On weariness

I want to talk about fatigue.

I want to talk about the second and third shifts. The don’t-even-look-at-the-dishes-in-the-sink fatigue. The double-booked because it’s too hectic to look at the calendar and now I’ve had to let someone down busyness fatigue.

I want to talk about gear changing. The weary rousing of oneself from work mode to parent mode and back again. The feeling that a day, any old day, without any juggling acts would be some kind of bliss. A selfish, perfectly selfish, bliss.

I want to talk about bone tiredness: the I-don’t-have-time-for-the-gym which becomes I-don’t-have-the-energy-anymore-ask-me-tomorrow. I want to talk about the physical slowness, the inward curling and energy slumping that comes from mental fatigue.

I want to talk about emotional wear. The sense of hopelessness that comes with never having enough left to give. The guilt, of letters unwritten and phone calls un-made. The frustration that the work of relationship maintenance so readily eclipses its rewards, or feels like it will.

I want to talk about pacing and rocking and please please just sleep for crying out loud just sleep for fuck’s sake please just GO TO SLEEP.

I want to talk about the need to do writing and not having time for writing and not having energy left with which to make more time because the rewards of writing, the energising release and the pleasure have all been doled out. The stores are empty.

I want to talk about email in-box anxiety and bursting into tears over upended laundry baskets.

I want to talk about the fatigue of being fatigued. The wearing down of it. The hurt of coming up against one’s limitations and having to remember, always remember, that they are there. That illness is there at the edge of one’s capabilities, or near.

I want to talk about the work of wishing to be healthy. Of trying to think of shopping and cooking and eating well, of filling prescriptions on time and seeking recommendations and referrals and making appointments and dreaming of finding a yoga class and thinking as if there will ever be time.

I want to talk about the shame of even talking of doing too much when others do so much more. And about how maybe too many of us do so much that there can only be a deficit between doing and being.

I want to talk about all of that. But really, I’m too tired.

Chapters

A letter came from my mother today.

It’s been, approximately, eight years since I’ve received mail from her. This came via my childhood home, forwarded by my step-mum, who it should be said, gave me fair warning.

At first I was thrown by the improvement in her handwriting despite her increased age but then, I remembered: she drafts. She was always a prolific letter-writer and equally good at filling waste paper bins. One summer that I visited she embarked upon an autobiography and splurged most of a pay-cheque on a second-hand typewriter. I was excited because my mother was going to be a famous author – as I wanted to be – but my brother scoffed and was, of course, proved right. Her mood turned and she gave up after two days, the typewriter hefted out onto the pavement beside the bins in the caravan park they were calling home. I had read the first few pages of her failed memoir and had found it cloying and stilted compared with the novels I enjoyed. But I do recall the central theme which touched and unsettled me even then: the opening anecdote was something about a memory of shopping with her own mother and of coming to the realisation that no one, not even her mother, loved her. In the memory she was about five years old: I, the reader, was ten.

Two decades later and she has written to admonish me for not knowing her and yet, her words spill out all over my skin and under it and there is nothing of them I do not already know. A careful reining-in of impulse here, a sentence fragment there, an imperious judgment over the page and then finally a breaking free of the draft to add extra exclamation marks and to literally underline the evidence of her goodness in contrast to my own character … none of it, none of it, is unfamiliar. I don’t doubt that in the twenty-seven years since she left dwell huge gaps in knowledge and understanding. There is an unshared lifetime between us. But I recognise her syntax, I remember her posture as she keeps cigarette ash off the page, I see how she writes her Xs and Os just so. I know her.

She is written on me; she is writing on me.

The surprise tonight is that even after all I have learned and done, even though my rational brain tells me not to heed it, her criticism still smarts. I don’t want to write that I felt ‘crushed’ or ‘deflated’ or ‘wounded’ but nothing serves as a better descriptor. I have adapted to living without a mother’s love but that doesn’t mean I can live happily with her disdain.

Yet, this does not feel as bad as other times. Tonight I looked at my precious Bean all fresh and shiny from her shower, her blue eyes so wide and open, her hands grasping at my shirt, and I was reminded.

I write letters. I draft. I write of my daughter and to her, I wrote my genes into her, I write my stories onto her experience. And I have a certain syntax and a way of writing Xs and Os, and I don’t know what the end of the story will be, even if I do know very well what it won’t be.

But from here the plot only moves forward. From here, I write on.

Intermission

I’ve not been writing. Don’t feel neglected: I’ve not been studying, or cleaning, or ticking off errands either.

I’m not feeling well, again. I’ve felt it creeping up and so I’ve been pushing the depression back and back but that only works for a little while and that while has passed, for now.

