A Selected History
Dec. 17th, 2009 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
askygoneonfirePrompted by a recent post by someone on my livejournal friendslist I have decided I want to write a post which could most accurately be categorised as autobiography. I intend this to be an overview of one aspect of my life this past year. I'm hoping it bookends things for me just by forcing it into a narrative form. I need it to be public, which is why I'm posting it, but I am also aware it has limited appeal, which is why it's below a cut.
After the disintegration of my 5 year relationship with Ali things began to fall apart for me. I spent the beginning of the year screaming at her, letting as much of my rage and hurt out as I could in the hope that it would affect some sort of change, and when it became clear I'd lost some time before I knew there was a game, I raged at her in the hope letting it out would stop me being eaten up inside. I'm not sure anger works that way. I think it's more that it burns, and the more you express it the more fuel you allow it. It just burns hotter and hotter and leaves you with nothing.
I moved out at the beginning of February, actually, I was running rather than moving. It was a strange time, there was a deep bone-felt sadness to it, I was leaving a flat I loved, a home I'd believed would last, a dream. There was also a lot of optimism attatched moving day for me. Unpacking my stuff, having hooked up my stereo first, it felt reminiscent of when I went to Lancaster - just me and the stuff I wanted, for me. This optimism kept cracking though, one minute I was celebrating my freedom, the next I was looking at a long uncertain road from this new beginning that I had already trodden and believed I would not need to tread again. I felt I was being pulled both backwards and forwards simultaneously.
February was my 4th month of heavy drinking, I'd begun in the October when Ali had started drifting away. It was something I did every single night in order to sleep, in order to quell the psychic restlessness which otherwise left me climbing the walls. March continued in much the same way, I went on frequent benders with various friends, all of whom - with the exception of B - I drank under the table. The only way I can sumarise these months is to say that things got faster and faster. I was always rushing, always doing the next thing on my mental calendar before I was even halfway through the previous thing. Nothing wholly occupied my attention and everything I did had to be louder, faster, bigger, brighter. Everything was an assault on my senses but nothing was ever big enough, loud enough, frantic enough to overtake my mind.
These periods where I tried to deafen, or perhaps deaden, my senses was matched in intensity by the periods where I feared the world outside my front door. There have been years before 2009 where I feared the world and idly scratched the back of my hand until I drew blood simply because I couldn't keep still and my hands took on lives of their own. I always think it's as though they are trying to get away, claw themselves out of the connection to the black clouds in my mind. But this particular brand of fear and anxiety, this was much more like the once in a lifetime depression I had suffered at age 17-18. Only, like me, it had grown up. It was no longer adolescent depression, it was big and resilient and mature. It was bigger ever time. And everytime it subsided, everytime the rapid, cycling, bleak, rushing thoughts of hopeless despair went away they were replaced with ever faster, ever more insistent plans and fears and ideas and everything. I knew everything and nothing at once. And when I say at once I mean *simultaneously*
It was in March that I knew, quite suddenly and quite without hesitation, that it was too much. Too much up, to violent a turn to down. I babbled to my friends about how hopelessly depressed I was, how endless the world looked, how utterly without ties or connection I was to the world. I talked about the speed everything was passing me with. I talked at speed. Apart from when I talked incredibly slowly, moved slower. Unable to vocalise a coherent thought, unable to concentrate long enough on a sentence for it it make sense when expressed because of the cacophony of bile and hatred and paranoia clanging away in my head.
The conversation I had with the GP turned out to be one of the most terrifying and, honestly, the most inevitable I have ever had. This; those moods, the change from centre of the social world to trembling recluse in a night, had been there in some form for years. 2009, a broken heart, a tendency towards erasure of the self by drowning it in spirits, a sense of being cast adrift; all those things did was magnify a problem which had bubbled away for years.
A few months, a couple of trips to the psychiatrist and some industrial strength pharmacuticles later I was stamped with a diagnosis I was assured would follow me, perhaps even define me, for the rest of my life.
