Once is happenstance...

So, you’ll know that I got some emails from E recently - I think I might have mentioned it.  This weekend, I also received another email from C.  What both of these emails had in common, apart from the fact that they were both from ex-girlfriends, is that they were both apologies.  Now, I don’t remember much from my A-level maths but I do remember that you’re not supposed to extrapolate from only two data points.  But if you had to, what do you think it means?

七転び八起き

One of the things that has helped me immensely, over the last few years, has been going to the gym.  On the days when I’m not working - and so would have no particular reason to leave the house otherwise - it can be my only reason for getting dressed. And, on some days, my only reason for getting out of bed!  

The health benefits are obvious and, I learned this week, physical exercise actually helps the middle-aged brain (which, I suppose, mine now is) create new brain cells and stay sharp.  That’s not the only way in which it’s good for me mentally; exercise stimulates the release of endorphins, which are the body’s natural happy drugs, so exercising can often change my mood for the better.  The other thing I’ve learned by going to the gym, however, is that as powerful as the mind undoubtably is, it’s often the weakest muscle in the body.

The kind of training I do relies on progressive overload - lifting heavier and heavier weights, until failure.  What that means is I’m looking for a weight that I can press or lift until I physically cannot lift or press it again - usually after around eight repetitions.  This training to failure relies, obviously, on picking the right weight and then lifting it until you cannot lift it again.  That’s the failure part - you just don’t have the physical strength to do another rep.  I stress physical because the thing I’ve noticed is (with me, at least) the mind gives up before the body does.  

There have been so many times at the gym when my brain has been crying, “enough, no more” but I’ve pushed through that barrier - and it is purely a mental barrier - and found that I’ve got another one or two reps left in the muscle.  The flesh was willing but the spirit was weak.  I think the thing that’s taught me is the importance of mental resilience.

Now, I am not the most resilient of people and I’ve been fortunate in my life that I haven’t really had to be.  I have friends who have been through far worse things - cancers, the loss of loved ones, terrible betrayals - and they have come through.  I’m honoured to have them as friends and I think of them as role models.  That helps at the times, like now, when I find I need to be resilient, when my mind is saying “enough, no more!” because my problem isn’t really with the outside world, it’s with my head. I know that and I understand that - I don’t have circumstances worse than anyone else, it’s just that sometimes I lack the resilience or resources I need to handle things as well as others might.

I want to give in but I’m not going to.  I’ve had enough but I’m going to keep coming back for more.  As crap as I feel, I am not going to stop.  Even if I have to do it on bloody autopilot, I am going to keep going until this gets better.  I saw a sign on the underground once that read “if you’re not happy with your life, change it” and I’m going to, no matter what.  And no matter how bad I feel, no matter how much my brain tries to trip me up, I am not going to give up.  Fall down seven times, get up eight.

The rest is silence...

So, a week ago I posted a piece about being contacted by E.  I had some very supportive comments on Twitter and a great deal of support from the ever-lovely @spicelearning and the Laceys.  Ultimately, though, I had to decide what to do and I thought carefully about the best way of replying.

In the end, I settled for telling the truth about how I felt.  This is not much of a decision for some people but with me it’s sometimes tricky.  I worry that telling the truth will mean that people won’t like me; I’ve learned in the past, as I’ve written elsewhere, that I try to manipulate people by sometimes being selective with the truth.  But I decided that I would try to apply what I’ve learned and just be honest about how I felt.

And so I did.  Last Wednesday evening, I crafted a heartfelt email that explained how I was feeling.  I also explained that I believed that she did not feel the same and that while one day I would want to be her friend, right now that was too difficult because I wanted more and she didn’t want to give it.  That being the case, I said I thought it would be better if she didn’t contact me again although (triumph of hope over experience) if I was wrong about how she felt she should obviously let me know.

I’m not expecting to get a reply and I haven’t had one.  The fact that I wasn’t expecting one hasn’t made it any easier and the last week I’ve felt quite upset; it’s stirred up a lot of things that had settled over the last few months and I’m afraid the storm came in quite quickly this time, just when I thought it had receded.  It’s not the worst thing in the world, I know that.  Unlike previous occasions, I think I have a sense of perspective and a sense of humour about it that is helping me cope: I’m Googling the crap out of reactance theory, for a start! It’s just that some stuff has been stirred up and I suppose I just have to wait for it to settle again.

Just when I thought I was out...

I am rather pissed off.

The Godfather Part III is not a great movie. It's spoiled by a lot of things, one of which is Al Pacino's hammy acting but there is one scene that seems relevant to me at the moment. It's the scene in the kitchen where Michael Corleone, suffering from diabetes but not realising it yet, and wearing a very un-Godfather (but quite fetching) burgundy cardigan, roars "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"

In between all the shenanigans with C, I dated - for a over year or so - a woman called E. Timing was not kind to us; when she wanted me, I was ambivalent towards her (actually, I was a bit of an arse). By the time I'd sorted myself out and realised that I wanted her, I'd alienated her to such a degree that she didn't want me. So it goes. It was the end of that relationship and the (drama queen alert) mini breakdown I had as a result that really made up my mind to leave the country.

