Autumn

Autumn

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Raindrops keep falling......

It has been overcast all day.  And now the sun is getting low in the sky.  Dusk is imminent and there is a glow, a luminescence to the world.  The greyness makes the green of the garden even greener.  But my heart is heavy and it has been for many months now.

I have been a stressed little gal all my life. Super charged. Hyper. Active. Hyper-Active.

I have watched, friends, family and colleagues crumble under the pressure of life.  I kept going.

I have had 9 of the top 10 life stressors dogging my steps for most of the past 30 years. I kept going.

I have achieved. I have worked. I have dreamed and I have compromised. And I have kept going.

Suddenly I didn't want to keep going.  Suddenly I was scared for my sanity.  I really was. Suddenly, and for the first time in my life I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to get up the next morning.  Suddenly I was sitting in front of the TV at night and feeling my grip slip.

I went to work each day. I worked, I talked, I laughed, I mentored and I sometimes growled.  But I always looked the same. Yet I didn't feel the same.  Sometimes a panic would grip me and I was terrified that I was going to collapse. I was terrified people would see me collapse. I was terrified. I would go outside and walk up and down the carpark till I had put some oxygen back into my blood and the trembling stopped.  Then I went back to being me - the me I have always been and never liked.  The martyr.

As I sit here now I know I have pushed all this into the background. I know I am in tenuous control. But I also know that one more disaster in my life right now will implode me.  I have withdrawn into myself and the funny thing is no one has noticed.  The more troubled I am, the happier my cardboard exterior becomes.

My treatment of my depression is to make myself create.  Craft, cooking, writing, chores- yes chores.  I set myself little goals each day - and I mean little.  I learned the hard way to stop setting impossible goals.  Impossible goals unfulfilled fuel the anguish inside.  Possible goals chip away at the despair.

So, I have started chipping. Today I resolved to take a nap, do a load of washing - only one - and find the half knitted scarf from last winter and put it next to my armchair.  I also resolved not to cook dinner and to stay in my pyjamas all day.

Mission accomplished. 

It also helped that I was able to chat to my bestie, Kim Kollert, for a few minutes today on Yahoo.  She is in Oregon, USA but when we chat it feels like she is in the room. I miss her.

So, new mission.  Blog myself out of this funk.

What I would really like is to hear your stories of a time when the weight of the world was so heavy you almost couldn't breathe.

What I would really like is to know that I am not alone in this.    That others have felt the vice grip on their chest, the suffocation of panic and the fear that it will never get better.

I am not going to medicate my way out of it. Not yet.  I am going to work my way out of it. Or at least try.  I have done it before many times, but it was never this bad, more of a despondency than a depression. A temporary setback rather than a flat out crash.

Well it's time to get out into the garage.  The other tactic to overcoming this state of affairs is fitness.  Since I have rheumatoid arthritis jogging is out of the question, but I am already developing some major biceps and quads lifting weights - OK, ok little ones. Jeff is lifting 150 kilos in a dead lift. I can lift 50kgs.  But I am doing it. It helps the new knee too so that is good.

Well the bench press awaits.  You know? Just writing all this has made me feel a little bit better.

Thanks for reading this far........ Bless.