One Little Thing

There is an advert running at the moment for Tropicana orange juice. What I like about it is the way the first few moments of the morning are depicted. The children's limbs look loose with sleep. The adults seem to be functioning with their eyes closed. None of these people make waking look easy. They are not the people who wake at 5.30 to run, gym and shower before eating muesli and heading off to be the CEO of a multi national. They look like real people, right up to the point in the advert where they drink the juice anyhow. Then it descends into images of bicycles and surfboards and people staring into the distance with purpose.

Those initial sleepy images reminded me that there are many ways to wake and start the day. The first step is the hardest isn't it, I just need to find the first step that works for me. I realised that the first steps I had in my head weren't first steps at all ... they were further down the line than that and with my present frailty - they too easily overwhelmed me. I said to myself last night... tomorrow when you wake just put the kettle on... that's all. Don't worry about dressing or even what you are going to do when the kettle boils. Just get to the kettle and put it on.

A bad dream woke Xavier early on in his sleep and he joined us in our bed for the rest of the night. He's always welcome... which one would worry would lead to him always sleeping in with us but it hasn't turned out that way, he likes his space too. So he slept soundly beside me and I woke early, as usual, with anxious thoughts. With Xavier there I could just hold his sleeping frame close, rest my head into his soft mop of hair and breath in.

When he woke, he snuggled in and shortly after put on a little firework display for me - shooting his tiny clenched fist up from the bed covers into the air and then splaying his fingers with a bang, and then a crackle as they came to rest on the duvet once again. It was a beautiful display and it captured my attention. I was ready to do my one little thing, and I raised myself up to put the kettle on. I didn't ask myself to be jolly or talkative or playful or even helpful. I just put the kettle on, that's all.

For some time Xavier and I have been working on him dressing himself and he is getting really good. The stop start progress has more to do with my not functioning very well at the moment. Today, after breakfast, he confidently took himself upstairs with a collection of action figures and set about dressing himself for the day whilst I did the same in my own room. I was so proud of him... he managed everything but for those trickly little socks and as usual didn't feel it cold enough to put his jumper on quite yet. For both of us, getting dressed this morning was a significant accomplishment.

I learnt a good few things this morning. I am not a morning person and that's OK. If I am not jolly Alicia will understand. If I don't feel awake enough to play, Xavier will understand too; I won't go to parent boot camp for letting him watch a little telly first thing. Making a hot drink is enough to be getting on with at first. I love Alicia deeply, she has her own emotional ups and downs and I'm better able to support her with that later in the day.

There were plenty of opportunities for set backs this morning and Alicia and I will need to talk later about what we can expect from eachother emotionally at the start of the day. She is a wonderful and complex person... I wouldn't have her any other way.

Now I've blogged it is time for the next little thing. Thank you to the many people who have encouraged me this morning ... it means a great deal to have you all there with me.

Good Evening

If you have been dropping by this blog lately I'm so sorry that the posts have been so desperate. It is helpful for me when I write things down and lovely when I hear from you, but I don't imagine my recent posts make for pleasant or easy reading, especially if you know us.

I have always promised myself that I  would just write it as it is inside and on difficult days that can make for difficult posts. But I'm glad that some time in the future I shall be able to read these again and know how much stronger I've become. And I'm glad too that there will be others that get to peek behind the curtain and see what happens in our home when depression comes to stay. A greater insight into this condition can be no bad thing. Only the other day talking openily about depression invited the retort "depression,  isn't that the new bad back". Campaigns like Time To Change have much work ahead of them.

The evenings are precious at the moment. I seem to surface as the person people recognise as Mehdi. Not always, but it is more likely come the evenings. That is a strange thing to understand and convey from the perspective of health. It is probably even stranger to be around. By the evening I might do a reasonable impression of being well again, and that is a relief and a break for Alicia.

