Last night I didn’t sleep very well. I pinched a nerve in my back a few weeks ago and since quarantine it seems to rear its ugly head sporadically. It’s really the cherry on top of the cake of an already colossally bad period of time.
I started my new job editing audiobooks a few weeks ago. I LOVE IT. The first book that was assigned to me was ‘The Bloody History of London’ which, anyone who knows me can absolutely vouch for, is *my shit*. 6 hours a day of work – that I actually enjoyed – seemed almost too good to be true… and it was. A week into the book and due to Coronavirus (anyone heard of it?) all production was halted temporarily.
The word temporarily does repeat in my head daily, I must admit. It’s becoming less and less convincing.
So, a chance at having a semi normal routine having fucked off, I have spent the last 2 days cooking, playing Sims 4, watching Kitchen Nightmares, playing with Peggy (my new kitten), and sleeping. To be honest, I’ve actually really enjoyed it. I have worked full time since I was 18 so the idea of not working initially brought me out in hives, especially in a pandemic, but I liked the downtime. That’s until, of course, I stopped sleeping.
A little about me, I cannot function on no sleep.
I’m gonna put my neck on the line here and say that nowadays, I really only have boughts of bad mental health when I don’t sleep. So after a night of angrily tossing and turning every two minutes to find a comfortable position (spoiler: there wasn’t one), this morning it really only took an email with some reasonably bad career news and a dropped eyeshadow palette to make me conclude that life really wasn’t worth living anymore.
It occurred to me that instead of crying and playing The Sims until it gets dark, I might actually funnel these feelings into some thing productive, like writing. A thing I can do. To be clear – the play that I have been halfway into for months is about a pandemic which causes worldwide infertility so if I can avoid writing that then I *absolutely* will. I will write a blog a day until all I have to talk about is de-moudling the bathroom. That is not a threat. It will happen.
My history with mental health is a complicated one.
My first memory of feeling overwhelmed was in year 2, when I used to get frustrated and cry over small things, like spelling a word incorrectly or using the wrong type of paper in class. My mum used to call them ‘worry-aches” which now I realise is a really cute way of describing anxiety.
This persisted all through my teenage years but mostly in the form of resistance to change. I had a very supportive and fulfilling childhood so anything that threatened that disappearing I struggled with a lot. Friends moving house, a tree in my garden getting chopped down or my old childhood toys being thrown out were events that I found to be intensely traumatic. But really, that was the only form of anxiety I remember having.
Until the big guns came out.
My Dad, like, full on died.
In the hospice he was admitted to, if a patient had passed away, the nurses tied a white ribbon on the door handle. Poetic and sinister in equal measure, I thought. I will always remember the sickly sweet smell of cleaning products and flowers lingering together.
I was 16, mid way through my GCSE’s and if I struggled with a tree getting chopped down before, well honey, this is a whole new ball game. Blood in his urine had turned into diabetes, that turned into treatable cancer, that turned into untreatable cancer in the space of 18 months. The latter stage only being three weeks, before it was his turn to have a white ribbon tied onto the door handle.
I often, still to this day, deal with his death through humour. Our family motto is ‘if you don’t laugh, you cry‘ which is all well and good until you make a dead dad joke at a party and someone gets uncomfortable or upset. Even on the day he died, I remember laughing that I had a ridiculously orange spray tan (my prom was the next day. I still went.) and an elderly neighbour told me off for being insensitive at such a horrendous time.
Another thing about me, I don’t like others telling me how I should feel. I would wager that none of you do. Especially when your Dad has lost his 2 year battle with cancer and the reality of *never seeing him again* is starting to hit you. So to be honest, Edna, I am more than entitled to laugh at how orange I am for 10 fucking minutes.
My GCSE’s were bit of a blur. My school eventually gave me a free pass to sixth form but I remember having to be physically carried into some of my exams by my Mum and head of year, Mrs Callandar. I had my own exam room to take as much time as I needed. I remember looking at the off white walls and counting every bobble and mark in the paint. My insides felt like lead.
My results were okay. I had a reasonably enjoyable sixth form experience where I started to really hone in on what I was good at, and what I absolutely wasn’t. I met some great teachers, did all the teenage things you are supposed to do, etc etc. With a sprinkling of emotionally abusive ex boyfriends and friendship fallings out, I would say I got away quite lightly.
2 years earlier I had read the eulogy – something I had written myself – at my dads funeral. I remember looking ahead at the packed church, furiously trying not to glance at the big wooden box that was sat next to me. All I kept thinking was ‘He is in there, he is in there, he is in there.‘ I spoke about how he was a magpie; he couldn’t resist anything shiny. He bought a guitar for the family when we had no money because he thought we would enjoy it. My mum gripped my hand as hard as physically possible when the curtains slowly closed around his coffin at the crematorium.
But still, in year’s 11 and 12, I had fun. I realise now that I was not dealing with grief as I should have done, but it was my fresh start! Let me live for Christ’s sake!
