I should know by now not to entertain the thought that ‘perhaps I am better’.
One thing I have learnt on this stupid journey is that I am never going to be ‘better’, and one thing I realise now is that I should make the most of the days where I feel ‘okay’, because I think ‘okay’ is as good as it is going to get for me.
Life is never going to be brilliant. I am never going to be the happiest, most positive person in the world. Right now it is a struggle to be a happy person in general.
I’m typing this in our bedroom because I have yelled at everyone so far today and figure, hey, it is probably best if the only person I can yell at or be nasty to is myself. I happen to be very good in that particular aspect.
I hoped I would start the New Year off the way I intended it to continue, but all the New Year has brought me, so far, is a lot of tears and that horrible feeling of being devoured whole by something based entirely in my own brain.
I hate my brain, at times like this.
Obviously it doesn’t help that both of my children are away, but still, I am a grown ass woman, I should be able to cope with a few days apart.
In the meantime I guess I’ll just continue making life miserable for the poor people who are stuck in the same house as me.
Lauriel got a job and began working last week. I was worried about how I would cope because since about April 2013 she has been doing a bulk of the responsible adulting and parenting, because of my less than stellar mental health.
Prior to last week, I can’t really remember the last time I took the kids to school by myself, or went and did the groceries by myself (actually, it was Christmas Eve 2014… what was I, fucking crazy???), or did the little errands that needed to be done. Sometimes I would go to school with her. Sometimes I would go to the supermarket with her. Very rarely did I do anything alone that would put me in contact with those scary human things.
Depression and anxiety do fucked up things to your brain. The simplest of adult tasks seemed impossible and I lacked motivation to do… well, anything really. Even eating was hard and on a daily basis Lauriel would have to force me to eat breakfast, to eat lunch.
You can understand how shocked I am that 10 days into needing to be self sufficient, and being responsible for everything relating to the kids (until 5pm), I am thriving.
I wouldn’t say I LOVE my wife being at work all day, but finally, after years and years of feeling like I am inadequate as an adult, I feel like a real adult. I feel like a real mum. I feel like a real wife.
I really am shocked that I feel so mentally well, because I thought it’d be the opposite. I had images of myself crying all day while Lauriel was at work. I had images of needing to force myself to pick the kids up, and crying all the way there. I had images of being pissy that I had to go to the supermarket, of getting out of that place and being ready to punch a brick wall.
But no. Being in a routine has done wonders for me. Doing what I want, when I want is no longer an option.
I know that I have to be awake at 7.30am. I know that I have to have the lunches done and kids out the door by 8.30am. I know that I need to do x, y & z on certain days. I know I need to leave home and be at school by 2.50pm. I know I need to bring the kids home and get afternoon tea and homework underway. I know that I need to have dinner planned and depending on what it is, underway by 5.30pm. I know that between 5.00pm and 5.30pm Lauriel gets home and we spend a few minutes cuddling and talking about the day. I know that around 6.30pm dinner is had. I know that between 7pm & 7.30pm the three younger kids go to bed. I know that 8pm means lights off. I know that around 9pm Eloise goes to bed. I know that around 10.30pm we go to bed.
The last time I felt ‘blah’ (aka: depressed) or anxious was at least 10 days ago, and that is a major accomplishment for me.
I do miss my wife like crazy when she’s at work, but I’m also busy enough that I don’t really have time to sit and mope, or to feel sorry for myself. For the first time in a long time, my brain doesn’t feel quite so cluttered and the world doesn’t seem quite so scary.
Except on Sunday and Monday, when my wife has days off. By then I’m over being a responsible adult and tend to become a bit of a recluse.
If someone tells you they feel so stuck, so lost, so alone, so completely fucked up that the only solution is to commit suicide PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE take them seriously.
Do not tell them it’s attention seeking.
Do not get mad with them
Do not roll your eyes and ignore it
Do not tell them to stop being silly
Do not tell them to get over it
Do not tell them to go and do something to take their mind off it.
