A response too long to post

Hmmm
I'm not entirely sure what to say... or whether to say how I feel or not...

Firstly,

Wanda - Thank you. I have been thinking about you and wondering how you are. xxx

abroadermark - The first thing that struck me was how down you sounded in your initial response. I did wonder whether you were being a bit sarcastic too... but perhaps not.
If you really are feeling that low then I'm so sorry. Why are you an 'idiot?' You certainly sound a LONG way from being an idiot to me...
In terms of what you say about looking for 'whys' being the stupidest thing you can do... Well, in all honesty, I completely understand how you reach that conclusion... I swing from holding that opinion and then holding the opinion that jss writes about.
I guess that ultimately, I want answers. Some people do and some don't. Some people aren't bothered by the fact they don't have an understanding of the reasons why, others are plagued by the need to know... the need to make peace with something through reaching an understanding,even if on a purely academic level.
For some it's one more struggle they could do without, for others it's the only way they can put something to rest.
Again, I would add that I swing between these two poles. I think many of us do at various points in our journey.
I don't know whether it's a stupid thing to do. Often it seems to intensify the pain and I'm caught in a web of 'do I, don't I?' and then the feeling of guilt descends... the awful 'what about all the orphans?' scenario.
I don't know.
It all makes me despise myself but no more than I would anyway so... Nothing to lose perhaps.
Anyhow abroadermark, I digress.
I'm sorry to hear you sounding so low and upset and wonder what inspired such despair. I get the impression that you might find it hard to write about it on your blog (hence your coming here...) I'm not sure about the misery thing though... That made me feel a bit... unsure... It makes me want to defend myself and then it makes me a bit... Well... Why should I need to defend myself? It's MY blog and I can be miserable if I like... But I can't y'see. Not without struggling with horrible guilt.
Do you know that I found it so so painful to be so honest about how bad I was feeling that I set up ANOTHER blog for the 'really bad' posts? Even after writing so much here I still wince at comments that I suspect come from people who are actually thinking, 'oh just shut UP you whinging, whining b*tch'.
So.
That is a very long reply. Sorry! Summarising never was a gift of mine...

Andrea - Thank you. Perhaps that is the best any of us can do really.

jss - It's so nice to hear you. Really.
Something you said is actually quite important to me.... and the more I read it, the more I'm struck by it.
You said that eating disorders must have whys and unless we find them we will
" spend our lives trying to overcome by sheer force of will, which leaves us utterly depleted, or worse we sink further into the addiction."
Partly because of the hurt I'm causing and partly because I hate living in this cage, I have made a decision to 'get better' over my summer holiday.
It is only just starting to occur to me that it may not actually be a very realistic thing to say. I'm not sure that I can just do it by 'force of will'. And yet, there is a part of me that insists on not accepting that this is something 'real'.
You comment about the ed having something to do with my sister almost stung. Not in a bad way jss, just in the way that you get when someone has thought about something for you... Care can hurt sometimes can't it.
I guess it might be something to do with her. I just don't know what.
I do wonder about certain things but I don't dare to put them into words yet. I'm not sure how much I understand and how much is just rubbish.
I know that you understand the agony of watching someone you love destroy themselves.
I'm so sorry that you have such an acute understanding but, thank you for sharing it with me. x

abroadermark - I AM listening to you and thinking that you sound like you are hurting..?
Please feel free to express what you think. Each of us has that right and the right to disagree.
x

EDs in adulthood

It's a strange thing to develop an eating disorder in your thirties without having had too much of an issue in the years prior to this.
I've waded through thousands of Google pages in an attempt to find articles about late onset anorexia and bulimia. I suppose because I was hoping that someone far more knowledgeable than me could offer me a piece of jigsaw that I don't have. I was hoping to find a few sentences that would make sense of the jumbled, misshapen blobs of bewildered guesses that occasionally float between my cornea and the mirror of anorexic truth.

Most of the articles documenting episodes of anorexia in later life are actually about the recurrence of an eating disorder which the patient has suffered from as a young person. Easier to understand a relapse than an illness that comes from out of the blue.

So, what then, is going on if there is no SERIOUS tendency towards this illness until a person is in their early thirties?
What is going on there?

