Worth Pointing Out Now That…

…thanks to the total fuck-up that was last year, thanks to my first semester being completely lost due to the state I was in, and the second not much better because let’s face it I was still getting better, I wasn’t just better straight away, thanks to my being an arrogant, lazy little shit, thanks to the way I hardly worked this summer because I really wasn’t feeling too great, thanks to all of this, thanks to the fact that I just don’t work hard enough for things I want, or didn’t work hard enough for things I wanted, thanks to the fact that I thought I might just be clever enough to breeze through and didn’t want to work hard when I knew I wasn’t going to do well, and I just didn’t want to put in the effort only to not do particularly well because if I had started working it would have been too late, and I would feel like working wasn’t worth it because if I work, I want to do well, damn you, not just passably OK, thanks, basically, to the fact that I am an arrogant, lazy little cunt who totally deserves everything she’s got, I failed two of my exams, which means I lost thirty credits, which means I can’t progress onto Level Two of my degree, which means that next year, I’m going back as a part-time student to retake the two modules I failed, I’m going to get a job to fund me through this year and to give me something to do with the time when I’m not working, and actually, maybe this is a chance for me to learn a lot about myself. Maybe this will be a good thing for me.

I’m just really angry that effectively it’s all mainly a consequence of being too depressed for too long to do anything about it. That someone who is as clever and potentially brilliant as me should be scuppered by an illness she can’t control or understand, that I’m buggered before I begin because I’m just weighed down with a condition, a weakness, and however good I could be half the time I’m fighting something which I shouldn’t have to fight. I don’t know why I shouldn’t have to fight it, I guess I really mean, no-one should have to deal with this because you think of your mind as being something that’s in your control and so it’s being ill is just not fair, frankly. That’s enough of me being a petulant little brat. I probably deserve this.

So now, I do organised things, I register, I work out how I’m going to get the money to do all of this, and simply, I pray.

Nope, Still Not Dealt With, Oh, Wait…

More nightmares, every few weeks, and only more common now I have S. Not sure why that should be except that maybe as I’m learning to trust him I’m stripping myself bare of a lot of things, and my injuries are open to the air once more and it’s like ripping off so many plasters or something. Because I have to trust him, because any kind of sexual activity with him has a meaning, and so yes, I guess I’m evaluating meaning and choice and guilt and blame and he sees everything of me, so is it any wonder if sometimes I am reminded of T, merely because of the absolute contrast between that experience and everything I have now? To feel safe and happy I have to let go, and to let go I have to trust and be honest with S and with myself.

So yes, the first time I met him I had one of those nightmares, and I’ve had a few bad days, and then he woke me up in the middle of a very bad night the other night and I just dived into his arms and held onto him for dear life. You can’t bury these things, sometimes. Perhaps I can deal with this and get over it for good, now.

I’m hoping I might be able to leave this blog again for a while soon – the last few weeks have been a rollercoaster ride; but I don’t think I’m unwell, as such. It’s more that adjusting to changes like this is difficult, and I’m having to confront a lot of things about myself, and I don’t always like what I see, so I’m having to grow up a lot, which is definitely a good thing. Growing pains are to be expected, even if that does mean bad days and panic and fear and wanting to be infantilised and looked after some times, and being just a bit attention-seeking on the internet every now and again. It’s a stupid kind of dealing with the hand I’ve been played, and I’m a bloody idiot and I annoy myself witless, but I’m alright.

Perhaps that’s what I really came back to say: look, I’m all growed-up, I can haz boyfriend, this is a bit scary and I’m freaking out a bit and sometimes that brings up things I’d rather not think about and sometimes I have the most god-awfully black days is that normal is that normal is that normal oh wait yes it is normal and maybe not every day will be super-happy-fun-times but some days are and it’ll get better and I’ll be less shy and less of a scaredy-cat and learn to grow and trust and have confidence in myself and him and even if it ends tomorrow I’ll still have learnt something.

