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.