I put my blog on a hiatus for a little while. Recently I’ve not felt like writing – for any reason – and I put it down to the weird circumstances we are still living in. I thought all this would be over by now if I’m being honest. This feels never ending. At the time I’m writing this, I have just received my first vaccination, and I should be feeling excited about getting my life back. I don’t know why I’m not.
Tonight I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that my mental health has deteriorated more than I have been willing to admit for a while. I knew my physical health had declined, but mentally…. I think if you are someone who has been mentally unwell since before Covid, it was easy enough to believe nothing much had changed. After all, I was still anxious and depressed, so what’s new?
I’m in constant consultation with my doctors at the moment about medication. We’ve been trying something new recently, and we’ve toyed with it twice now. But still, in the last week, my anxiety has hit a peak. I should have probably blogged about it. I try to keep this forum very honest and open – I have always tried to use it for that purpose and ultimately for myself. Recently, I’ve not felt like being honest with myself about how I’m feeling.
People tell me a lot that I’m strong or brave. I don’t feel strong. I certainly don’t feel brave. To the contrary, I’m scared of a lot of things in life. I can be strong for other people because I value the people I have in my life, but I can’t always be strong for me because I don’t always value me. That thought is looming over me a lot right now: it’s the permanent elephant in the room. Without being fully aware, I seem to have made friends with my own darkness instead of trying to address it, and I don’t think that’s been the right choice for me.
I have always said that my mental health is a part of my life, and something I have to live with and manage in similar ways to my asthma or, now, my fibromyalgia. Something has changed. For a while I have been more depression than I have been myself. One reason I am less enthusiastic about leaving lockdown is the knowledge that I will have to face myself again, and I’m now more scared of me than of the depression.
I have been asking myself who I am. What do I like? What do I want to achieve? I’m not sure I have any real answers to those questions. I try to be me, but I’m not sure if I’m particularly likeable. I certainly don’t like me for any length of time, and so I’ve systematically closed myself off from the world and that’s been fine because the entire world is closed anyway. That won’t be the case for much longer.
I don’t know how to reintegrate myself into a world I’m both terrified of joining, and terrified of being rejected from. Generally I want to hide because I don’t feel like I have a place. I’ve never really fit in anywhere, and I don’t expect that to change any time soon. I’m tired, so tired, and I don’t know what the future holds.