Me, about 16 months ago:

Me, about 16 days ago:

Never believe your own hype.

After a brief email conversation with the only psychotherapist I ever ever got on with, I am going back into therapy in the new year. I wish it didn’t feel like a defeat. I know it shouldn’t feel like a defeat, and I know that were it anyone else going through this, I would be fully supportive of them. But it has always been easier for me – and, let’s be honest, I am not alone in this – to be kinder to others than the self. And it feels like defeat.

I don’t want to sit in that room again. I don’t want to have the ‘silence trick’ played on me, knowing it’s being played, but still falling for it every time because that’s what you have to do, isn’t it? I don’t want to have to stare at some shitty abstract art piece hung on the wall above and to the left of his face, a piece that probably cost more than my week’s wages, because I can’t make eye contact while I’m trying to find words to describe something that I can’t describe. I don’t want to have to sit with the aching fear of what might come out. Man, they (I) really need to work at marketing therapy better.

But I’ll go back. Maybe because I’m not dosed up to the eyeballs on enough antidepressants to knock out a rhino this time, and maybe because part of me (let’s be honest, largely the exercising part) is still functioning, maybe it seems like recent storms blew over fast. They haven’t. I was strolling around the house yesterday thinking about cutting my throat (which I did not, before y’all start panicking, just saying there was an urge there, don’t make me repeat the disclaimer that words & thoughts =/= actions), and having internal arguments around the ethics of allowing self harm. Yeah, things are not good yet. Things are a long way from good. I can put on a composed face, that’s what’s changed in 5 years.

I never really doubted that all this, the overwhelming crushing weight of everything, wouldn’t return at some point. I guess… I just wanted a little more of a grace period, y’know? Two year’s relative-somewhat-screwy-sorta peace doesn’t seem like a decent trade for the ten years that preceded it. I still feel like I’m owed something, I still get angry about that. I thought I’d overcome that, or at least learnt to hide the bitterness, or at the very very least just learnt to accept it as a part of me. Am I catastrophizing? Well, yes, obviously. That’s the point of it, right? Seeing the worst in everything.

But anyway, ignoring all the above – enough wallowing for now. Hopefully, like that weekend at Hever that made me believe I could successfully avoid a watery Swedish grave, this can be a turning point. Everything comes around, moves in circles. Some Audiotechnicas died. Now I have some Audiotechnicas again. Headphones will become my metaphor for survival. No, they’re not paying me. Yet.

Yeah, I can put on a better face these days, because I feel pressured to, and I’m slightly (slightly) more self aware these days. At the moment I’m just glad to have achieved a few things in the past few years, since all this last cropped up, that I’m proud of: some nice cockle-warming (COCKLE goddammit) rocks jutting out of the raging river of existential malaise that I can hold on to when I need a breather.

It’s going to be royally weird going back, isn’t it?

Happy 2017. Die in a fiery hell.

Listening: This Will Destroy You – Little Smoke; the last time I had a massive public breakdown, once my parents had recovered me from… wherever I’d walked to in the night, I can’t remember, they got me home. It was late, I don’t know how late. I had to sleep on the sofa in the living room with my Dad in a chair next to me because I couldn’t be allowed to be left alone. I’ve never been a good sleeper and demanded music, and Tunnel Blanket it was. It’s a good soundtrack for a breakdown. Everything comes around.

Reading: A definitely appropriate article from Brainpicker, concerning Leo Tolstoy’s essay on getting crunked up. Happy New Year’s.