It's not Sink or Swim

(Written 5 days ago.)

I read over the blog post titled ‘post uni blues’ from a couple of months ago, and sometimes struggle rather than to think ‘hay, I have come a long way’, I think- I don’t want to write about it all again that until I’m better, until I’m writing about an episode in my life that is over. But it’s not really working like that.

I thought that getting on the plane was the hard bit- and to some extent it was- I hadn’t physically thought about when I got here because I couldn’t see myself getting on the plane in the first place. I kind of just thought I’d be better- sitting on white sand, working in a beach bar, with all my friends, what would I have to feel depressed or nervous about? Now I’m getting on the plane again next week to go back after an amazing summer, I thought I'd reflect on how it's been because I look at my blog, and its not a lie or a front, I really am having this wonderful moments- great times and experiences, but I have struggled in between; its just taken a bit of time to realize that it doesn’t take away from the fun I’ve had at beach parties, Bushwaka, nights with my friends and days on the beach.

Once I settled in I really was ok, for the first time in about a month and had a great weeks holiday with the girls, my brother and all his friends. But as they say, two steps forward, 1 step back. I had a week after before the next lot of people arrived and hadn’t released how much I had needed to be surrounded by people, noise, activities and plans. When I fall off the bandwagon, it’s so dark, I can’t remember there ever being light, and the more I torture myself saying ‘fuck sake why can’t I appreciate the beach, the good weather?’ The worse I get. It makes me numb. My mum says she can see when I’m bad because I’m not there, that the light is switched off and that’s how I feel. It’s so all-consuming I function on automatic; talk, walk but its not me. I’ve lost the fun-loving girl and am so terrified I’ll never find her again I just try and function minute to minute until it fades. Which it does. It may fade for ten minutes, or ten hours or ten days, but I always forget that I’ve been fine in between episodes.

I had a bad a attack the day my mum arrived- I think I’d been trying so hard to keep myself together, that when I knew she was coming that evening somewhere in my head I had just given up. My close friend out here had been brutally attacked a few days previous and we were all badly shaken. He’s very lucky and is fine now, but I felt the tone of everything change- this place has always been a safe haven to me, my friend like a sibling, and they both had been damaged. I couldn’t bear the thought of him hurt, they had stamped on his face and kicked in him the head, my friend- the most gorgeous and warm person I know, and I was frightened to see him because at the time his face was so bad: his dad had walked past his hospital bed when he got there and not recognized his son. I felt it was unfair of me to be freaking out and falling apart when it was him and his family that should be upset -I couldn’t say that I was struggling again- I came here to get better so thought I was failing.

I got so nervous I couldn’t eat- the smell of food made me gag, but the less I ate, the more I panicked that I’d faint so I tried to eat something, then throw up. The anxiety attacks choked me, made me too hot and so nervous, I didn’t know whether to run of cry or what. So usually I try and just plough through. It’s like I’m in a muddy swamp and as long as I keep walking and wading through I won’t sink. Then the big black veil covers my eyes and mouth and slowly filters nothing but black into my lungs. It sits on my shoulders, covers my eyes and I see nothing. I see nothing but endless fields of battle after battle with myself, and its so heavy and so grey it’s a field I don’t want to cross. I can’t move and I come to a complete standstill in every way. Its like a darkness that infects every part of me and sucks out any energy left, and worst- any hope. I think that’s worse than the anxiety attack, because the feeling of depression makes me believe that it will always, always be like this. Its blinding, and I can never remember letalone believe that I’ll be fine.

I walked to work that evening with my a friend of mine- I had forced the poor boy to stay in the house with me all day, in forty degree heat, beautiful sunshine outside, and will never forget his patience considering I he didn’t really understand what was wrong. I remember walking and thinking I was going to pass out- everything was too loud and bright, I was walking a different way to work-along the sea- because I thought the breeze and the sea might calm me. Then I saw a group of my mum’s friends from back in England that happened to be holidaying in a nearby town. Now you’re talking to someone who is a believer in fate and higher purposes, and when I saw those familiar faces I immediately burst into tears- I was so happy to see them. I was chaperoned to work where they told the owner I wasn’t fit to work (I was standing there like a pale, slightly green shaking statue literally unable to speak by this point) and they took me back to the apartment. I am eternally grateful to them.

