My most favourite contemporary novel in.the.universe.
While my life is reading like a Hallmark card at the moment, granted it is a poor holy-hell-how-are-we-going-to-pay-all-these-bills Hallmark card, several friends (blogging and otherwise) are in the midst of the rough ride I know all too well. For one in particular it is that of her partner and his recent diagnosis with bipolar and the struggle to get the meds right to get her husband and their children’s father back that is fairly constantly on my mind.
They’re clocking up close to six months of trying to get his meds right but that reality just doesn’t pay any credit to what she/he/their family has weathered before hand or since.
When I am ‘back’ as it were, as in mentally firing on all cylinders and as stable as Martha Stewart’s horse chalet I realise the impact my mental health has on those around me but also the reality that well, this is a good phase.
I remember the first time a very dear friend (who I now basically don’t have a relationship with at all. Sadly.) suggested I go and speak to someone.
To be honest I went in part for the Bridget Jonesesque notion of how romatic an idea it was that I needed to see a psychiatrist.
But I did have an underlying concern they were going to tell me yes you are manic depressive and here, take this lithium and come in for some electric shock therapy next week. Bring your own stick to put between your teeth.
Of course none of that happened but it was about nine years ago and many questions have been answered since and many childhood ‘issues’ resolved or at least put to rest.
I’ve also worked up quite an impressive list of different drugs for dealing with depression, anxiety, bulimia and whatever other brainfuck you’d like to throw my way.
But you know what?
It was the very first prescription for anti-depressants that was the hardest for me to swallow. That script didn’t even come into play until about two years after I first saw Dr J.
But I had the script for a full two weeks before I could even bring myself to get it filled let alone start taking it.
I guess that script was a pretty big turning point, a moment of acknowledgment but certainly not acceptance that my brain just didn’t work as well as it should all of the time.
It was an awful moment of realising that while plenty of other people could handle what came their way in their daily life, I couldn’t cope with mine. Well, that was how I saw it at the time.
The next moment of recognition was when Dr J said to me that considering it was the third bout of depression he’d seen me for in as many years once I was back on track (that time around) we would have to discuss long term options.
I cried.
The acceptance of my illness (for want of a better word) only came when I crossed that line back in May.
For some that line is attempted suicide, for others it is the very first labelled bout of depression or serious anxiety. Mine was that episode when I had enough cognitive thought to know what I was experiencing was a full blown panic attack but an equal physical urge to simply stop feeling the way I was feeling.
It had nothing to do with ‘suicide’.
And that has played on my mind not just as much as these friends who endure a similar reality to my own but for all those people who have killed themselves. I am spending way too much time wondering if they actually wanted to end their lives or simply that the physical urge to stop that awful awful awful way they were feeling at that time (and how long they had felt like that and just couldn’t stand it for a minute more).
That night was the first time ever I’ve crossed that line to when suicide isn’t a daydream but a very percebtable reality.
You see, that full blown anxiety attack was such that while I had occasional moments of cognitive capacity to tell myself ‘you’re not dying, this is just a panic attack, slow down your breathing, this will pass, this will pass, this will pass’ the one burning thought was ‘I can’t feel like this anymore’.
So the idea of ‘suicide’ was far less one of ending my life and much more one of not feeling so awful any more.
All of the normal thoughts I have to ensure I never act on those suicidal thoughts – the kids, Chef, my friends, the rest of my life, were not even in my head space.
I just couldn’t feel like that anymore.
I’m repeating myself and not even sure where I’m going with all this.
I absolutely dread to think of what I would have/could have done if Chef wasn’t with me.
The idea that he would leave me because of my mental health is a bit of an old chestnut in our house and one I relinquished some time ago.
His love for me, no matter what, is probably as great an antidepressant as my little white and big purple pills.
This time it took close to two months for me to find my even keel. The episode after Felix was born took about 10 months. The time after Jasper about four. And they’re just the big Cohunas – I couldn’t even give you a guesstimate on the brain snaps inbetween the doosies.
But it’s been nine years of calm seas and many Perfect Storms and that’s only the time it’s been catalogued. I think without the backstory I wouldn’t have bounced back as well as I have this time around. I know that it will pass, that I will feel better, normal, once more and that reality is very important to me to not act on the thoughts of how to stop feeling so bad. Which generally involve nudity and swimming in arctic waters in the middle of the night, so it’s really better for everyone I guess.
Sometimes all this strikes me as incredibly middle class developed nation indulgence but well, it’s my reality. Thank god I don’t have it and have to worry about finding fresh water/avoiding suicide bombers/dodging warfare each day along with my propensity to anguish, over-analyse, doubt and fret. God, how tiring.
So here I am today.
Happy.
Stupidly content in my cluttered, messy, cramped house with no money and no prospects.
Taking little boys for walks around the block, to the beach, down to the lake to feed the ducks.
Cooking, baking, washing, washing, washing.
Mulling over in my head the idea for my book.
Procrastinating from starting it…
Typical.
I am almost incredulous that at the beginning of May, just 11 weeks ago, I was scared of being alone with my children.
And so it goes.
In the back of my mind is a niggling thought – maybe this remarkable level of calm and peace and love and harmony is some bizarro world mania.
That it’s just the soaring high before the crushing low.
I’m not dwelling on it, it’s just there.
As is the acknowledgment that it always will be.
I think that’s called acceptance.