I'm possibly as lost as anyone else when it comes to understanding this.
I have sketchy ideas (at best) that when pursued, completely fragment and disintegrate and at once become impossible and absurd.

I haven't been here too much of late. Not for lack of wanting to write; more for not being able to find the energy.

I have a lot to say but very few words to speak with.
Please forgive me if I am not responding as much as I should be.

Loser

On The Other Side.

"...But there's another kind of hole, and that is the wound that divides family.
Sometimes the wound occurs at the moment of birth, sometimes it happens
later. We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation...
...I have infinite faith in the craft of surgery, but no surgeon can heal the kind of wound that divides two brothers (siblings)"

Abraham Verghese

Cutting For Stone

As I am having huge problems finding words at the moment I have resorted to using those of others.

This resonated as I read it the other day.

There's not a lot out there which acknowledges the impact of damage between siblings.

I remember in the early days of my sister's anorexia, when the wound of her violent and total rejection was still so, so raw and my flesh unaccustomed to the pain, searching high and low for books about anorexic siblings.

All I found was a reasonable amount of literature on 'Helping Your Child Eat' or 'Coping With An Anorexic Child'. That kind of thing.

A good few years ago, I figured that one day I might have found the healing and the balance I needed to help me write a book about anorexia with siblings in mind. I thought that somehow, I would be able to look on the years of loss with the glow of gentle understanding borne of the twisting grief of watching the slow suicide of a sister I loved with everything I had.

It would be called, "On the Other Side" in reference to a range of recurring nightmares I had for the first ten of the seventeen years of her illness. The dreams were all variations on the same theme... I was always stuck on the other side of the shatterproof, soundproofed window as she was mugged, the other side of the pond as she was buried in the mudslide, the other side of the turquoise lagoon as she drowned.

And the feelings are indescribable and yet, so many of us are familiar with the extraordinary pain of watching those who we love the most, kill themselves slowly and painfully, whether that be through eating disorders, drug addiction, alcohol dependency or just very, very poor life choices.

Not to minimise the angst of those who are compelled towards death by the strength of their addictions, but I honestly believe, and I'll speak only for myself in an attempt to avoid sweeping generalisations... I honestly believe that it is more painful to watch someone you love in agony than it is to be in agony yourself.

The Other Side exists for all of us at some point in our lives, but rarely to the degree that it does when it is the absurd chaos and torment of severe mental health problems and addiction that tear a family apart.

No surgeon can heal the wound that divides two sisters. If I could find one who did, I'd sell everything I ever had.

Welcome To Hell...

...It's where I have been since Friday's therapy session.


I've scoured Google Images. Searched all the most horrible words I can think of in, a vain attempt to find a picture that captures even a tendril of the mass of ... mass of what? I don't even have the vocab for it... the mass of whatever it is that lies throbbing and bleeding inside.

It's a mass of hot, white unknowns which twist in me; sometimes surging in violent, murderous ire, sometimes burning slow and orange. Other times the mass is suddenly pain in a cold, black ache.

It's all to do with the hell that is an eating disorder.
The aftermath of a purgeless binge.
The clawing desperation to tear huge chunks of flesh from my body just to weigh less.
It's the pathetic despair of facing a future with nothing better than this.
It's the dull agony of depression.

I'm screaming but the screaming isn't a sound. It's the absence of sound. It's the silence that becomes an unbearable pressure on ears that ring, desperate for noise, desperate to be freed from oppressive quiet.

Therapy must have really been huge in Friday, right?

You'd think.

You'd think there would be some profound reason for the fact that I've spent the weekend under duvet, trying to stem the bleeding from my finger which ended up getting the raw deal from the double edged blade.

All it was, so far as I can work out, was that the woman didn't really seem to understand.

I'm stuck for words to explain and my head is screaming at me to stop typing this. Such resistance.

The woman suggested that when I have my own place (I'm trying to buy a house) it will be easier for me and my eating disorder (my need for control) will die down.
She said that many people just found a weight they could live with and then got on with living.
She mentioned the gym and said maybe I'd just enjoy the healthy exercise. She talked about food and suggested that I would find a balance.

(My face is threatening to collapse as I type)

Okay so I have typed and deleted in circles for five minutes so I'll just be done with it now.

