Still not blogging

I sunk…

I am still sinking. I’m not taking care of myself.

I’m probably only even writing this because I told myself to stay sitting here while I drink through a 2L bottle of water.

I rarely buy bottled water, but desperate times… Over the whole weekend I think I only drunk 2 litres in total. Most days I’ve been lucky to drink a litre at all. And there’s a heatwave on. My head starts to ache whenever I lay down. I know I’m dehydrated. So I’m making myself drink.

This is one symptom of depression. Others I’m currently experiencing are:

• Unable to get out of bed (and if I do I potter around for a little while then hide under the sheets again) I only emerge around 1pm most days. Still tired, but able to at least get dressed.
• Eating is becoming difficult. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just impossible to get food together somehow. I nibble instead. And that can be raw mushrooms or carrots, or apples or chocolates. Or slices of bread. On their own. Pulled from the packet.
• I don’t care about stuff I usually care about. Like this blog. It’s not that I don’t dislike it, or not want to do it. It just seems, well nothing like any emotion attached to it has gone.
• Everything seems harder somehow. Like normal, simple things. Like putting out cereal box, bowl and spoon before bed (the only way recently to make myself have breakfast) seems about as feasible as jumping in the air and flying away.
• I am keeping up with my writing. Just. I’m worried about the effect on my mood if I don’t so I have to keep going.
• I feel lonely and exacerbate it by not having any energy to contact anyone. And if I do, this mask goes on:

It’s like my brain takes over and can’t tell anyone how much mental pain I’m in. It over compensates on a massive scale.

Which is exhausting.

• I don’t tell anyone. And if I did no one would be able to do anything anyway, so why bother?

I’m not actually drinking while typing this. I’m just ignoring an empty glass. So I’ll stop.

Update

How I’ve been on the outside:

How I’ve been feeling inside:

For a few days I pretty much stopped. I got out of the house every day and I wrote every day. All other activities fell by the wayside.

How I am now:

I’m not pretending everything’s fine when it isn’t. I’m not in as bad a place as I was, but I’m still

And yeah… I’ve discovered Bitmoji…

Choosing wisely

“Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.”

– Roy T Bennett

I am trying to do all the activities in the book. I have missed some. Out of the 7 categories, the one of “Give” is the one I have skipped most. Today I got out my journal and looked at the book and looked at the giving activities I have missed.

Of the 9 I have missed (only nine? I thought I was doing much worse – I don’t need to beat myself up quite so much) two involve doing things that I really struggle with. Doing them would take a lot of willpower and inner strength – and I don’t have the energy at the moment. In fact I may need therapy or something to attempt them..

Two more are doable with a little help from Spirit – Okay Angels, if you could present me with a first aid class I can get to and a vending machine I’ll be good to go! Another one is about giving other people compliments – I do that, sometimes. I tried doing it more, I even blogged about it. A bit.

So, that’s 4 left. The first one of these was in December. I was struggling a bit by then. My mood was low and since then my energy has gotten low too. My default position when I am like this is to avoid people. It’s hard being around others when I am low, because I automatically put on a mask

Everything’s fine! I’m fine! Nothing to see here! I’m coping!

Think it’s exhausting reading all those exclamation marks? It’s worse living them. I can’t seem to stop it. It’s one thing talking about mental health here, where I can pretend no one’s reading (though may I take this opportunity to thank you for reading my blog? I appreciate it. I hope it helps, or at least kills some time…) or to talk about it when I’m not in a depression, but quite another to admit to anything wrong when in the middle of it, person to person. It’s taken me years to even admit it to my brilliant GP, who has been known to find time to see me week after week when I’ve been at my worst.

Point is, interacting with others is hard enough in the usual way, never mind in a different way, such as slipping a positive note into a lunchbox (not that I prepare any lunchboxes) or bringing cake.

The depression wants me to beat myself up over this. It has been, and didn’t want me writing about this. That’s what depression does. It wants you to feel bad about yourself so it can feed off it. It doesn’t want you to do anything to feel better. I am changing. That’s one reason I began this blog (I’m sure I’ve said this before). Previously I would have ignored the activities that I wasn’t doing, focus on what I was and hope no one noticed. Today I didn’t. Today I sat down and looked at what was actually going on, which helped rein in the negative thought.

Only 9 Giving activities missed. One only half-missed. 4 have reasonable explanations for being missed. I am doing okay. It’s not laziness so much as exhaustion. I can bake a cake to take to work, write a note or a letter, send a postcard. The fact that I haven’t doesn’t mean I won’t. The fact that I’m tired and struggling is a reasonable reason. I am taking the time to stop and do this blog on a daily basis, even if it’s only to ramble on about the depression. I am taking time to write a little bit extra every day. I’m taking time. I choose to take time to improve. Well done me.