A darkened cinema.
On my own.
Well, there were two others there.
I saw Mongol.
Granted, it wasn’t quite Mamma Mia or Sex and the City but I wasn’t really in the mood for fluff and bubble.
I wanted saga and scenery.
I loved it.
Before that I got to have a late brekkie (granola, berry compote, yoghurt and a chai tea) at my most favourite cafe in the world.
On my own.
With a magazine.
Granted, it all would have been even better without the Day Three migraine (which two neurofen forte didn’t even impact) but oh my.
You see, as my position as a salaried member of the public service officially ended on Friday I thought I should reassure you all that despite my appalling blog posting irregularities of late, I am so much better than I have been for quite some time. If I had to put a time on it I’d say this is the best, the most normal, the most me I’ve been in about two years.
Isn’t that something.
*****
Friday and Saturday featured Felix’s belated birthday party which involved having five eight year olds here from various times ranging from Friday morning through to Saturday lunch time.
Get this…
It was so.much.fun.
Sure, exhausting, but fun.
They are such great kids and I found it hilarious eaves-dropping listening to their conversations and games.
There were pizzas for dinner and ice cream sundaes for dessert with freckles, jaffas and smarties and home made chocolate sauce (I had to make something)
We ended up with only two sleeping over on Friday night and at 10.30 I told them I didn’t mind them talking away (I’d set them all up on the lounge room floor) but the volume was getting too loud and they needed to turn it down a notch.
So they went to sleep.
Isn’t eight adorable!
Breakfast was pancakes w/ maple syrup, bacon, watermelon and strawberries. Which they demolished.
Then they all went home – and one even took Felix with them for a play date/sleep over… until the following afternoon at 5.30.
Sweet.
*****
I was going to do a linky-love post to various people but Blackbird beat me to it. But I’m doing it anyway. Sort of. But nowhere near the scale of hers. I’m just saying. So you don’t feel let down.
*****
I was going to do a post about all the things I’m giving thanks for at the moment but Babel Babe beat me to it.
But here are some things regardless.
Twinning’s Chai tea bags – Now I am normally a complete devotee to loose leaf tea in a pot but I am very partial to properly made Chai tea, which is actually quite difficult to find and way too time consuming to bother with at home. The amount of time I’ve spent staring at different brands and forms of chai tea in supermarkets, organic shops and the like is ludicrous. Even moreso when I can’t bring myself to decide on one or purchase any. So the other day, out of a level of desperation and boredom with my indecision I just grabbed this at Woollies. It is subtle. A light brew but fragrant in a way that I’m finding deeply satisfying.
Strawberries – How good are the strawberries at the moment? Delicious and cheap. Considering I have three children who could happily eat a punnet each in about a minute and a half this is most excellent.
My children – this is a weird one. For starters there are things that are absolutely shitting me to tears – Oscar’s constant teariness and increasing neuroses; Felix’s relentless melodramas which involve performances worthy of any daytime soap opera and his current obsession with deriving pure enjoyment from maximum antagonsim of his siblings; Jasper’s fluctuating between being Mr Policemen and Batista with Grover; Grover’s return to waking twice a night.
But get this – I am absolutely loving being at home. I am so calm and in control. It is OCD heaven. This doesn’t translate to a very clean and certainly not tidy house, but it does translate to me being around my children and parenting them the way I want them parented. I can’t tell you how restorative this has been to my sense of self and indeed my self esteem.
And so it means I am here watching the relationship between Jasper and Grover subtley change and develop into one of mates – with games of chase and other strange little episodes. It means I am having the delicious conversations you have with a 2.5 year old – those about diggers, and the moon, about that big truck, or that bus, or about how Percy has been very naughty and is therefore being put inside the toy box with the lid shut.
No dog smell, no dog shit – nuf said.
Slowing down – This has just sort of happened. I’m not worrying so much about what we don’t have or what the future holds, I’m spending more time playing and being with my kids than cleaning up after and around them, I’m looking at the list of things that need to be done and then reordering it into a realistic list. I have no idea how long this will last or if this is a major change in me for good. I like it. I like the impact it has on the rest of the family. For now. But as I am normally the driver of the family I’m quietly confident that will return but perhaps with less aggression, frustration and anxiety.
*****
Then I was going to do a school holiday joke, but Bec beat me to that too.
From Felix:
What happens when a cat eats a ball of wool?
It has mittens.
Boom tish.
there’s five eight year old boys in my house.
Along with Oscar and Jasper.
Grover is at my inlaws.
We’ve been to the park with some other friends.
It involved a car trip.
Oh my LORD the noise.
Isn’t it marvellous how boys who don’t really know each other just do the whole, ‘do you wanna play handball/soccer/footy’ and then just do so?
We’re home now.
They’re playing cricket, interspersed with handball, trampolining and some other game that seems to have more rules than actual activity.
One of them is inside playing with Jasper’s Thomas the Effing Engine toy we got him the other day that has a motorised component. He’s very intelligent and talking to me about how freaky it is that these parts work even though they’re not charged by electricity. He’s very intense and while I’ve always felt he was a little ‘weird’ in that creepy kind of way, he has greatly endeared himself to me in the last 10 minutes.
They’re such a nice group of boys.
It’s pizzas, movies and a sleepover tonight.
Breakfast will be strawberries (aren’t they just delicious at the moment) pancakes, bacon and maple syrup.