The inevitable 'catch up and review' type post

This time a year ago I was in Bogota. Contemplating life, the world and another year I had escaped for three weeks to try and get a grip on why I was so increasingly unsettled.

Of course I had a complete overhaul and massive revelations that changed the course of my life entirely.  Ok hardly, but it did start me off down a track of vulnerable honesty and deconstruction.

It's a very difficult place to be in right now, looking at the determined lists and resolutions I made in what I assumed would the the low point that led to the high.  Now I know it was the beginning of a year of falling apart and sharing my weakness, and that the lows were far from the bottom and anything other than fleeting.

It's hard to ignore the instinct that tells me this year has been a failure, that I've not achieved what I set out to do.  In fact I'm taking apart big chunks of my comfortable life partly to move forward - but also because I can't carry on.  That's a horrible feeling.  To know that a year on I'm still not ok.

It's safe to say that my pride has been to diminished to nothing this year; I've had to be too honest to hold on to any illusions of togetherness or success.  After ten years of independence I've had to ask my parents to look after me again, and am forever asking friends to forgive me for hiding from them.  The title of this blog stings as I go part time to try and find the energy to build myself up again.  At the very height of insecurity I'm choosing to give up having any disposable income and giving up my home.

It's not a bucket list or handful of New Years' resolutions that I need this year.  It's not that I'm directionless or bored or lazy.

'No human, you can't
go back to bed.'

I'm broken and I'm scared.

So what do I do? Hide under my duvet indefinitely?  Unfortunately the four legged creatures I live with won't allow this. Write some lists full of gusto and positive cliches?  Been there, done that.
Make some goals?  Falling short anymore is simply too much. Pull it together? If I could, I would have already.

By my calculations that leaves one thing; wait it out.  The one good thing about living with depression for a while is that I now know what to expect. I just have to hold back the panic and breathe.

There are always chinks of light even when the dark seems unending.
Even if the clouds never cease their lurking, there are days that seem lighter.
I cannot compare myself to anyone else, particularly on social media. (Which lies.)
There is no shame in starting again, even if this isn't starting again... it's all forward.
I genuinely prefer a blank page to a rut.  Remember this.
Hurt nurtures compassion,  This is the time to become a really really nice person.
I don't have to be sorted yet, if ever.  I am allowed to muddle through.
It'll be ok.  It will.

And why I am broadcasting this quite so publicly? Because feeling ashamed feeds the dark.  Making depression a taboo also further stigmatises it. Talking about it shines light on how common it is to feel out of control and useless.  Because whatever I may feel on any given day, what I've documented reminds me that I am not completely lost, that I've had moments of clarity and hope - maybe even wisdom. I'm not whinging, I'm fighting.  I'm not pushing a sob story, I'm telling a real story.  I don't want attention, I want it on the record that I'm not going to give up.

Happy, terrifying, New Year.  There is more to come.

Christmas is not about being happy.

My love / hate relationship with Facebook is getting increasingly lopsided.  I love it for the sharing of articles and campaigns I'd never otherwise see, witticisms of my esteemed network and the opportunity to stay connected with people that my dis-organisation in non cyber life would let slip off the radar.

However, and I'm not the first to say it, it is an impeccable device for self harm.  Want to feel like you are boring, less successful and less popular than a load of your peers?  Check out your newsfeed.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the sharing of adventure and happy times and achievements.  But alongside this great stuff, I wonder if we're encouraged to keep up appearances.  Maybe we're tempted to shout about the good stuff to project what we want our life to be, rather than what it is.  And possibly we end up looking for affirmation from anyone who will offer it.  Most importantly what if we're sweeping stuff under the carpet at the expense of tasting a little genuine hope?

Christmas is this incredible clash of well publicised stress and pressure to make some magic.  It is the time we push real life aside and wrap the season up nicely.  Somehow Christmas has become about being tidy and putting on a good show until its all over and the mess takes over.

Yet the first Christmas was far from tidy.  It was all about love breaking into the mess of the world and showing us hope within it.  Quite opposite of sweeping the crap under the carpet, Christmas was about looking straight at it and declaring 'there is more than this'.

If I've learnt anything this year, it's that putting your struggles out there isn't a ticket to getting out of stuff or an excuse to sit in a corner and feel sorry for yourself.  But I am holding onto the idea that embracing brokenness is where real hope lies.  It's not found in pretending that everything is fine and together, instead it is in saying 'here's my mess, I am not alone in it.'

Celebrate the great bits of life, absolutely, but not if it means pretending.  Christmas is for the strugglers, the hurting and the messy.  Joy is not found in the neatly wrapped presents and perfect roast potatoes, it's in taking a breath to declare that life is full of broken bits, and in looking for where the light is shining through.

Conscious unsettling.

I've gone quiet over the past few weeks, as I have one of my 'hide and talk to as few people as possible' phases.  As winter has finally decided it's going to visit I've been making some big decisions and trying to prepare for some scary steps ahead.  And attempting some as yet unsuccessful toilet training with puppy #2.

Having spent far too much time feeling guilty and ungrateful for feeling low when I have so much, I had to force myself to look at things a little differently if I'm going to get out of the rut.  No magical cures, but a fighting chance.

What this has come down to, I now realise, is letting go of the final vestiges of The Plan.

The Plan was the inevitable path a teenage me would take, complete with a set of assumptions about when I would marry and how many children I would have.  Right up to aged 18 all I wanted was a simple 9 to 5, 2.4.  My teenage years hardly followed the norm but surely I would slip back into the groove and all would be well and ... normal?  Adulthood hit and I went with the flow but if I'm honest the risks and decisions I made were part of my 'student years = anything's allowed before I settle down' chapter.  And then the penny dropped as the milestones and deadlines of The Plan passed and I embraced the idea that there was no inevitable.  I even started celebrating my unsettled soul and looked for ways to find myself on the edges.

I have had a extraordinarily blessed 20s, I haven't saved the world or been happy much of the time but I can't deny how much I have to be grateful for.  Somewhere in the last year or so I got comfortable and settled.  But instead of taking a satisfied breath and sending a knowing nod back in time to teenage me, my spark upped and left.

I'll never know whether depression took my spark or whether my spark leaving made space for depression.  But I know that I started settling for less and stopped pushing myself.  Because I had so much why should I want to change a thing?

Just because I have a comfortable life, doesn't mean it's right.  Just because it's a pleasant plan, doesn't mean it's my plan.  And oh yeah, there's no plan.

So bringing this rambling tale to a point of some kind, I've taken some massive and terrifying steps which will make life considerably less comfortable and rather more precarious.

I'm risking fuelling my depressive voice which will tell me that people will think I'm a failure. There's a niggling train of thought which keeps telling me I'm going backwards; undoing the nice life I've worked for.  I'm admitting that at this time, I have to take the foot of the pedal and find some life balance outside of work.  I'm declaring that I'm not as strong as my aloof persona wants people to believe I am, that I'm far from sorted and I'm weird enough to not be satisfied with what others might give anything for.

He may be cute, but he poops on the sofa.

Of course I'm scared and my ego is bruised that I can't simply move forward from strength to strength.  My hope is that moving forward in weakness will help me to find some unsettled spark that allows me to feel like I'm not wasting time, that I'm not in the wrong place being the wrong person.  That stops the gnawing guilt and the 'shoulds' that strangle creativity.  My plan is to embrace the blank pages and jump into the unknown with all I have to offer.

Fingers crossed on the puppy's toilet training too.