A Positive Case

Yesterday I left my suitcase on a train. It doesn't have lots of valuables (doesn't rather than didn't, the recent nature of the loss means I keep it present) - it's the suitcase that my mum and dad gave me for getting a permanent job, it has clothes and a Murakami book I was in the middle of reading and shoes I bought for my friend's wedding. Little things that are important to me. 

When things like this have happened in the past - when I was in the throes of my depression I wouldn't have been able to step back. I would have stayed in that frantic moment, when you feel so electrifyingly alive it's impossible to think straight. When you can't quite believe that it happened to you and you go over your own idiotic behaviour again and again. When you say to yourself forever that it's all your own fault.

Don't get me wrong I was there for a bit. I'm up at a ridiculous hour because I can't get back to sleep. The important difference is I know if I don't get it back it won't be the end of the world. I can get myself out of those negative spaces I used to roam around, back hunched, crying in the gloom. I can breathe and understand sometimes things are beyond your control but - pretty much always - it's not the worst it can be.

The things that have helped me to do that have been having an amazing therapist - who I saw for only a few months last year - mindfulness and the support of my friends. Sometimes I think that it's amazing I managed to stop pushing people away. More on that to follow. 

In any case (ha!) I hope to continue like this, this me that can lower her heart rate when stressful things happen. 

Love and hope from a person who is still breathing. 

Miss D x 

Waking up

My eyelids crinkle
and crumple in protest.

My body is sunken - still sinking,
deeply heavy.    

Light somewhere
and a muffled alarm ringing
abrasively in my ear.

Not again.

Write Now (Part 2)

Hello friends,

A little while ago I wrote about the barriers to writing that I believe my depression - and to some extent my personality - cultivated. Now I am setting myself a challenge - a week long writing course where I have nothing to do but write. Of course I am excited, exhilarated, wondering where this great adventure will take me. Who, out of the fourteen other people might become my friends. What my week will hold - and what I can create. The place I am in is stunning, rolling mountains - peace and quiet enveloping the overawing grounds.

It seems a bit luxurious doesn't it? So many other people, other writers, just got on with things - writing at their coffee tables, on trains, in every free moment. I don't have that kind of personal motivation. I get stuck in the uselessness of how it feels to be me. This for me is an opportunity to push myself beyond the what ifs and how comes and why don't yous. I am grateful and lucky to have it.

Writing is the way that I express myself and I believe that whatever medium you are naturally drawn to is important to nurture. I have wanted to do this for a really long time. Now what's stopping me? Aside from the fact that I am currently writing on my blog instead of continuing a short story?

As ever only myself.

Miss D xx

Empty

Sometimes when I leave a conversation I feel empty

Like there's not enough of me, or them, to make it meaningful.

Like I'm touching just the top of it

Wanting it to be more than it is

Willing it into poignancy.

Time to Yourself

I don’t know why I have been struggling with this - being here, having time to myself. I thought it was what I had always wanted, to be able to write and read but there’s something about me - I don’t do well on my own. I mean I want to, I really, really do - but it’s like something’s blocking that; stopping it from being possible. 

Or is there nothing? I am creating a path, an expectation of a blockage, when it doesn’t really exist? I am my own limitation - I can achieve anything and yet I choose not to, to sit and feel completely lost and alone, to focus on that feeling and let it overwhelm me. I am not here to judge, only to observe my life patterns and how I let them coil around me.

26th September 2014

I want to be a writer

"I want to be a writer". This thought has been in my head since I started reading books. I loved reading, I loved writing. Then I got older. I started using words to hurt myself. To write about how much I wasn't. And I lost faith. 

It went something like this:

The world: Everyone wants to be a writer

Me: You're not special, you're not talented, you'll never make it.

The world: Filled with literary genius, people who can create 

Me: Still scrawling how much I hate myself on to a page 

The world: There will always been someone better

Me: You're not good enough. Never will be 

The thing that I have only just come to realise is this: I am a writer. I have written for as long as I can remember and no-one can take that away from me. Now those words, ones I wrote in the midst of an ill-understood pain, help me realise how much I hated myself, how not ok it was and how far I have come. The help me to understand I wasn't just a moody teenager. I didn't just eat too much or not eat at all. I wasn't unattractive and horrible. I was just extremely good at pushing everything good away. 

I am a writer. 

Christmas is Cruel

This is the thought I had today - there's a cruelty in Christmas. 

Don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly love Christmas. Every year it's one of my favourite times. Just hours ago It's a Wonderful Life made me whimsical and weepy. I don't love it because I'm madly religious; I'm not all and that in itself is a topic for another time. I love it because I get to go home, see my family, dress up nice and go out. I get to play games and watch TV - to do all the things I never have time for usually. In short, I get, to be indulged. 

Therein lies the cruelty. Indulgence breeds a kind of guilt.  Or it does with me. 

If you're like me and you have (or have had a problem with food) it's can pull you apart. Like the rest of my family and friends I love food. I love eating.  Every Christmas I can remember I've felt guilty about doing it. Sometimes before, mostly during, always after. The first time I made myself sick on Christmas day I felt relieved. Like I could be unaffected by surging all of it out of me, straining my heart. There'd be an acidic taste on my tongue and I'd dispense of it with more chocolate. And the circle continued. 

I don't know if there is a kind of hope here - maybe if you recognise what you're doing it's easier to stop it? I'll speak more about triggers soon but Christmas is one. It's something that hugs you tight then pull you back fast into darkness. 

Miss D x 

Hello there

Hello reader, 

Welcome to my blog. It's about living with Mental Health problems. Sometimes ones you might not know you have. 

You need to know something about the name, I think, to start with. When I was a teenager I remember one birthday present in particular - a Mr Men door sign 'Little Miss Sunshine'. My friend said to me "it's because you're always so happy".  I thought: inside I'm screaming and you do not know me at all. 

I've been living with depression for as long as I can remember, although I only realised what depression was about a year ago. Before then I thought I had an eating disorder, or at times just a really moody temper. Sometimes I'd get anxious. I always seemed angry. Then I started to cry too much. The same questions tugged at me - Why am I not happy? What is wrong with me? 

Cliche? Cliches exist for a reason. We all think we are wildly original when actually we go through the same things, the same kind of pain. 

It took me a long time to answer those questions. In the end I only got there because I was tired. So tired of years of it, coming at me when I least expected it. In between I had good times and great times. So I knew that things could be better. 

I spent most of my younger years covering it up, blaming myself for the way I was feeling - tearing myself apart physically and mentally. 

The reason I'm here is to share what I've been through and what helped me get better. 

I always wanted to a be a writer, but for a long time everything I wrote was a reflection of what I didn't want to be - myself. 

Here's hoping.
x