Valentine

I have mentioned before that I am amazingly lucky to have a really understanding partner, who has had her own struggles with depression too so she knows where I am coming from a lot of the time. She is, among other things one of my main muses, especially for my more positive writing. This year I wrote a short piece to put in her Valentine’s card, and I though I would share it.

You…

You are the very paragon of light,
when all I want is darkness in my eyes.
You are the shining light of honest truth,
when all I want is bare-faced stinking lies.

You are the blinding power of the sun,
when I have lost myself in darkest night.
You are the life that nestles in the air,
when I deny the breath that is my right.

I do not always know what’s best for me,
even when I think I know it all.
You must feel that I’m a lock without a key,
and still you keep on coming back for more.

Your heart beats always strong with love and care
Your soul will stand the trying tests of time
I love you almost more than I can bear
And can’t believe my fortune; you are mine.

Excercise is Good for You

When I was first diagnosed in my late teens/early 20’s pretty much the first thing that the Dr asked me was “How much exercise do you get?” and the second was “When you wake up in the morning, what do you do?”. These questions surprised me a little. I was here for my mind, not my body. It turns out that the two are very much linked though…

To be my usual topsy-turvy self, lets take the second one first. One sure way to invite the black dog to spend the day with you is to lie in bed after waking. It’s the perfect time for thoughts to run around in your head. In a person that doesn’t have a mental health issue this is fine, it can help start the day, provide solutions to ideas that you have ‘slept on’, and generally be a nice snuggly lazy way to start the day. For those of us that are unfortunate enough to have depressive tendencies however, it’s very different.

Lying in bed with nothing to do but think is a terrible idea. In a lot of ways, thought is the enemy. Well that’s not quite true. Undirected thought is the enemy. As I have written about before, well focussed thought can be a mindful relief, but that isn’t what happens the first thing in the morning when you have just woken up. Doubts and fears swirl and grow in the quiet dawn. Those nagging little gremlins that can be kept at bay with day-to-day action have no barrier when you are just lying there.

So, some of the best advice I was given very early in my depression ‘career’ was to get up when you wake up. I still do, and I still find it helps

Excercise. The bane of modern urban living. We don’t get enough, I think that is generally accepted. Your average bloke or girl in the street gets half of the aerobic action they need, and that’s being statistically optimistic! We are a world (Meaning the western, plump, rich world) of ageing, fattening people. This aside though, your brain needs exercise too. The same Dr that got me to jump out of bed in the morning also told me to take a hike. Literally. It turns out that one of the best things that you can do yourself with no help at all is just to go for a walk. It can be difficult when you are having a black dog day, but boy does it work when you can manage it. I have lost count of the times where I have managed to drag myself out of the depths with an autumnal stroll. Nothing more than that. No stern talking to myself, no mantra, no yoga (although that would help too), no pills (other than the usual daily ones). Just a stroll.

Breathe the air. Look at the sights and sounds. It doesn’t matter where you live, it could be next to a steel works or an airport but there are still things to see, hear and smell just as if you lived in an idyllic forest. Focus on the external. Let the internal conflict, fear and hatred flow away and wonder at the beauty of the world.

Excercise stimulates the release of chemicals in your brain called endorphins, which contribute to that ‘natural high’ that keen excercisers mention. Swinging your arms and legs shakes out any stiffness, holding your head up and looking around clears your airways and helps with neck and back pain. There are myriad physical reasons to just take a walk. Add those to the mental benefits and it becomes impossible to argue against.

So get out there and take a hike!

Some useful links :

mentalhealth.org on the benefits of excercise
webmd on depression and excercise
helpguide.org has a great page on living with depression. Good general advice here but #4 is particularly relevant here

Survivors Guilt

There was a time in my life when I used to sleep with a sharp knife beside the bed. I still own the knife, it’s quite small, probably about a 6″ blade which is serrated, and a black plastic handle. I didn’t have a bedside table then so it sat on the floor. When I sleep I usually lay with my back to the centre of the bed and my face right at the edge, so the knife was placed where it would be one of the first things I saw when I woke up. I can remember waking up every morning for quite some time and I would alays ask myself the same question. Can I do it today? Can I reach out and take that knife and draw it across my wrists? I can remember imagining what it would feel like, how much it would hurt as the jagged edge bit into my skin. I can remember thinking that I had to be careful because I didn’t want to sever the tendons on my left hand and be unable to ‘do’ the other wrist.

