As for me, I’m okay…for now anyway…
October 15th, 2009I think I might just have reached the point where I’m ready to start climbing back up the mountain again. Dusting off and moving on. I’m not all fixed but it’s recovery time.
The inevitable slide reached it’s absolute depths around about the beginning of the week where the only option was to have a good old full on flat out weeping breakdown. I’m a great believer in cathartic weeping and as a fully blown graduate in the school of depression I know quite well these days how best to handle my worst episodes and that’s sleep and not having to behave like a functioning human being for a little while. Luckily I also know that I’m exceptionally tenacious (or just bloody stubborn depending on how you look at it) and that these things will come in troughs and peaks. The plunge is followed by the long walk back up. The disassociation and strange disconnectedness of a full depressive episode gives way to starting to feel part of things again.
Depression is a difficult thing. It can be triggered by something obviously distressing or it can be triggered by not getting the bus in time. Sometimes you can be absolutely rational and somehow end up listing ‘end it all’ amdist your to do list or you can be an absolute broken mess. Sometimes there’s no telling what’s going to come spilling out when it strikes. Sometimes that darkness is so overwhelming that you’re pretty sur there’s nothing you can do to get out of it, or that it’s all hope is lost. To be fair, I’ve had a fairly traumatic year. I’d like to write more about being inside the depressive mind looking out at some point.
The funny thing is, anyone who knows me knows I’m not an eternal miserablist. I can be perfectly optimistic, excited and passionate. I like levity in my life and I’m more than keen to make sure other people have it in theirs. Most people would have no clue chatting to me that I have any such issues. Shyness yes but otherwise chipper. For me, recovering from these times is a battle and it’s an exhausting one but it’s one I’m grimly determined to keep on fighting until I reach points like today. Tomorrow might be another bad day, but it then we just start over again.
The depressing, tortured songs give way to something a little more grrrr, a little more…well…me. Less mopey more interesting. The bad poetry gives way to wanting to draw stupid pictures of silly zombies and take photos of amusingly constructed works of children’s imagination. Work starts to become interesting again and I start to feel excited about what I’ve got to do and what I can do.
It’s been a long, tough, difficult year, that’s for damn certain but there have also been infinitely amazing moments of brilliance too.
The passion for Holocaust Education is returning and the realisation that I have an astounding opportunity to do something pretty amazing if I get my arse in gear is sitting right before me. The Holocaust Fellowship is something I earned through hard work and determination at one of the most cripplingly sad times of my life. I need to do it justice.
The excitement about the innovative Lead Practitioner role is all abuzz in my brain. I just have to get, y’know, rehired in that role now, but I have so many ideas about what to do with it and plenty of things that I could use as a focus for my Masters dissertation.
There are really thrilling writing and creative opportunities and if nothing else, having a depressive episode is usually really good for stirring up ideas. I have all kinds of things swimming around in my murky little brain.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I’m doing okay.