I heard her say that
your life will be a struggle forever
your ED will never really go away.
and it all basically amounts to
this is the best that you can hope for

...and the words of an old favourite ring in my ears, as they so often do when death feels the best chocolate in the box...

"and the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep"

(K. Rogers. The Gambler)

I predict a heart attack.
Or diabetes.

And
I found this which, I suppose, isn't too bad a representation when it's all said and done.

Writing About Therapy.

Aside from the obvious prerequisite that one can actually recall something about a therapy session, I've discovered that writing about therapy makes at least two demands on a person.
The first is that the victim (did I just say 'victim'? Obviously, I meant 'client') is able to find words for what he or she is experiencing or has, in the past, experienced, and the second is that he or she has the guts to engage with some of the things that are being looked at.
Suffice to say, I've not really had much of either lately. More to the point, as a previous post explained, dissociation has made the act of recalling sessions somewhat impossible.

Today I was grateful not to be continuing in the same vein as last Monday's session, which, predictably (some might even say, conveniently) , my little chicken mind can't remember at this very moment in time.
We did however, end up talking about school days and white knuckle bus journeys and terror and little girls who cried in the mirror because they held so much hatred for the image that stared back at them.

We've been talking lately about the parts and, she has also thrown in the term, 'splits'.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of 'splits' (gleaned from a friend and a little bit of surf power) is that they are very similar to parts except that they are formed at a younger age and have to do with the inability to recognise that good and bad can exist alongside each other. So for instance, in my case, I may glorify someone, unable to see the 'bad' that they may have done because a part of me that contains memories of anyhing negative about the person is split off.
I might be SO wrong here. In all honesty, the woman may have explained but I can't remember, let alone get my head around the concept so...

Sometimes I wonder whether therapy is actually unhealthy...

I remember the days when a "split" was a spliced banana draped in velvet chocolate with sprinkles that were bad for my eczema; when "parts" were things like arms and legs and ears, and "dissociation" meant 'to quit hanging about with'... or... actually, a word that wouldn't even have been in my vocabulary.

Okay. I know I would still have been terrified that the mind thing is early onset Alzheimer's, and I know that I would still have been in pain... I know it's not a simple as all that... But still...

Still.

Words From The Den

As happens so often, I go to write some replies to the people who have left such kind comments here and I am unable to even begin.
"Why is that?" I ask myself.
"Well", replies a more Knowing Self, "that would be because you feel overwhelmed by the things that have been said and the fact that you don't deserve anyone to hear you. Thus replying seems to acknowledge that you are worth commenting ON".
"Ahhh" says my Wondering Self. And then a small "oh".

It's not just replying either.
It's writing full stop.
In my last post, I optimistically resolved to write more in order to stop throwing mountains of cash into the dissociative void.
As you can see, THAT went well.

On the subject of therapy (and given the subheading on this blog, I guess it should be) it has been... a little bit like curling up inside a den of very hungry lions who haven't yet sniffed me out.
I realise that I am here, admitting something that feels so risky that I WINCE as I type. Is it possible that the couch, in that little cottage in the woods, has become an object of safety?
It has been a year since I began therapy, so I guess it's about time that I started to feel like I can trust that place, at least a tiny bit.
Committing that thought to 'paper' (albeit virtual paper) feels terrifying. Perhaps because I am afraid that I can't take it back when suddenly, it all becomes so unsafe again. And it does... Sometimes the lions look at me with glazed eyes which could realise me at any given moment.
It's a risk and I stay curled, very small and for the time being at least, safe.

************ Having just written this, I read back and find that what I HAVEN'T written about is what I would really LIKE to find words the for and yet, as usual, I have tiptoed around lions.

If I live long enough, one day I'll fight them **************

Is It All In My Head? Dissociation v Reality

Dissociation, like depression, has a wardrobe full of different outfits.

It can appear smoothly, draped in a fine mist of white muslin, allowing a hazy, overexposed world to blur before your eyes.

Other times it can rock up dressed in an altogether more jazzy little number, a more textured material with large purpley grey blotches which grow and intensify as you look at them.

Occasionally it can make quite a dramatic entrance wearing a dark, kaleidoscopic cloak which wraps around the edges of your eyes, warping distance, making things zoom in and out. Making the world a computer game. Those cars racing you... they're not real... Nothing is really real.