After finishing school and saving up as much as I could as a Dominos pizza delivery driver (a whole other blog), I went travelling to New Zealand and had the time of my fucking life. My Dad had lived there for years and I felt it was a great way to connect with him. To have memories of the place like he had.
But then I got back and realised… my friends had gone to University.
Ah.
Turns out, life is less fun when you are delivering pizzas with no end in sight. My ex’s fateful words that I would ‘amount to nothing’ kept playing like a vicious loop in my head and I felt slightly… shaky. To say the least. Getting up at midday and eating shit whilst watching shit TV was not helping. A month went by in the same routine.
That weekend we had been to my Aunty Ginny’s house to catch up. We ended up putting on old family videos on that played in the background whilst Ginny and Mum cooed over the cute babies that were now lanky/bored/lazy teenagers.
My Dad popped up now and then in the background. He was an introverted military man so didn’t like being in the spotlight (can’t relate) so when it came to finding pictures of him to display at the wake we had fuck all to choose from. But there he was, smiling politely whilst running after my little brother hiding a rugby ball. We had a collective moment of ‘…Ah. There he is.‘ and on the afternoon went.
On the way home, my Mum, brother and I are chatting absentmindedly. Staring out of the window, watching the white lines flash on the tarmac road. Nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary.
Then I stopped breathing. Completely.
The next thing I remember is realising that my Mum had swerved onto the hard shoulder – almost into a field. She was trying to help me through what I now know was one hell of a panic attack. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t do it. Fuck, I actually can’t breathe.
But I eventually did. Of course. We drove home in silence and upon arrival, Mum and Tom helped me upstairs as I crawled into bed. Tom sat on the edge and glanced at my grey, ashen face. That was the only time to this day that I remember him looking scared of me.
I didn’t leave that bed for a full month afterwards. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t eat, couldn’t wash myself, I didn’t get dressed. I was taken to the doctors in my pyjamas and wasn’t able to leave for hours because they thought I was going to kill myself. Every now and again I sat on the top of the stairs, hearing my Mum cry on the phone to her friends about how desperate and helpless the situation was. A wave of guilt ripped over me every day that only 2 years after losing Dad, I am putting my family through this all over again.
I slept all day and stayed awake all night. I did not speak. Something had snapped inside me and everything had gone silent and dark.
I do not say this lightly, but I wanted to die.
The only way I can describe it is: I never had the guts to physically kill myself, but if I had a button that was a way to, I probably would have pushed it.
I had, what I know now, as a nervous breakdown at the age of 19. I know it sounds other worldly and dramatic, but I want to stress the point that there was really, truly, no way out for me. At least in my head.
The thing I wanted most in all the world, was to be admitted into an institution. I used to imagine all the ways I would tell my Mum that.
After a month of pure misery on all accounts, my Mum sat on the edge of my bed.
‘I have found a lady I think you could talk to.’
I stared at her. I knew what this meant. I had seen many therapists since Dad’s death with limited success. One that springs to mind told me that Mum had an agenda and I couldn’t trust anything she said, so it went without saying that I was sceptical.
But of course, I didn’t say any of this. I just stared at her.
‘I know. But I promise, if you don’t like this one, you never have to go to another one ever again.’
I stare at her.
‘I promise.’
Looking back now, I realise how high stakes this request was for my Mum to say this. She never makes empty threats. She knew that if I didn’t say yes, my life would go down a very dark and difficult parallel path. I said yes.
I’m not gonna bore you with much more, but the next 2 years were an uphill struggle. I saw Hilary, my new therapist, every week, then every two weeks, then every month. She absolutely, no doubt about it, saved my life. I would say it took a solid 5 years for me to mostly have a *grip* on my mental health and it was not an easy ride.
I still see Hilary every now and again. But this time it isn’t for traumatic deaths of a parent, it’s more when I’m feeing overwhelmed at work or for particularly nasty breakups. She still has all my notes from 7 years ago, she remembers everything and is utter magic. A lot of my friends have seen her too. She made me a firm believer and champion of therapy and about how important communication is.
I’ll say it louder for those at the back… COMMUNICATION.
The picture heading this blog was taken about 3 years ago. I am with my friends at Roadhouse in Covent Garden, singing Karaoke to the classic hit ‘Shut up and Dance’ by Walk the Moon and clearly killing it. It is also a period of time where my mental health was the worst that it’s been in recent years, due to a horrendous breakup that destroyed everything I had built myself up to be for quite a while.
You would never guess that from the picture though, would you?
Look, I’m not going to patronise you by telling you all that because you know it already. But every time I scroll past that picture on instagram I realise that, whilst my life is no where near perfect, at one point I was a frail, grey body curled up in my bed at my mum’s house, waiting for the sun to come up and for it to start all over again.
There is no way IN HELL that person could have ever become the person that I am now, writing this. But somehow, they did. I am, I mean. Writing this now.
The memory of the motorway stays with me, though. It’s scary to think you can go from zero to swerving onto the hard shoulder within a matter of moments, but I don’t let that fear consume me now in the way that it once did. Everything passes eventually, and it will this time.
Right, I’m off to play The Sims. The play stays ignored anther day.
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