Into The Blue…

I can see all the way to the horizon, I can; the sky is that hot English August turquoise blue, so vivid it seems alive, and the sea, with the sun glancing off it, is a burning white. Hills for miles, skylarks, still, and fields full of corn and wheat and things just waiting for harvest. Miles and miles of view and, finally, hardly a cloud under the sky.

That, metaphorically, is the view for me right now: I’m happy and well, and there are things that upset me sometimes, but the same kind of ’sometimes’ as any healthy person. I made it out from under the clouds. Right now I don’t think there’s anything else I have to say within the remit of this blog – so I’m taking a break. I may be back.

I’m not taking this blog down, and I’ll keep checking up and moderating reasonably often. I’m also still blogging at On The Brink, of course.

It feels odd to be leaving aside something which for so long has been a part of my life – both the blog and the being depressed – but it’s time, and personally, I’m excited to see what happens now; what’s on that horizon.

Live long and prosper, all of you; fare thee well.

Jenny

New Look

Thoughts?

I saw this graffiti in Amsterdam and I thought it was beautiful. I was in Amsterdam about this time last year, which is why I was looking there for ’springtime’ pictures to put up as my new header over at On The Brink, and I saw this, and some other graffiti shots, and I thought, ‘Actually…’.

Guess I can’t be too bad, then, if I’m feeling as inspired and artistic as I am right now. Itching to draw something, anything, probably just more studies of my hands and face and body, but I should be sleeping.

That Sense of Hesitation in the Air

I’m still waiting.

For it all to go wrong, for time and me to diverge horribly, I’m splitting up inside into the mad, mad flesh of me, and the real me, who in this bizarre but oddly accurate metaphor is the tough rind, bark, skin, something like an orange – becuase this skin is both who I really am, and who I am trying to continue to be. The mad me, the fleshy bit, is absolutely an aberration. Sometimes she’s there and sometimes she isn’t.

At this stage she still might go away, leave me in peace. Essentially I am in Limbo.

Seasonally Affected?

So, the sun has come out. Beautiful. But it’s made me all sad and wistful and worried, like time is running out on me and the things I could do in the time I have, and it scares me and saddens me, and this is where it all began – when the summer began to begin, back when I was about sixteen, this – this exact feeling – was the trigger. Every summer I feel it, every summer I fight it, I still don’t understand it. We’ll see.

Yes. I Remember You.

First off, I want to apologise to all my readers – I know some, if not all, of you will find this a very hard post to read.

I thought I’d dealt with this. I thought I’d dealt with this.

However last night, dosed up on sleeping pills, I had a dream. I very rarely dream, and when I do dream my dreams are often full of things with massive emotional weight for me. Past lovers flit through, changing their minds or ignoring me full stop or picking arguments I never thought they actually cared about in scenes full of over-large buildings, trees as big as planets, and tennis courts built more like adventure playgrounds. There is a lot of adventure in my dreams, abseiling down random buildings, skydiving in sports halls big as hangars, leaping across the rooftops and bridges of Venice. However, last night’s dream was, though in a similar setting, infinitely worse.

There was a man – a friend of my sister’s? I’d not met him before. There were old-fashioned canvas tents full of the things you expect to find backstage at a theatre, in the middle of the desert. This man thought he knew what I wanted, though I wanted nothing from him. He kissed me, and I let him, because I thought that was all he wanted from me, but the next thing I knew his penis was right in front of my face and I was covered in his semen and I didn’t want that, I didn’t want that at all, and (why didn’t I do this in real life?) I shouted at him, hit him, got truly angry. He wasn’t in the least bit sorry, and what good did it do except make me feel a little bit better? But I suppose that’s something.

I woke up, crying.

Later today I finally got my phone back (I lost it in the Peaks on Sunday). There was a text, from T (you should all have guessed who he is by now – not the actual person, I mean, but what he did): ‘Do you remember me?’. Too well, far too well. I’m not going to reply.