TALK to them. HUG them.
Tell them you LOVE them. ASK what you can do for them. DON’T presume it is all ‘for attention’ brushing it, and them off.
I am not stupid, I know that some people threaten to commit suicide or do something to harm themselves to get attention, but just because they’ve done it once, even ten times before, doesn’t mean they aren’t being 1000% honest this time.
Someone I love dearly is going through a really hard time right now and I have been beside myself with worry. She was incredibly strong and took herself to get help when no one would listen or take her seriously… I hope she eventually understands just how brave she was for doing that; so many people don’t have that strength.
I was in a really good mood last week… until I read a news article online and my whole mood plummeted. I just mentally and emotionally flatlined. It wasn’t until a day or two later that I realised exactly what had happened to me when reading that article; I had been triggered.
Triggers are something I’m no stranger to. I have triggers related to my abortion, to the sexual abuse I suffered, to my nephew dying, to my ectopic pregnancy, to the earthquakes… but never before had I experienced a trigger related to depression.
The article I was reading was about the domestic violence allegations against Shaun Kenny-Dowall and was written after he’d been hospitalised due to concerns surrounding his mental health. To begin with there is a bit of background about the journalists previous experience interviewing SKD as well as his own opinions on the man. Pretty standard for a feature article. It then moves on to an interview with SKD’s dad…
And that’s where it got hard for me to read.
The more I read the sicker I felt and to be honest, I felt close to crying. I wasn’t really sure why, I don’t know SKD personally, nor do I know that much about him… but there was something about his dad’s words that really affected me.
“After a very difficult night Shaun was staying at his dad’s place in Bondi. He was being watched but jumped a back fence. He took his father’s car. He could not be contacted and John called the police. John got in his wife’s car and headed straight to The Gap. The lonely drive to The Gap was the worst minutes of John’s life.
He was looking for something he didn’t want to find.
“I had it all planned out,” he said. “If I saw his car I was going to get to the edge and get down to him as quick as I could. I wasn’t going to let him be alone down there.”
The police searched block by block through the Eastern Suburbs and found him in Bellevue Hill.
Three cop cars pulled up next to him. He was sitting in his car staring blankly into space with a newspaper beside him. He wasn’t responsive, was emotionless and was not making sense. He felt let down and alone.” (from ‘Families divided amid allegations’ – Sydney Morning Herald, 25 July 2015)
The words resonated on a very strange level. For the first time since I really acknowledged my depression I began seeing myself from Lauriel’s point of view. I realised how scary it must have been for her when I was at my worst, how helpless she must of felt… and not just her either, my kids also saw me at my worst. I felt crushed when I thought about how it would have been for the to see me like that, a shell of the person I had been. They must have been terrified and confused. I will always hate that I put my kids through that; I am just glad my parents weren’t here to see me. It is easy to pretend you are okay via text message!
What really got me though, like a suckerpunch to the gut, was reading about the state SKD was in when they found him in his car. Not responsive. Emotionless. Not making sense. That state is familiar to me. That state was me in April 2014 when I finally lost it.
I remember sitting on the edge of the bed in a towel after my shower, my eyes fixated to an invisible spot on the floor, not feeling, not thinking, not really there. My body was there but the rest of me was… elsewhere, or perhaps it had turned off. My heart was beating, my lungs were were filling with air… but I just… wasn’t there. Lauriel literally had to dress me and talk me through the seemingly simple task of walking out to the car so she could take me to the doctor and I could finally get the help I needed.
On the one hand, the flashbacks have acted as a reminder of how far I’ve come… but on the other hand I’ve been reminded that depression is never really ‘over’. It’s not something that you deal with and leave it in the past.
It stays with you, all of it; the bad times as well as the good times.
Weeks like this are enough to make me pull my hair out. Actually, earlier this morning that is what I was trying to do. I was pulling on my hair hoping it would come out in my hand and some of the frustration I was feeling would magically disappear, perhaps it would float out of the empty hair follicles?