I was terrified and I was alone with the biggest road block I had ever run up against. Googling my diagnosis offered me only the cold comfort of statistics that promise worse things if we cyclothymia sufferers dare to reject modern medicine and go off meds. There was also some degree of horror as I read list of symptoms after list of symptoms which described my private battles exactly. It offered an explanation of an idiosyncracy which had driven Ali to destraction - waking up in the morning with a deep, black, hopeless depression which had offered no clues it was on its way and which absorbed and crushed everything it touched in a vacuum of utter misery. I debated rejecting everything the psychiatrist offered - meds, diagnosis and the promise of it lasting a lifetime.
I questioned friends and strangers on what to do next. In the end the right course of action was revealed to me by a friend who is wise beyond his years and utterly without affectation. He asked me which I feared more; a diagnosis, pills and a specific threat to me future or the mental landscape I was then carrying around, a landscape without a route out or with hope of reprieve from the restrictions it placed on my actions. The answer was as clear as the question; I had nothing to lose except my terror at the bent my thoughts were taking and the lack of control I had over my actions and motivations. I took the pills.
Things didn't change fast, they rarely do, but increment by increment things slowed down. I found myself in December without knowing how. I found myself in a position where I was able to date. I found myself anticipating, and then securing, a promotion. I found myself surrounded by friends - old and new. I found myself making plans, sure I'd be able to follow them through. I found myself looking at my life with the testaments of friends ringing in my ears assuring me that whilst I am not cured, I'm some way toward being healed.
I am neither stupid enough nor desperate enough to force my narrative to a close. Indeed a lot of what I hope for the future is based on the idea that this story is not over, I have yet to prove the psychiatrist wrong and achieve stability without medication. There are also, I'm sure, more struggles to come. From June until now there have been highs and lows every bit as terrifying as those that came before. But, and this is not a small fact, I am at the end of 2009. The end, the end of a year where I was forced to confront the fact the person I loved and trusted implicitly was not the person I thought her to be and never would be. The year I was forced to face an aspect of myself I had known was there but had hidden - disguising it from others as best I could and trying to squash it down inside me so far down I could pretend it didn't affect me, let alone scare me. The end of a year where more things have gone wrong that I knew were in existence and doing just fine before then. The end of a year where I came out fighting harder than I believed I could.
The end of a year where I surprised myself. Which makes this the end of this very selectively told story.
After the disintegration of my 5 year relationship with Ali things began to fall apart for me. I spent the beginning of the year screaming at her, letting as much of my rage and hurt out as I could in the hope that it would affect some sort of change, and when it became clear I'd lost some time before I knew there was a game, I raged at her in the hope letting it out would stop me being eaten up inside. I'm not sure anger works that way. I think it's more that it burns, and the more you express it the more fuel you allow it. It just burns hotter and hotter and leaves you with nothing.
I moved out at the beginning of February, actually, I was running rather than moving. It was a strange time, there was a deep bone-felt sadness to it, I was leaving a flat I loved, a home I'd believed would last, a dream. There was also a lot of optimism attatched moving day for me. Unpacking my stuff, having hooked up my stereo first, it felt reminiscent of when I went to Lancaster - just me and the stuff I wanted, for me. This optimism kept cracking though, one minute I was celebrating my freedom, the next I was looking at a long uncertain road from this new beginning that I had already trodden and believed I would not need to tread again. I felt I was being pulled both backwards and forwards simultaneously.
February was my 4th month of heavy drinking, I'd begun in the October when Ali had started drifting away. It was something I did every single night in order to sleep, in order to quell the psychic restlessness which otherwise left me climbing the walls. March continued in much the same way, I went on frequent benders with various friends, all of whom - with the exception of B - I drank under the table. The only way I can sumarise these months is to say that things got faster and faster. I was always rushing, always doing the next thing on my mental calendar before I was even halfway through the previous thing. Nothing wholly occupied my attention and everything I did had to be louder, faster, bigger, brighter. Everything was an assault on my senses but nothing was ever big enough, loud enough, frantic enough to overtake my mind.
