Over the last ~5 years I’ve become pretty obsessed with mental health and the formulation of my own internal spectrum with which to gauge my current psychological state. Without going into too much hideous detail, it’s become pretty clear to me - and confirmed by those around me - that my own personal daily adventure through the quagmire of mental murk exists in roughly 2 week cycles of peaks and troughs. Now, I think this is pretty normal and maybe common and I’m not going to go as far as to pull comparisons with those who suffer from very severe peaking/troughing, but it is still very significant to me while I’m having difficulty processing the unpredictable fluctuations.
The ups are, needless to say, pretty great and, I would argue, responsible for the most productive periods of my adult life. The downs are then, obviously, the opposite - self-destructive, insular, spiralling and hopeless. These are things I’ve been at the mercy of since I was 14 probably, when I ran the gamut of eating disorders in an effort to ingratiate my developing brain with the idea of becoming a person existing in a world with other people - however, the focus on monitoring the patterns has really ramped up in the last few years as my coping mechanisms have become stronger and more controllable.
In essence, I’ve worked on an enjoy-it-don’t-jinx-it rule mingled with textbook CBT/ACT principles in spurts of 2-3 week cycles of unjustifiable joy and sheer cliffs of misery, most of which can be attributed to particular triggers or changes in circumstance, although not always. My life has changed quite considerably and pretty constantly - I’ve moved house seven times in two years, I’ve been more or less unemployed and then employed in shift work that kills my brain (5am starts, not my thing), and then relationship events which will always remain the most damaging and baffling to my inexperienced brain. I’m a (over?)sensitive person, I react hard, I know that, most of my energy goes into maintaining a routine of suppressing depressing feelings in order to go to work, see friends, keep doing gigs etc, something I have periodically relied on anti-depressants to simulate. However, in March the panic attack cycles of 2011/2012 came back, making gigs excruciating events and destroying my will to socialise, leave the house, eat - and it becomes a very well-rehearsed routine, to the point where you stop trying to counteract it and just accept that you are a Panicker and a Worrier and that is just how you respond to normal things like buying a sandwich or getting on a bus. I went to the doctors and was given prozac and told that, because I’m sleeping normally (if 13-16 hours a day is normal) they couldn’t really see any other issues beyond whatever I’d been visiting doctors for for the last nine years. The prozac though, instead of taking hold, completely destroyed me this time and made the anxiety so much worse, which hasn’t happened before. This was a frightening thing because I’ve always held the comforting thought, if it gets really too much or if I really need to numbly hold onto a slipping thing to get to a certain place, I’ll always have the option because it’s helped in the past, so it became obvious that it’s time to try and properly change it using just my own brain (no pressure.)
The upshot of this is that I’ve been 3.5 weeks clean of panic attacks and have existed in the best prolonged mental state I’ve experienced for literally years over those 3.5 weeks. I’m telling myself I’ve broken the habit now and I want to entomb it in words at least to serve as a reminder for a future self gratuitously rolling around in the pig shit of depression. What’s more interesting (to me!) is that I’ve had what I could deem ‘normal’ reactions in sad and angry times which on the outside resemble the symptoms of a panic attack but, after confirming with my very wise and pragmatic sister, were correctly attributable to the situation and what most people would’ve done. Which is, frankly, a fucking revelation. There are some things that I’ve done in the last few weeks which may or may not have made a difference, but I’m pretty sure most of them have. Here they are:
- I stopped drinking (this was an accident, I happened to not drink for a bit and felt better - I realised that playing/going to lots of gigs means that you also drink a lot of pints, either as social crutch or in an effort to make a boring time/person (myself) seem more fun. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that not having alcohol, a depressant, has helped get out of the panic cycle in a pretty significant way.)
- exercising better (I am an obsessive exerciser, meaning that when I do it, I do it obsessively and punish myself (obsessively) when I don’t. I was getting to a point where I would run the night before and the morning of a stress-promising day (~every day) in an effort to pre-empt any excess energy/adrenaline that might rush the brain to over-thinking later but, in fact and fairly obviously, was actually wearing myself out, getting horribly tired and therefore very depressed. Like all those aspirational things say, a steady mix of aerobic and anaerobic with enforced rest days is not just best for your body but also best for your mind.)