I can’t help blaming myself, even now: because in the end he was bullying and wheedling and fighting me and I just said, OK then, fuck it, if that’s what you want, take it. I had no idea what the consequences were going to be, and if I had, he’d have been out of the door hours earlier. Hindsight is a terrible thing. As is What If, and If Only.

I suppose I’m only realising now that this is something I’m never going to deal with. The best I can hope is that it slowly starts to bother me less and less often.

Scouts – Please Help!

A few weeks ago I was contacted outside the Union by a group of students involved in a mental health charity (possibly Mind?). They’re taking a presentation round various local scout groups and such and asked me to join in (and, I’d imagine, every other passer by that day…!). Anyway, I may have the opportunity to help them with this presentation and give a short talk.

I thought I’d talk about some of the stuff I’ve put into this blog over the last few months to try and get the message across that depression is more than just feeling a bit sad, that you can’t just ’snap out of it’, and that it can have serious consequences. And all those other assumptions people make.

So, avid readers, what, in your opinion, should I mention? Any of my stories and thoughts particularly stand out for you? Anything you think an audience of average age about twelve to fifteen (is that how old Scouts tend to be?) would particularly ‘get’? Are there any other messages you’d like me to pass on, and stories of your experiences etc which I could share as well?

And watch this space – at some point my draft presentation will appear up here and so any suggestions at that point too would be bloomin’ lovely!!

Someone

In my other blog, ‘Someone’ has become a handy shorthand for the boyfriend I don’t have. The one who exists purely in my mind, laughs at me good-naturedly and tries to hide the fact that he adores me, likes the things that I like, challenges me, spends rainy sunday mornings companionably drinking coffee and reading the paper, sprawled in his bed or mine while I wear his hoodies and we recover from our hangovers. Whatever. Actually, the point of this entry is not what he’s like, screw that, I mean, he doesn’t exist, does he?

No, it’s a response to L’s latest entry on Patchwork Dreams – about her experience with relationships and her current relationship, and the ever-present ‘third wheel’ that is depression.

Basically, this. Right now I am fine, I am in a good place, and if I were to meet someone, get along with them, go out for a drink with them, and end up actually (shock) being in a grown-up, functional relationship, as I am, that would be fine. But part of the reason why I avoided such a relationship for so many years was because I’m terrified of being in a relationship that isn’t equal, where I rely on my partner too much, where he has to bear the brunt of the chaos in my head and help me through that with very little reward. I know that’s not how Someone would see it, if they loved me, they’d live for the good days and all the rest of it. And I’m sure that’s not how L’s boyfriend sees it either. But it terrifies me, this idea of being ‘obliged’ to someone. I can’t place that burden on anyone else’s back but mine.

More than that, I’m petrified that I’ll make it as a functioning adult, more or less, and actually get to the point where I end up marrying someone and having their children. This is in some ways a dream I, in my more melodramatic moments, think I’ll have to sacrifice. I’m convinced I’d be a hopeless mother: honestly, sincerely, imagine having a depressive mother. It would be impossible, for me, for my husband, for my children, and if I was depressed it would almost be selfish to actually go down that route. At least from my point of view. I couldn’t look after them, I couldn’t hold down a job as well, not if I was anywhere near as bad as I was last semester, and essentially my husband would have to be primary carer and breadwinner and look after not only our children, but me, as well. Someone’s got to make sure I don’t dehydrate and starve to death because I don’t want to get out of bed! Seriously. Anyway, it’s something I’m terrified about, because I can’t – simply can’t – trust my brain from one month, week, even day or hour to the next not to throw me a total loop and knock me down altogether. And if I can’t trust my own mind, who the hell can? And who the hell should have to? I can just about get my head around a boyfriend who has to deal with that, but not a husband, children – Mummy’s ill in bed, please don’t disturb her, when they can clearly see there’s nothing wrong. It would be just too unsettling for weeks on end.