This evening I played superhero alien robots with Xavier. Both he and I can become engrossed when role playing action figures. I warmed through yesterday's dahl and cooked a little rice for us. I sat down and watched a TV show with Alicia. For me these are notable events because they involve activity and leaving the bedroom: Two things I was unable to do during the rest of the day. Like an awakening, the evenings can remind me and others that I am still - in there somewhere. Silly and mischievous, attentive and kind, creative and curios. Behind the drawn curtains, within the heavy, lifeless limbs, inside those dark, flat eyes... I am still in there. I am recoverable, reachable, salvageable.

The other important gift that these evening awakenings give me is hope for each new day. That tomorrow I might wake like you do and have nothing more than sleep to shake from my head. That my eyes might be opened by an alarm rather than anxiety. Or at least that I might be able to do more than I did today.

Conversely the evening can also be a time when I make promises that my morning self can't keep. So tomorrow I plan to wake early, walk our dogs. Come home to make Alicia some well deserved breakfast and get my beautiful boy ready for the day. That would be just incredible.

A friend by deed

Today is turning out be another hard day. The prospect of doing anything that involves leaving the bed fills my limbs with lead. My pack, Alicia, Xavier, Molly and Charlie have been with me for most of the afternoon. On this bed, or is it a life raft, or is it a prison. It is kind of them to join me here but now conversation has turned to what they will do next and I feel incapable of joining in. Once again I am recoiling into this blog.

Alicia is having a difficult time again and shares those difficulties with me. I don't what to for about that. I know things are extremely hard for her with my being unwell. I feel completely responsible and at the same time unable to help. I don't think I'm the right person for her to talk to about these things right now. Not only can I not help, I also feel myself crumple under the impact of what she has to share. She needs someone else she can depend on to be there and be supportive of her as she needs it. Ordinarily that is what we do for each other but not right now, it just feeds the depression with more guilt.

We have, as I write, just argued about this. I can't be her support right now. Not in this case. Not where my thoughts can attribute all her difficulties to me so that in listening the ground falls away beneath me.

Look away now

How do you stop one day from being like the next? One moment at a time is about all I can cope with right now. When Alicia or friends ask me what I have planned for the day ahead, that is one of those moments when the darkness floods in. I am caught in the possibility of setting out a plan that in all likelihood I will not achieve. When you ask me about the future, even the next hour, I have to look my propensity for failure in the eye,  I don't have the courage to do that. If you do ask me about a moment other than the one I am in right now, chances are that I won't answer. It will be as if I don't hear you. But there is little point repeating the question. I can't hear you. It's my way of protecting myself.

So from one moment to the next I measure out the day in tiny little achievable parts. Whilst this has the advantage of protecting me from failure, it does not then follow that I am instead succeeding. In fact this leads to days without showering or dressing or even leaving my bed. I have for company my own tortured mind which is not in all honesty a very good friend to me at the moment. So rather than be with it I push it aside when I can, by writing here, talking to Alicia or getting in touch with you. That way I still belong, and depression doesn't succeed in casting me out altogether.

Alicia is buckling. She is carrying my weight and her own. It is really difficult for her. She is seemingly without choice. The cards I've been dealt make her a loser too... that can't be fair or easy to reconcile. She cried a little again this morning. The love that I feel for her is the same love that makes it unbearable to watch what this illness is doing to her. I can't watch.

So there is depression on the inside, eating me from within, and outside I have to witness the people I love being ripped apart by it, knowing I am the cause. I'm not suicidal, but how is that not the most attractive solution for everybody? I have to believe again this will pass. That is the only thing that makes my decision to live make any sense.

Thrifty meals

At 6.30 when I wake my thoughts wander into dark places but picking up this phone and writing has become a way of repelling them. So here I am blogging again.

As you know we are getting pretty good at thrift in our household. A week ago I read an article about the weekly life of an out of work Liverpool man as he tried to make financial ends meet. He was a victim of circumstance and poor policy. It is a gritty tale worth reading, and in particular I was sadddned to read that he spent his tiny food budget on frozen foods to stretch it far enough. In this household we might have few pennies but we have hearty appetites and meal times are something we look forward to. Eating together brings us a lot of joy. I wish I could cook something for him now.