Sometimes dissociation involves sound... an indistinct blurring of a voice with the silence of the space it falls into... The words take a sudden dive before they reach your ears... Sometimes the letter blends that make up the words don't even get to you in the right order. Syllables stretch into each other, yawning languidly into each others' beginnings and endings and beginnings until there are no gaps in sound, just distant, fluctuating tones.

And then there are things that I fail to understand.

I ALWAYS thought I had an atrocious memory. I remember so very little about being young. Whole trips, events, months, years don't exist in my mind. Somewhere in me lies a terror filled conviction that I am in the early stages of Alzheimer's... Early onset... It seems an inescapable fate, given that it's both my long and short term memory that is an issue.

I often run upstairs to get something and by the time I'm up there, it's gone... I have conversations and stop mid sentence, unable to complete what I've been saying.

I go to ask my boss something, tap on the door, say hello and then.... then nothing. (And NO, I'm not anxious around my boss. We're good friends).

Recently, my family recalled a trip to a cousin's christening. We'd stayed the night before in a pub and I had apparently become hysterical with fear upon entering the place. Something about some drunk men in the bar...

"You must remember! You were about eleven! I was only six and I remember it!"

The nerves in my leg have all gone dead and though I watch the skin dent under their fingertips, I can't feel them pressing down on it.

That's what listening to stories of my childhood is sometimes like.

According to the woman, and to others who seem to know, my memory loss is dissociation. It's indicative of 'something'. It 'says a lot'. Really? I can't believe this. It's sounding too strange and I know, after all, that I just have a terrible memory compared to my sisters.

But I don't remember a lot of sessions either. Whole therapy sessions aren't there the next day. Someone pointed out that I pay too much to be forgetting everything. Hence my new resolve to write, despite resistance.

This post is too long but I wanted to include a song by a man I'm sure I could love (if only for his voice).

It's called In My Head and it's a question that tortures me.

Something sometimes happens in therapy where I find myself asking if anything I feel really exists... I suddenly doubt that the pain and the desperation is real... I doubt that I am even telling he truth... I don't know whether anything I feel exists in reality. I beg the woman to consider that I might be making it up... that it might all be in my head. I don't want to waste her time. I don't want her to believe me if my feelings aren't even real.

I'll leave Mr Sean Mullins to explain the rest.

Beyond Friday.

After Friday's session, being the mature adult that I am, I drank myself stupid.

And what better way of dealing with the desperation I was feeling?

(OK. You may not hear the irony that question is heavily weighted with... You'll just have to take my word for it. It is).

Although it feels as though almost every cell in my body has been screaming, the cries have been largely unintelligible. Trying to translate has been like walking down the street past people's conversations, catching snippets, exclamations, disjointed and unrelated.

I seem to be in very separate parts.

One part has been in agony.

Some nights have seen me curled, clutching my bear against my stomach, pressing into the pain in a fruitless attempt to make it subside.

Applying pressure to the wound, is what springs to mind as I type.

The writhing and the breathless, empty pain, reminiscent of the twisting nights where my sister's illness was so new and the loss was so raw and immediate.

That same deep and desperate ache.

The ungroaned, churning and building in the middle of me.

So, one part agony... Another, disgust and hatred.

It started the following afternoon when, despite the alcohol - induced drum, beating in my head, I stood under the shower, my inside no more than a shell. Sans feeling.

Suddenly and unaccountably, a photograph appeared in my head.

Dad and three little girls wearing white spotted, cotton sundresses.

One little girl is standing slightly in front of the others three figures. She has her arms folded across her, clutching her arms as though cold; and her face is a picture of frowning discontent.

Perhaps I was cold. Perhaps sulking.

But in less than a second, I was flooded with a disgust and self hatred so strong it might have split me in half, my body the tower of Babel and my horror as powerful as God's own rage.

It's my fault. I was the sister from hell. If I hadn't existed, she would have been ok. It must have been cold there in my shadow, playing in my head.
And that little girl, THAT little girl, she needs to be starved to death.

And she is.
I'm at my lowest weight in a long time today. It feels good to be in control of her.

A third part experiences rage.

