I haven’t been able to post for a while. For the first time, I felt unable to express how I was feeling physically, emotionally or mentally.
I found myself in a situation that caused me to feel frozen, paralysed almost, unable to move forward in anything. I have had no focus and found no joy.
Although defrosting has now begun, like most things, I don’t know how long it will take and whether I may have to throw myself in a bath of hot water to speed up the process.
Life can be a bitch
Sometimes, I admit, you just have to accept that things are not going to go easy for you. They are what they are.
It does feel that life is a conveyor belt of one thing after another. Not unlike The Generation Game, but not as much fun. Some things are small, some so large that they make a cancer diagnosis pale by comparison. At least that is how it feels. Felt. I’m not sure of the tense yet.
The rational side of me knows that it is my GAD that is heightening all my feelings, not just the anxious ones. The paranoia, the guilt, the doubt, the fear. But unfortunately, that side is being overshadowed right now. It only be seen in certain light, something that happens as rare as an eclipse.
Not even on my worst enemy
Over the last few months I have been dealing with a situation I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I have no doubt that a “normal” person would have felt some worry, but would have dealt with it head on.
Not me. Not with GAD.
It has shaken me to the core. I have never, ever felt so low and despondent in my life.
Something that has the potential to rock my family’s world in not a good way.
I appreciate that may sound very dramatic. And as a good friend said to me only this week, I am a drama queen, but the result is still the same.
Now, if you have read my other posts (you really should you know), you will know that I have had depression before. A lot of people have in varying degrees.
But this, this hollow was a dark place. A very lonely, cold and dark place.
It was, I am ashamed to say, a place I thought about escapeing from. By any means necessary.
I say ashamed because I am. Not of the feeling itself, but because I let other people make me feel that way. I allowed my sense of self to fall away. I let my self-doubt overcome me. I allowed myself to become something less than who I am. I was no longer a mother, a wife, a warrior. I was just a woman wanting to give up.
There were times that it seemed the best idea. Which even now I can see was not the case.
But my coping strategies were failing. My mental health recovery was reverting. I could not see a way forward that was positive.
Invisible woman
I made the decision to come of social media. The things I loved to do, my posts, affirmations, jokes, readings – the things that were helping me through my recovery – were now tainted and I couldn’t bear the thought of it. I wanted to be invisible.
I was so wrapped up in my own story, feeling sorry for myself to an extreme I didn’t know existed.
My mental health recovery took a huge knock, some kicks and several punches backwards and it will take time to get back on an even keel.
So I disappeared. I shut myself off from pretty much everything and everyone.
I simply didnt have the ability to interact. To make conversation. To be me.
I was unable to do anything. My mind was a complete whirl and not a chocolate one filled with some sort of synthetic cream. Every moment, my mind went through different scenarios as to what would happen and what the result would be. I was exhausted but I couldn’t sleep. As soon as my head hit the pillow, my mind went into overdrive.
I was in bed for days. Weeks. During this time I had to have two operations and I can safely say that they were highlights of this time!
How did I get here?
I have had dark thoughts. And that is putting it politely.
It is not something I like to talk about, nor is it something I talk about lightly.
It wasn’t simply a feeling that everyone would be better off without me
But for the first time in my life I thought about suicide. And how I would do it. I don’t mean just as a matter of fact. I mean imagining it. Step by step. And how it made me feel.
And it made me feel a release, as if I was washing away negativity with my blood. I felt at peace, knowing I would not have to face this any more.
But it also frightened me. How easy it was for me go to that place. And I understood.
I understood how intoxicating that feeling of relief can be, the end of pain and the beginning of peace.
And I understood how it is a place that others have gone to. And how some have not come back.
Not letting them win
Although the situation is still existing, I have reached a turning point. A shift in my reality. It was almost as if I had experienced varying stages of grief. Perhaps that’s exactly what it is. Mourning the loss of what once was.
Now I am angry. Angry that I have lost 3 months of my life. Admittedly its not as if I had any plans to go anywhere…
I had no idea life could be like this.
It has given me some insight, forced me to look at things differently..
It has also made me realise how strong I really am.
I have things to do. People to virtually see.
Because for the best part of those 3 months, I couldn’t even see or speak to my tribe. It was just too overwhelming. I wasn’t ready to tell them what was going on (actually at this point in the blog I realise it probably sounds way more exciting than the reality), and I didn’t have the energy to listen to them, or pretend.
I didn’t have the energy full stop.
The road back from hell
I definitely feel a shift though. I’m having CBT and working through my homework.
I signed up to do this year’s Race for Life. I have even said I would do it wearing a Wonder Woman costume if I raise enough money.
I therefore have mixed feelings about how much I want to raise!!
I have reconnected with some friends. Seen a couple in the flesh, social distancing of course.
Its tough though, as those thoughts are still there, the whirling mind of scenarios still exist, but they are quieter.
I know that regardless of the outcome, I will still be here. I will be okay. My family and I will come through the other side intact.
Because I am a Warrior.