It took about a 5 days before I felt ok again. My mum would do the 10minute rule; only thinking about the day in 10minute blocks. I’d wake up and she’s say- ok for the next 10minutes were going to have breakfast. I really struggled to eat, food makes be gag when I’m nervous, and then she’d say, ok what do you want to do for the next 10minutes? And that’s how I’d play the day.

I struggled between using the knowledge I had learnt and rejecting it all, thinking- Christ I am so sick of holding myself together, I want to go back to the days so so so so badly where I had never even heard of an anxiety attack or depression. The rejection doesn’t help. Because its there. It doesn’t have to rule my life, but its there. And coming to terms with that is the single most difficult thing.

That really is the key thing here I think- acceptance. If I stop fighting it and focus, I stop being blind and can remember all the things I’ve learnt on the process how to control it when I’m falling. I can remember that I won’t always feel like this, that it will get better, in a few hours, or a few minutes even.

Writing seems to be my saviour. When I can’t distract myself long enough to pull myself together, I write, because when I’m writing I’m completely in control, of the pen, the flow of words. I may not be able to control my brain from flipping out, but writing diverts the attention. I found that if I wrote exactly how I was feeling I could write it out of me as it were. Then I would draw a line underneath and then wrote positively; I couldn’t talk myself into felling ok- but I could write it until I believed it.

This is from my journal that I’d take to work, scribbling until I felt ok-

I know I feel bad now- but I HAVE TO believe that one day I’ll get better. This is something I’ll look back on and go, wow, I got through that, I can get through anything. I HAVE TO believe that everyday won’t be like this one because otherwise, I don’t think I manage a single second more.

I have the strength to dissolve the black cloud, I can and I WILL rise above it. I am strong. I came to Spain, I run a bar by myself, speak a foreign language, have many friends out here. When I feel bad, I don’t collapse, I plough through, even if I’m battling every single second to keep my head above water, I’ve never stopped swimming. It’s not a question of sink or swim, because I’m going to swim through the sinking.

I KNOW things happen for reason. That things happen the way they’re supposed to happen. I refuse to believe that I’m suffering for nothing. I’m on the right path in my life- I just don’t know where it leads to right now, and right now the path is bloody rocky.

Just keep walking, even when it’s so bad I cant speak, I cant think, just walk through it, write through it. If I keep walking, maybe in an hour it will grip my throat less, in a week less, in a year a distant dark memory. I’m never going to give up- I’m just going to believe that I WILL NOT feel like this my whole life. It doesn’t define me.

IT MAY BE RELENTLESS, BUT SO AM I.

This is my mantra, I say it over and over and really believe it. Yep, it’s probably a bit American happy clappy style but it works.

Something else that I realized through writing, is that when I’m bad- it completely and utterly blocks out any memory of feeling good or feeling normal. When I stop and think I realize that actually, the majority isn’t suffering, it’s the other way around- I’m fine out here- I have terrible bad patches yes, but they’re bad patches. I only realized this about three weeks ago, and when I did it was like the little light at the end of the tunnel that was almost extinguished came back into view.

I was told to keep dairy of anxiety and depression- and I was only then I began to really see- that the majority of the time I’m ok, the bad patches are small, its just the weight of them, the volume of darkness that’s makes it feel its lasted forever. I feel that every time I fall, that I’m back to square one and I’m not better, nowhere near getting better and ill never get better, but that’s bollocks; I’ve had good days and good weeks and then bad hours, bad mornings, nights, afternoons, bad days at my worst but since I’ve been here in Spain it hasn’t been like it was before, its just the weight of the darkness blocks out any memory of light.

When I really saw this- hope came back- if I fall, I will get up because I’ve been getting up over and over and over again these last months. Two steps forward one step back is still going forwards, however impossibly slow it may feel…

I had a lovely time with my mum and brother once I started feeling better and another family arrived in the town that we’ve known for many years out here. We were sitting by the pool and my blog was mentioned- the mother in this family- the most happy, energetic and confident person I have ever met, turned round and said- “I’ve been through the same thing.”

