sense of self
  • I actually left the house with chipped nail varnish. That’s an even bigger deal because I never, ever do that. I’ve had painted nails every day of my life since 1995 and my nails are always immaculate when I’m in public. Even when I’m in full on nutter mode.
  • Mr Friendly offered a chat to cheer me up and I said no. This is unheard of for so many long and complicated reasons that I won’t go into them here, but If I can’t even be bothered to speak to him there isn’t much hope left.

Anyway. The good thing is that I’m not in hiding. The bad news is that I just don’t feel like talking to anybody or doing anything. There’s nothing in my head and I’m really struggling to find anything that I still care about – what’s the point of talking to people when there’s nothing in your head and you can’t find anything to care about? It doesn’t really leave you with a lot to say.

Throughout the ups and downs of being Wee Gee there’s always been something for me to hold on to – books, politics, justice, music, Mr Friendly – it has always seemed to me that when I can’t care about myself I can at least find things in the external world to care about. Now it just feels like everything has finally gone. It didn’t happen overnight, but slowly and surely things departed until I wound up here trying to figure out what fills the hole now everything has disappeared.

In some ways, I feel like this is what I’ve been working towards my whole life. Other people get married and have kids; Wee Gee makes everything so small that the future is little more than a robotic march through the motions for no other reason than that’s what being alive is all about: a series of pointless and unnecessary motions that  you put yourself through day in, day out. Boo to everything!

I think this post might be what you call navel gazing; it’s certainly self-indulgent, I know that. I’ve been trying to find a way to say all of this in a light hearted, amusing way, but there isn’t anything funny about it.

It’s either that, or my sense of humour has left the building along with everything else. Oh bums.

Wee (hoping that tomorrow is better) Gee xx

PS – I have at least a million blogs to catch up with and I do care about that, even though I think I don’t so I’ll try and get to them tonight.

Posted in The small things lists

10,000 steps (shameless self promotion)

Posted on by WeeGee

I’m on day two of the 10,000 steps challenge and a couple of readers have asked if I’ll be posting a link to my fundraising page on this blog. I had thought about it, but didn’t want to appear cheeky and I was worried that things might get a bit mixed up and I’d get ‘outed’

Anyway, now that people have actually asked it doesn’t feel so cheeky, so I’ve posted it below.

I know that you guys have never met me, but I suppose you know better than most just how important charities like Mind are, so, if you’re that way inclined I’d mean the world to me if you decided to support me by making a small donation. If you’re not that way inclined, maybe you would consider supporting me by taking a look at my other blog which I’m using to document the challenge. It’s not as good as this blog, because so far the only thing I’ve thought of to say is ‘took some steps…. Took some more steps’. But hey, you never know, it might get better as the challenge progresses.

Re the worry about being ‘outed’ I’m publicising the resources above to everybody who knows me – some of those people know what goes on in my head and others don’t. If you do visit either of those sites I’m relying on your discretion. I feel like I’m taking my life in my hands here, but I am doing this for Mind and you lot are a lovely bunch and I’m sure I can trust you. The only other thing to say is that even if you do get to find out my real name I’d like to stick to Wee Gee please because I like it better that way.

Anyway, here’s the page you need  if you feel like making a donation:

Make a donation using Virgin Money Giving

End of shameless self promotion.

Posted in About today

This is really happening, isn’t it?

Posted on by WeeGee

I don’t really like Radiohead anymore – I lost interest somewhere around OK Computer – but I do really like this song. I think it sounds like how I feel a lot of the time:

The line in the song that goes ‘this is really happening’ is a notion that strikes me every now and then, usually in the wee small hours when I can’t sleep and there’s nowhere to hide from all the things that are happening in my head. Sometimes I feel incredulous about it all because how very dare this be happening in my head, but most of the time I feel frightened because this is really happening and what if I can’t figure out how to make it quieten down again?

I had 11 whole years when I didn’t have to struggle very hard with myself. I had to struggle a little bit because I don’t think the voices* ever go away you just get better at answering them back, or ignoring them, or both. I think of my difficulties as a dark passenger** because they are always there at my side. I’ve carried my dark passenger everywhere I’ve ever been – sometimes it’s heavy and sometimes it isn’t so heavy; sometimes it’s almost silent and sometimes it’s very, very loud; sometimes it looks out the window as we travel and sometimes it takes over the driving.

For the past year or so my dark passenger has been in the driving seat and I’ve had to struggle very hard with myself. Compared to the 11 years where I wasn’t struggling much, the past year feels like it’s lasted for a lifetime. Sometimes, I get sick and tired of it all and I just wish that all the nonsense would disappear out of my head. Other times, I remember that it will never disappear completely and so I start to wonder what the point of struggling very hard with yourself just so you don’t have to struggle very hard with yourself is. Right now is one of those other times.

Today I feel a bit small and insignificant and, above all else, frightened. I’m wondering what would happen if I just stopped struggling and gave my brain over to the darkness. I don’t much like being in the dark, but I can’t help thinking it’d probably be a little easier on me.

Still, tomorrow I’ll be all brave again. Thoughts pass eventually because that is their way.

Wee Gee x

 

 

*I should point out to you that over the years I have learned that you need to be very careful when you’re talking about the ‘voices in your head’.

**If anyone watches Dexter, mine is not at all like that dark passenger – just for the avoidance of doubt!

Posted in Some thoughts about my journey

Back to the drawing board

Posted on by WeeGee

I’ve spent a lot of time reading the blogs of other people who have similar difficulties and challenges to me and I’ve been amazed how many of them there are, and how many have struck a chord with me. People seem to blog for all kinds of reasons – for some it’s about therapy, for others it’s venting and for some it’s about reaching out for a little bit of old-fashioned human kindness. The obvious question to ask myself now is ‘why am I really blogging’?

When I started my blog a few weeks ago I decided I was going write about my attempts to live well and overcome depression. I knew I wanted to record my journey, and that I maybe wanted to share it if anyone was interested but above all else I was determined that the daily ins and outs of my mental health were going to be something of a side issue: I wanted to keep my writing upbeat and positive – this was going to be about progress and recovery and everything else was getting left out. I still think this was a noble aim, but after almost four weeks of writing I’m starting to wonder if my approach is a little too rigid and perhaps, unrealistic. My rules allow me to say I suffer from depression, that I had a bad day, that things aren’t going well, but they don’t allow me to spend any time explaining or analysing what any of that feels like or what it really means. And those things, are probably the biggest part of my story.

I live with the day to day impact of depression; It’s a big part of my life and in banning myself from writing the truth about it I’m leaving big parts of the story out. I don’t want to change tack completely, and it’s still really important for me to focus on achievements (one of my little aims in life is to make sure that the word ‘depression’ is never bigger than the word ‘achievement’ in my tag cloud!)  but I called this blog ‘how do you eat an elephant’, not ‘the elephant in the room’!

So I’ve decided that it’s important that I allow myself to recognise the reality of being me in my writing here. I don’t necessarily want to turn this into a mirror image of the depths of despair that my mind can come to, but I don’t want to pretend that stuff isn’t happening either. After all, the real achievement is that I carry on – getting little things done and getting slightly better every now and again – in spite of the reality of being me. What I think I’m saying is that ‘me’ is important even if ‘me’ isn’t always pretty.

As I’ve already said, nobody is ever going to want to shout about mental illness from the rooftops, but if someone like me (who has even gone to the lengths of setting up a blog just to write about depression) isn’t willing to acknowledge the truth of it then mental ill health seems destined to always have the quality of a dirty little secret.