It has been 7 weeks since my last bad day. In fact it was two bad days in a row. I was fairly non functional, burst into tears emotional, in general not coping with life. It was two days of crying, trying to be kind to myself and for the most part, assigned to my bed. Those two bad days were nothing compared to my really bad days back in March, April and May. Those two bad days would have been awesome back then. Back then I would have had to medicate myself and spend the next however many days getting over a medication hangover. It is interesting how as time has rolled on, the bar has been set higher relative to my baseline of doing well or stability rather. So each increment of function that has returned and sustained itself with some stability, I have almost subconsciously bumped that bar up. I spoke to my psychologist about it at my last appointment. It is a double edged sword in a way. Bumping the bar up is not necessarily a bad thing, it can be helpful to improve in lots of different ways incrementally over time. But for me, it has meant in some respects I haven't given myself the credit for how far I have come, and find I can't be content with just being where I am at. I feel like I always need to reach the next rung on the ladder. The more distance I put between myself and my breakdown the better. I also spoke to my psychologist about looking forward to the year ending and closing the door on this dark chapter of life. "Why does the year have to end to do that? Why not draw a line in the sand now?", she asked me. And though I see her point and I have tried, I feel like the end of 2019 will be a symbolic close of the hardest year in my life. I can leave all this mental instability behind and get on with life in 2020. I don't know why I can't seem to make that shift now. I feel like all that panic could at anytime make a quantum leap from March and bombard me here in October, but somehow my mind has made up the rule that it couldn't possibly make that leap into next year. It makes no sense, but it is what it is.
So why can't I be content with just being where I am at? Why all this incessant bar raising? When looking at it in a broader sense, I think the same sentiment can be made for anything, not just mental health. Never content with my body, never content with my fitness, never content with my house, never content with anything really. Not that I feel overly competent in any of those areas of my life. But I feel like I am always on a journey to some unknown destination where you have overcome and accomplished all these goals. Only to replace them with new more challenging goals. Instead of just being where you're at and being okay with that. Sure everyone wants to improve and get better in certain aspects of life, but when your worth and success becomes intrinsically linked to all these goals and boxes you need to tick or get to, it can negatively affect your wellbeing and physical and mental health. I know. I keep piling up those goals and have endless box ticking lists, much of my time is spent feeling overwhelmed and stressed by all the things. All the things I need to do, all the things I have done half arsed, and all the things I am going to have to do in the future. And most of those things are for other people, children and partner and pets. I have been listening to some Wayne Dyer lectures on YouTube. He is a motivational, self-help speaker (he passed away in 2015) and he has a good quote, "Striving, yet never arriving." That seems particularly relevant to my situation, I feel a resonance with his sentiment. Always striving and never even knowing if I have arrived.
I also started listening to Eckhart Tolle, some of his interviews and lectures are on YouTube too and I have his book on Audible, The Power of Now. I haven't listened to it yet, but from his talks and interviews, I can guess that it is about how all we have is the now, this moment right now. But mostly we all find ourselves living either in the past or the future, disregarding the power of now. I should really listen to it. Another box not ticked, yet.
Half arsed is probably a good descriptor for my life, flying by the seat of my pants stuff. It is how I feel like I stumble through my life, somewhat bewildered. I could live with that I suppose. I would just like to be more confident in that half arsed bewilderment. And find some other half arsed bewildered idiots and form a tribe or something. I think I may have produced that tribe inadvertently and now I wash all their dirty dishes and clothes and pick up all their crap. I endeavour to try to find peace in the mediocrity and try to be mindful and grateful for each functional moment. Hopefully the very bad days are well behind me. But here I am in a depressive no man's land, relieved and thankful to be out of the acute phase of staying alive and clawing back a sense of sanity. Only to find that while I have profoundly changed, my life looks the same and I still have a quiet sadness, a grief for what I wanted it to be. I can't remember where I heard the quote, but it is something like "depression is when you grieve the life you expected or wanted or think you should have." I think it was from Johann Hari's book Lost Connections, but I think he was quoting someone else. I guess recovery is finding a way to bridge the gap between those expectations and reality, and coming to an acceptance of the life you actually have. And eventually finding the moments that make it all worthwhile and carving out some semblance of contentment with how it has all unfolded. Who knows, perhaps some happiness sprinkled over life every now and then would be welcomed too. I certainly know I have had enough of the dark clouds sprinkling depression all over my life.
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