I don't really understand what happened to our attitudes to food. I'd like to share with you a dish that we regularly make for its thrift and its flavour. You will love it, but it isn't complex, and you won't need to pull aside a shop assistant to point at something alien on your shopping list. This dish is what we consider to be peasant food, just tasty, nourishing, economical food for the hard working. Well, that's all we ever want. Food has yet to become so dull to us that we have to start inventing exotic ingredients, or arranging things in architectural fashion on our plates. I've been there and done that in my perfectionist past. I have stressed about dinner parties, now that is shameful! At the end of the day I look for a bit of pleasure in the making, for me this usually requires a certain amount of meddling with the recipe.

Most of the ingredients are things we consider to be store cupboard ingredients in our house; we cook a lot and these are ingredients that last for ever. So this meal of around 6 servings tends to cost us around 20 pence per head. It will cost more if you are not in the habit of keeping a good stock of basic spices.

Yellow spilt pea dahl and rice.

Serves: 6

1 1/2 dessertspoon vegetable oil
4 cups yellow split peas
12 cups of hot water or better still light stock
1 onion roughly chopped
2/3 cloves garlic just squashed
3 pinches of sea salt
3 teaspoons tomato puree,
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground coriander
lemon juice of half a lemon
Tabasco sauce or chilli if you like heat

Cooked rice to serve it with

Gently heat the oil in a deep pan, add the salt, onion, garlic. Turn the heat low, cover and leave to sweat (5 min) but not brown.

Pour in the hot water or thin stock. Add the yellow split peas. Cover and leave to cook for 25 minutes.

Add the tomato puree and turmeric and cook until tender and thickened. Stir it from the bottom continuously now and add more water, if necessary, to prevent drying out or sticking. Continue simmering and put some rice on.

Heat oil in a small saucepan over medium heat and add all the ground spices; stir until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add this to the cooked split peas. Squeeze in the lemon and add heat to taste. Stir well. At this point I use a hand blender to blend and mix everything. It makes for a smooth dahl which Xavier prefers.

Serve over rice and at the table we leave it to you to squeeze extra lemon juice, add drops of Tabasco, and season further with black pepper. A knob of butter on top is even better.

This feeds us for a couple of days and we keep it in the fridge to heat a quantity as needed. On reheating we usually have to add a little more water. You can decide if you prefer a thick or thinner dahl. If you have fresh herbs like mint or corriander they serve up really well with this meal. I sometimes add dried thyme when it's cooking.

If you do decide to make this it would be great to hear how you get on and see a picture or two. I should take a few snaps when we next make this. Like I say, it isn't fancy but boy it is good. My difficulty is that I get bored easily so i like to make lots of different meals, whilst my family keep requesting favourites like this!

Jump Start

I am trying. Please don't judge me. All I have left in me to do is write. I dressed and went to find the jump start my father lent me. I followed the instruction but nothing happened ... the van just grumbled for a brief time. Fail. So I went back inside and here I am. I don't have much resilience do I. But don't judge me. This is my best for now. Being dressed is an advance on yesterday and so is opening the front door. With a little encouragement or even a kick I might even shower. Just not right now.

This is the disgusting face of depression. I want your understanding but I expect you can barely look at me. This is the ugliest form of humanity. All that potential, all those perfectly healthy limbs and organs, just being wasted. And the self pity. That is to lie in the gutter and not even bother to get up.

Leave me here. I'll be alright. It will pass.

Scratched Vinyl

This morning is just about being unwell. It is dull, not worth blogging about and certainly nothing to waste your time with reading. I've said everything there is to say about these feelings. I've started days like this a thousand times. This is the bit I endure and the bit you won't understand unless, sadly, you too have experienced clinical depression.

Sometimes writing is a way of scraping that ancient hole into my skull and letting the demons escape. Cutting out the stone of madness. Right now it is out of reach.

I'm taking one day at a time, actually I'm just getting by from one moment to the next. This is tricky. Every day has its minor triumphs, the things we take for granted when in good health  ... but the goal is more than to just make it to the other side of the day... it has to be.

I haven't been well enough to work and this is a source of real concern. Working for myself means I can go back at any moment ... and that keeps me hopeful. But in the mean time I am shut up in this house, trying to think what it is I can say to my customers.