Like Fat Heffalump says in her post on the Black Dog, most people go quiet when passing through a patch of bleakness. I’m no exception.

Some talk of how depression feeds their creativity, how darkness is a source of ideas and catalyst for expression. Not so for me.

For me, it is all dimness and brainfog. Inactivity and fatigue feeding each other. Lack of concentration. Headaches and a feeling of heaviness; too-quick anger and too-slow smiles. Stagnation.

I don’t know what to write, except this.

On bullying

A few weeks back, Natalie from Definatalie made it known via twitter that she was being bullied on Facebook. Someone had taken a photograph of her from another site and posted it to a hateful Facebook group in order to shame and ridicule her. Natalie took it in her stride beautifully (read her graceful response to the Facebook group and the experience here), I’m happy to say. But me? It made me a little afraid.

I think we accept now that bullying is not confined to school grounds, and also that the bullying that goes on in childhood can be far more serious than the old narratives about character building would suggest. I believe that the ugliest aspects of humanity dwell in bullying behaviour: bullies dehumanise and objectify, they use the power of many against one or a few, and they take pleasure in the destruction they wreak. This would be hyperbole if people were not being bullied to death, but they are.

I’m not a school student, and I don’t really have a workplace, so one would think my vulnerability to bullying, in the sense that we think of it traditionally, would be limited. Perhaps it is. I’ve been bullied online more than once though, and the reality is that I will be again, because I write things that some people don’t like to hear, because I post photos of myself sometimes, because I participate in online communities where there are, like everywhere else, power-plays and popularity contests.

And, as I’ve just said, bullying scares the hell out of me. Bullying is triggering for me.

Bullying had me rehearsing suicide notes at nine years of age. Bullying gave me bruises, scars, knocked me to the ground and winded me. Bullying made me vulnerable to other forms of victimisation, about which I don’t wish to speak. Bullying made me try so hard to be liked that I was, for a time, virtually unlikeable. Bullying made me strong and it made me an advocate, yes, but at what cost?

I once left a job because I was bullied there. The bullying wasn’t so terrible, the bullies had only transitory and limited power, and I had support. But the extent to which I felt disempowered for even a few moments horrified me and sent me spiralling into anxiety, insomnia and depression. I was humiliated by my inability to ‘take it in my stride’ as much as I was angry at the original treatment. With hindsight, I can see that what appeared to be an extreme reaction was perfectly natural from someone who’d just been so strongly triggered: after the core incident, I was shaking, pale, in shock, having flashbacks. I could not work. What my colleagues saw was someone who’d had a very bad day and was unable to overcome that without help. What they were really seeing was someone who had been bullied so viciously in the past that her wellbeing was at risk from comparatively minor incidents.

Bullying is the most rapidly expanding workplace health problem, especially in schools – that is, it affects teachers as well as students in devastating ways. It’s also rife online. The tragedy of the latter situation is that online spaces are commonly used by groups of people – perhaps victims of trauma or those commonly subjected to prejudice – who wish to carve out a ‘safe space’ for themselves. And in many ways, online interactions can supply an enormous amount of social support to those, and all, people. We alternatively scoff and ruminate about the amount of time young people spend online but the fact is, there is a lot to love about the access they now have to vital information and crisis resources. Loneliness and isolation can be more easily combatted when there are more ways to let others in.

But our computers and our iPhones let the bullies in, too.

This doesn’t have to be only bad news, because with this growing awareness that bullying is more than a few taunts in the playground, comes growing responsibility. Bystanders have enormous power, and little excuse not to exercise it. When children are bullied in schools, the majority of us have no chance to act because we are simply not there. But we are online. We are on Facebook, and we can (and do) lobby for offensive groups to be closed down and call bullying when we see it. In comment threads and other online spaces, we can intervene (even with a degree of anonymity) to show bullies that we’re onto them. We can be blatantly intolerant of those who seek to attack and victimise others, or who use undermining and silencing tactics. And in our everyday interactions we can show integrity, courtesy and openness: we can refrain from committing the violence of harsh words or social exclusion.

Maybe these are small things, but they are something, and nothing is not an option.

Mother cupboard

*this post is my first contribution to the Writing Workshop over at Sleep is for the Weak. I chose Prompt #4, clear out a cupboard.

“Only a mother could love that face!” You know that your mother doesn’t love you, before you have words to say what it is that you know. “Remember, at least one person loves him – his mother!” It’s an ugly kind of knowing; a shameful kind. “There is no love like a mother’s love.” You push the knowledge right to the back of the forgetting cupboard. “God could not be everywhere, so he made mothers.” It is knowledge that sets you apart, marks you as unlovable. It is better not to show that you know.

