And I’m freeeeee…. freeSTYLING

After my emotional crappiness in the early hours of the morning, I wanted to share something positive, something that made me feel good about myself, that made me feel not-crap.

I spent the morning knitting.  Literally 8.20am-1pm I was knitting like a… well, something that knits really intensely.  The end result was a Milo for my cousin’s baby due in February.  More specifically, it is a Milo that included a little freestyling!  Yeap.  Me.  The person who must follow a pattern, who must follow a recipe, who must do something exactly how she is told to… I freestyled.

Okay, so I didn’t freestyle a hell of a lot, in fact, it was only one row that was different from the pattern… but I love that it worked!  I did a row of eyelets so I could lace through some ribbon to be tied in a bow at the front.  Being that I haven’t had babies for a long time now, it may turn out that ribbon is a pure and simple pain in the ass with a baby, in which case I am sure my cousin will use her brain and remove the ribbon!

Was nice to do something that left me feeling accomplished today.

This whole ‘colouring for mindfulness’ thingy…

One of the proudest moments in my life was winning a colouring in competition in year six and being awarded my prize by (cricketer) Stephen Fleming.  I don’t think I did a lot of colouring after that… why would I?  Colouring is a kids thing, right?

Wrong, apparently!  A few months back I started noticing all these mandala colouring posts popping up on Facebook and admittedly became quite curious.

This past weekend I realised there is actually a technical term for it – colouring for mindfulness – which sounds a lot classier (and more grown up) than simply ‘colouring in’.

It’s more than a fancy name for something most of us do from the time we can hold a crayon in our chubby little fists as toddlers; it is an exercise in, well, as the name suggests, mindfulness.  It’s a way to calm the mind, to clear away all the assorted jumble of thoughts and just be.

Really, it is the perfect meditation activity for someone like me who finds it incredibly hard to just sit and free the mind.  Actually, it is near impossible for me and I find that my inner dialogue is at its worst when it is just me, myself and I sitting still – I believe it can be referred to as ‘relaxation’.  I don’t do relaxation.  Not without something to keep my hands busy.

Crocheting works, knitting works, so I figure there may be something to this colouring thing.  I am so curious, in fact, that today we downloaded some images, printed them out, purchased some pencils that are just for us (a phrase that isn’t often used or respected as a parent) and right now I’m going to go and get my colour on.

I shall report back in the near future!

Goodnight y’all!

Keep on knittin’ on!

It has been close enough to two months since I last posted (oops).  My lack of posting hasn’t been related to a lack of crocheting or knitting, in fact, completely the opposite!  I have been knitting so much lately that I haven’t had any time to blog (that and university has started back so I’m into the swing of the academic thing of things).

I have been knitting up a storm!  To be honest, I don’t think I have picked up a crochet hook since around the last time  I blogged on here; this knitting thing, it is addictive!

It isn’t just addictive though, it has also proven to be a big internal struggle and challenge for me.  When I f*ck up it is a battle between ‘do I just put this down and pretend it never happened‘ or ‘do I keep on at it and not let it get the better of me‘?  Once upon a time the answer would have been to get rid of it and move onto something new, but that’s the old Emma – or at least I like to think it is.

Looking back, giving up so easily might have had something to do with my anxiety.  If I didn’t try, I couldn’t fail, right?  Stupid thinking really, because not trying is like instant failure, or at least that is how I see it now, anyway.  My anxiety disorder seems to be nicely under control at the moment and I am finding that has given me more confidence in most areas of my life, but particularly my study.

I haven’t stressed once over assignments, I’ve just gone ahead and done them (76% in my first 300 level assignment, thank you very much!)… I’m also doing this odd thing called planning.  I’m not sure if you’ve heard about it, but from the age of 5-ish you are told to ‘plan ahead’ for your school/uni/etc work.  After…. god, 26? years of schooling I have finally realised that planning is where it’s at.  Maybe I should make more people aware of this magical idea?

Anyway, before I leave you all to go and do some of that planning stuff I spoke about, I thought I’d leave some photos of my latest projects!

Colin vest

Zanny T jumper

Fish ‘n’ Chip jumper (little sister of the Zanny T)

Simply Soft cowl (for me, but modelled by Emmy)

Seaweed cowl

baby hat

In case any of you are interested in the patterns for the above items, here you go!

Colin vest

Zanny T jumper

Fish ‘n’ Chip jumper

Simply Soft cowl

Seaweed cowl

These are the days I hate the most

I need to remind myself of this

Today has been the type of day that leaves me feeling exhausted and on edge – mentally, physically, emotionally – the type of day that seems to last triple the time of a normal day.

What exactly is this type of day?

It’s the type of day when I wake up feeling uneasy and don’t really know why.  One minute I feel sad and don’t know why, the next I feel over excited and don’t know why.  One minute I’m happy and the next I am a grumpy bitch taking it out on everyone else.  I spend a lot of time in bed on these days.  Time feeling sorry for myself and picking apart every. single. little. thing. I hate about who I am.  Usually a lot of that time is spent feeling like a failure for whatever reason, feeling like I don’t deserve my wife, my children, my family, my friends.  Rather than being proud of myself for ______________ I beat myself up for ____________; usually the thing I beat myself up over is something old, something in the past, something I haven’t thought about in years.  It makes no sense whatsoever, but I can’t shake it from my thoughts.