Too tired to think…again

It’s too much again. Today’s activities was supposed to be looking at fears, but I can’t face that today. I can barely face myself. It’s one of those “the only thing I see in the mirror are flaws” days. I looked at the other two activities for the week – garden centre? Impossible without a car around here. DVD? I don’t want to watch anything, plus it was too much trouble to have breakfast, because getting food into a bowl was unachievable this morning, so finding the disc drive to plug into the laptop (currently my only way to watch DVD’s) is way beyond me.

I am writing this because one day I may look back over my depress-tagged posts and this will remind me that after a good day you can have a bad day, and yes, Ingrid, your instincts are right, if you can’t stand the idea of something on a particular day, it’s far better to journal about whatever is going on, not just go and feel worse afterwards.

Hopefully I will also reread this and remind myself that tomorrow went better, that it’s possible to have good days after bad and that bed isn’t such a bad idea.

I’d be going there now if I had written anything other than this post today. I know that if I don’t write today I will regret it tomorrow.

Edit:

Tomorrow was better.

Tired

I posted. Only it was a page not a post. And so I saved it as a draft. I was going to sort it, but no idea how to find drafts.

I am at the tired point where I want to cry because it hits to think. I may not manage anything else today due to tiredness. I have posted. I will find it, the original I mean. It’s just I am so tired, too tired and I can’t think and it is like this, when tired. My head can’t think. It needs food. Only I have forgotten how Food works. And battery is low, and I’m getting obsessed with posting a post I cannot find, so I am at least recognised it and I think how it is like this when ill mental and physical obsessions come up because there is no energy left to push it down, and that’s what a lot of mental health is, I think, not being able to find energy to stop the symptoms.

This post would be unreadable if not for the words appearing on the keyboard but I need to stoptyping and rest now, please.

Releasing resentment

Change of plan today, because I felt drawn to do the exercise about resentment today.

One reason we hide our emotions is because we feel guilty for having them in the first place.

I know how damaging this can be. One thing I read about depression stuck with me. I wish I could remember where I read it because it makes sense. Depression comes from suppressing or pressing down your emotions. I know that once I began examining my emotions I began to get better. Not 100% obviously – the last few posts are proof of that – but I come out of these periods quicker, and I can sense what’s going on sooner, which usually stops me falling quite so far.

The exercise is simple:

• Complete the sentence I am feeling resentful about…(what?) or I am feeling resentful with… (who?) as many times as you need.
• Look at each statement in turn and ask the questions:
• What lies behind this feeling?
• what if anything do I need to do about it?

I did this four times tonight. I won’t say what I was resentful about, because once it was over I tore up the paper and flushed it away. This was actually the answer to one of the questions “what do I need to do about it?” This helped because it’s a good way of releasing the guilt – not only is the resentment out of my mind, but now it’s torn into little bits and (symbolically) out of my life too.

I work well with symbolism like this. My brain may not always be helpful or indeed healthy, but it does work in some wonderful ways too.

👁 💗 my 🧠

It’s important to give love to all parts of yourself, especially the bits you don’t like. I’ve been moaning about my brain a lot recently but that’s as effective as moaning about my kidney. It doesn’t contribute anything to getting better.

Today’s activity was a good one. I will be doing this one again.

It’s not a good sign when…

• I can’t remember how food works. I walk around the kitchen and look at food but it is impossible to get from looking to eating because complicated things like cutlery or packaging are in the way
• I can’t think about time. I lose time playing games on the tablet, but worse is looking at the clock, seeing the time and thinking I have half an hour to listen to this before I have to do such and such then find the timer to do such and such going off ten minutes later because my brain can no longer process what a clock is saying.
• I have unopened packages on the kitchen table. Receiving post is something I usually enjoy, but they just sit there and I have no interstate in them.
• I cannot make sense and even handwriting something is hard because I look back and see mistakes like I have written the word “it” as “ti” and this is handwriting so it’s not even a typo.

and yet, with all these bad signs, signs that my brain is not working, I have to go to work soon. This has advantages; buying a sandwich on the way will ensure that I eat because, while making a sandwich is currently impossible, eating one isn’t, but I am wondering if I am up to it, given how tired I am. And I have my evening class, but I have to go because it’s half term next week.

Thing is, it’s a writing class. And given how badly I am writing….

But somehow I stay stubborn. I pack my bag for class and for work. I can tell what’ll happen; I will arrive home ten pm and fall asleep, and not have time to Blog (why does WordPress capitalise that word?) so I am blogging now, even with nothin to say.

Apologies. It’s my perfectionist streak, and it’s not a good sign when that is in charge of how “good” or “bad” I am.

Blogging while exhausted

I want to write a bit more about yesterday’s blog post.

