I’ve been back home for over a week now, but part of me still hasn’t landed.
Years ago, I went through a dangerous period of depression, but thankfully I received a lot of support from friends and family and managed to climb out of that valley. So many great things have happened in my life since then that I figured it wasn’t even possible for me to go back there.
Until now. Let’s take Sunday as an example: I had the afternoon free to do my creative work while Craig caught up with his pile of Post-It notes and other odds-and-ends. Hooray, right? I was finally back in my space and able to tuck into my novel.
Except I couldn’t write or draw or do anything. I couldn’t muster one iota of belief in my abilities, nor did I feel like I had anything to say. By the end of the afternoon, I’d given myself permission to just be a person with a job and not create anything else.
Thankfully, I recognise this as something chemical going on in my brain and body. How? Because it’s free-floating; there isn’t any cause, and it can attach itself to anything.
Here’s how stupid it gets: Yesterday morning I was making a new box for all the postcards Craig’s collected, and I found one featuring a little trollish character with a ginger beard and a kilt that touches the ground. The caption read: “Hamish in John O’Groats”, and I started crying. What? Why? The loose thread of reason running through the emotion had something to do with Craig being willing to have a “Hamish” thing in his collection, that he’s make me part of his life. I was grateful, yet didn’t feel worth it.
Last night, we met friends in Thurso and went to the art show taking place at the high school there. I loved how democratic the show was, featuring names and images we recognised from galleries and shops right alongside rank beginners, with everything in-between. Some of the pieces were horrible, childish muck, and others were arrestingly original, beautiful, or fun. (Prince Charles’s watercolours were actually quite good.) So it was a nice night out, and provided some inspiring input.
Best of all, though, was talking to an acquaintance there””a ‘transplanted American’ who writes a great column for the local paper. When I confessed to not being quite myself, she said she’s just come back from several weeks in the States and is feeling the same way. It was such a relief and a comfort that I just had to hug her.
Likewise, an old pal who travels a lot told me by e-mail that she’d got a virus from a woman who sneezed on her throughout a long flight (she jokingly suggested this should be illegal””and I think she has a point! Visibly sick people should at least be required to wear some sort of mask or sit in a dry-clearning bag or something). Now my friend is sick and has jetlag. She told me she lost a friend years ago to suicide, and his GP suggested the virus he’d caught (H1N1) “could have contributed to [his] feelings and inability to cope”. I get it: I was sick in Toronto this trip””my first cold in years, which in itself was a letdown””and I can tell that it hasn’t gone away completely.
I read a blog article this morning that called people out for only “life posting” about their successes and about how HAPPY! and GREAT! they are””and added that comparing ourselves to others is always a recipe for disaster. That does seem to be the stick I’m beating myself with, which the Internet makes readily available.
What’s the remedy? I don’t know yet. Compassion for where I’m at. Patience: I don’t think this is going to last long, and that was the mental tape that looped around when I went through my bad spell, thinking a low state was reality“”permanent, persistent, and pervasive.
Not making any big decisions for the moment. Just staying with what’s in front of me.
I’m fine, really; I just find myself without any inner resources at the moment, and that’s weird.
So instead of being ashamed, thinking “No, don’t show that! You won’t look good. It’ll seem like you’re asking for help and being sucky,” I’m just putting it out here in the interest of making mental health less of a taboo.