Like the title for this blog states: sometimes I don’t think I’m fit to be part of the human race, or at the least, that I’m not fit to be part of a human clan. I should be shut off from everyone and everything, left to my own devices until I either ‘get over it’ (how I hate that fucking term, but it is all I can think of) or finally do lose the plot and get carted off in a straight jacket.
Rationally I know I’m not insane, that a straight jacket isn’t in my future – BUT – weeks like this I feel like I’m just one little step away from being locked up and the key being thrown away. Perhaps into a volcano. Or the core of the sun. Somewhere as hot as a mofo, that would dissolve the key.
I can’t even explain what is wrong or why I feel this way.
Am I sad? I dunno. Maybe. I miss my parents and my sister. (Yeah, now sit me watch and cry with those words out on virtual paper) Am I angry? Not really, well, only with myself. Am I upset about something-in-particular? No. If there was something that was making me upset I would be able to fix it, this funk would have disappeared almost as soon as it began.
I tried to explain it to Lauriel yesterday, the best I could come up with was
Nothing specific, my blood just feels thick and I can’t breathe and my brain is cloudy and something is clutching at my throat
Nothing specific. Sure. How the hell can ‘nothing specific’ turn me into a complete and utter bitch? I have a horribly short temper, I don’t know if I’ve said a nice word to the kids all week (okay, I have, a lot, but it doesn’t feel like it), I don’t want to do anything, I don’t want to go out, I don’t want to stay at home, I don’t laugh at things I’d normally laugh at.
I just feel tense. Wound up. Tight. Hyper-sensitive.
Sound. Sound is doing my head in. Literally. The constant chatter of the kids, the music they play on their tablets, the singing they do, the hovering, the- all our kids do is talk and make noise!
I hate myself for finding the above annoying – they are bloody kids – it’s what they do! It’s what they are meant to do, it is what they are allowed to do, it’s what kids have done for hundreds of thousands of years! They talk, they laugh, they sing, they ask, the whine, they giggle… and here I am, cringing and clenching my jaw, wishing like hell they would just shut the f**k up.
I’m like the fucking grinch right now.
What makes it worse is that it hasn’t been a one day thing, it has been the whole week. I know it is probably caused by stress (money related), cabin fever (we have been stuck at home a lot due to being down one car and having a kiddo with a fractured ankle) and good ol’ hormones (seriously, you’d think evolution would have made hormones easier to deal with?). Even though I know that, no matter how hard I try to force myself out of this funk, I can’t.
Even as I’m telling myself ‘calm down’, I am getting angry because of Bruno Mars or Taylor Swift playing from a bedroom, or because of a child asking for the fiftieth time if it is lunchtime yet, or because a fly keeps landing on my ankle, or because the wind is blowing a certain way (actually, I lie, there has been bugger all wind lately!)…
Irrational. That’s me right now.
I KNOW it is going to go away, that it’s not a permanent thing… but that doesn’t make being in the middle of it any easier.
What I’m most ashamed of is that it’s my kids suffering. They didn’t ask for a mother with mental health problems! Perhaps it’s harder because most of the time I DO feel fine, in fact, I have felt better over the past six months than I have in years… but getting used to feeling good means that when I feel bad, I feel really, really bad.
Tell me how it is fair that ‘healing’ or ‘recovering’ or ‘whatever’ from depression can leave you feeling worse than when you AREN’T dealing with it?
Before I sign off, I feel the need to share this video again, all about a big black dog… the perfect metaphor for depression
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.
Ever since I was little I have loved going to the beach. I have always found the ocean so calming. The sound of the waves, looking out to the
Hard to be unhappy with a view like this… the kiddos, the ocean
horizon and knowing it stretches far beyond what I can see. I love to see the relatively calm ocean on a sunny day and equally I love to see the almost angry looking ocean on a cold, wet, stormy day.