- sleeping more (I use pinterest, I’ve seen every pretty graph there is to see that says you should be aiming for 8-8.5 hours sleep a night and it’s pretty normal to assume that getting this or around this will mean that you’re doing fine, but it seems that I’m a person who needs probably more than 9 hours sleep a day, not necessarily all at once (all hail the siesta) but it’s definitely contributed to feeling a lot more excellent a lot more of the time.)
- I finally made some decisions and asked for help with enacting them (a bad choice is better than no choice and it shouldn’t be left for anybody else to make your choices for you. Just because you can’t control everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make the best effort (for you) with the things you do have control over.)
- I stopped apologising and saying ‘just’ so much (http://jezebel.com/google-exec-women-stop-saying-just-so-much-you-sound-1715228159)
- I learned the meaning of the word ‘transactional’ and how most things are not it (important for increased self-worth.)
- I got a cool new haircut.
- I quit lactose and feel miles better physically (turns out most cases of lactose-intolerance start between 20 and 40 and I’m one of them.)
- I started taking B vitamins and iron supplements, and eating a shitload more protein.
- I (notably) read: The Virgin Suicides, some Alain de Botton books and Ronda Rousey’s autobiography ‘My Fight, Your Fight’ (I attribute Rousey’s book, despite knowing basically nothing and caring very little about MMA/UFC, to a very unexpected and very welcome increase in feelings of confidence and motivation and recommend every self-defeating soul read it.)
- I watched: Frank (finally), OITNB and Eastenders (notable because I usually find myself watching Eastenders on the edge of a down spiral (chicken and egg though right?!) but this time I’m maintaining and still accidentally watching it which is probably actually a really terrible thing but who cares, it’s fine.)
- I listened to a lot of: Frankie Cosmos, Anna McClellan, Martha, Girlpool and Swans.
- I looked after my friends’ cats (a sense of purpose like no other.)
All these things existed on a microcosmic cusp between the last down and this extended current up and allowed me to do things like see friends and do music stuff that has since contributed further to the maintenance of level feelings, and basically amount to self-care. I don’t know if it’ll last but I’m concentrating very hard on making it a new permanent mode of being. All that being said, I could be in a hole again tomorrow so hey ho.
I wish I could do the first week every week for the rest of my life.
The first day is the same as most other days. The second sees a a globular feeling forming in the bottom of your limbs but not much else to report. By day three, the relief is like nothing else you know. The evil twin of the relief felt coming out of that six-week flu sentence we all did last winter, it’s an old friend that begrudgingly accepts your hug, stiffly and without warmth.
Weighty and sodden, even your clothes feel heavy on your back. It’s excruciating behind the eyes but you’ve no excuse to not go to work - you’re taking the cure they’ve given you, you’re better now.
You need to worry about it but you can’t, it’s an effort to get up out of the chair, it’s an effort to think about getting up out of the chair, it’s an effort to think.
Your body becomes a cat that won’t be talked down.
A series of aggressive directives sent from brain to body and you’re out of bed for day four. You lift someone else’s hand in slow-motion, you let someone else twist the tap in slow-motion, you watch as you take the longest shower a human has ever had. Maybe you are dying, maybe the pills will get no traction and this is you for the rest of your life. That wouldn’t be so bad, but without the memory fresh in your exhausted mind of the electrified ball of short-circuit nerve-endings sunk into your stomach.. how would you appreciate that this is the best you’ve ever felt?
Day five is vegetative. You’re thinking back to the days where you’d lie on the floor having to forcibly relax every muscle in your body, sinking bones into floorboards to slow your heartbeat. Now it’s all you can do to blink.
The sixth day, your eyes are two holes in space. One of your older colleagues is getting worried: you’re not politely smiling at his jokes. But he’s the only one, the others are making jokes about your period. You’re staring at a wall, eyes screaming to be closed, you serve customer after rude customer who stare at your leaden mouth barely controlled by anvil jaws and think you’re the stupid one.