Anyway, there was a period at the start of the years where I would plaintively hold up my little heart and E (who, to be fair, had her reasons and her own journey) would pick it up and then put it down, pick it up and put it down until, after a series of increasing fractious messages, made it clear in no uncertain terms that I shouldn't involve her in whatever fantasy I had going in my head about our "relationship." I apologised (and meant it) and got on with the business of getting on with it.

I would think of E, often and with regret: regret at the way I had behaved, regret at the squandering of a chance for a great relationship, that sort of thing. But, I reasoned, she'd made it abundantly clear how she felt (or didn't feel) and the fact that she was no longer in touch meant that she didn't want to be in touch. Leave it alone, I thought. Learn your lessons and move on. So it goes. I was, I thought, over all that. It was a missed opportunity but one of perhaps many. Maybe it was my last opportunity, maybe it was my best opportunity - whatever, it was over and I was over it.

Guess who emailed me this morning? Guess who has spent all day parsing a 42 word email, trying to work out what it means, if it means anything, and what I should do. I am not, it would seem, as over E as I had thought.

And so, as I sit here in yet another airport (I like airports - did I mention?) I am pissed off. Not with her but with myself, as usual, for being upset and getting my hopes up and being uncertain and a whole bunch of other things. And I'm wondering: what do I do now?

I love Nigel

When I went freelance, one thing I told myself was that it would probably only be for a couple of years. The travel involved, I imagined, meant that as a job it would have a very short shelf-life. Well, here I am, seven years later, and the one thing that I'm definitely not tired of is the travel: in fact, after all these years, I still rather like it.

Sure, it can be a bit of a pain to be away from home, and some hotels I've stayed in have been rather insalubrious but on the whole, it's still quite an adventure. For someone as generally lacking in confidence as me, it's been a great lesson in self reliance.

Occasionally, I get to travel abroad - Saudi Arabia, Denmark, Germany, the USA - which is fun because I love airports (I'm in Heathrow as I type this) but most of the travel is within the UK. And that means I get to do one of my favourite things in the world: driving.

Not long before I left my last job, I bought a car. Having had company cars prior to this, I was a little nervous about buying but I went ahead and bought a car being sold by a colleague. She needed a new kitchen and so was selling her car which she'd bought new, eight months previously. Which is how I met Nigel and fell in love.

Nigel is a dark blue Mini Cooper, with a Union Jack roof decal. In all the years since I became self employed, as I've moved towns, as relationships have come and gone, through good times and bad, Nigel is the one constant. He and I have travelled over 150,000 miles together. If you assume an average 40 miles an hour, that means I've spent in the region of 3750 hours driving: that's just under six months, constantly driving a distance roughly equal to six times around the world. And still I love driving and, in particular, I love driving Nigel.

No matter what my mood, no matter how crap things have been, no matter how rocky my love life or how precarious my business, Nigel never fails to bring a smile to my face. He's just so perfect to drive, so responsive, so much damned fun, that I swear to god I've laughed out loud with pleasure driving down some (invariably twisty) roads.

I'm not a fan of anthropomorphising but Nigel (named after Mansell, because of the Union Jack) clearly has a character of his own. If you spend six months with someone, constantly, you'll get a pretty fair picture of anyone's personality. He's a boy because sometimes I lust after other cars and that would feel weird if Nigel was a girl, obviously. Because nothing else about this post is weird, is it?

On depression

I’ve noticed a lot of articles about depression on the internet recently.  The best, by far, is this one and if you haven’t looked at it yet, I can’t recommend it highly enough.  The quality of pieces like that is part of what’s stopped me talking about my own experience - what more could I possibly say and how could I possibly say it, that would express my feelings better than the piece I’ve just linked to.  The other part of the reason is that my depression didn't seem bad enough to bother talking about.  

Of course it didn't - after all, it's perfectly normal for me to feel like dying, more often than not; it’s perfectly normal for me to feel a kind of squirming insecurity and belief that I am Just Not Good Enough to be around other people. Given that it’s perfectly normal, why bother talking about it?  It’s only recently that I’ve started to appreciate that other people don’t feel like that - other people look horrified and embarrassed when I tell them how I feel.  Which, ironically, produces a feeling of shame in me and makes me even less likely to say anything!

It seems that other people (perhaps you, for instance), feel differently. They don’t have days when they're one wrong word or thought away from sobbing but don't know why; they don’t have the almost overwhelming desire to give up on everything.  They don’t have the self-loathing that comes from not being able to pull themself together; to just cheer up; to just deal with it and get on with things. They don’t have the special kind of feeling bad that comes because they don’t have things bad enough; other people have it worse.

