Life, the Universe and the Melancholic

In the last couple of weeks my mental-ness has stabilised. I'm thankful. When I'm good, I'm good. When I'm good, I just get on with all the life stuff, and try to find and point out the good bits as I go. Attempting to continue to seek the joy in life. The extraordinary in the ordinary. It sounds a bit silly I suppose, but looking for any thread of good in the day to day is important. Sometimes what that looks like for me, is as simple as hanging washing out and taking a photo of the pegs lined up, or taking a walk along the beach and listening to the ocean. In 2019 when i was really unwell, it was digging holes over and over again in the sandpit with my toddler or jumping on the trampoline with her in circles. At the time, I didn't really see those moments as joy or good. I often did things on auto pilot, not finding much joy in anything, but what I did find in those moments was the present. The power of now stuff that Eckhart Tolle bangs on about. Fixating on jump

This past week has been challenging. My psychiatrist had trialed me on a new med a few weeks ago for my anxiety. "Anxiety, depression or manic episodes...what's the worst at the moment?", she asked me.  "Anxiety. Definitely the anxiety", I said. So off to the pharmacy for a prescription of Clonidine, otherwise known as Catapres. For two weeks I was on it, with little effect other than drowsiness. I texted my psychiatrist to let her know. "How about we try something different. What about an SSRI?", she says. My brain on red alert is ringing alarm bells. I messaged her back reminding her that I don't tolerate them so well. "What if a try Valdoxan? I tolerated that okay," I say. "It's doesn't do much for anxiety," she says. "How about we try Efexor?"  And that is where my week started. I lasted three days, before I pulled the plug. Intense jaw pain, along with ear pain . Unable to eat, nausea, dizziness. The jaw p

I'm unwell with Covid. Four of the children have Covid and are all recovering well. The youngest has been very hard work. She bounced back rather quickly from Covid and only has residual effects. Me on the other hand, I am struggling. I was already exhausted, physically, mentally and emotionally, before Covid decided to take residence in my body. I'm fatigued, lethargic. Short of breath. I'm grief stricken. It's Mother's Day here in Australia today. It feels wrong that Mum is not here. I would have spent some time with her today at the nursing home. Probably see my Dad and my brother too. Instead I'm home with Covid and I feel like I'm dying. I've barely been able to truly rest during the day. Laying down, yes. But when a 5 year old wants to play, eat and bounce, there's not much peace in that. The older children have done their best to help, but they are both getting over Covid too. It's also my parents wedding anniversary today. They never made

Life has been propelling me forward and I have found myself in a quiet, simmering reflection about the past six months of my life. Simultaneously feeling lost, yet found. Unbearable, lonely grief for the loss of my parents, yet cautiously hopeful for the future without them. Navigating a world without them is incomprehensible. Navigating a world without the 24 year partnership that had been my stability and security in life, is daunting. The loss of my relationship has further compounded my experience of grief. I've lost more than I ever thought possible, all at once. I still think a part of me is numb, a survival mechanism of sorts. Nothing is more finite than death. There is no arguing with death when it arrives. There is a before and there is an after. Getting caught in the inbetween, the what ifs and the if onlys, is futile. So I try to exist in the after, all the while feeling tremendously lost. I had a moment this past week where I was thinking about the prospect of finding l

My Dad died. He took his last breath around 4am, 17th December 2021. His death was so peaceful and quiet. He just drifted away from this realm to the next. Exactly 100 days since Mum took her last breath...Dad took his.  He got sick from an infection. MRSA. Originating from a wound in his toe. He had osteomyelitis the previous year in the same foot. He had a fall at home after becoming quite dizzy and ended up in hospital with septic shock from the infection. IV antibiotics were started. He was in and out of ICU. He was ventilated for two days. He had multiple heart attacks. Pneumonia. A clot on his lung. His kidneys began failing. He spent just over two weeks in hospital, before it was decided that active interventions were seeing no improvements. Doctors transferred him to the palliative team and within 36 hours of that decision, he was gone. For the majority of the two weeks he was in hospital, I spent as much time with him as possible. Actually out of the fifteen days or so, there

The father of my children moved out three weeks ago. We had effectively been together for 24 years. All those years and children together. We watched our children grow as we continued to grow up. Somewhere along the way I think we started to grow apart. I became a mother to many children and got lost in the whirlwind of all the things. I can't speak for him, but I suspect he also got lost in fatherhood, trying to provide for us. He has spent much of our years together with undiagnosed ADHD. Essentially, his entire life undiagnosed. In hindsight, its impact on our relationship was insidious. It became a running joke that he was my extra child. Eventually it wasn't funny anymore. For either of us. The more I tried to address issues and things that I felt we needed to work on, the more he would shut down. It felt like he slowly disappeared and trying to actively engage him with working on our relationship became pointless. I felt ignored, unseen, invisible for the most part. On th