It's scary how quickly things can turn around with depression. Despite having to take care of things by myself for a week, I'd been doing pretty well. Ever since we've had Toby (our pup) I've been getting out of the house more than ever before. However, I find it really challenging to take him for a walk by myself. I like to have a route in mind, somewhere with lots of space where I can see if other dog walkers are coming up ahead so I can try to avoid them. I did a few practise runs with Robbie before my solo walks. They went fairly well, one major challenge was driving as I hadn't done any for a while, since my operation at the beginning of October actually.
Surprisingly I didn't have too many blunders during that week. The unexpected trip up came when everyone returned home and we had a full house again. I know that I get anxious during transitions from being alone after being surrounded by people, and also when returning to a full house again. I finally get used to enjoying the space rather than fearing it, then it all returns to a busy chaotic minefield again.
I'd been printing off all of my old blog posts, which turned out to be quite the stack of paper! I'm currently working through them for something I'm working on at the moment. For me it's a strange process, blogging has always been fairly strange for me. I'll write about things that have happened recently and events that happened a long time ago but I've only just processed them. Some posts might have been written weeks ago, others perhaps the day of publishing them. I always check through them one last time before making them 'live'. However, even if I've just read through them all of 30 minutes ago, I couldn't tell you what they say. My short term memory has been shot to pieces by this illness. During some of my lowest times I can recall watching an entire season of a TV programme, but I have no recollection of what happened. I can remember rough plot lines of books I read, but I have no idea who the characters were, what the book cover looked like or even what the title was. I think this is the process of my brain trying to protect itself (bare with me). There are so many 'stressors' (traumatic events, memories, people etc.) that can build up to cause a breakdown or a period of depression. I believe that those 'stressors' take up so much space in my head, so there is little or no room for trivial information to be stored during those times. Even if one of those trivial things is something I have written, something I really ought to be able to remember but I just can't.
As I said, I was reading through old posts I'd written. I felt sad for the person that had been through these things. And I realised it was me! People often tell me that they find it difficult to read some of my posts, that they make them teary eyed at times. For me, I've lived through those moments already, they were hell to experience when they happened and in some cases it has taken me years to be able to even recall all the details of those events. In my mind I've already experienced that trauma, patched myself up and moved on. Imagine my shock when I sunk into a depressed mood over reading about something I've actually experienced, yet the words made me so sad and suddenly re-live it. My movements became very slow, I lost my appetite after being ravenous moments before, all I wanted to do was sleep. I trudged upstairs ready to fall into bed, but I'd misplaced my phone. And somehow I was suddenly losing my breath, feeling flustered, leaning into the door frame of our bathroom clutching at my chest that felt like it was on fire. I was having a HUGE panic attack, over a bloody phone! I know now that it wasn't just over a phone, it was a number of factors. It was not being prepared to feel this saddened and low over something I've already lived through, written about and moved on from. I was being attacked by my past. I was crying on the floor curled up into a ball clutching at my chest. It was all too familiar to the breakdown of February 2014. It felt like nothing had changed, I had fallen to my knees sobbing, howling and not caring about how it must have looked or sounded to other people in the house.
I don't want anyone to run to my aid now. I'm OK now. Over time I have learnt to recover quicker from panic attacks and low periods. A sign of progress! Of course it's alarming to me and anyone else in my life when this happens. It's unexpected for all of us, and yet it shouldn't be. Yes, I've made progress in many areas and some days it may seem like I'm well again. But, I still have an illness, I am still very, very unwell and need to bare in mind that I can't run a marathon without training for it first! My project (very secret I'm afraid) will not stop because of this incident. I just need to take things slowly and remember that even my own words can hurt me.
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