So yes, I worry about my future. Because that worry extends to everything in life. If I carry on the way I’m going, I’ll get a good degree and I should be able to get into graduate medicine and pass taht pretty comfortably too, get a good job, depending on the market at the time, and put together a good life for myself. But if I’m not OK, then I might not make it through to finishing this degree, I may not get into graduate medicine, and I’ll struggle to hold down a job. I have no certainty. No-one does, but I have, well, negative certainty, I guess, because I know I have this ‘tendency to melancholy’ which has a brilliant habit of rearing its ugly head just when I least need it.

However, L gives me hope in her entry – right now, a few months on, and she and her Someone are doing well, as far as she’ll let us know, and if I can get past my island mentality and learn that if someone wants to be there and be that person for you no matter how difficult, maybe you should let them, and it’ll work, and you’ll be as happy as you can reasonably be at that time.

Not only that, but you’re right on another score, L – I got a lot more attention a few months ago (admittedly not once I’d got really bad but I guess that was just because I barely left my room) than I do now. I got a lot more attention over the last three years, ranging from the merely sexual to the mad declarations of love that S threw at me despite his girlfriend and all of that shit. How much of a correlation there is I do not know, but I used to be more aware that people liked me than I am now. Perhaps that’s just becuase I’m meeting fewer unattached, new people, and I have a lot more competition here than I ever did in P’d.

So yes. I am nigglingly terrified about my future becuase I’m terrified that I won’t always be OK, and it’s also almost certain that I won’t always be OK from here on in, that in a few months I’ll be flat on my back again, staring at the sky and waiting for it all to go away.

Figaro

I just went home for the weekend to see the Marriage of Figaro. Hoped to catch up with a couple of people including some home friends and my grandmother, but our various plans fell through and instead I found myself going on a couple of beautiful walks with my family, which was great. Saw some beautiful ginger piglets, for starters! And lots of beautiful views. No lambs yet, though! I felt very poety, but couldn’t find the words for the things I wanted to write about; so I just enjoyed it instead.

Anyway, I woke up back at university this morning to a text from my mother saying something along the lines of this: that my air of contentment and balance is making me ‘more beautiful than ever’. I never had my mother down for the gushing type. I guess I must have scared her rather, then, at some point.

Anyway, she’s right. Nothing special happening, and in fact, lots of things to worry about and get stressed over and all the rest of it, but I can’t remember the last time I was this happy.

The point being, it does end. People tried to tell me this when I was at my worst: it doesn’t go on forever, it can’t, you’ll make it, just keep going: and I kept thinking – I really cannot keep going like this for much longer. I can’t carry this weight. I can’t see anything ever changing, I’m just going to get worse and worse until I stop altogether, fade out, and die. I couldn’t at all see that there was any possibility, simply, of release. And of course I couldn’t – you can’t reason with illness. I just had to get there. I don’t know, now, what it was, but something changed. I had a lot of help from my cousin, the holidays were made reasonably easy for me, it was the break I needed. And something changed. And now I’m here.

The point I’m making being that no matter how you feel today, tomorrow, however long it lasts, it isn’t forever. It isn’t rational, and you can’t predict it, but know this: it will not last. You’ll make it. I know it doesn’t necessarily help to hear that, because I know I never believed it, but maybe you will. Hold on to that, if you can.

Interesting Events

Quite apart from last night being the most bizarre evening I’ve spent in a long while, starting in a fantastic Eighties disco and going on to a fantastically seedy-shiny casino and then finally some random guys house, with the theft of a bowl of wasabi peas and many miniature adventures along the way, quite apart from all that, S finally got back in touch in the oddest way.

