Ill January

I’ve had an interesting month. The New Year started well, but very soon I began to feel unwell with symptoms that seemed to suggest a bladder infection. I suffered with that for a few days until the pains suddenly got worse and I needed to go to hospital for a 6 a.m appointment at urgent care. I had a scan in a talking donut-shaped tube (did anyone else realise that those machines give you instructions? Me neither). Feedback from the donut tube informed me that it was a kidney stone, which explained why neither paracetamol nor antibiotics had been working. Luckily the stone wasn’t that big so, after a 7 hour wait in hospital, they sent me home with instructions to drink as much water as possible to flush the stone out, and to keep moving.

The hospital was very busy and I was put into my own room with double doors that opened onto a corridor. This meant that I spent the next seven hours watching patients being wheeled across in stretchers and wheelchairs. I heard alarms, yells, and people groaning in pain. Someone shouted to a nurse ‘what are you doing to me?!’ Alarms and buzzers kept going off. I saw about eight or nine different members of staff. At one point all the lights flickered and I thought we were about to have a powercut. Somehow it was hectic and boring at the same time. Early on, a nurse came in to give me a shot of morphine. It worked instantly, before she’d even finished injecting the whole syringe. I’ve never experienced a more effective painkiller.

Once I was home, I started getting symptoms of a heavy cold (possibly coronavirus). I was feverish, coughing, faint and very uncomfortable. I couldn’t eat. I had the joy of getting my period on top of the cold/covid and kidney stone pains, so the next couple of weeks were spent mostly in bed feeling quite miserable.

I’m feeling a lot better than I was, but still not back to normal yet. I have an appointment to see ‘The Stone Team’ for a follow-up and I find the very idea of a dedicated Stone Team hilarious.

This is my first blog for nearly 10 months and it’s mostly just venting about the rubbish January I’ve had. I’ve also been sad because we’ve lost a few neighbours to the virus this year and I was hoping we were collectively emerging from the crisis, but it seems that we still aren’t out of the woods.

Purpose and Meaning

I’m sitting at my desk, sipping a strong cup of tea, eating slices of cheese and apple. It’s morning but I’ve been up all night (to quote Britney Spears: oops I did it again). The main reason for being awake all night was my art history course. I’ve come to the end of the sculpture section, but am finding it so much more technical and challenging than I expected. I have to work hard on this topic. If you’ve never been asked to differentiate Classical, Early Renaissance, High Renaissance, Neoclassical, Baroque, Mannerist, Rococo and Medieval figure sculpture at 3 in the morning then frankly I envy you.

Aside from the art-based nervous breakdown, I’m feeling confused about life in general. I’ve realised that a lot of my distress is coming from having a lack of purpose or wider meaning in my life. It’s hard to talk about this to anyone in ‘real life’ because it sounds sort of Californian New Agey and self-indulgent to be Searching for Meaning – as though I should be spending weekends at Esalen and wielding healing crystals. But it is a real problem, to feel as though you’re adrift with no stability or guidance, no direction or deeper significance, not even any stable value system (of the kind that comes from religious belief, political conviction or a single, culture-specific worldview). I overthink everything and it leaves me feeling completely confused and uncertain.

I’ve met some people – good friends from the past, people I barely know -who’ve had a certain quality that I admire: it’s a kind of groundedness, a stability and certainty. They seem to have a core that is not clouded by all the confusion and anguish that some other people experience. They have typically been extremely calm. On the other hand, I am always rushing around looking for answers and, unable to find any, living in a grey-area where nothing is certain. My current mental state is ‘existential French novel anti-hero’ and let’s face it, nobody wants a personality like that.

What to do about it? I don’t know. I feel guilty spending so much time thinking about all of this when I can turn on the news and see so much suffering. The Covid situation in India is horrifying and here I am, fully vaccinated and unable to help. What are we going to do?

(Excuse the overwhelming pessimism)

Disenchanted April

I am a grumpy lump.

