Big Daily Update

Think it’s about time for a Big Daily Update. Things have been difficult since my grandmother’s funeral last Thursday. I was too upset to sleep that night. Understandably this caused all kinds of havoc with my sleeping pattern and now I don’t have anything resembling a sleeping pattern. I have been thinking a lot about her, about my mother and grandfather, and about death in general which is not good for me. I have been crying a lot more frequently which is also a bad sign. It has been raining and miserable all day long, and due to crazy sleeping I didn’t make it out for a walk at all. Instead, I attempted to watch Shakespeare in Love for the fourth time, but struggled as it didn’t hold my attention. My mind tends to wander off to darker things when I try to watch television. Ate reheated vegetables (not very nice) and ice cream with tinned apricots (tastier). Mood is also being fickle. Depression remains a constant, however it was much more severe earlier today. In fact, it was so severe I could barely speak. Sometimes it seems to follow that pattern – worse in the morning, slightly better in the evening. Or perhaps it improved after I had more sleep.

Depression: Day in the Life (Part 2)

 

Look at the clock. Stand up and feel dizziness. Panic about dizziness. Sitting back down doesn’t help. I start to have a panic attack. I relax my muscles and slow my breathing. Manage to use technique to get panic under control. Panic attack is averted. Feel pleased. Resume watching TV. Think about how quiet the house feels. Uncontrollable panic about my mother dying. Thoughts that I want to kill myself first. Imagine how upset my parents would be and start to cry again. There’s no way out. Feeling trapped in dark room. There are three exit doors and each one has a lion behind it. Feel more dread than my body can contain. YOU ARE HAVING A BATH. Drag self up and finally have bath, it only took four hours. A big achievement. Decide to wash hair tomorrow instead.

Feel convulsed with despair. Force self to look at textbook. Remember that I used to love learning. I can’t read. My mind rises up like a blank wall, preventing the words from making sense. I feel brain damaged. Perhaps I had a seizure four months ago and it damaged my brain. I feel lobotomised. Thoughts move through my head as though they are moving through treacle. My mind is dull and damaged. It is useless. I am useless. Feel guilt about being useless. What if my mind is irreparable and never goes back to normal? What if I never regain my previous level of functioning? Start to cry again. Pull self together. Feel despondent about utter lack of interest. Each hour and day stretches on into infinity. Am being pulled down a black tunnel with death at the end. No escape. Terror. Realise I have been thinking for half an hour. Textbook is still open on my lap. Consider asking my doctor for ECT.

Make cup of tea. Tell self to go out for walk. ‘You will feel better’. Step outside but see neighbour in the garden. Pretending to be cheerful is too much effort. Feel self-conscious and ugly. Go back inside. I’ll go out later. Maybe. Feel physical pain. Know it’s depression but knowledge isn’t power. Feel helpless. No matter where I go or what I do it will always be there. There is no escape. Despair. Express train. ‘It will traumatise the driver’. Jump off the viaduct. Try to forget about jumping off the viaduct. Easy to do because short-term memory is dead. Wrong choice of words. Now thinking about death. Feel cold inside. No normal feelings, no human warmth. Try to remember what it was like to feel happiness. Know I felt it, but don’t recall what it was like. Feel intense pain. Mood is black. Vision seems darker. Tell self happiness is possible. Don’t believe self. Have to believe self. Have nothing if I don’t have hope. Will have to trust the possibility of recovery. Have blind faith. The belief, not the band. My jokes are not funny. Am humourless cretin. Feel guilt about being humourless cretin.

Wish internal monologue would shut up. It won’t. Think it’s continuing just to spite me. It’s like being in a Russian novel. One of the really long ones. The chapter where the prostitute listens to the philosophical rant. Basically every Dostoyevsky novel. Am trapped in Dostoyevsky novel. Woe. Am too ill to work. Could do with the income. Every time I asked for work I wasn’t able to do it. Will I ever be able to work? Will I ever want to? Maybe I’ll kill myself and then I won’t have to think about it. Could be worse. Could be a prostitute in St Petersburg. Or a dead moneylender. Or in Siberia. Or Dostoyevsky himself. Glad that I’m not Dostoyevsky. They called him the ‘mad Russian’. Don’t think that sounds very nice. Advice of the day: Don’t be mad. Don’t be Russian. You’re welcome.

Depression:Day in the Life (Part 1)

Wake up feeling severely depressed. Seems as though I felt it before I woke. How is that possible? Depression when you sleep? Never mind. It is 6 AM and have been asleep for twelve hours. Tell self to get up. Ignore self and go back to sleep. Wake up an hour later. Manage to sit up in bed. Manage to lie down again and go back to sleep. Wake up an hour later. Tell self to get up. Tell self I can’t. Depression weighs me down. Go back to sleep for half an hour. Tell self I will do it this time. Sit up quickly and reach for top at the other end of the bed. Pull top over head. Tell self to stand up.  Refuse. Take top off again and go back to sleep. Wake up again. Put top on. Take top off. More sleep. It is ten o’clock and need to get up. Need to go back to sleep. At half ten, crawl sideways out of bed and across floor. Put on trousers first, then top. Success.