I was at the stage that is un-technically called “exhausted frustration” I used to get to this state all the time and I think I used to think it was another symptom of depression.

It’s what I call the frame of mind when any and every little thing can send the mind into unreasonable frustration and, if unchecked, rage. I used to not recognise it as a result of my body being hungry and exhausted. By tiny things, I mean swearing under my breath at the phone keyboard because whenever I press the “t” key it gets me to the “tag” section on instagram. I don’t usually swear in public. But every time it did this I muttered another swear word, which I won’t type here because it’s not that kind of a blog, under my breath.

Thing is, because I was so tired, I wasn’t even aware I was doing it, not at first. I don’t know, maybe about 5 minutes of this before I caught myself and put away the phone. This is scary because it’s like my tiredness has taken away normal rules from me and not told me.

I am still exhausted today. I was in bed around 8pm last night. I also, because I was too tired to think, barely ate. Which only makes it worse. It’s weird, the way physical and mental health are divided, when your mind is another part of your body. Physical illness can affect the mental illness in decisive ways – I guess that’s why the HALT technique I blogged about recently is so effective – because it does acknowledge this. Too little Food can affect my mental health profoundly. It affects my sleep, because a hungry body will not sleep properly. It also impares my thinking (and possibly spelling too since the app is telling me there’s no such word as “impares”) my decision making, and my emotions go haywire – basically if I don’t eat, my mental health goes down hill. Which is a problem when I am too ill to cook.

Have I blogged about the difficulty I have with…..

There was a sentence there. Then half way through typing Poof! Vanished. No words in my head matched the words. This is exhaustion, not even frustration, just the exhaustion of a heavy head cold. It’s frightening, losing words. It’s frightening knowing that I have little Food in the house that I can eat. When I am so tired that I cannot complete a sentence, cooking becomes potentially dangerous. When I can’t trust myself with words I know I am not in the right ability to trust myself with a knife, or an oven.

Also, ev3n as I write this I am aware of the ability to type coherently is leaving me. Like the way I left , I mean put the number 3 in my word even just then. I am not even sure how it got there. I am not in the grip of exhausted frustration now. If I was a tiny thing like that would have me literally in tears and begging the machine, out loud, to please stop doing this and why are you doing this too me? Which I’m not. I’m too tired to insert italics though. I am tempted to delete this post, but a) I am too tired to do another one and I want to do one each day, even if I’ll, as a record for, I mean of, how it is. b)This typing is a illustration of how tired I am. Maybe the (lack of) structure will make my point of how tiredness affects me mentally better than my saying it?

I am going to change the title of this post to reflect it.

It is nearly 8pm.time for bed.

In a week or two I will have to reread these posts to see if they make any sense whatsoever.

I didn’t miss a day, I missed a draft

I thought I posted yesterday. Often when I turn this app on it shows me what I last typed, so I just turned off what it showed me as per usual. Then I realised, once I had deleted it, that it was just a draft. I’m putting it down to illness. That’s what I blogged about, being ill and how when you’re depressed you don’t notice physical illness coming on because you are already tired etc.

Still ill today, but I remembered last week’s activity- to have a nap, and I did that today. So I’m going to count that. My tablet has 9% battery left, so (once I double check that this is posted okay) I am going to turn it off.

#boringblog

The week

Another day… I was okay, until I wasn’t. I searched for the right words to describe me and I got “desperately sad”

There is no reason other than it’s a continuation of this low mood. That’s what makes it frustrating. If I had a reason to feel miserable it would be easier. Not less painful, but easier.

Last summer I had a time of feeling down, but having a reason (going through a break up) meant that I could think about it, feel the pain of it, experience it. Also the general feeling of a cloud hanging over me wasn’t there. I was allowed to feel miserable without all the other side effects of mental illness. Also, when my mind was telling me that I was stupid/useless/whatever for feeling that way I knew it was lying. Because I was going through a break up, so there was a reason, so I wasn’t stupid.

Because that’s what depression tries to do. It tells you lies. It tells you that you’re stupid, selfish,worthless etc. and because it’s your own thoughts telling you this, it’s really hard to argue back.

Still looking at the book Have the best year of your life, I may not have done much from it this week, but I can tick some things off. I did the bird book, described my Nirvana and looked at fear, so that’s 3 out of 7, and two other activities are things I have been doing regularly. One is take a nap. I haven’t this week – laying in bed unable to get up isn’t the same! – but I know that taking naps can help when I am on the way down. The other is:

Get a maps and draw a circle around your home that extends approximately 12 miles. Now look inside the circle for a place you’ve never been…now go pay a visit.

As I have previously blogged, I have been doing a bit of this over November and December, and hope to do more of in February.

So. 5 out of 7 covered. That’s not bad, given how I have been. I am doing alright. I am goodenough.