It is a risk writing here so openly using my real identity. Customers are easily able to progress from my business web site to Googling me and finding out a little more. This is common sense when you are inviting a stranger to work in your house. I would certainly do it and my unusual name means it is incredibly easy to connect me with the business. However, given the ignorance that surrounds depression and other mental illness, I don't imagine it would be a selling point for me. At this point I should launch into some rationale about why I don't blog anonymously, how I'm trying to challenge stigma and discrimination. But the truth is I blog honestly and openly, without censorship, because that is what I vowed to do from the very beginning - those words are still there at the foot of the blog from the first day I published. There is no other reason. It makes decisions about what and how to write easy because I'm not looking over my shoulder, second guessing my readers.

I've only met one customer that admitted to seeing both websites and connecting them. I know at the time it terrified me... and I felt very exposed, despite her kindness and willingness to employ me. But I can't on the one hand campaign for an equality alongside those with physical illnesses, whilst at the same time taking advantage of the fact that depression can be concealed from others. That is surely to have it both ways isn't it?

I sometimes wonder if I should go further and link the two sites myself. Be totally upfront about being in business and living with depression. Is that a good idea? In my home town there is a wonderful place called The Café des Arts, a Social Enterprise that provides people with autism with an opportunity to work,  learn and show their art work. It seems to work.

But I suppose depression has its own baggage doesn't it. Not everything that is laid at our door is prejudice and misconception. Having depression makes answering the phone difficult at times, talking to people is hard, being reliable from one day to the next is impossible during depressive episodes. I'm not even sure I would employ me. And yet I'm a good person, my work is of a high standard and I'll always do my best for my customers. There should be room enough for people like that in this world shouldn't there?

What do you think, continue with my double life or be upfront about depression?

Scrounger

It's getting to be time to dig deep. I've written recently about our financial circumstances openly and honestly so that the complex problems that arise around mental ill health are plain for others to see. I'm surprised that there isn't more reading and support out there for people with depression. The big push at the moment seems to be to raise awareness and get people talking. Charities Mind and Rethink Mental Illness collaborate to run 'Time to Change" campaign aimed at ending mental health discrimination. After all, coping with a mental health condition is enough to deal with on its own.
In October 2011 the campaign received its first government funding of up to 16m over four years. Ironically though, this is the same government that is attacking the benefits system and our weakest members of society to fund the mistakes of our financial institutions.
Say benefits, step back and then watch the fireworks. Only the other day the news stories about UK benefit caps brought to light opinions held by people I know that I can only, politely, describe as deeply ignorant.
In the UK the welfare benefits system is complex and the regulations change frequently. I would go further and say it is obstructive. Often claimants require expert support to overcome the application processes; it is the primary reason why my local Citizens Advice Bureau and the Advice and Representation Centre are overwhelmed with clients in desperate need of their support. These are both volunteer based charities, funded in the main but not exclusively by local government grants. With debt and unemployment on the rise it is again ironic that these charitable organisations, providing the last post for help, have had their funding slashed. It must be difficult for the most vulnerable members of our society to not feel victimised by the policy moves of this government.
I've mentioned already that Alicia and I tried once before, unsuccessfully, to make a claim for Employment Support Allowance. Well, I have been in employment all my life, working not in the city but instead educating your children for a wage that Alicia once calculated, hour for hour, was equivalent to working a till in a supermarket. I have always paid my taxes, even in self employment. My National Insurance contributions are up to date. In the UK National Insurance contributions build up one's entitlement to ESA and other state benefits.
This morning I made a claim over the telephone. I was more determined than before, driven a little by anger I think. The claim form, which is best completed over the telephone, is 56 pages long. I provided detailed information relating to both Alicia and I about our employment, our house, our mortgage, our incomes, our education over the last 5 years, pensions, insurances, savings, health and health care, our bank accounts and the movement of any funds in and out of the accounts over the last month, my business profits, assets, and accounts. The calls require around 30 minutes to connect with an advisor and the claim form takes anything upwards of an hour to complete. I knew what to expect and so had a folder, around 3 inches thick, stuffed with the information I would need to have this telephone conversation. Like before, I expect the form will arrive, several times over the next few days, and I shall need to complete it again. And I will. I will provide whatever evidence they ask for and see how it goes. I've been told that each time I am ill I will again have to go through this application process from the start, and given the pattern of things that is quite likely.
So today, despite the van having a flat battery, another day unwell and my mood crashing in the early afternoon, I held a telephone conversation with a stranger. That is an accomplishment. And I am seeking the financial support I'm entitled to for our family. That too is an accomplishment. Round one to us, though it doesn't feel much like winning, but I'll keep you posted.

