I feel like there's a hole in me that I'm always trying to fill, that I'm incomplete, a piece missing - I can't do anything useful until the hole is filled, until the hunger is satisfied, but it rarely is. I'm incomplete, a jigsaw piece is lost. And many things take more from me than I have to give, the hole gets bigger and I am secretly, invisibly, completely broken.

The Left Hand Of Darkness

Below is an exerpt from 'The Left Hand of Darkness' by Ursula K. Le Guin, which I have just finished reading - I didn't want it to end. It's set on another world - the alien visitor is speaking to a practitioner of 'foretelling', an accurate art which the people of this world have attained. 

'Faxe, I don't think I understand.'
'Well, we come here to the Fastnesses mostly to learn what questions not to ask.'
'But you're the Answerers!'
'You don't see yet, Genry, why we perfected and practice Foretelling?'
'No-'
'To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.'
I pondered that a good while, as we walked side by side through the rain, under the dark branches of the forest of Otherhord. Within the white hood Faxe's face was tired and quiet, its light quenched. Yet he still awed me a little. When he looked at me with his clear kind, candid eyes, he looked at me out of a tradition thirteen thousand years old: a way of thought and way of life so old, so well established, so integral and coherent as to give a human being the unselfconsciousness, the authority, the completeness of a wild animal, a great strange creature who looks straight at you out of his eternal present....
'The unknown,' said Faxe's soft voice in the forest, 'the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. No Handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods, nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion.... Tell me, Genry, what is known? What is sure, predictable, inevitable - the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?'
'That we shall die.'
'Yes. There's really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer.... The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.'

Shameful

Loneliness is so shameful - to say I am lonely is to express a terrible vulnerability that is repellant to others. The person who complains that they are lonely creates an uncomfortable void around them; this sort of openness, this vulnerability is embarrassing, unsettling. Social isolation increases around the lonely person, and the loneliness is compounded. Shame itself, shame of loneliness, causes us to shut off parts of ourselves and to shy away from connection. And then the loneliness generates more shame.

I would like to be able to say, 'I am lonely', but it would be like setting off a bomb that repels everyone around you - except the predators - it would be counterproductive. 

Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two

Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two

Just... yeah. This is lovely.

Sometimes it's difficult to read or hear about other people's experience of depression - it always seems to have a beginning, a 'time before'. I suppose they are descriptions of depressive episodes. All the tests for depression ask if you feel worse than 'before', if you don't enjoy what you 'used to' enjoy. When I read these I feel alienated - it's not that I've always felt the same, but I've had pretty consistent low mood for a long time, with frequent depressive episodes. I always frame my current experience with being 14 or 15, major depression with derealisation which you can read about in a previous post. Everything before that is hazy, and everything after is absolutely a journey from that point. A crashing-through-the-undergrowth, messy, awful journey, but with few places as bad as that first starting point. 

Reading Allie's blog, I question myself. Is this still even depression? Am I obsessed with how I felt at that time, and unable to accept that I can move on?
I have made a lot of progress over the years, and am currently coming out of an episode, so I suppose I can't inspect myself at this moment, and expect to find all of the markers that mean I am 'genuinely'  ill.
It's possible I have a personality disorder, and that's all mixed up with anxiety, and behaviour, and not just depression. But I do worry that I'm just lazy, that I want to avoid having to deal with anything difficult, that I'm weak and self obsessed, and not 'really' mentally ill. This picture of somebody 'faking it' 'for attention' reeks of stigma osmosed from the media, but still I wonder if that's just a conceit I've invented to excuse myself.

Even if that is the case - and I am in fact stuck in the past, an emotional hypochondriac - can I be excused, for having started my adult life in a place of profound darkness, and for therefore carrying it as my main frame of reference?

Work, work, work

I lost my job last year - I was called into a disciplinary and dismissed after becoming more and more anxious and depressed, and feeling victimised, isolated, exhausted and unable to concentrate.

I have always been affected at work by depression, anxiety and avoidant tendencies - I think I hoped that if I went to university and got my design degree, and was then doing something that I really cared about, that I would be happier and be able to deal with things better. The problems remained, however - interpersonal, energy, mood, concentration, memory. And whilst I was no longer bored, the pressure, short deadlines and long hours made me very ill.