These periods where I tried to deafen, or perhaps deaden, my senses was matched in intensity by the periods where I feared the world outside my front door. There have been years before 2009 where I feared the world and idly scratched the back of my hand until I drew blood simply because I couldn't keep still and my hands took on lives of their own. I always think it's as though they are trying to get away, claw themselves out of the connection to the black clouds in my mind. But this particular brand of fear and anxiety, this was much more like the once in a lifetime depression I had suffered at age 17-18. Only, like me, it had grown up. It was no longer adolescent depression, it was big and resilient and mature. It was bigger ever time. And everytime it subsided, everytime the rapid, cycling, bleak, rushing thoughts of hopeless despair went away they were replaced with ever faster, ever more insistent plans and fears and ideas and everything. I knew everything and nothing at once. And when I say at once I mean *simultaneously*
It was in March that I knew, quite suddenly and quite without hesitation, that it was too much. Too much up, to violent a turn to down. I babbled to my friends about how hopelessly depressed I was, how endless the world looked, how utterly without ties or connection I was to the world. I talked about the speed everything was passing me with. I talked at speed. Apart from when I talked incredibly slowly, moved slower. Unable to vocalise a coherent thought, unable to concentrate long enough on a sentence for it it make sense when expressed because of the cacophony of bile and hatred and paranoia clanging away in my head.
The conversation I had with the GP turned out to be one of the most terrifying and, honestly, the most inevitable I have ever had. This; those moods, the change from centre of the social world to trembling recluse in a night, had been there in some form for years. 2009, a broken heart, a tendency towards erasure of the self by drowning it in spirits, a sense of being cast adrift; all those things did was magnify a problem which had bubbled away for years.
A few months, a couple of trips to the psychiatrist and some industrial strength pharmacuticles later I was stamped with a diagnosis I was assured would follow me, perhaps even define me, for the rest of my life.
I was terrified and I was alone with the biggest road block I had ever run up against. Googling my diagnosis offered me only the cold comfort of statistics that promise worse things if we cyclothymia sufferers dare to reject modern medicine and go off meds. There was also some degree of horror as I read list of symptoms after list of symptoms which described my private battles exactly. It offered an explanation of an idiosyncracy which had driven Ali to destraction - waking up in the morning with a deep, black, hopeless depression which had offered no clues it was on its way and which absorbed and crushed everything it touched in a vacuum of utter misery. I debated rejecting everything the psychiatrist offered - meds, diagnosis and the promise of it lasting a lifetime.
I questioned friends and strangers on what to do next. In the end the right course of action was revealed to me by a friend who is wise beyond his years and utterly without affectation. He asked me which I feared more; a diagnosis, pills and a specific threat to me future or the mental landscape I was then carrying around, a landscape without a route out or with hope of reprieve from the restrictions it placed on my actions. The answer was as clear as the question; I had nothing to lose except my terror at the bent my thoughts were taking and the lack of control I had over my actions and motivations. I took the pills.
Things didn't change fast, they rarely do, but increment by increment things slowed down. I found myself in December without knowing how. I found myself in a position where I was able to date. I found myself anticipating, and then securing, a promotion. I found myself surrounded by friends - old and new. I found myself making plans, sure I'd be able to follow them through. I found myself looking at my life with the testaments of friends ringing in my ears assuring me that whilst I am not cured, I'm some way toward being healed.
I am neither stupid enough nor desperate enough to force my narrative to a close. Indeed a lot of what I hope for the future is based on the idea that this story is not over, I have yet to prove the psychiatrist wrong and achieve stability without medication. There are also, I'm sure, more struggles to come. From June until now there have been highs and lows every bit as terrifying as those that came before. But, and this is not a small fact, I am at the end of 2009. The end, the end of a year where I was forced to confront the fact the person I loved and trusted implicitly was not the person I thought her to be and never would be. The year I was forced to face an aspect of myself I had known was there but had hidden - disguising it from others as best I could and trying to squash it down inside me so far down I could pretend it didn't affect me, let alone scare me. The end of a year where more things have gone wrong that I knew were in existence and doing just fine before then. The end of a year where I came out fighting harder than I believed I could.
The end of a year where I surprised myself. Which makes this the end of this very selectively told story.