Since I began suffering from depression, the beach/ocean has been one of my happy places. I go there when I need to think, when I need to feel, when I need to get a sense that the world is so much bigger than I think and to be reminded the world is in fact beautiful. The thoughts in my brain might not be, but the world… it can be gorgeous when it wants to be! The moment I get a glimpse of the ocean I can feel myself starting to refresh and when I am physically standing on the sand watching the waves rolling or crashing in, depending on the mood of the ocean that day, I feel as if my brain is getting recharged. It’s as if the negative energy is getting swept out to sea and is being replaced by positive energy coming in with wave after wave after wave.
The waves caught us!
I’m not a religious person but I like to believe I am a spiritual person, and there is just something about the beach that lifts my spirit, that makes me realise I can do this, I can deal with the depression, the anxiety, the negative thinking. It makes me realise that life goes on… I think it’s the continual movement of the waves. Waves never stop. Life never stops (until the very end). The waves can’t be controlled and neither can life, not at the most basic level
We went to the beach yesterday and I took pleasure out of the seemingly small things. I looked for pretty rocks and shells with Emersyn before we stood along the shore to see if the waves could catch us. We laughed when the incoming water almost reached our toes, but didn’t quite make it. We squealed when the water came in and went far beyond us, wetting my pants and her skirt. Then we went to the playground and Lauriel and I sat and watched the kids playing (nicely together!) and laughing. It was so relaxed and peaceful, even with all the noise associated with being at the
The ocean – my happy place
beach.
I hope to make it to the beach more this summer. I hope to make it out of the house more often, full stop.
One of the things I hate about depression when it is at its worst is that I find it hard to leave the house. The physical effort of walking to the car, the mental effort of being around other people, the emotional effort associated with trying to pretend I want to be there. For too long I let my depression impact on our kids. Rather than all of us going on an outing it would be Lauriel and the kids, with me staying at home to sulk. If I did go out I would be snappy and grumpy the entire time. Family outings weren’t fun… and I hate that so many potential fun family memories were ruined because of me, because of my depression.
How the hell do you thank the person who saved you from yourself?
I feel as though I wasn’t Lauriel’s wife for the first part of this year, rather I was the fifth child in the household. I will probably always feel guilty for the way she had to prop me up over the first part of this year, mentally, emotionally, even sometimes physically while I cried.
How do you thank the person who lay in bed with you for hours while you cried? How do you thank the person who told you repeatedly you weren’t stupid, an idiot, a moron, a waste of space. How do you thank the person who put up with your mood swings? How do you thank the person who didn’t yell back when you yelled at her? How do you thank the person who essentially provided all the care for your children for a period of months? How do you thank the person who always put you first and her kids last?
If you are me you shower that person with gifts of crochet.
Yeah, not exactly a fair trade is it? You stopped me having a mental breakdown, here, have a capelet! And a shawl!
I feel as if I have nothing I can give, nothing that really explains or demonstrates just how grateful I am to have such an amazing woman in my life. But I can crochet. I can make her things. I know a shawl or a capelet or… well, anything crocheted doesn’t seem like a big deal, but there is so much time and effort that goes in to each item. More than that there is love.
While I am making something for her I find it impossible to not think about how lucky I am to have her, how lucky my kids are to have her, how lucky the world is to have her. It takes a very special person to put themselves last and to spend so much time trying to reassure someone that they do matter, that their feelings are important… when most of the time it probably feels like talking to a brick wall.
One day I will find a way to truly thank her… but until then she will have to make do with a LOT of crocheted items…
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!
I started this blog for two reasons. First of all, I want to share my experience with anxiety and depression. I have suffered from both for around 12 years now, the depression was triggered by a pregnancy loss (a termination to be more honest), while the anxiety was triggered by my beautiful nephew dying of SIDS when he was four months old. Then there were the traumatic Christchurch earthquakes in 2010/2011. THAT was really what set me off.
