Wolves At The Door

Each day usually brings a moment of normality. Yesterday I had it mind to seize that moment and when it came Alicia and I reached for the leads and took the dogs out across the hills. Poor Alicia, she didn’t quite know what to expect and felt a little unprepared for the route we eventually took… through hedgerows and across fields, but she has a lot of heart. I’ve always liked hilltops. There is something about looking down at everything below me … so small and insignificant, that cuts through everything and brings a feeling of peace. We lay in the grass, I fed the dogs an ice cream, and we watched the clouds. In that moment, we were us again… and the world couldn’t touch us.

People say inactivity breeds more inactivity… and the walk we took certainly had the affect of stimulating me to do more when we got home. I got it into my head that I would cook up a fish supper… until part way through the hurdles I faced grew closer and closer and my legs heavier. I retreated to bed… having been defeated by what most people manage to do each day without even thinking about it. Not a big defeat, just a little reminder that I need to pace myself and be patient.

Lately I have wondered what would become of me if I didn’t have the support and love of Alicia. She wondered the same and asked me outright how I think things would have turned out. ‘I’d be living on the streets I say’ with a clinical certainty… and she agrees. The conversation makes us both angry at the world.

You see, mental ill health alone is really quite tolerable. But set it against the demands and expectations that we all face each day, and suddenly there is an audible sound of a ticking clock, pressuring me to get better at its ticking pace, rather than mine. It is a source of guilt. It robs me of the activities that might help me get better, replacing them instead with the duties and responsibility that rest on each of us, regardless of our capacity to respond to them.

I wonder how it is possible for so many of us to live with depression for so long… tinkering and medicating through infrequent meetings with well meaning GPs. I read that depression is second only to heart disease in the number of people it affects… and yet the tinkering continues and the resources to respond seem to be missing. Any other condition and one might expect a referral to a specialist and swift treatment. But strangely I, and others like me, are left to chance that there might be someone who loves us, who can take the strain and keep us from losing everything to a life of madness on the streets. Neither of us can make sense of that.

So I push worries aside, probably made a great deal easier with the medication, and don’t wonder if we will lose our home or have county court judgements made against us. Instead I just wait for my next moment of normality and plan another therapeutic walk with the pack.