Not well

At the moment I am not well. I am sick, quite sick, I have been sick for over a week and I am only just getting energy back to the point where getting myself a glass of water doesn't feel like a massive undertaking.

But I am still not well, it turns out I'm sick, very sick, and have been getting more so for quite some time, my anxiety and depression has reached what I think is called 'crisis point'. This is terrifying . I don't remember ever feeling this fragile.

I feel as though I am made up of playing cards of tissue paper and I am trying to keep them together in gale force winds.

A while ago we went for a drive around the coast and it got really windy, it was howling and pulling the car from side to side, I watched a seagull sitting in the middle of the road take off, if it is possible for a bird to show uncertainty or even fear, that is what I saw. It rushed up as though being sucked through a giant straw, only to be spat out and thrown across the sky. At first it flapped it's wings trying hopelessly to go in the direction it intended. Then it seemed to resign itself and with it's wings out spread was sent soaring over the hills and out of sight.

While this is a pretty depressing post, the fact I am writing anything at all seems a good sign to me. I have sought help and I am being supported and am starting once more what they call my 'personal wellness journey'. It is still terrifying, perhaps even more so because to let a part of yourself hope for recovery feels a very dangerous and vulnerable thing to do. After a few days of immeasurable support and an exhausting beginning on my 'personal journey' - my mind aches as though it has bush bashed through k's of gorse riddled scrub, crossed icy rivers and dragged itself through heavy snow), I am beginning to wonder if the seagull was not sent soaring but instead was riding the wind.

Tread carefully

I am at that point, that I have been before, where I know I need to be a little careful. If I am a little careful it can be an exciting time but it is also an exhausting time. I was about to write I am in turmoil, it's dramatic and false, but in another way I do feel like my thoughts, my feelings, my unconscious, my insides are tumultuous. I feel shook up. There isn't much going on externally to make me feel this way and I only know because of a slightly painful history that I need to tread carefully. I know from experience that right now I need to be kind to myself and I need to make a few changes. I want to make a few changes and I like being kind to myself, so it is an exciting time.
I want to practise mindfulness.
I want to take pleasure in delicious and healthy food.
I want to be active.
I want to keep working on my confidence.
I want to keep in contact with people who are important to me.
I want to take pleasure in everyday activities.
I want my mummy! "Now, now Frankie you can handle this, take a deep breath and recognize that feeling in your tummy as nervous excitement". It's a time of change.

Changes

I haven't written in a long time and I don't even know if I will publish this, I don't even know what this will be. I have a job, I have had a job for almost 6 months and it looks like I will have it for at least a year more. It's not glamorous, it's data entry - but at the least the data comes from the 1800's. Although I still feel undeniably me, I do feel as though things have changed for me and my 'education' these days is very different to what it was while I was studying. I am learning to get up at 7am Monday to Friday and go to work. I'm learning to work for 7 and a half hours a day, even when I'd rather do almost anything else. I'm learning to do everything else (dishes, washing, cooking, sleeping, relaxing, etc) I need to do outside of those hours (this I'm definitely still learning). But I'm also benefiting from things I have already learned, especially motivating myself to work.

I wrote this quite a while ago now but didn't post it. Since then I have gotten a new job, I am now an archivist, supervising 12 data entry operators. For a long time I truly loved it, for right now I enjoy it but am finding it so incredibly challenging. I am learning so so much and it's defiantly a learning process. I am learning so much I don't think I can type it all down here. But the biggest things for me at the moment are feeling confident in my knowledge and that I deserve to be an archivist and a supervisor, this is tough. I am learning to manage the difficult days and things that stress me, this is tough too and a little scary. I am scared of things getting too much and me getting unwell again. But another thing I am realising is that I need to learn to be grateful. I am lucky to have this great job and these incredible opportunities and I am grateful for having (for the most part) good mental health, I am grateful for the wonderful people in my life. And as I have been forced to realise lately I am grateful I am alive. I'm going to try to write a gratitude journal each day, because I need to remember the wonderful things I have in my life. I'm also going to make an effort to write on here more often, even if no one reads it (I"m not sure I want anyone to read it) I know it is good for me to write, even if it's nonsense and even if it is a little self obsessed.