Depression is a place I know

I think that maybe all of us who live with episodes of depression wonder if it really is just something wrong with us... or if the world we live in is at fault. Did we jump or were we pushed?

For me certainly, therapy taught me that, like you, I didn't have much say in who I am. I recently tweeted that we take far too much credit for who we are, and when I wrote that I had in mind the genetic pool (over which I had no say) and my childhood experience (again something I was not to determine for myself). So again I am looking at dealt cards and know what I can do is play them, what I can't do is change them.

So what is the game in which these cards are put to the test? Well, I know the game I've been playing very well. It is the one I've been failing at for years, slowly, almost imperceptibly, until one day we all looked and thought to ourselves how faded and tired it looked. But, and for me this is an important but... there are many games. We can play this hand here, where the rules are educate, qualify, work, borrow, buy, work some more. This is the game where those of us with a condition like depression feel that the odds are weighted against us. I mean the odds are weighted against all of us in the casino, and the real winners don't play the tables they own them ... but still, our odds are tougher because we can't play as frequently, don't always show up, and feel loss before the game even began. You've probably seen us around, we don't look as together as you on the outside and even during the winning streaks we smile through our cheap dental work and dance in our scruffy shoes. But you expect us to play so we do, despite our losses.

This is not a game we are good at playing. But there are other games. One such alternative is grow, work, harvest, cook, eat. Other games include, trade, exchange, repair, make, and create. They are games considered alternative when you live here, especially in our cities. But that isn't true across our globe. There are plenty of games where the playing nourishes us, strenghtens, occupies and excites us... and positively medicates our depression such that it almost isn't there.

I was never made to wake up and do the same thing for most of the day. You weren't either. But we do because once people figured they could get rich real quick if they could get us to live like that. And if you can there is no reason to do any different. It's a game I lose at so I'm better off avoiding. I do know when I've had a good day, when the game fits. It usually involves being outside, even in the cold and rain. It comes from getting earth under my finger nails, from making something from almost nothing, from putting my muscles and mind into nurturing and caring for something. I win too when I chop and crush and sear and taste... when I gather us together from our busy activity and we sit and eat. When the bread feels heavy and the butter salty. When the vegetables are still illuminated in their garden colours.  When pudding is a clever creation of bready scraps. It is a game that involves being a father,  playing, teaching, telling stories, watching. It is a game that starts to look and feel like the hard work of self sufficiency. It is an alternative, a compromise, that is good for the soul. Not an easy option... least of all in this part of the world where standing still costs us nearly £900 a month before we have eaten. But that is our challenge... that £900... making the changes that reduce that so that we spend more time working hard for a worthy reward and less time standing still.

We are in your debt.

I said once I don't believe in luck, and I don't... it's attitude. It's how, when I look back at things, I interpret them, whether I learn something from them, make the most of them. It isn't always easy to think that way and sometimes, like the Greeks, I think I have angered the Gods and now they are toying with us in revenge. Of course, that's nonsense, but it feels that way when events are interpreted as being 'done to you' and taken personally, and depression has a habit of making it seem that way.

When the laptop broke the challenge was to still generate and update the paperwork for our business, and communicate with customers. Alicia's mother came to the rescue as she so often does, allowing me to use her notebook one evening. Alicia came down the stairs to find I had dismantled the laptop on the kitchen table, determined to find the fault and see if it could be fixed (I have never in my life opened up a computer before so she was understandably concerned). A broken component hanging off the motherboard cost me £2.49 to replace and a nice chap will solder it on for me later this week for a small fee. In the meantime this smartphone,  won in a competition that the business entered, has come into its own, even permitting me to blog.
.......