Monday's session, which I can't much recall, stoked a fire of anger at myself.

How dare I have this... How dare I?

Everyday I work with children who have suffered the most unimaginable trauma.

Torture, rape, abuse, terrible loss.

I go and see the woman, I tell her and she listens.

She talks about me. My pain. Things that may or may not have happened and I am so, so, so angry.

Like me, this woman hears the most awful things. Atrocities. People who have suffered beyond what I would consider to be bearable.

And here I am. And here she is listening.

I can't get past the fact she must be disgusted by me.

I am invalid. INvalid. There are no explanations or excuses that justify my pain.

My propensity for weakness is astounding.

On Monday my anger and my fear is too much, and I vow not to go back to her and I am absolutely certain that I won't, because I can't justify it.

I consider an email which will ensure I am too ashamed to ever return, just in case my will were to weaken.

And now, come Wednesday, I am not sure how I will cope with not having a place to take this pain. Because I can hate it, deny it, minimise it, rage and resent it all I like. But it's still there and

it still makes me fold in half.

And I hate myself with all the raw passion of an angst ridden teenager, and all the weary loneliness of a man at the end of an unfulfilled life.

Today has mostly been a series of blanks inside.

My Very Sad Case came into my room first thing. She wanted to talk about a shock she had had.

I listened and spoke carefully. I wanted her to feel the care.

I taught my lessons, I ate some lettuce and tomatoes, I wrote my plans and I came home and curled up and slept.

Writing this post, I am again struck by the wave of disgust at myself.

There is no end to it.

Saying the Unsayable

Although it seems absurd for someone of my age to behave in such a way, whenever my anxiety becomes unbearable, I crouch against the radiator in my room, and play game after game of Bejeweled or Word Scramble on my itouch.

It's a way of not thinking.

I have been crouched there for the last two hours.

My therapy session is responsible for tonight's retreat into a world of random letters on nine squared grids.

"Tell me about your week", the woman asked, when I explained that I had struggled with a huge loss of control with my eating since Wednesday.

So I do.

I tell her about the ferocity of my four day workouts, I tell her about the pressures of GCSE coursework, I tell her about the curriculum inset I have been on. I tell her about the anxiety I have felt.

She asks if I feel the impact of the kids' anxiety. (The children I work with / teach).

And so I begin to tell her about a particular kid, one in my group, who is in the middle of a case where her secret history of sexual abuse has come to light.

I tell her about this poor girl, who I want to wrap up and hold safe until it's all over. I tell her about how much I want to protect her, how frustrated I am with child mental health services lack of input, how I want to shred the red tape that is binding professional services from helping her for the next few weeks.

I tell her about how much she reminds me of me at that age... Her anxiety... the phobias she has...

I recall the fear that wraps itself around her at night...

And the woman utters the omnipotent, 'yes' and adds that she was just thinking that.

Why? I ask her.

She doesn't know the girl. How can she know that we're similar?

The woman's response is a blank (in my memory) except for the fact that she compared us in terms of dissociation.

So she knows. She knows about the extent of the dissociation. How does she know that it's that bad?

(Note the twisted irony in the fact that my mind has gone blank somewhere around this)

We talked more about the girl, until the woman said that what was important, in terms of our work, was that I tried to remember the fact that I had noticed similarities between this girl and myself.

More blanks

until

we discussed something my mum had said the other night when talking about my

sister's seventeen year long illness.

Mum: I've often wondered why... Why, when she has grown up in this family... With all this love... How....?

Me: Maybe love isn't always enough.

Mum: Of course love is enough... being loved...

The woman says it's an interesting and that she takes it that my parents only recognise 'abuse' as something very violent or sexual...

She says something about emotional abuse and I say,

"My sister wasn't emotionally abused"

" I was thinking of you actually"

That's hurt my stomach. Can I tell her that? Can I tell her that what she just said hurts in my tummy? No. I can't. That sounds pathetic. It is silly and it doesn't make sense.

And I'm dazed and a little way off and I am beginning to pick up the cynic's shield because somewhere it's aching but somewhere else it's feeling like a deliberate game, playing with my emotions, kicking the ball at me when I wasn't looking...

"Huh? What is emotional abuse anyway?"