Been up ten minutes. Was asleep for seventeen hours. Feel exhausted. Getting up was a bad idea. Want to go back to bed. Tell self that’s ridiculous. ‘You’re staying up’. Look in the mirror. Regret looking in the mirror. Look uglier than usual. Decide to have bath. Go into bathroom. Don’t have enough energy so go into bedroom and check email. Dad sent me parts of his story days ago. He wants me to give feedback and suggestions. It’s only four pages and English was my best subject at school. It’s impossible. My mind feels frozen with depression. Will have to do it another day. Look at clock. So many hours to fill. Need to have bath. Decide to make breakfast instead. Decide to have something that doesn’t need preparing. Turn oven on. ‘HEY, REMEMBER SYLVIA PLATH’. Whoa, thought, where did you come from? Can’t be bothered. Turn oven off. Back slowly away from oven. Get head as far away as possible from oven. Remember oven is electric, not gas. Eat two strawberries and leave kitchen. Will tell mother I had breakfast. Where is she? See note on table. Remember she was going to visit grandad. Lament loss of short-term memory. Feel sorry for grandad. Must be difficult for him. Feel upset about grandad. Try to stop thinking about grandad. Start thinking about death instead. Try to stop thinking about death. Look out of window and try to appreciate nice view. See churchyard. Think about graves. Think about death again. Oh FFS I’ve only been up an hour. Need to have bath. Too tired.

Go into room and listen to music while lying on bed. Contemplate my lonely future. The future looks impossible. Try to focus on music. Can’t enjoy music. Terrified about future. Force self to enjoy music. Still terrified about future. Remind self how passionate I was about music. Start to cry about future. Change to a different song. Now hysterical about future. Change to a different band. ‘There is an express train that you could step in front of. It would kill you immediately.’’ Oh hello again, thought. Push thought out of head. It boomerangs back with more force. I imagine stepping in front of the express train. I wonder how long it would take to die. I hope it would be instant. But what about the pain upon impact? You don’t get hit by an oncoming train and feel nothing. Give up on music. Decide to have bath. Run bath but don’t get into it. Can’t be bothered. Let water out of bath. Feel guilt for wasting water. I am a terrible person for not caring about the water.

House feels empty with just me in it. It’s too quiet. I won’t be able to cope on my own. I should be able to cope. Everyone else can. Feel immobilising terror about future. Start thinking about my friend who’s pregnant. Think she’d make a good mother. My periods have stopped. Last one was five months ago. The doctor says it’s a symptom of my mood disorder. Wonder if I can even have children. Fear about the future – try to push it out of my head. Start to cry. Feel pain beyond grief. Decide I’m going to work out where the pain is coming from. It’s psychological yet it’s not in my head. It’s not in my chest. Sit with the feeling but can’t pin it down. It’s a permanent ache, yet it exists nowhere in my body. It’s a thick black fog pressing down on me. It won’t lift. Get my colouring book and try to colour in. This is boring. Turn on TV. Also boring. Get my duvet and hot lemon water. Lie down on the sofa watching daytime TV. Am wrapped in a blanket sipping hot lemon. It’s August. Realise I’m behaving like a person with tonsilitis. Remember being less useless when I actually had tonsilitis. Feel overwhelming guilt for laziness. Feel that I am impairing my mother’s quality of life. Wish she had a better daughter. One who is more active than a tuberculosis patient. Wish I was in an old-fashioned sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. Maybe there’d be an avalanche and we’d all be killed. It would be a relief to die that way. Then I wouldn’t have to make the choice. Thoughts of death again. Try to bring focus back to the television. It is boring. I am boring. Life is boring.

 

What Dreams May Come

In my dream a bird flies towards me, then I wake, but for a few seconds it is still there flapping in front of my face. Last week some hands reached out from inside my dream like a 3D movie, emerging from the screen and crossing the barrier that divides sleep from waking. When I close my eyes it should be black behind my eyelids, but instead there is a fixed image of a photograph I took a few days ago.

It’s a side-effect of the meds. They don’t cause hallucinations in the precise sense of the term; what they actually do is cause very vivid dreams. I’ve always experienced something called hypnagogia and they have heightened this experience. Hypnagogia is the word that describes the brief, hallucinatory phenomena that can sometimes occur as people are drifting off to sleep – or just as they are waking up. It’s related to disruptions in your sleep-wake state. Still half-asleep, you pull part of your dream with you into reality, just for a few seconds. It’s like being on the border between two worlds – picture having one foot in California, the other foot in Mexico. It’s not classed as a symptom of  mental illness, but it’s disconcerting, often terrifying.

Title of the post refers, of course, to Hamlet’s soliloquy in which he hesitates at the brink of suicide, afraid of worse things that could await him in death. If Hamlet had ever been on anti-depressants who knows how much stranger his soliloquies would have been.