Every morning I would lay there and cry. I would sob until my body was pulsing and my chest hurt. I was crying because I didn’t have the strength to pick up the knife.

For several years after this period (It was a bout 10 years ago) I felt like I was a fake, a phony. I was imagining that I was depressed and I was just looking for attention. There was nothing wrong with me because I couldn’t make myself pick up the knife. It was survivors guilt.

Now when I think about it I am usually (almost always) glad that I didn’t pick it up on any of those dark mornings. I look at my wonderful partner who I also knew back then although we weren’t together, and I know what she gets out of our relationship now. I look at her daughter, now 5 years old, pretty much the only positive outcome of the relationship she fled several years ago, before we got back together, and I know how much this clever loving girl loves me and our family. I look at my parents with fresh eyes, with love and genuine friendliness that I can’t remember feeling prior to about 5 years ago. I look at this blog, and the wonderful people that have taken time to read it and even comment. I look at the great job I have with really interesting people and enough pay to keep us in a nice house albeit rented.

Still some days I feel guilty for not having picked up the knife.

The black dog never let’s you fully escape. I am learning that it will always be there with me. Barbara Woodhouse couldn’t dream to train a real dog to heel so well. I now have many sources of support to help me survive my encounters with it. I have medication. I have family. I have a partner who lives with her own black dog and is much further along the path than I am, she has kicked the meds, I really look up to her strength and try to model myself on her.

It’s all about learning to live with it. It’s a part of who I am, but it doesn’t have to be all that I am.

“I’ll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does.”
― Henry Rollins, The Portable Henry Rollins

Commitment and Carrying On

I have a confession to make. I am about at the point where I usually give up.

I have started blogs before. I started a gadget review blog about 5 years ago, a poetry one before that, and of course I have started this one twice before, once in 2009 and once in 2011.

I think it’s fear that does it, fear and the pressure (percieved pressure) of having to keep going. I tend to think :

I have a few followers now. How can I possibly keep writing what they want to read? How can I think of new things to write about? Won’t they get bored of my drivel?

Of course, in my more lucid brain I know that these are things that every new blogger fears. The trouble is that feelings such as these are tasty nibbles for the Black Dog. Depression feeds on these doubts and fears. It magnifies them and amplifies them so that they grow out of all proportion and before you know it a molehill has indeed become a mountain. I just give up. It is easier to live with the self loathing that walking away from something generates, after all, it’s a part of living with this condition anyway so it’s not an unknown feeling.

THIS TIME IT WILL BE DIFFERENT!!

I feel like actually shouting this out loud. I am absolutely determined that this time I am going to keep going. I started this blog mainly as therapy for me, and it is working. I am finding it really useful to be able to pour out onto the ‘page’ my thoughts and revelations about my condition and other things that seem to fit, like my writing. The fact that others seem to like it and want to read it is to a degree secondary.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s wonderful and I am humbled by the interest, but if only do it for you the reader then I think I would stop like I have before. The big difference this time is that I am feeling like it is making a difference to me, and I want to continue that feeling.

Another big difference is that I am now on some medication that is working for me (I have been for just over a year now, I will talk about it at some point on here) and I have a wonderful understanding partner who knows what living with depression is like so she understands.

So yeah, that was a bit self indulgant. Sorry about that! Normal service will be resumed  🙂

Black Shadow

Sniffling and snuffling
Searching for a scent
Skulking in shadows
Invisible
But audible
Self inflated; self serving; self perpetuating
Oroubouros without end
Or beginning
Mine.

Poetry has always been an important part of my coping with life. I have neglected it for a few years, but I am hoping to get back into the habit if you will indulge me. As with pretty much any writer, the gems are very well hidden within all sorts of grubbiness.