It was wrapped up in special packaging: a teaching and meditation morning at a Buddhist centre.
The teaching carried in it a message that helped me to put to rest something that I’d been struggling with for decades.
I’d thought, for a long time, that I would never be able to put right mistakes that I’d made in the past because they were too big; too major. I thought that I’d fallen and failed early on in my life and all my efforts to rebuild had failed too. Despite doing my best to push through on positives for a long time, it had never been enough.
Then, suddenly, there it was, in the teaching that morning. It was possible for me to put the past behind me and be happy in the present. All I had to do was develop a calm and peaceful mind.
That teaching gave me hope, when I needed hope, and I’ve been building on it ever since.
That doesn’t mean that I am suddenly happy and joyful all the time. You don’t go through a lifetime of struggling with complex mental health and emotional difficulties without that struggle alone taking its toll. But I now allow myself to feel lighter, have stopped berating myself, stopped feeling responsible for everything that goes ‘wrong’ or has gone ‘wrong’ in the past.
For a long time, friends have told me that I deserved to be happy, but there was something so badly hurt, and at such a deep level, that it’s taken a long, long time for that place of hurt to be finally exposed to a point of healing, and for that healing to start taking place.
Tonight is a meeting of the Buddhist group that I go to, which is an outreach from the Centre that I went to last year[i].
I’ve already had a good day today, and I have that to look forward to this evening.
This may not seem like the most momentous achievement or purchase of the century, but for me, in the context of my life, it is.
It marks the point where I do, finally, know that I am in control of my life.
Over 40 years ago, I had a car but didn’t even have £5.00 to put petrol in it.
I’ve had a few car breakdowns since then but none as major as the personal breakdowns I’ve had to recover from.
There were times when I thought that my life was a write-off, and I had no insurance policy to fall back on; only a belief that I couldn’t give up, however hard it got.
And I didn’t.
My life’s journey has been about retraining my brain – to think differently; see things differently; do things differently.
So, today, I drive my car with two new front tyres and, though a little tired myself, feel a strong sense of relief.
I had a lovely walk with Lydia this morning, and a lovely afternoon with a friend.
I am no longer ‘locked in’, nor am I ‘locked out’. I am free to be, and to be me.
That doesn’t mean I can or want to be complacent; quite the opposite. I want to make the most of every day: learn, experience, reflect, be open to possibilities, accept what I can’t change; appreciate what I have.
I picked her up from the boarding kennels this morning, where she’s been staying for the last nine nights.
The staff at the kennels love her, and she gets very excited about going to see them. I’m pleased to say that she’s also excited to see me when I go to pick her up. She is a big bundle of furry fluffiness hurtling towards me and goes straight into the car, ready to go home.
It’s good to be home.
I needed to get away for a while, but it’s so good to be home.
To pace myself, after a late return journey last night, I choose not to go to yoga this afternoon. Instead, I take it easy with my dog, get my car tyres checked – I need new ones – and do a bit of shopping. Today is the first day of the rest of my retirement, and I’m enjoying it.
Later I go to Qigong. We are doing some movements, under the theme of ‘deer’, which are lovely. I imagine I have antlers for a while. We take up poses for increasing our alertness and awareness, as if we are animals in the wild, picking up on sights and sounds, of potential dangers and opportunities for exploration.
Building up to the deer movements, we did work to increase the flexibility and strength of our shoulder blades and spine, as well as being beneficial to kidney and liver function.
I continue to reflect on how fortunate I am to have my health and be able to do exercises such as these to help maintain it.
Anybody who has had depression knows that one of the most difficult things to deal with is that awful desolation that drowns you as you wake up from whatever sleep you can get.
It is an experience that you have to have had to know what it feels like, when the thought of even having to get up and get dressed, let alone do anything else, is beyond daunting.
There was a time when I could only wake up and get up by setting a first alarm clock to go off several hours beforehand, then another sometime after that, and another later still. When I finally did get out of bed, my first port of call was a strong cup of coffee (appropriately named ‘Rocket Fuel’) with which I swallowed my anti-depressant tablet. Eventually I could then get dressed and ready for work.
I’ve started to struggle again with this aspect depression, after years of having trained myself to get up without too much snooze time between alarms. The fact that my partner now brings me a good strong cup of tea helps enormously, as does not having any time pressures at the moment. Even so, the tasks associated with waking up, getting up and getting dressed should not be underestimated for anyone who is suffering from depression. Like a lot of things, breaking the process down into small steps can be a good strategy. First one sock, and then the other.