Xavier was due a trip to the farm as a reward for his beautiful efforts. So when the family car broke down at a busy roundabout, the jolly AA man shook his head and called time on our beloved Multipla. Whilst not materialistic about our car, we are sentimental - it holds a lot of dear memories. We were towed home for the fourth time in two months. Our chap at the garage took a look and the repair cost meant we would indeed be looking to let her go for spares or repair. It was a blessing really because insurance and road tax were becoming unaffordable, and fuel a luxury, save the repair costs. But then, out of the blue... he suggested we trade a bit of decorating for the repair. So this remarkable offer means we can see a way of breathing life back into our Multipla, even if only to sell it! People are always astounding me with their kindness and compassion. And to top it all Xavier will still have his trip to the farm, again through the generosity of Alicia's mother who has offered to drive us there. She is incredible.

And yesterday when the door knocked a knock at 8am my first thought was that the bailiffs had come and we froze. It was in fact the postman with a parcel for us. Inside the mysterious large box, chocolates and vouchers for a local grocery store. Alicia and I both cried a little, stunned that someone had thought of us and knew what it meant for us to afford groceries at this time. The kind message signed off 'from a friend'.

Each day a friend gets in touch with us to see how we are getting on, and offer support and encouragement, and that includes the amazing people that take the time to generously leave us a comment on this blog (Spanner is owed a special mention here). We feel that our troubles, minor misfortunes and struggles with depression are in your embrace. Every kind thought and deed reaches us amplified a thousand times and changes everything for us. It makes us feel that depression doesn't have to win and succeed in pushing this family to the fringes of life... that we can make it and we can believe in ourselves in the way that you believe in us. The gift, you see, at every turn is hope. You give us that... always, every day. Thank you.

Play the cards you are dealt

In the UK at the moment the cuts, or austerity measures as politicians prefer to call them, are very much targetted at ordinary people. There is something of a witch hunt for those who are not in work. There are not the vacancies out there, that is a fact, but that hasn't stopped the pressure from falling on the unemployed, ill and disabled. Financial support is harder to access, the sums are slashed and claimants live amongst others who feel guilt is the price you should pay for being on benefits.

For those who succeed in a claim for financial support, I say well done to them. The application process is complex, obstructive and without compassion... and they have overcome it.

Last year during an episode of depression Alicia and I sought financial support for the first time in our lives. I don't need to write here that depression brings life to a standstill, so the reality was that I wasn't leaving the house, answering the phone, opening the curtains, showering, dressing, let alone bringing my business accounts up to date. But that is exactly what was required to make an application for employment support allowance (ESA). Alicia made the call because I wasn't able to talk to a stranger on the telephone. The questions were complex, sought detail and exactitude. The sort of question that can only be answered with a great deal of preparation. An hour later an exhausted Alicia put down the phone. A few days later, a form arrived and once again we were asked the same questions, and this time with accompanying evidence. A week later another form much the same as the last and then another one, I think three in all before we gave up. The irony was that only a mentally well person could have the capacity to apply for a benefit, designed to assist the self employed at a time of ill health.

Our financial decline has been steadily driven by the cycling nature of the depressive episodes. A few years ago we began by turning to our credit cards and overdrafts when my ill health led to prolonged absences from work and reductions in salary. When I lost my job becoming self employed was the only way to be employable. We started to sell our belongings to get through the difficult periods and avoid missing payments. We cut back on whatever we could, not using the gas central heating that only a few years ago I had installed myself. Giving up the family car. Dental care, hair cuts, meat and take aways are all luxuries we don't and can't afford.

When I pulled my accounts together recently the financial cost of my ill health became transparent. The patchy periods of being well enough to work, against the dark days of ill health averaged out to an income of around £615 a month. With Alicia's salary, child benefit and child tax credits, that figure improved to £1093. It was a shock to see what depression, what I, was doing to our family.