I just submitted the first proper assignment for my art history course; it was a response to a formal analysis question about a Vermeer painting (no, not the pearl one). I’ve re-read my assignment a few times now and each time it seems to get worse. It looked decent at the point of submission, but now it seems inadequate… I waffled and used the phrase ‘tonal modelling’ repeatedly, and probably inaccurately, to compensate for my lack of art vocabulary. It’s the kind of assignment that might even turn my tutor into a grumpy lump. (Behold, I wield the magical power to turn a happy person into an unhappy blob with the click of a button!)

I don’t want to talk about Grandad’s funeral that much, except to say that it’s a valid reason to be a grumpy lump. The sight of a coffin is depressing in general, but especially so when it contains someone you’ve known since birth, who you somehow expected to always be around, even after they reached one hundred.

Depression and anxiety are currently making me feel very trapped, but I am able to function in a way that I haven’t been in the past, so it’s not the worst it’s been. But that’s the thing about depression, once you’ve known a very severe episode you’re always worried in case it returns.

Oh, and just for irony value, I am reading a novel called ‘The Enchanted April’, set in Italy, quite humorous, but also quite inappropriately titled given my low mood and the fact that a Coronavirus-haunted April in England is significantly less enchanted than an idyllic spring in an Italian seaside castle.

Broken

It’s been a tough week. Everything in the house is broken: the bathroom tap, the dripping kitchen tap, the unusable and leaking bath, two plug sockets in the kitchen, the switch on the kettle. Now, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the boiler turned itself off tonight and I can’t figure out how to make it switch back on. We don’t want to call anyone out because of the Covid risk.

I’ve started a distance learning course: history of art. It’s difficult, but interesting. I won’t quit but I can tell it’s going to be more work than I thought.

Add to that all other kinds of stress, like my parents’ health, my own health and the fact that my depression returned this week with a vengeance. It always seems to come in April. Why is this?! I should be happy: it’s Spring. The blossom appears on the trees outside, it gets warmer and the days get longer. Yet here it is…depression. I’m already on antidepressants so there’s nothing else I can do.

Grandad’s funeral is on Tuesday. The neighbours are going to stand outside of their houses as the hearse makes its way past. I was moved by the amount of flowers and cards that both households are accumulating. My feelings about his death come in waves of ignorance and realisation. Some times it’s not there at all; sometimes it wells up suddenly as I remember that he’s truly gone. It’s a process, and it’s only been one week.

I usually try to look on the positive side when things go wrong, but this is a struggle right now. I’ve spent a lot of time on distraction, throwing myself into my course and studying even in the middle of the night. It’s not the worst coping mechanism, I guess.

Here’s to better times.

6 Months On

I can’t believe it’s been six months since I last blogged. A lot has changed in that time. Grandad died on Monday night; he died peacefully, at home, with his daughter at his bedside. He was 100 years old. His funeral is delayed due to the pandemic – there’s a queue because of all the Covid deaths. It’s a sobering thought and makes us feel lucky that Grandad was able to be at home with family rather than alone in hospital. (He died of old age, not Coronavirus, but had been in hospital the week before).

Grandad was many things: a retired farmer, a builder of houses, a pacifist, a dyslexic who loved history and won medals for swimming. At the age of 89 he decided to walk the Thames Path, a long distance walk on the other side of the country. He went with a backpack but no tent and slept in fields. He travelled a lot in his younger years, at a time when travel was still a luxury and a real adventure. He nearly bought a farm in British Columbia (too remote), took my grandmother to Venice and Verona, visited Dubrovnik (his favourite city), Spain, Tunisia and other places I’ve forgotten about. He wished he’d become a pilot.

During the time that I knew him he always believed he didn’t have long left. It became a family joke: ‘It won’t be long now,’ he’d proclaim, sitting in his chair and surveying the room with suspicion. ‘This will probably be my last birthday,’ he’d say before blowing out his candles. He lasted about thirty years longer than he predicted. With his reputation for longevity on a par with Keith Richards, it’s hard to believe he won’t walk back through the door.

Let’s see…what else has happened since the last post? I had my first vaccine, the AstraZeneca one. I’m only in my twenties but when mum had hers the nurse decided I might as well have one too. I was ill for two days with joint pains and muscle cramps so bad that I couldn’t sit down. Then I recovered and was fine.

I’d describe my moods as undulating, but they’ve been fairly good most of the time with no serious depression. I can’t wait to go somewhere.