I am normal, and that is, frankly, fantastic. Or rather, I am a work in progress, and yes, alright, I admit it, I am probably going to go back to counselling once I’m back at university, give it another go, but that doesn’t make me ill, or mad, it just means I’m taking responsibility for myself, and accepting that I don’t always find things easy.

Every Day

Every day I sleep terribly.

Every day I wake far too early.

Every day I wake up terrified.

Every day I struggle to concentrate because I’m working too hard at merely feeling safe.

Every day I can’t wait to go to bed again, because it seems like progress.

Every day I feel terribly guilty for feeling like this, so I smile, and I wait, and I hope.

Every day I feel terribly guilty that all I do is take from you, and what do you get in return? Me, just me, and what is that, of what worth am I to you? So I push those thoughts away because I like you too much to consider letting you go.

It’s only been about a week that I’ve felt like this, I don’t know why I feel like this, and yet already the phrase ‘every day’ seems perfectly appropriate because it feels like it will never end.

Two Decades And I Feel Old

The meal was lovely, in the end. Just lovely. And yes, I felt shaky and nervous and downright weird for most of the evening and then didn’t sleep last night, and yes, I woke up this morning feeling no better, but it was OK, because I felt safe.

I really don’t want S to become my safety, like that. I don’t want to have to rely on him utterly. I am glad he can help, but I don’t want to turn to him every time I’m a bit down, or getting irrationally afraid, and so on. There’s no reason I can’t do this on my own, except, well, past experience. But past experience says nothing about how much better I would cope if I could just collapse on Someone the first chance I got.

Meanwhile I haven’t slept in two nights, forgive me. Let’s hope tonight I sleep better.

As for my birthday, well, I feel increasingly old, sometimes. And I want lots of sensible things and, by and large, I am getting those things. I think a birthday is, for me, better seen as merely an excuse to acquire useful things and get some reasonably pleasant people into the same room as me in some reasonably nice clothes with some reasonably nice drinks and things, in the most generic sense; no need for it to be about me as such at all.

Stop It, Stop It, Stop It.

I knew I was in for it for a while. I wasn’t feeling wonderful, and this came out in my behaviour – loud and funny and attention-seeking and a bit drunken and annoying, and overdone and lurid but it was either that or do nothing, say nothing, be nothing, so of course I went for the former, and I was happy and things were good but then they suddenly weren’t and so I went to bed.

I switched off the light, and pressed play, and listened to about half the song, before it all became too much, the walls were too close and the world too small and I was terrified but I don’t know what was scaring me so much.

So I rang Someone and he knew what I was talking about, how I was feeling, when I was being completely and utterly incoherent, gibbering and breathing far too fast and just pacing and pacing and close to tears and having a full scale panic, in a flat spin. Not a panic attack like I’ve had before but different, somehow, and no less horrible. But gradually he got some sense out of me, and talked me into naming all the things I was worried about at that point in time, all of them, and talked me through them all, made me get a glass of water and just sit down and stop pacing, and I calmed down, and got intellectually engaged rather than just emotionally engaged with my worries, and just about calmed down, drank some water, kept talking to him, and he made it better, and helped me work my way out of it.

And so he and I went to bed in our separate houses, him with only seven hours until he had to wake up for work, and so I went to bed. And I lay there, tossing and turning, for seven and a half hours, and I got no sleep, none. I dozed for about half an hour at one point and that was it. I don’t yet feel tired but it’ll probably hit in the next couple of hours. Today I feel all shaky and sad and nervous which is bad, but hardly unexpected. And both my parents and Someone independently have said I really ought to go back to counselling and try that again. Oh, effort. They’re right, though, I think.