“I think it’s really positive that you are sleeping.” She doesn’t seem bothered that you’re racking up ~14 hours a day.
“I’ll write a letter to the counsellor.” Okay, good, but can you also help me?
Day seven and you’re coming out of the woods. It’s time to regain some composure and settle in to wait for your cold, hard life to arrive with a nine month supply and a noticeable upward change in your ability to be punctual.
~*~*~
This is the fourth time I’ve come back to this solution. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve asked them to do something else that won’t end with this solution but it always does. I’ve read and watched things and talked to people about it - people I respect a lot and also people I don’t know the tiniest thing about - and I try to emulate some of their eventual acceptance. It allows you to function while you are in a state of dysfunction but it also, eventually, saps your joy and this is the thing I can’t ignore. Muted and blunt, your once sparking, ADHD-inner-child has been sedated and sent back to school. You can’t cry, for happy or sad. No more drawing on the walls, no more throwing your toys out of the pram, no more running, no more playing, no more singing.
The last time I was on something I wrote one song in 14 months. In the five months since then, I’ve written nine songs for an album and an e.p, which I’m putting here as a boiled-down example rather than any kind of self-defeatist benchmark. A lot of other things have changed too so it’s impossible to tell. Not that writing songs is a gift or whatever, but it’s significant to me because it’s the thing I’ve committed a large amount of time, money and effort to over recent years. Since March 2013, I’ve not been regularly taking a thing for a total of 11 months in two bouts of cold turkey cleansing. I can’t help feeling frustrated and defeated and like I’m letting myself down with the constant waxing and waning; for me, it’s a fight between accepting that what I want for myself is not necessarily the most helpful in order to function socially (which has become increasingly harder in recent months) and palpitating on in the only way I know with the hope that it gets easier with age (which, so far, doesn’t seem to be the case.)
This doesn’t really amount to anything, this is just my experience of something that I felt I needed to write about.
I understand, all right. The hopeless dream of being - not seeming, but being. At every waking moment, alert. The gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone. The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace. Suicide? No, too vulgar. But you can refuse to move, refuse to talk, so that you don’t have to lie. You can shut yourself in. Then you needn’t play any parts or make wrong gestures. Or so you thought. But reality is diabolical. Your hiding place isn’t watertight. Life trickles in from the outside, and you’re forced to react. No one asks if it is true or false, if you’re genuine or just a sham. Such things matter only in the theatre, and hardly there either. I understand why you don’t speak, why you don’t move, why you’ve created a part for yourself out of apathy. I understand. I admire. You should go on with this part until it is played out, until it loses interest for you. Then you can leave it, just as you’ve left your other parts one by one.
Your poem “friendly advice to a lot of young men” says that one is better off living in a barrel than he is writing poetry. Would you give the same advice today? I guess what I meant is that you are better off doing nothing than doing something badly. But the problem is that bad writers tend to have the self-confidence, while the good ones tend to have self-doubt. So the bad writers tend to go on and on writing crap and giving as many readings as possible to sparse audiences. These sparse audiences consist mostly of other bad writers waiting their turn to go on, to get up there and let it out in the next hour, the next week, the next month, the next sometime. The feeling at these readings is murderous, airless, anti-life. When failures gather together in an attempt at self-congratulation, it only leads to a deeper and more, abiding failure. The crowd is the gathering place of the weakest; true creation is a solitary act. Charles Bukowski
"Sometimes you just feel like the best thing to do would be to fall forward and let it crush your ribs… just give in right there. But as long as there is some sort of harmony going on with another human being, music or conversation, it can give colour and nuance and vitality to something that seems like it would inherently be the opposite. Like, there is no way you could make the darkness fun. But there is. You can."
A 79 page perfect bound B5 extravaganza of drawings and mini comics produced over the past year of things from real life. Risographed in black, blue, red, pink and orange. Run of 250. £15.
You can get it from my store HERE, or send me a mail directly, or I’ll be around with a stack to buy at ELCAF in London, or they will very soon be at GOOD PRESS in Glasgow and eventually some other places too. Enjoy!