There's no such thing. It's another bloody therapy buzz word. They get paid to turn us all into victims.

"Emotional abuse is being repeatedly hit... a little girl being thrashed in the middle of the night when she's anxious... blank blank blank

Blasted by an ice blow torch. Instantly frozen.

What? What's she saying? No more. Don't say anymore. please stop. Did I just say that bit aloud? Don't cry. Don't cry. You're ok. You're ok. Don't cry.

........"that wasn't to help you... that was out of anger... It was out of control..."

Stay calm... It's ok... What do I do with this? What am I meant to do with this?

I hear a small, strangled groan that might be a sob

Shit. Did that come from me? Did she hear? Please don't let her have heard

I want to cough to cover the sound up.

No, a cough'll just make it worse. Maybe she didn't hear.

Sudden tears on my face

No. No no no no no. Don't cry. Come on. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. why am I crying? What am I crying for? It isn't anything. I don't even feel anything. Why are you crying you silly girl?

"....... and we're a couple of minutes over and I realise this is a bad place to have to break... just take a few minutes...."

What do I DO with this?

She's saying something about saying the unsayable

"There are some tissues......."

She knows I'm crying.

Of course she knows I'm crying... I'm trying to wipe my face... What the hell am I crying for?

She's asking what my weekend is like....

I'm telling her I don't know. That it's ok. That I'm ok. That I'm sorry.

And it's a blank how I get out of the room.

Summoning up the Energy

Although I would ideally like to be a little more disciplined, very often, writing this blog seems to demand a far greater degree of energy than I am capable of finding in me.

It feels hard to summon the courage to write some of the things I am afraid of commiting to anything more than the very floaty space somewhere in the haziest recesses of my mind.

Often, the depression I live with day to day, lies in me, appearing dormant to all but the part of me that is a desire for self expression.

The black dog lies heavy on my chest. Always with one eye open.



"Should" isn't a great word.

I know that.

It's one of those words that most counselling types love to pounce on before suggesting 'healthier words like "would like to" or "could".

Nonetheless, as a blog about therapy, I feel that I should be making more of an effort to muster the energy, reach into the haze, muzzle the black dog and write more about it.


And so I tred lightly over the trepidation and pledge to try, even when the words are hard.

Fattening Up Under The Cloak

If I think of the chocolate and the jellybeans and the more chocolate and the more jelly beans and the rice crackers and the mini eggs that I have stuffed down me...
An endless onslaught of sugar coated dollops of fat.
My head is spinning in a panic of sugar and heart pounding horror at what I’ve done.

What have I done?

I’ve worked so hard to burn it all off and now, in one evening, I’ve thrown my body into chaos with a purge-less binge.

I want to run and not stop until my bones tear through my skin.

My mouth hasn’t been empty for more than 5 minutes since I left therapy.
Which implies that it was difficult right? But it wasn’t. Not really.

We spoke about a dream.
The bookshelf was a flimsy, wooden frame covering an entire wall. Like some sort of Ikea job, the frame had compartments, filled with rows of books.
They wanted to move the whole unit.
I stood and watched in silent desperation as the thin frame twisted and most of the compartments on the left side emptied crashingly.
I’d warned them it would happen and they wouldn’t listen.
We talked about how it was about therapy. Somehow. I think Friday’s session had some bits in it that felt very much like the shelf would twist and things would fall out.

I can’t remember what she said. Surprise. Surprise.

My heart is cloaked with sadness.
It has been since Saturday evening when my dad recounted his visit to the hospital where my sister is currently sectioned, caged like the animal her illness seems to make her.
He described how, as he sat next to her watching something on her laptop, her head suddenly dropped and lolled.
He'd asked if she was falling asleep and listened to her half breathed response. He helped her climb up on the bed and watched as she immediately slept.

A nurse popped her head round the door, apologetically, not realising dad was there, she called to my sister to say it was lunch. Feeding time. Force feeding.

“They’ve turned her into a zombie”.
Dad does an impression of her that all at once makes my eyes prick with unusual tears.

I don’t cry for her anymore. Not usually.
And I didn’t. But my throat ached and I had to look hard into the bottom of my glass to see the grains of the table.