I want to be like that

Someone at my work passed away on Tuesday. We just had an afternoon tea in their honor. They showed a photo of him when he was young and told stories of him. He had worked here 18 years. I have almost worked here 1. When I started I was very shy and quiet. I didn't want to be so I made a real effort to talk to people. I would even count the number of people I had talked to that day (I don't think it ever got over 5). It was painful for me to talk to someone, it physically hurt. But he was one of the people who talked to me and who I could talk back to without any pain. I felt so much more confident and happy after talking to him. He had a smile that was so kind and so genuine you couldn't help but mirror it. But he is gone now. He died of a heart attack, he was on a waiting list for a heart operation, the same operation my father had, but my father had it in time. I have been thinking about this man and about my father. I don't know if this man had children. He undoubtedly had family and I am so so very sorry  for their loss. I am also so very grateful I haven't had to experience a loss like that. I want to celebrate my family, I want to build my relationship with my father. I have also been thinking about what a difference this man made to my day and to so many other people's day, just by being genuine, friendly, happy. I want to be like that. 

Too many thoughts and not enough words

As is starting to seem usual for me, my head and heart and tummy feel full with too many thoughts and I can't find the words to materialize them outside of myself. They are siting inside of me, stuck and stifled. I'm not unhappy, in fact I am happier, more relaxed and more content than I ever have been. On our weekends we get into the car and make our way around the bay, each time I feel breathless and wide-eyed at the incredible environment we have managed to find ourselves in. We stop somewhere along the way and sit looking out to sea, watching the gulls swooping and soaring or the tide crash against the ragged rocks, we might wander along listening to the sea and each other, or we might gaze into the rock pools at the initially gross but actually beautiful anemones. I cook apple and blueberry crumble and we eat it with cream, so comfortable and at ease with one another on our worn out couch. Still these thoughts tumble around inside of me, occasionally riming my eyes with tears. I am happy and content and confused. I don't have the words to explain to anyone, let alone myself what is going on for me. Perhaps it is because I am so happy and content that my body or mind feels as though it can look for how next to increase this happiness. Maybe it is because I have never planned beyond finishing university that I am struck dumb by all the possibilities. Perhaps it is the increasing feeling of pressure to be an 'adult' placed on me by society or maybe myself. Whichever or whatever it is, I am drawn to words in a way I haven't been since I was a teenager. Seeking out and rapidly consuming books and stories, unable to put them down, taking pleasure in the shape and sounds of words and sentences. I am continually struck with an incredible desire to write, to write about anything and everything. I almost never get to put pen to paper or finger to key, but stories and words and sentences nevertheless find themselves rushing around in my mind. I cannot find the words to make sense of my self, to manifest my thoughts and feelings outside of myself, but I am (perhaps unconsciously, perhaps my mind is) seeking them out.

Some nonsense

I don't know what to write, but all day today I have felt like I need to write, it has been itching under my skin. For a long time now I have felt unsettled, upset and yet very settled and very calm. If I think about it, it's pretty normal for me around this time of the year. With Christmas and New Year and the long summer break a lot gets stirred up in my mind and it takes me a long time to work through it, to even recognise all the things kicked up and swirling in my mind, to name them. I can't name them yet, but I know they're there, I can feel them. I guess I could name some of them, like the apparent changes in my family and my relationships with them (although I can't describe any further), changes in the way I see myself, considering what it is I want to do (to do a masters?). But really a lot of the things that have been stirred up, that I can feel in my insides, that somehow make me more still, more steady are not things that can be named - they're much bigger and complex than that. I feel like my mind and possibly my heart because that's how it feels, is working through these colossal dust particles without me, or at least without me being fully conscious of it. I am trying to be patient without being lazy or blase. I am trying very hard to look after myself and do what is best for me, even though sometimes it's hard. This won't make sense to anyone, it doesn't quite make any sense to me, but I want so badly to get some of it out, to give my mind some space to work in (even if it's just a musty corner)