Like the Hyperbole and a Half article, there’s no particular “reason” for me to feel depressed.  Which sort of makes it worse; if there was a reason, I guess I’d be able to do something about the reason.  I’d at least have something to point to, a justification.  To be able to say “I feel depressed because...” and be able to give a reason that people could understand, could empathize with, would be such a relief.  It seems so pathetic to feel depressed but have no reason for the feeling, no justification; it’s embarrassing and it just adds to the depression.  

That lack of reason, I think, is part of why I used to cut myself.  I wanted people to take how I was feeling seriously even though I would have been mortified if someone had asked; I wanted to externalize the pain, to show it in some way, to express it.  All that, plus the guilty little secret that many self-harmers share, the real underlying reason, I suppose: we feel better having done it.  It’s a relief.  It’s not practice for suicide, it’s not seeking attention (I’m really embarrassed if people notice my scars) it’s just the only way we can think of to feel better.  Or sometimes it’s the only way we can think of to feel something.  I haven’t done it for years now, although I’ve been tempted.  I don’t think I’ll do it again, but never say never, as they say.  

As for the suicidal feelings, that’s mostly what we used to call in Samaritans a “passive” wish - it’s not an active desire to be dead, as such, but more of a desire for everything to just be over, for everything to go away.  A lack of desire to go on, rather than a desire to stop.  I’ve thought about it a lot - methods and so forth - but never felt sufficiently bad to do anything.  I think it’s more a comfort to know there’s a way out, if I need it.  

I haven’t had the kind of epiphany that HaaH did: perhaps my depression has never been quite as severe or it’s of a different nature.  It just lurks in the back of my mind and sometimes it comes to the front.  I don’t really know what causes it; maybe nothing at all, maybe it doesn’t even need a reason.  I can just feel it coming, like a storm front rolling in. I see it from a distance and know that it’ll be here shortly.  I can feel myself slipping into it.  Occasionally it disappears - the storm clouds evaporate before they get to me - but more often than not it arrives, stays for a while, and then slowly fades.  Sometimes it’s short and severe, sometimes it’s a long, constant drone that lasts for weeks.  Churchill called it his black dog: it’s my own little brainstorm.

It’s not wholly debilitating and it probably won’t kill me (he said, with a wry smile).  It’s not the worst thing in the world; it’s not terminal cancer or quadriplegia or any of a dozen other terrible fates that can befall people.  I’ve been fortunate enough that, no matter how bad I’ve felt, I’ve always had enough strength of will to drag myself into work and cover it up long enough to allow me to do my job.  I guess it’s partly made worse by the amount of time I spend alone - I have a tendency, as David Walliams said about himself on Desert Island Disks, to unpick myself when I spend too much time alone, so I’m trying to change that.  Although convincing myself that it’s okay to spend time with other people can be a challenge, too.

Exercise helps.  It can be a real struggle to get myself out of the house and to put the work in when I get to the gym but I invariably feel better having done it; the mood lightens for a while.  Sometimes going for a walk can help, too - what C (who was completely unable to understand it, even though she had suffered from depression in the past) used to call getting a change of air.  I’ve been promising myself a good long walk in the country on one of those cold, hard winter days - I’m quite looking forward to that.  Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be much that I can do to prevent the storms or dispel them when they arrive - at least, I haven’t found any ways yet.

So why am I writing all this?  Well, to be honest I don’t really know - mostly, I felt compelled to say some of these things and, having done so, it feels like a bit of a release. It’s sort of a return to my earliest posts on this blog; an exploration primarily for myself. And, I’ve found, that by writing about these things it has helped me understand them a bit better and, in this case, accept a part of myself.

I suppose that, if you know me, these storms sometimes cause me to act in particular (and peculiar) ways.  For instance, if I don’t want to go out or if I seem hesitant to join in, I’m not being rude or aloof: it’s because I genuinely think that you’re only being kind and don’t really want me to come along and I don’t want to be a burden.  You probably have no idea how hard it is sometimes to accept the idea that someone might want to be with me, might enjoy my company, and how pathetically grateful that can make me feel when it happens. 

If I don’t know you, I guess I want to add my voice to the increasing number of people who are being honest about how they feel.  To try to remove some of the stigma around depression, to try to help you understand how depression feels to those who suffer it and to put in a little plea for your understanding.  Not your understanding of me, of course, but of those of your friends who may be suffering even now.

Postscript

This has been sitting on my computer for quite a while now.  It’s gone through a few revisions but mostly superficial - it hasn’t really changed much from the first draft because it all came out pretty much in a torrent! The reason I didn’t publish it immediately was that, having read it, that part of my brain that seems to work with the depression immediately started to sneer and mock.  It’s pathetic to feel this way; you’re pathetic to feel this way.  Stop moaning and get on with it. You’ve got nothing to complain about.

So let me say this: I’m not complaining, I’m not saying I have things worse than anyone else and I’m not making a case for any particular special treatment. This is the way I am and, while I’d rather not feel depressed, I’m fortunate enough not to feel it all the time.  The last few years, I seem to have felt it more often than not and that’s been difficult, to be honest, but I feel like things are slowly getting better, I feel like I’m starting to feel more like myself again.