You may remember that he is the guy who completely messed me around for months and months last year, I’ve referred to it a couple of times but I don’t think I’ve ever bothered to tell the whole epic tale here. Basically it involves a certain amount of cheating, S telling no less than three girls he is in love with them – one of them being his ex, my best friend R, the second being his girlfriend B and the third being me, and as you can tell from that last clause, a hell of a lot of lies on his part, to himself, to us three girls, and everyone else. Who knows how he really felt about any of us. Over the summer it all blew up – I told him to come clean to his girlfriend and broke things off with him, as did R, and then in November I went to D__ham to help out at a concert he was giving, and his treatment of me over those few days and over the last year or more made me snap, leave him an angry letter informing him that I couldn’t have anything to do with him until he grew up a bit, and leave before he got back to his house the next morning (yes, that’s right, rather than staying on his sofa as I expected to do, I found myself sleeping in his bed whilst he went to his girlfriend’s for the night, because, rightly enough, she didn’t trust him – why he couldn’t have sorted something out and told me a bit sooner I don’t know because I certainly wasn’t in any kind of mood to make decisions at all – so we have me, in a house full of complete strangers, incredibly depressed and miles away from home).

He is the only person I’ve ever been angry with. I still am angry. Anyway, as you know, I was ‘not assessed’ for my exams so that they didn’t go down as fails, and I put that up in my facebook status, and he messaged me to ask me exactly what that was. Which was odd – I haven’t heard from him except for one text at New Year (saying to him, if you’re coming to T’s party that’s fine, I’m not going to make things awkward as long as you don’t), since I was in D__ham that time. So yes, it was odd that he should contact me out of the blue, but I started to think, well, I’ve left this long enough, we had a good friendship before things went so horribly wrong, maybe it’s about time I put my anger behind me and start trying to talk to him again. After all, the last time anyone was truly angry at me we’d started communicating within a fortnight. Three and a half months is quite long enough to be angry at someone. So I did reply explaining all about it.

He didn’t reply to my message. So a week later I texted him to ask him whether he’s messaged me out of curiousity or becuase he hoped we could start to rebuild our friendship (promise I worded it better than that), and yesterday he replied to my text to say that ‘it was out-of-the-blue curiousity; I do not and never will deserve your friendship’. Which practically made me burst into tears on the spot, although a little voice in my head muttered treacherously that he sent that text precisely in order to have that effect on me, and not because he genuinely means it. Dialogue ensued, as I pointed out that if we all thought like that, far fewer people would deserve friendship from lots of other people and the world would be a poorer place. I told him I’d be at A’s party, where I know he will be too, and well, we’ll take it from there.

That whole conversation shook me up no end though, leading to the consumption of about a billion wasabi peas, too much strawberry beer, and definitely too many fags. (I’m getting better with the fags now – I only smoke when drunk these days, and I am cutting down. By Easter I should be smoke-free. Hell, by the end of this week I should be smoke-free!).

I’ve just got a terrible feeling that I know exactly what I’m letting myself in for – months and months more of his games, throwing my emotions around like so many juggling balls, tugging my strings and getting to me like no-one else can, just because he knows how. I don’t know who the genuine S is. I don’t even know if there is a genuine S, or whether it’s just a million different facades he puts on like the rest of us change clothes.

No. Absolutely Not.

Two months. Two whole months. But today, I’ll be honest, I feel awful. And bad days are happening more often, and it seems more and more of a given that they will all just run into one again, bad day after bad day after bad day, and I just cannot do this. I don’t have time to feel this terrible.

I want to get a degree – a good degree, at that. I want to be normal. I want to decide to go out based on how much money I have and whether I’ve got a 9am tomorrow, not based on whether I can physically cope with and enjoy the company, whether I can get drunk without ending up in a corner staring at the floor and waiting for everyone else to want to go home, or get drunk and not end up so horribly angry that things just go wrong all around me because I read all the most negative signs from people, amplify them in my head and make the whole thing just so much worse.

I want to be happy.I want to have conversations with people, be normal, enjoy myself and enjoy life for all the simple, little things. I want to want to eat, I want to enjoy my food, I want to enjoy my studies and my friendships and the things I enjoy doing, without this terrible veil, fog, over me and everything I see and do. How dare they take this away from me? Whoever ‘they’ might be. God, perhaps, but why would he do this just after things have started to go so well for me? I cannot live like this, I really can’t.

If this carries on I am going to go back to the doctors and demand more help. CBT, perhaps, or some drug other than fluoxetine – citalopram next, I suppose, that seems to be the way. Or sertraline. We’ll see.