As she was talking, I cannot describe the relief to hear someone putting your own feelings into words, the feeling that someone knows exactly what you are going through and it made me want to write this blog post. Not only that, she had suffered a lot lot worse, and now is absolutely fine. She has four children, is studying to be a paramedic, gets on planes and trains, and even the tube. I went to sleep that night and little voice of doom that sneaks up on me saying I’m gong to be like this for ever, could not touch me after speaking to that wonderful woman.

It was easier to be ok when everyone was here, but when I’m on my own my brain works itself into over-drive. After two weeks, the family and mine where heading home.

Its when its comes for me in the night- the first three nights after my mum went home it woke me up, I woke up sweating with fear, a feeling of a belt around my chest and throat, that little voice of panic telling me that I won’t be able to stop it now, mum's not here, I’m on my own in a foreign country, what the hell am I doing? I cant manange this, I won't make it through the night... I slept next to a friend who held my hand as I literally shook and tried with all my might to calm my breathing. She said she had pins and needles in her fingers from where I squeezed so tightly. And then she went home too. That’s the one thing about this beautiful place- everybody goes homes, and I was busy trying to cling on to something, anyone, when really I knew that it's only me that can fix this, only me that can keep my self calm.

And so I was on my own. But in a beautiful place, sitting on a beach, in a job I love and I couldn’t see any of it again. Three days of feeling like I was holding myself together, clutching at an arm or a leg trying to keep all the pieces of me together.

I had friends from my university that happened to be staying in the next town and wanted to meet up and so I made myself go meet them in the busy town- I hadn’t been up there for three weeks because I wanted to be somewhere close, although I’m not really sure close to what. I made myself get in that taxi thinking of an escape route; I had money enough to flee if I wanted. I got out the cab and could see them sitting outside a busy bar and fought the impulse to run back to the cab, because really, I cant run from it. It gets me if I’m at home, on the beach, asleep, so I thought I might aswell keep walking towards my two friends, one foot in front of the other. I don’t really remember the first part of the conversation- but then one of them made me laugh and I breathed out sticky tension and breathed in air rather than fear. So I kept at it, we walked to the next bar, met up with my other group of friends and I walked into the bar- this might sound pretty dull, but the thought of walking into a hot stuffy bar with crowds made me sick to my stomach. There was a song we loved. I went in and danced. Danced in a crowd and smiled. Really smiled rather than a pretend one. I stayed a a friends house in the next town- a new place, and slept (although I made a baffled friend sleep next to me) and although I woke up in the middle of the night in a bed that wasn’t my own, in a town I didn't know, I controlled my breathing, I calmed myself and fell asleep again.

I woke up so pleased with myself- I walked and met my friends and went to the beach for the day- I had 20minutes of feeling so nervous I was nearly sick and jumped in the sea so they could see me cry. But the tears never came. I was ok, I was doing all these things I was ok, I hadn’t passed out, freaked out. I got out that sea and enjoyed the rest of the day and evening, rather than plough through it.

The further the gap between each bad patch, the more I believe I’m ok. So 5 days of feeling fine and I really am ok. it might not be forever, I might feel bad next week, I might feel bad at the airport- but each time I get my heart to go back to normal, I believe a little more that I can do this, I can enjoy my last week here in the sun, last weekend at work, and finally- get on that plane home and be ready and excited for the next thing.

I’m aware that I’m not very good at taking my own advice, I struggle to accept what I feel, I want to be me again, and I want it now. It’s because I get impatient. I want to be better forever, not for ten minutes or a couple of days or a couple of weeks. I’m frustrated.

Just to keep at it is what I think- I’m doing ok, actually, I’m doing more than ok, I really am having fun - I still have so many funny stories to tell about this place, and only 5more day here!! I’m going to go home thinking- I did a summer abroad, ran a bar by myself, made new friends and reunited with old ones, danced, sang, swam, laughed, cried- the dark doesn’t keep me down for long. It never will.