After the monthly mortgage, council tax, gas, electricity, water, phone, insurances, TV license, prescriptions are deducted... amounting to £854, this leave us £239. With that we feed our family, wash our clothes, ride the bus, clean, and make a token payment to our creditors. I write this down here not for sympathy, but so that the descent from mental ill health to homelessness is less mystical.

This month will be the first time we default on the mortgage. But we are proactive, and we are survivors. The mortgage company have an application from us to transfer to interest only for a few months, we have more things that we can sell and we are cultivating the back garden to reduce our food spend in the future. In the kitchen we are creative and accomplish something akin to alchemy with seasonal (and therefore affordable) ingredients.

When I said a couple of posts ago that we had to adjust our lives to accept and survive the periods of health and ill health this is what I meant. There is no point anymore pretending that we can aim for a time of stability. The last four years have been devoid of stability and nobody is going to magic away the cost of living in this county or employ someone who can't tell you if they will be well from one day to the next.

From the very first day that Alicia and I came together it was made difficult for us. We have always felt and still do that it is us against the world. Never more so than now. With a compassionless government in power that asks 'what will we get in return' as though human kindness and compassion were themselves born of capitalism. We live in a climate where our compassion for eachother and our unequal and different loads are obscured by the witch hunt and a competitive drive. A drive that has us attacking the weak, just as one would prune the smaller shoots from a sapling... and disgard them so that others can flourish. Alicia, Xavier and I are occupying a part or society that is expendable, inconsequential, burdensome. It is the luck of the draw.

Compassion fatigue

So it's the morning again and I'm not the person that rested their head on this pillow. My eyes are scrunched up afraid of the day ahead. My head full but with what, I don't know. My body heavy.

I know I need to tune out. Tune onto something that will activate a soothing response... releasing the oxytocin embrace.

I am so afraid that the people I love and keep close will tire of this. Med is ill again... it must be so wearing. Everyone I know is so wonderfully busy and their lives so complex. My being unwell must just deepen their waters and thin their compassion. My fellow bloggers, you must know this better than any. I guess this reflects on how I have lost a degree of patience with myself and so expect others might feel the same way.

There is another day looming. Right now it feels like another opportunity to fail. What a way to wake up.

Curve Ball

Once when I was having a difficult time I wrote ... and it helped... so I'll try again and maybe it will help again.
Now, in the midst of another dip, we have started to wonder for the first time if in fact I am cylcing through periods of depression. The evangelical optomism as I rise and reinvent life after a depressive episode is becoming all too familiar. If I wasn't self employed I might not have such a good handle on the frequency and length of each episode. Several times a year, each one incapacitating.
The challenge has been to survive. Each episode drains an already empty reserve of funds and we invent and create to meet one bill at a time. Thankfully what we lack financially we make up for in the closeness of our little family, and that is the wind at our backs. But each morning I wake up dead inside and beg the last few drops of life to leave me to peace. It is a fog that clears on some days, but lingers on others. When it clears and I am in the safety of my family and our nest, I laugh and sing and dance and cook... I am unrecognizable. Even I don't know how to make sense of and relate the extremes of weather inside my head.
Trying to get better and then live and plan life around being well just hasn't worked this year. I know that now that we've tried. I don't stay well. It just is. And each time I fall behind a little further than the last time and surviving becomes a little harder for our family. I'm sure in it all we know a happiness like others don't come close too. How we continue to survive and how we keep things practical is something I just don't know the answer to. I am, as you might expect, filled with guilt that time after time I put my family through this, that my own internal self made hell blinds me to the real difficulties others out there face each day and conquer.
It was different when I worked to get better thinking that I would go from strength to strength. Now I'm having to familiarize myself with the idea that this will, in all likely hood, happen again. So I fly across a mental globe from a constant equatorial climate where one day is much the same as the next, to a seasonal environment where I need to learn the skills required to survive harsh winters in my head. It is possible, I just haven't figured out how.

New Year new wisdom

I'm not really one for new year resolutions. It isn't that I don't want change... more that I am always trying hard to change and regularly reflect and resolve to change my trajectory. So when I read this post I thought...yes. And I knew you would think so too, so there it is for you. Happy New Year.

Teresa Evangeline: In the Living Room of the World