Half of it is that I am disproportionately worried about my birthday meal tonight. Me, my parents, my sister, her boyfriend W, and Someone, and me. And we’re going to the restaurant my family always goes to for birthdays, and as usual my sister and I are doing the whole dress-n-heels thing, and looking pretty. And for some reason this just terrifies me. Possibly because I am the centre of attention, and I get increasingly funny about that these days, possibly because I’m nervous about the setting and the people and will we all get on, which is daft, there are almost no unknowns in this outing, it’s bound to work. Oddly I worry what W and S will think of the restaurant, which is also silly, it’s just a perfectly nice, safe restaurant which serves good, well-thought-out, nice food, and has a not-at-all-bad wine list. So yes, I’m terrified, and terribly low and sad and deflated and I hope it’s just because I’m tired and I’ll be alright in a bit. And of course my entire family is worried about me now.

Well, You Did Ask

The switch trips in my head and that’s it, down and out, nothing I can do or say, it’s honestly as if I just dropped off some kind of edge in the dark that no-one noticed. And he asks, what is it, what happened, are you alright? I try to explain. It always sounds so bloody artificial coming out of my mouth like that – I just suddenly feel, well, awful. I don’t know why. I’m really sorry. And because he’s Someone, and he’s lovely, he just puts down the teatowel he’s holding and wraps me in his arms and I hide there, curled up in his arms, for ages.

What does it feel like, he asks. Eventually, I speak. I don’t know how to describe it, really, but to me, moods have colours, and this, this is a sort of…grey. Murky, misty grey. It’s the only way I can describe it. But it’s like, every single word I’m saying, every movement I make, is a massive effort. I’m so sorry for doing this to you. No, it’s alright, he says. I want to spend the whole day just hugging you, I don’t like it when you’re not happy. I want to be here. And yes, I think, grey is about right. Mist. Bruises. Clouds. But I don’t bother saying any of those things out loud because I don’t think it’ll help. Worse than that, I think he already understands.

An age later and gradually I can feel normal function returning, I can think again, I care. And without my doing or saying anything he can see that. Your whole face changes, you know. I don’t know what it is, I think it’s in your eyes. They… twinkle, I guess. He smiles. Tentatively, just a little bit, so do I. Time moves on. Tea is drunk. I rejoin the world.

On other days I wake up with a feeling of abject terror and all I can do is get out, get away. I don’t know how to tell people when I feel like that, because usually absolutely instinctively I act almost completely as if everything is normal in order to avoid gibbering like an idiot, and until that facade breaks down it works. But I’m better off if I just get out, leave, I’m going to go and read the newspaper, go for a walk, clear my head. I hope. But then I can come back and I can talk about the things that happen inside my mind, and I am understood. As for why I am understood, or not understood, or the ways in which we struggle, that would be an invasion of privacy I’m not prepared to make. And meanwhile, I am gradually finding that I can talk about anything I want or need to talk about, quite seriously.

I can say the first thing that comes into my head, I can do whatever comes to mind, because I am finding that I can trust him to like me for me. And that millions of the same things make us howl with laughter.

And a week in each others company, comprising almost every given human emotion plus some not so standard ones, was followed by the beautiful, peaceful night we got home, were not burgled, and realised for the first time that yes we can do this. And then I went away on holiday and had days and days and days to myself to think in, and I come back all calm and contented and happy and rejuvenated and normal feeling, having been able to be alone for long enough to have some shockingly bad days just wash over me which is just what I needed, and time to think, and to be, and I come back and I find I really miss him because on some of those bad days it would have been good to have him, just him, sheltering me. And because I hear from him that he isn’t alright and I only want to be there with him even if I can do nothing to help, I just want to be there, because I don’t like to think I could have done something when I didn’t, I want to make things alright, I want us to be able to turn to one another. There are things I would have liked him to see, too, places I imagine bringing him in my more fanciful moments, plans I have made, daftly, for imagined beautiful days.

More than anything, though, I hope that’s it, the last of the weird days. That from now on we have bad days because one or other of us is a bit short on sleep, or hormonal, or stressed, not drowning in waves of anxiety or depression, not unsustainably insomniac, not paranoid or obsessive or any of those things. And I pray, but I don’t believe that that’s it. Oh, if only.

So, I’m Back.

Not sure how long this return will last. My, this feels weird. Hello, everyone. Not that anyone is still checking up on this place, but, well, yes.

