Tiny Little Goals

I’ve been taking Quetiapine for 26 days. For 14 days I have been on a dose of 100mg. I passed through a dark place where suicide held my hand for a little while and I achieved little outside my own thoughts. I’ve got two good reasons why it would never come to that so there is no call for alarm – it was just that my mind wondered onto suicidal thoughts in much the same way as anybody’s can become fixated and preoccupied.

The pace of mornings continued to be dictated by the medication’s side effects until very recently, when I became disciplined about not eating for two hours before taking the tablets, and for one hour afterwards. This places my evening meal at around 5.30pm and I take the Quetiapine spot on 8pm. Not the most sociable of habits but necessary, if I am to wake the next day alongside everybody else.

A month ago I was walking my dogs regularly and trying to be mindful, and then I found myself trapped inside a cumbersome, sedated and tired body again. I was tired too of having to start again, I had started again so many times. Each time it was hope that helped me make the first move - but now I was starting to feel a little cheated by hope. There seemed to be more snakes than ladders on my board.

About a week ago a flurry of articles about exercise and mental health were widely publicised by campaigns like Time to Change, which coincided with my own wishes to be more active. I accept that being active sometimes helps me fight the depression, but I recognise too (as more articles ought too) that sports men and women are not immune to depression. With the encouragement of others I took the first steps again, walking with the dogs around the block that encompasses the red brick church with its high walls. A short walk by any measure, and exhausting too – but it was a walk all the same. The tiniest of goals achieved. Yes, a month ago I could walk much further but this is where I am now. This is what I have to deal with – there is no good that can come from drawing that comparison.

As my mornings were returned to me and those short walks became once again a part of some kind of routine, I became useful again. My body was responding better to what I wanted to do, and my mind more able to focus. I was still astonished at the frequency with which needed to stop and rest, but I accepted it and tried to think of it all as exercise on the way to somewhere healthier.

My mood has been improving and the facial expressions that Alicia recognises as me are, at times, evident again. There is a component missing though – emotion feels muted somehow. Alicia has noticed it too. But I have been busy and can look back across a day and claim to have done something worthwhile.

Today has been a difficult so far but that means nothing at all. It says nothing of yesterday and of course can say nothing about tomorrow. It does bother me though, because I do want to be reliable. I want to have up and down days like other people who don’t find themselves completely derailed by the downs. I want an employer or client to look at me and be confident that my downs won’t keep me off work or critically alter my functioning – but they do. This is something I’d like to consider more another day in another post, when my energy and mood permits it. But for today I’ll just accept that this is what I can manage for now, just like my little walks.