For a long time the depression would come and go, but the anxiety has always been relatively constant. I was a single parent for six-ish years, and I think this forced me to ignore the depression, to sweep it under the ‘too hard’ mat and hope it would go away. I convinced myself it had, but I realise now I was in denial. It took the love of a beautiful, funny, wonderful woman (Lauriel) for me to get out of denial and start to accept my depression was more existant than I believed.
It seems stupid, doesn’t it. Meet an amazing woman, fall in love, move in together, get married, start the rest of my life… and fall into a deep depression. It confused me for a long time. I didn’t understand why I was suffering so badly when in reality I was the happiest I had been in… well, forever. It was as if there was two of me. Depressed Emma and blissfully happy Emma. Over the past year things got worse and ‘depressed Emma’ became more prevalent than ‘blissfully happy Emma’… I was still happy, but there was this persistant fog, this horrible cloud that just wouldn’t lift, no matter how happy I felt in the other part of my brain.
Things came to a head about four months ago. I had a breakdown in the shower. I got out, sat on the bed and cried. And cried. And cried. And cried. I was numb. I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t think. All I could do was cry. Lauriel informed me we were going to the doctor, and I didn’t say no. Like a child I let her get me dressed, get me out of the house, walk me into the medical centre, walk me through to the nurse, walk me through to the doctor, walk me through to the pharmacy.
Ninety minutes and a three month supply of Fluoxetine later, we went home.
I started seeing a psychologist not long after that, and finally feel as if I am starting to get on top of my depression and anxiety, though I doubt either will ever be gone. I recently had my third appointment with my psychologist and he told me he is proud of the progress I made.
Most days I think he is right, I have made great progress. But then there are days where I feel like I am right back at step one.
Oh yea. The second reason for starting this blog.
Crochet!
One of the worst aspects of my anxiety is I am terrified of being a passenger in a car on a long trip. Around town, fine. Onto the State Highway? No fucking way. We had a birthday party to attend in June and I had a major anxiety attack before we left. Crying, shaking, imagining crash scenario after crash scenario. Lauriel eventually said we didn’t have to go, but I KNEW we had to. I KNEW that I had to push on through and that I had to test myself. My psychologist had spoken to me only days earlier about exposure being the most effective form of treating anxiety.
Lauriel broke the day into small chunks for me. First off all I was to concentrate on getting dressed. Then having breakfast. Then getting ready to go. She had me choose a book to take. She suggested I take my crochet. I decided it wasn’t a bad idea, but doubted I would be able to concentrate on it. We got in the car. I did up my seatbelt. Lauriel started the car. We were off.
I started crocheting immediately. Know what? I didn’t take my eyes off my crochet until two minutes before we reached our destination. A WHOLE trip had passed by without any anxiety. There were no freak outs, there were no crash scenarios racing through my head. I concentrated on my crochet and that was it.
It was then that I realised crochet was something I could do to calm mysef, to focus myself, to divert my attention away from whatever it was I was fixating on (along with being afraid of being a passenger, I also convince myself on a very regular basis that I’m dying of some horrible disease). Crochet almost became my saviour… well, after my wife anyway.
I have a few hard months coming up with various dates which have bad connotations… so I have decided I am going to make a blanket for our bed. It is going to be huge. I am doing granny squares that are little and to make the blanket big enough for our bed, it is going to require 484 granny squares.
My plan is that when things get tough mentally/emotionally, after talking it through with Lauriel, I will pick up my hook and start working on the blanket. I might get a couple of squares out of the way and feel okay, I might end up at it all night.
This blog isn’t going to be all depression and anxiety though, I also plan to share the good stuff, because part of what I have learnt in the last four months is the importance of appreciating the small stuff. Cliché as hell, but incredibly important. Who knows, maybe I will do a daily ‘3 things I am grateful for’ post. I probably won’t. But maybe I will.
Emma Knits 