So I’ve decided to daily-ish document things as a way of a) keeping the ‘positive data log’ I’m meant to keep but don’t and b) having something to look back on. When I did this about 5 years ago and looked back on it recently it was a bit frightening in terms of mental-ness but also really interesting to consider how things have changed and the way things were. Here’s me giving it another go, purely for myself. Future me - please don’t think this was too pretentious.
I’ve been exam free since Wednesday afternoon and woahhh it’s weird. There were no disasters but no exceptional performances either. Already sold my textbooks and sorted out getting rid of my French lit books...I did five loads of washing yesterday, made a paper flower prototype for my wedding bouquet thing and emailed about a million people re:work experience and wedding things. Turns out I don’t like not having much to do.
I’m also about to become the co-renter of a house which has been gutted and has new everything and is in an amazing location and for which I’m about to start knitting a pouf. Because that’s a normal thing to do...Such strange but exciting times. We move on 20th June and I cannot wait!
I’ve got an appointment (finally) at the eye hospital on 11th and Occ Health on 16th (also when we sign the contract!) but I’m going to have to deal with a fair chunk of anticipatory anxiety prior to that.
Today I went to see the nurse for the first time since my exams started and she was so happy to see me. It’s funny, we’re more like good friends now than anything else. I suppose she’s a bit of a detached parent figure? Like, she definitely cares about me but also has that therapeutic input that a parent isn’t in a position to give. We’re trying to sort out some of the social anxiety stuff before I fling myself into a new environment where I don’t know anybody. She said again today that she’ll always be there to answer my emails. It means a lot but it’s slight confirmation that I can’t cope. Chatted about how I can’t cope in a social situation when I don’t have a role - work experience? come at me no problem. bumping into someone in the kitchen? terrifying and overplayed in my head a million times because I don’t want to have made them anxious or uncomfortable and because I don’t want to have been ‘weird’.
Had a discussion about having been on medication for four years and not knowing what really happens without it. I have no intention of coming off it tomorrow or anything but I’m conscious that I don’t want it forever, either. It’s a tricky one - I’m not sure I’ll ever feel comfortable enough to stop taking it because I worry about what happens too much (let’s just remind ourselves of suicidal madness and certain self destructive tendencies...) Anyway, we had a nice chat about stuff and didn’t bring up the fact that I’ll have to stop seeing her soon. Because right now not having that support frightens me.
I also bought myself a pair of low top suede converse in a moment of nostalgia - a nod to my emo teenage days if you will - and to celebrate exams being over. Then, and as what we like to call a ‘social experiment’, I decided I’d bite the bullet and get my eyebrows threaded - i.e. I voluntarily spoke to strangers. (the threading was weird but really effective and beats tweezers because I have a nasty habit of fiddling with tweezers and faffing and just yeah not great). So here I am recording that I spoke to strangers and it was fine. Tried not to replay it too much.
Finished Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig today (started last night) and it was a really interesting read. I sent a couple of bits to the nurse because they seemed useful:
“Adding anxiety to depression is a bit like adding cocaine to alcohol. It presses fast-forward on the whole experience. If you have depression on its own your mind sinks into a swamp and loses momentum, but with anxiety in the cocktail, the swamp is still a swamp but the swamp now has whirlpools in it. The monsters that are there, in the muddy water, continually move like modified alligators at their highest speed. You are continually on guard. You are on guard to the point of collapse every single moment, while desperately trying to keep afloat, to breathe the air that the people on the bank all around you are breathing as easily as anything.”
“Depression is also . . . Smaller than you. Always, it is smaller than you, even when it feels vast. It operates within you, you do not operate within it. It may be a dark cloud passing across the sky, but – if that is the metaphor – you are the sky. You were there before it. And the cloud can’t exist without the sky, but the sky can exist without the cloud.”
“Minds have their own weather systems. You are in a hurricane. Hurricanes run out of energy eventually. Hold on.”
I haven’t had diet coke for 2 days (which shouldn’t be an achievement but really is due to my disgusting habit of a litre and a half a day as of recent times) and, after an initial killer headache, I’m surviving rather well without it. Trying to eat salad again rather than a million chocolate bars. That is rather more difficult.
S is writing up his thesis so I am pretty bored at the minute but enjoying mooching on the internet and feeling my smooth-ass eyebrows. Looking forward to not living in grotty student accommodation and being able to have a nice long bath and a read knowing that the bath is clean. Ah, simple things.