I have tried being self employed, but the lack of external pressure or structure has been a hotbed for depression, and I am absolutely useless at charging an appropriate amount for my services, am a terrible procrastinator and am plagued with terror about responsibility and finances. I get lonely and stuck with my own twisted thoughts.  I don't think being fully self employed is for me. I also don't think I could work full time - maybe not ever - as I get so exhausted in the afternoons, I feel even lonelier, I feel naked and exposed like I have no skin, and under pressure I can panic and completely underperform. I am claiming benefits right now - and was running my business alongside as 'permitted work', but it is taking a break right now as I can't bear to look at it - and I am doing a little bit of design here and there, but still vastly undercharging. I know I am undercharging, but I can't seem to stop doing it.

I have been experiencing a lot of guilt and confusion about claiming benefits - I also play a sport as a hobby, and I make it to practice 3 times a week and play competitive games, although the anxiety is sometimes pretty crippling. If I can do that, I can work, right? That's the voice I always hear, the voice of the ATOS assessors, and the voice of the general public, and maybe my own voice. Another part of me says - it is only a few hours a week, nothing like a full-time job. It is completely voluntary, and if i don't want to go, I don't go - so it is very different to work. We are constantly told that exercise is good for mental health, so it has that benefit, and it gives me structure and social connection. I still feel very guilty and strange though.

I have started taking a new medication, and am feeling better than I was, although still very exhausted, and my mood feels fragile. I am not working - only voluntary and a small amount of nominal freelance work - and am spending time on Facebook, writing this blog, playing my sport, and contributing to my league doing a bit of voluntary work (a very small amount!). I also meditate and have started practising yoga at home using a DVD. I try to meditate often, I go for walks, and I am writing letters and seeing the doctor, trying to get real help. I am functioning. So I could get a job, right?
I am functioning in a bubble though, tiptoeing round the eggshells. I know with certainty that going back to full time work would trigger another major depressive episode, and just now, almost certainly part time work, too. So - if I could in theory work, but it would almost certainly trigger a major depressive episode or an anxious breakdown and the absolute need to run away and protect myself from the situation - does that make me unfit for work? Or does it not quite meet the criteria?

A friend of mine who has suffered with M.E. / C.F.S (an illness I am familiar with, as my partner is plagued with it) and recently had an injury, has had some help from a trust which helps people with disabilities or mental health problems to get back into work. I have no idea if I count as having a 'disability' or not, but being dismissed from work and having them directly cite my mental health difficulties [anxiety attack] as the cause has maybe helped me along that path. I have always gone into a position intending that this time, this time I would be able to cope with it - but maybe I can get more help.

I have always felt dismissed by medical professionals, or have not fully believed in my difficulties, even whilst trying to convince everybody else of them. I feel like there's nothing really wrong with me, all whilst standing on my soapbox and declaring all my profound difficulties. At work, I have always just tried to carry on (but not really done a very good job, and ended up running away). I almost always end up disclosing the fact that I have 'anxiety' to my employers, as my concentration and mood and energy declines and I start to make more and more mistakes and cry in the toilets more and more - but it has always been difficult to get across exactly what this entails, and usually ends in confusion, and in the situation worsening and my leaving. I have never known of anything that I might reasonably be able to ask an employer for to make my life easier. Afternoon naps? Flexible hours? Being able to leave whenever I want because I am tired or sad? I could not reveal my difficulties for fear of being declared incompetent and fired (which did finally happen, anyway).

But I am starting to feel more hopeful, that if I fight for the right support, and believe that I deserve help and support, that maybe somebody or some organisation can help me to thrash out a way of presenting my difficulties to an employer, and a way of dealing with my depression and exhaustion. A larger organisation (e.g., larger than a 2-3 person family business) might have the right HR and standards in place to allow me some leeway and support. A supportive employer who could see my talent and work ethic but work around my low mood, anxiety and energy levels would be ideal. A part time job, maybe half days or 3 days a week, with maybe a bit of freelance work - I might be able to work with that, taking things delicately and carefully. I have always dreamed of having a sort of mentor relationship, working under somebody I respect creatively - but it is probably a very lucky person who finds such a relationship in their work. It is possible that I should stop trying to aim so high, swallow my pride and get a more menial job - but I have done this before, and I am not at all convinced that it would be any better. I am very ambitious and prideful though, and full of vision, which maybe doesn't match up to my actual capacity to perform. But my portfolio looks good - I don't know, it is very confusing.

 I've certainly never felt that I have a 'disability' before - I have wanted to, but have felt like such a fraud. However, these problems have been around forever, and will probably always be around. I've managed to produce some very good work despite them, but there are a lot of things I find very difficult which make working very hard. It would be nice to be able to be upfront about my difficulties and needs. I have no problem with being open, but first I need help working out exactly what my difficulties and needs are. I am getting there, but it's an uphill struggle, and I am wary and scared about being pushed into work without a means of defending myself, and being unable to perform.