I’m working towards being one of those people who springs out of bed in order to ‘seize the day’. Just because I’m slow to start, though, doesn’t me I don’t appreciate and value. It just means that I have to take my time to get myself (literally) geared up, even at a basic level.
This is one place (of many) where the poem in my recently posted Poetry Rule No. 9b Keep recycling to a minimum until you’ve got your other priorities right applies.
Rules, Rhymes, Recovery, Recipe, Random – Glad About Life:
Lobster meat is sweet, I believe I tasted it once, a long time ago but I really don’t know if the clacking, snapping, pincer-sharp bite of the lobster-look-alike girl’s mind belies anything even remotely kind
As I sit watching her eat that lobster meat sucking her fingers with self-satisfied glee pouting and spouting out the debris of her clacking, snapping pincer-sharp mind and smile inwardly at the resemblance I see a wonderful, horrible thought comes to me
Wouldn’t it be great if a giant lobster loomed and ate her up after popping her into a boiling pot, while she was still alive?
This is the sea-bed of salivation upon which I feed and thrive turning the tables through poetry on the clacking, snapping pincer-sharp lobster-look-alike girl’s mind and her kind
2020
Rules, Rhymes, Recovery, Recipe, Random – Glad About Life:
Ironically, I’ve recently been feeling too tired to write about what I have wanted to write about: sleep. Until today.
Breaking the cycle of inactivity is massively difficult during a period of depression. It feels impossible to know what to do or where to start that will make any difference in any meaningful and lasting way. And then sleeplessness takes hold and so it goes on.
I still have variable experiences of being able to get to sleep, and sleep long and deep enough to feel rested. However, any current difficulties I have are nothing compared to what it was like for me, years ago, when I became addicted to sleeping pills (Triazepam).
In the end, to detox, I took myself to Turkey in the hot season, walked and sweated for miles and eventually screamed myself off them.
The process of detox itself, especially in unsupported circumstances, is very dangerous, and, to anyone contemplating taking tranquilizers of any kind, I would say, “Don’t!”.
It might be easy for me to say that now, as I did take them then and felt that I needed to – desperately – at the time. Maybe I did. But that was before I had explored all the other options and possibilities, mainly because I didn’t know about them.
There is much more awareness and access to mental health coping strategies than there used to be over twenty years ago when I was going through some extreme experiences. Meditation courses and apps, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, affirmations (I use these a lot), talking therapies, the benefits of exercise and so on. Even so, despite drawing on these approaches and applying them in my day-to-day life as best as I can, I don’t always sleep well.
Now, though, I’m much more able to sit or lie with the lack of sleep and rest into it, be patient with it, rather than going for a quick fix with all the associated draw backs. If I’m really struggling to settle, I might get up, watch a bit of telly (reading is usually out of the question at these times, such is the impact of depression on my capacity to concentrate), make a cup of tea or – even better – hot chocolate. I also occasionally indulge in a glass or two of wine or a gin and tonic. (I’m conscious of the drawbacks and addictive aspects of alcohol reliance but it does sometimes do the trick; a couple of paracetamols – again as a very occasional alternative and never at the same time as alcohol – also eventually send me off.)
I’m gradually working towards having a kinder and more balanced relationship with myself, doing what I can to be good to my body and my brain. I work on being thankful, get my brain into ‘glad’ mode and accept that I am getting “there”, which is “here”, with every day a blessing.
It is much easier for the me that I am now, than the me that I was twenty years ago, to not fall back on the quick fixes, partly because I have worked hard to find out about and put self-management strategies into practice and partly because I am in a much better place on a personal level. It is much easier to get to sleep on an evening, knowing that in the morning I will wake up in my partner’s loving arms.
Maybe there was a time when I did shoot the Albatross, and paid the price. But sleep is a very gentle thing, and doing my best to let sleep slide into my soul is part of an essential process of healing.
Perfectly placed on a shelf, they appear to have arrived where they were always meant to be, the pebble, the picture and the plant. Which is odd really because pebbles are meant for beaches and pictures for art galleries or walls; plants can be anywhere that nature calls.