My wife calls this the spiral of doom.  One thing leads to another, which leads to another, which leads to another… and results in me wishing I could bash my head against a wall.

And that is what I do sometimes.  Yeap.  One of my not-so-good coping mechanisms is to bang my head against the wall.  I remember doing this as a child, I remember doing this as a teen and I still do it as an adult when I’m at my worst.  Lauriel tells me off for this and pretty much physically restrains me.  I am grateful she does because the last thing I need is to knock myself unconscious.  Then there is the biting.  If I’m not banging my head against the wall – literally – I am biting myself.  Usually my hand or my forearm.  I’m not sure if this is considered self-harm but I cannot control it.  I get angry/upset/whatever, begin to shake, then my hand/arm goes up to my mouth and I bite as hard as I can.  I think it’s a way to try and snap myself out of it, or perhaps a way to let out my frustration in a way that is safer than punching a window or smashing things.

Yes, today is one of those days.  I cannot pin my finger on exactly why I am feeling this way, I think it is a combination of things.

* I had to go for a cervical smear, this triggered my health anxiety (I have myself convinced my results will come back showing something is wrong), but also some memories of the sexual abuse I suffered in my early 20’s…
* I had to see the doctor for my six monthly review for my meds and ended up coming out of it on a higher dose of antidepressants, leading me to feel like a failure for needing even more help.

Okay, those are probably the two main things that have triggered my mood today; but those things have – as happens on the spiral of doom – left me feeling ‘blah’ about almost everything else.

I hate these days because they come out of the blue and usually after days of feeling really good, and positive.  They just strike and knock me off my feet… no matter how often I tell myself tomorrow I will feel better, that it is just temporary, I still feel as if I am deeeeeep in the depths of *whatever this is* and that I’m going to feel this way forever.

I think this is the hard part about dealing with depression and taking measures to improvie it.  When everyday is a depressed day you don’t really notice just how bad you feel, but when most of your days are good days (finally, yay!) the odd bad day you do have feels 100x worse than you are used to feeling.

I guess that days like this could be viewed as being a complete and utter bastard, but a more positive way to look at them is probably to think of how far I have come and that I now have a new normal.

“What’s wrong?” … I *really* don’t know!

One of the things I hate the most about suffering from depression and anxiety, is my inability to explain exactly what is wrong when I am in one of my depressive or anxious phases.  I think it is something that other people suffering from depression and anxiety understand, but for those lucky enough not too it can be so hard to verbalise what’s going in in your brain.

Usually I can’t pinpoint WHAT is wrong.  All I know is that ten minutes ago I felt fine and now I feel as if my brain is shutting off, there is a huge foggy haze clouding mood, and where I was laughing not long ago, now all I feel like doing is lying on the floor and crying.  My common response when Lauriel asks me what is wrong is “I just feel blah” or “my brain is being stupid”, because 99% of the time there is no reason for my need to cry, or my sudden attack of the ‘I suck’s.  I wish there was, it would make life so much easier.

I have started trying to pay attention to what is going on around me when I can feel that foggy haze starting to close in, but usually there is nothing different happening.  No one has pissed me off, no one has upset me, I haven’t received bad news, I’m not waiting for an important phone call, I’m not worried about a friend or family member.  My brain just does this thing where it decides I have been happy for too long, and that I need a bit of a reality check.  I need to be reminded that no matter how good I am feeling, anxiety and depression are always there in the background, just waiting for the right seemingly invisible trigger to set them off.

I experienced one of those ‘attacks’ today.  I was fine, laughing with Lauriel, feeling perfectly happy.  And then I was in this deep dark cave of shitty emotions and could not find my way out.  She asked what was wrong and I shrugged as I said “I don’t know”, and then wished like hell I could tell her something specific so we could work out a way to fix it.

When I get into this state I seem to instinctively take Lauriel’s hand and lead her to the bedroom.  We get in bed, I bury my face in her chest and the tears come.  I happen to think I am very lucky because now that I am medicated and dealing with the stupid chemical imbalance in my brain, I start to feel better quickly.  It’s as if by the simple act of cuddling me Lauriel is recharging my mental/emotional batteries.  She lets me feel whatever I am feeling (something I think IS important) and has never minimised what I’m going through.  I have never heard the words ‘just get over it’ from her, and I think that is something that helps me a lot.

We lie down.  I cry.  I stop crying.  I talk about how screwed up my brain feels.  I cry some more.   She makes me laugh.  I cry some more.  She makes me laugh.  I start feeling incredibly grateful that I have someone so amazingly understanding to go through this with.

I hate that I can’t tell her exactly why I feel sad, why I am freaking out about a headache, why I am worried about Emersyn going on a preschool trip, why I’m not laughing at something I would usually laugh at; but for some reason she understands that and lets me go through my own little selfish process until I feel with it enough to actually get out of bed and attempt to resume normal life.

Those of you who have a loved one who suffers from depression… try not to take it personally when they tell you they don’t know what’s wrong, or can’t go into specifics, because chances are they can’t.  Do love on that person though.  Do hug them.  Do kiss them.  Do let them cry.  You may feel like something as simple as holding them while they cry isn’t very helpful, but believe me, it makes a LOT more difference than you will ever know!