to be really honest with you i think i’ve spent the last twoish years moving through different genres of mental health crisis and i haven’t written too too much about it because i am terribly bored of myself sometimes and of this particular story. Sweet people often comment on my ability to experience and hold and transmute large amounts of grief, as such a testament to how deeply one can love, and i get it and i am grateful to be witnessed but i didnt choose it and i’d like to unchoose it coz my back huuurts.
and relatedly but separate, although i am no stranger to documenting a mental health crisis, sometimes i am deeply embarrassed! Even though i know in my heart that everyone else is only pretending to have a good time, i cannot help but be disappointed and disgusted with myself, and all the ways sorrow reaches and disables me.
I have a new therapist who self-discloses a lot and tells me to talk to myself in the mirror (which can’t be right?) and i’m really not sure how it’s going but i could tell she was fascinated by me so used that to leverage a really good price. She sent me some reading materials after last week’s session that mentioned something like “the opposite of depression is gratitude” and while that is a deeply fucking terroristic thing for someone to say to a depressed person, i’ve actually found it a little bit helpful recently (I know, eww). So I've been imagining depression and gratitude as two ugly drunk british men (I know, EWW!) living inside the local pub in my brain and having a little fistfight about who gets control of the territory (dis bwain aint big enuf for da boff of us).
Gratitude would be a quirky name for a pub in that faux-wholesome but deeply evil Liverpool Street kind of way. But a pub called Depression would be actually good and that’s precisely the problem. Still, something about the fallacy of only one being able to exist at one time has facilitated moments of presence that have been a balm to living inside rumination 24/7, which i can very easily do :p
But back in the terrible real world where depression and gratitude are not mutually exclusive, I am actually very good at both! I would say I am above average grateful for blessings and also above average hurt by disappointments. And in that way, gratitude is actually a trap. LIKE, if you crack your little heart right open to the wondrous beauty of life, how do you know when to close it again before the council cuts down your favourite tree or your friend ghosts you at the moment you need them the most, or fascists run the world etc. Every chronically depressed person you know was probably the most grateful once. Probably still is. So yeah, justice for us. Give a depressed person something to be grateful for today :)
This summer i finally lost it. After a couple years of doggy paddling my fucking ass off, of carrying a weighted blanket of doom around with me, room to room, to the function (tired must leave before midnight), to work (beg the white institution for deadline extension), to bed (nightmares) i was finally ready to let the blanket suffocate me in my sleep.
Dear Blanket: I know you are just a nice soft blanket. I LOVE blankets, i am GRATEFUL for blankets. I know you didn’t want to become a shroud. An accessory to my impenetrible fugue state. You did not want to pretend to have fun at the club or the conference, walk in circles at the supermarket or drag along the tow path. you just wanted to be a blanket. But you see some blankets are weighted blankets and i know they don’t mean any harm either and in fact some people like those blankets but between you and me Blanket, I don’t trust those people because weighted blankets make me feel like i’m dying in my sleep and that’s what you are you are very weighted and You are very anxiously attached, Blanket! You won’t leave me alone even for a minute and i’m so tired of carrying you around. I dream I am trapped under rubble. Every day my heart has broken before I wake up. I am losing whatever this battle is and maybe if I let you subsume me in the night like a fluffy little acid bath, we will both be free.
But basically my hot and sexy friend said No. and so here i am slightly manic (my eyeballs are shaking) from weaning myself off the psychiatric medication i was put on this summer during peak Blanket szn because while it stopped me from crying, i still wanted to die, and it actually felt dehumanizing not to cry about that?
Full disclosure I just took a 20 second pause to eat a jumbo pack of paprika crisps and a whole tub of tzatziki. I am hungrier than I have Ever Been. Last few months people keep telling me I look good and I’ll be like really? coz I want my blanket to kill me in the night. But I know it’s because i lost some weight from depression and then these meds which made me feel nauseous for two months straight. But I look good coz my ass is even flatter than usual. cool. It’s good to know everyone out there is Well and understands things about Wellness. It’s a real relief and we should all feel safe.
In a recent voicenote, my substack bestie
told me a breakdown is a breakthrough, and you just know that chic bitch is not gonna waste their time sharing cliches unless they are really helpful and deeply true cliches! And i feel it. God i am grateful to feel the cut definition of sand at the bottom of the ocean again, grateful to have feet that can push off, to have something to push off from. The rock bottom is a gift as is the floating on top as is the fucking swim.but i am grateful. I am grateful that when I took a lil break from my mental health crisis to support my friend’s mental health crisis a couple months ago, grateful to be let into a chrysalis, find companionship inside mine, that as we strategised around her survival in emergency temporary accommodation neither of us were familiar with, I am grateful that as we stumbled around looking for the lights, as day moved to night and we looked for the light, I am grateful that once we located it and turned it on, i am grateful the floor lamp had a revolving disco light in it, I am grateful that safety planning gave way to a surprise revolving disco light, i am grateful that we both moved towards it, for a solemn and silent dance
say something nice to me or else
these are always a pleasure to read, bc they are usually my own thoughts, but funnier and more eloquent. feels less lonely. wishing us both light at the end of the tunnel, but not in a dying way. ty <3
And look at you creating space for people to come and be vulnerable about their lives and experiences.