I’ve no idea where the plant came from apart from the supermarket where I picked it up. Or did it pick up me, with its green and white simplicity?
The plant is now closely proximal to the pebble and the picture, in a ceramic pot.
Don’t judge a book by its cover don’t even begin to think that you know what lies underneath when every belief that is written in time comes and goes
Don’t judge a book by its cover for the pages are those that can lie and deceive the wisdom of years may appear as true fears and the rest will come in as you weave
Don’t judge a book by its cover when the story has not yet begun Yet the time is right now and in some way, somehow what needs to be said will be done
Don’t judge a book by its cover it’s only a matter of time and again tattered and torn may be weary and worn but it’s all the same in the end
Don’t judge a book by its cover don’t even begin to think that you know for it’s all in a muddle and inside the middle is a tale that is waiting to grow so it will
Grey island you spin and swirl around me (or is it the sea?) as I sit and wait for my thick-headed brain to clear which it does almost, but elusively and all too briefly teasingly still tense tension immense
Four seagulls soar one sits probably shits (or is that on the wing?)
Thrift, rock, heather purple, black, yellow, mauve green, grey, white weather wild mild quite
Walking, talking, inwardly I sit (still) and wait for my thick-headed brain to clear and allow me to feel the joy of the sea and the splendour of the trees and everything around me
So, I sit (on a rock) and wait for my thick-headed brain to clear and know that someday soon it will be free hopefully
1998
A quarter of a century after I started my self-directed journey of recovery from a complete personal breakdown, it would be easy to think at this stage that I never will get that sense of mental clarity that I have been seeking.
I hoped by now that I could have been sailing instead of struggling to find the energy to get through each day in a remotely positive way.
There are significant differences though, between then – when I started out – and now – when I’ve arrived at a particularly low-down point, wondering how on earth I’m going to summon up the motivation and momentum to start going ‘up’ or ‘forward’ again.
The most significant difference for me is that now I’m in a loving relationship. My partner and I care for and about each other in ways that make us both feel good. He suffers from depression too, so we often alternate in terms of who most needs support from the other at any one time. We’ve both had almost catastrophic life experiences to contend with in the past, both just come through by the skin of our teeth, both had to learn to trust again – often the most difficult thing of all, including trusting ourselves as well as each other. And we’re both now thankful that we’ve found each other. ‘Together Forever’ is our motto. We want to make the most of the time that we have – both now in our 60s – and that, in itself, is a motivator. At the same time, I’m still feeling profoundly exhausted and know that I need to do some more work on myself to pull out of this and finally put the traumas of the past behind me.
I know that it’s important to sometimes push myself and at other times do nothing. Doing nothing is hard as it brings with it the fear that it will become a permanent state and that I will vegetate from doing nothing to being nothing. At my age, fear of dementia also comes in to the mix. But in the depths of depression, doing anything at all feels like just too much, so where do I start?
I keep coming back to affirmations. Affirmations, some gentle regular exercise, healthy eating, not too much alcohol. All sensible things.
The affirmations I’ve identified for myself at this time are for depression and hearing problems. While I don’t really have hearing problems as such – other than age-related deterioration – I do have problems with ‘itchy ears’ and I have also had problems in the past with being heard.
I set about learning and practising active listening skills when I trained as a volunteer bereavement counsellor – it must have been about 20 years ago now. I’ve found those skills invaluable in different jobs and roles that I’ve held, although more latterly I’ve found it increasingly hard to concentrate. Active listening, by definition, means giving another person full attention. I think my body and brain have been telling me to give myself full attention for a change; had I ‘listened’ to what they were telling me earlier, I might not have arrived at the state I’m at now, although by the nature of cycles, they do have to go full turn.
Anyway, the affirmations that I’ve found, to say to myself when I can and when I need to, are:
“I move beyond other people’s fear and limitations. I create my own life.”
When I say each of these, at the very low ebb that I’m at now, I get a sense of uplift in my spirit, even if my body and brain are running well behind. I hold on to the belief that they will catch up though. Eventually.
Oh, and of course writing – something, anything – can be therapeutic as well. I’m going to keep writing, and affirming. And washing up, and doing a bit of gardening …
These are the lives that we limit to live These are the cries that we’re frightened to give These are the days that we count on our clocks How soon will it be before it all stops?
Glad About 
You must be logged in to post a comment.