My sister restrained, and injected with anti psychotics.
Sedated. Unable to run. Unable to rebel against the controlling regime they force upon her.

It’s her fault.
I comfort myself.
It’s her fault.
She’s the one who tries to starve to death.
Again, I am cloaked by a choking sadness.

And I am a desperate teenager again, wanting to scream,

Lethergogetyourhandsoffmysisterleaveheraloneleaveherthefuckalone, tearing at their strong arms as they manhandle my beautiful, frantic, sobbing sister.

In real life, all the books fall out at once.

Delights of Duloxetine

I don't even want to think how long I have been taking the anti depressant, 'Citalopram' for. Perhaps a decade?

I guess that the efficacy of most medications decreases after long periods of time, although I have never heard this theory in relation to anti d's so cannot claim that this is the case.

However, last week, suffocated by a thickening black fog, I stumbled into the doctor's surgery (not a place I frequent unless death feels imminent) and admitted I had no desire to be alive anymore.

I sat hollowed and empty, crying without feeling the sensation of tears on my cheeks.
I answered questions that I can't remember, without being able to form coherent sentences.

A change in medication has been suggested before but I have always felt too anxious about the upheaval of such change. This time, I simply no longer cared.

I didn't care much about anything actually.

Didn't care when a man who had been staring at me in his car got out and followed me to a secluded area of woodland.

Didn't even care when he tried to make a move on me.

Nothing happened and I suppose I was lucky.

Either way, I find myself, a week into stopping Citalopram, a week into weaning onto Duloxetine (more famously, Cymbalta).

The effects have been good in terms of my mood, though at this point, it could well be a combination of factors, not least of which would be my return to work after the fraught Easter "Holiday" where I lived two weeks as a fugitive. Alternating between hideouts in the gym, supermarket car parks, retail outlets and coffee shops... Anywhere to avoid the pressure of food.

The downside is the side effects.
I haven't slept a full night for two weeks.
The pressure in my right ear is, at times, immense. My eardrum seems to oscillate constantly, and I am drive crazy by the fruitless attempts at yawning.
My stomach is bloated and rock solid. I am almost bent double from the acid pain that spreads from one end of my diaphragm to the other.
That kind of thing.

I have a huge amount going on in my mind but I feel unable to express any of it.

So what's new? I ask myself.

Dumbing Depression Down

Goodness knows that dignity is not an attribute one could ever ascribe to depression. However, in my experience, and it is just in my experience, the word 'depression' has been bandied around so liberally over the last decade, that it has lost any real gravitas that it may have had if perhaps, it had been reserved for the debilitating condition that it is, rather than using it to describe feeling a little bit low.



The increase in depression could well be a sign of our times:

Recession.
Political and economic instability.
Threats of terrorism and nuclear attacks.
Less focus on family life.
An erosion of moral values.
Little emphasis on spirituality.
Normalising addictive behaviours.

None of it helps...

Equally though, the increase in depression could be the fact that we live in a society which, for whatever reason, has taken this word and diluted its meaning by applying it clumsily to anything which bears even the slightest resemblance to it.
Much like a person who has flu when their nose is running.
I suppose colds are dismissed, whereas flu is taken seriously.
Most people tend to want to be taken seriously.

I'm not having a rant. It sounds like it, I know.
In fact, I don't give a monkeys about whether or not people overuse or misuse the word. I would never, ever deny someone's need to be taken seriously.
I suppose that I'm just making the rather muddy point, that when the thief of depression comes and steals an entire part of your mind, your reasoning, your spirit and a huge part of your temporal and spatial awareness... it's different from 'getting out of the wrong side of the bed'.

This post isn't really what I wanted to write about at all.

I wanted to write about some of the things in my head and yet, to even attempt to go near them makes my whole body ache.

I started taking duloxetine (Cymbalta) two days ago, having resorted to my GP in desperation.
It would seem that eight year reign of Citalopram has left me feeling bankrupt and hopeless.
I suppose it's withdrawal but I am sore all over and unable to stay awake. That being said, I am also unable to stay asleep.

Moan, moan, moan. I know.

I still haven't written what I'd like to.
All my moaning, all my theorising, all my despair... They're all just bricks around floating fragments and words that I can't pick up.

An Observation

Depression
rarely lends itself
to words