in my head. In my life. I am circling around something, and I can’t quite name it, or see it. Is it depression, again? Will it reach fingers into my soul and seep away my sanity and steal days or weeks or years of my life, so that I wake in the future and wonder where the past went?
It doesn’t quite feel like depression. We’re old friends, me and the black dog. I spent my teen years on drugs that were supposed to deal with the anxiety disorder I had, except no one called it an anxiety disorder then, it was a digestive problem. Yes. A digestive problem that only ever reared its head when I was under stress, like the first attack during my French Aural exam, that had me green on the floor and rushed to hospital in an ambulance with suspected appendicitis.
It wasn’t appendicitis. It was anxiety. Stress. Depression. But we mustn’t name them, mustn’t admit to them, can’t talk about them.
Therapy. I’ve done therapy. I don’t think it was the talking that made a difference. I think it was going through the motions, keeping paddling, head above the water, one foot in front of the other.
And I have so many reasons now to make sure that nothing steals me away. These little people who depend on me. Who look to me. Who love me. Who don’t deserve a closed face, or a closed heart or any of the things that if I were alone I could do to stave this off.
So instead, I think I have to fight it. Find my way out of it.
The doctors won’t help. I want to know if this is Asperger’s. Or High Functioning Autism, I’m not picky. If my inability to relate to others except through this written word is something that is coded into me. Something that I can’t easily unpick. Something that I don’t need to be ashamed of, because it’s not a weakness, just a difference. But the GP couldn’t see why that might be important for me to know, and dismissed my carefully prepared and rehearsed question, and yes, I could go again. Of course I could go again and see a different GP. Except to do that, I have to nerve myself up to it all over again. Prepare my case all over again. Use up the energy that I should be using to create a business, make a living, raise my children, clean the house.
Spoons. Do you know about spoons? That’s about physical illness, but can it apply to a situation where you get to spend your day second guessing every decision and chasing yourself in circles, until suddenly you look up at a clock and realise the day is gone?
You did the things you had to do. Everyone is clothed, fed, clean, the washing is on the line. But you are oh so very tired, and maybe it’s bedtime, and maybe the plans for tomorrow will have to wait until tomorrow.
Oh, I so want to know how to untangle my brain. How to just be able to make a decision, do a thing without being paralysed by circular thoughts. And at the same time I’m scared that without the circular thoughts I wouldn’t be me any more.
I’m not making any sense at all am I? I think the best place for me right now might be bed. And maybe in the morning I’ll have the energy and the courage to actually do something with my day.
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