Here is some stuff. I was fine for a while, and yes, I had the odd bad day, and the odd panic attack and long low days and lots and lots and lots of cigarettes and the whole happy-low pay-off (really enjoy yourself for a few hours and when you get away from the enjoyable situation you just crash, altogether, oh, fun times, to make up for being happy. Growl).

And I came home for the summer, and yes, I’d perhaps have a few more bad days. Not many, just possibly a few more. Possibly not a few more, maybe I was just noticing a pattern where there wasn’t one because I was scared and because that is how the human brain works.

And then I met Someone. For five minutes, at his parents house, and somehow I just knew he was Someone (authors note: do not go assuming I’ve actually fallen in love or that I’m possibly getting a bit crazy about this. I have known the guy for a month and I am fully aware of that fact, I’m not some kind of madwoman. Well, I am, or I wouldn’t be here, but you know…), not just someone, and somehow despite getting hideously drunk the next time I saw him, and despite having One Of Those Hideous Nightmares, despite then waking myself up, not really explaining anything, and just keeping a tight hold on his hand as I calmed myself down and he looked on in confused consternation – despite all of this utterly crazy behaviour from a near-total stranger, not to mention the world’s most disgusting hangover, he came home to mine and had lunch with my family, and they didn’t scare him off either, and so yes, he is my Someone. The thing I always feared. That I would find a Someone, and that I might, just maybe, actually have to rely on that person and that they would have to deal with the fact that I am not entirely perfectly A-OK – and the consequences of that.

For a while I was fine – he made me happy, he makes me happy. But then we went away for a week together to a festival and cracks started to show in both of us – and it turns out that he is no more OK than I am – arguably, in many ways, possibly worse. In different ways and for different reasons. And there are days when we make each other worse, and there are days when we make each other better, and there are days where we are simply happy together, and life is a lot more up and down now.

I begin to wonder if in fact I was only alright for as long as I was because I insulated myself from anything that might rock the boat. Stuck to seeing old friends and not going out too late and eating all the right things and protecting myself, didn’t really take risks in terms of getting to know men I might have rather fancied, instead sticking with teasing, dating, and screwing the same old crew (different men in each of those categories, I might add, and not really a ‘crew’ in any ‘large number of people’ sense, don’t go judging me by accident!).

Accidentally walking blindfold into a relationship that in some ways just works, and in some ways is bloody hard work, and in all ways is pretty intense at times, well, that wasn’t really part of the plan. So of course it’s a challenge, and I am having more bad days now, for sure, but on the other hand I am also very happy, not just content – I feel like I am actually living my life, not just living through it, surviving it, navigating it.

So yes, I am challenged, and that means I am not as well. But for now, none of the anxieties I had about leaning on Someone too much, asking them to give more than they reasonably could, and all the rest of it, none of these have really reared their ugly heads. Despite it all I am still happy in a funny sort of way. Battered and bruised (not literally!) and dazed and confused and happy.

And yes, things are only getting easier for us as we learn how to work with each other and when to step back and so on. Not only that, but he’s stopping me smoking, and I’ve cut down on my caffeine intake, and I don’t swear so much, and I feel really rather beautiful these days.

I’m probably not sane, I feel really rather fragile, but I think I can hold it together, and more than that I think it might be worth it. And I have never, ever said this about being depressed before. Nothing has ever been worth the bad days. Perhaps because nothing before has actually been able to pull me out of them – A can only make me realise I can survive them, tenuously; cigarettes change the timbre of a bad day; but, gradually, the darkness lifts, these days, just because he’s there. Not much, and not quickly, but it works, and it’s something. And you mustn’t go thinking that things are Really Bad. Compared to how they were this is nothing. I’m just having some bad days, and I get scared sometimes, and I’m not quite on an even keel but by and large I am fine, and genuinely happy. This isn’t a big deal. It’s just that I am not as generically OK as I was. So, well, here’s to another month. I think that’s a good wish to start off with.

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.