***

When I was about three years old my parents held some sort of party at our house. My mother, annoyed that I had interrupted her talking, deliberately dropped the hot ash off the end of her cigarette as I stood between her and a friend. It hit the delicate skin of my shoulder and burned me. I don’t think I retain this memory because of the searing ash. What I remember is her intently watching the ash fall, the look on her face, as she realised she had actually hurt me. Blank. And the look as I began to protest, bottom lip quivering. I knew at that moment, as she vehemently denied burning me at all, let alone on purpose, that there was nothing – nothing – I could say to make her feel sorry.

This reads like a melodrama, or a twisted and childish fantasy. Don’t think I don’t know it.

I wore the cigarette scar for many years, and I would show it to people, sometimes. There was no one who would accept it. It was an invented story altogether, or it was an accident, but evidence of callous disregard from the woman who was meant to care the most? You need to show a lot more than a few little white marks to prove that. Some people won’t ever believe that lack of mother-love exists in nature, searching for alternative explanations even when a child dies.

Beyond what was acceptable as discipline in the early eighties, I wasn’t beaten. Beyond what was acceptable in fat-shaming at that time, I wasn’t starved. I had things, I had sunshiny days and icecreams. Some days, I had love, or an indistinguishable facsimile.

One of my other earliest memories? My mother wiping my bottom. Being so young that I needed help with toileting, I remember calling for her, I remember her careful touch. I also recall the day I had my first serious asthma attack, when I was left in the corner at kindergarten, terrified and wheezing. Picking me up at the usual time (they hadn’t called for her to come get me, despite me turning blue) was the maternal lion you’d expect: the furiously protective and anxiously attentive mother I know I would be if Bean became ill when out of my care. But that kind of mother only made fleeting appearances for me.

It was probably self-defensiveness as well as mental illness which turned this sporadic affection into an even rarer disposition after my parents became estranged. Eventually the wounds of separation formed a callous against further sentiment. Blank unfeelingness became the default setting, punctuated by cruelty.

I believe she burned me that day, and abandoned me not long after, and inflicted me with hateful words over the ensuing years, because she was ill. I believe if she could have loved me: if her narcissism wasn’t so overwhelming, her grip on ‘normal’ thinking so tenuous, then this would be a different story.

But this is not a Choose Your Own Adventure. This is how the story went – and goes – and I cannot change it, no matter how far back into the cupboard I push these dusty memories.

I too am ill, though differently. Although there doesn’t seem to be a permanent way to change that, there is no choice for this mother but to write a radically different narrative. And so I am, crafting our days in ways that I hope won’t have to be pushed into dark memory-cupboards in years to come. Sometimes, this task seems unspeakably difficult. And there is no thing in this world that is more terrifying to admit to feel to say to hear to write
to live
than that.

**
I owe a debt of inspiration to isabelthespy for this post. This wonderful piece from her helped me to unjumble some of my thoughts around parental love.

On mental illness

Let me talk to you about my brain.

It’s not working so good right now. It’s soldiering on and getting me through the days but on the whole, it’s pretty down and a bit anxious. I’m more aware now of the ways in which this is different to feeling normally down and feeling normally anxious and I want to talk some more about that. Because, I guess, sad and negative feelings and worry are natural human emotions and everyone experiences them so it can be difficult to understand how this is different when they are caused by an illness rather than just occuring in response to life. And the way I recognise and understand that is through experience. Like this

* It is 2 pm and Bean is finally asleep, which is good for me, because my head feels foggy and everything is a little tough today. Someone raps on the door and I go down to answer it; a woman is there from an electricity provider, trying to sell me service. Because things are foggy in my head, it takes me a while to understand what she is actually saying so when she asks me for a copy of our bill I decide that the easiest thing is to just go fetch one, because then I can get a moment to think. Of course this is a mistake, because she takes it from me and tucks it on her clipboard and it’s clear that the speil she gave me about ‘not really needing to change companies’ was a total lie, and she wants me to go through the whole process of switching supplier. I don’t want to do this, and I tell her so. She ignores me. The conversation goes on and I start to disassociate a little: I can see myself just standing there like a big lump, not knowing what to say. I’m thinking what if I had a disability that made standing here difficult for me? What about elderly people, she could frighten them half to death. Why won’t she just leave me alone, this is my time to rest and I need to rest and she’s in my personal space. I try to say these things to her: that she’s intrusive, she’s bossy, she’s not welcome, she’s wasting my time. But I don’t because I know I will cry if I do. I feel about four years old. It is only when she raises her voice and wakes Bean that I have the strength to grab back my document and close the door on her. Bean has a tantrum because she was woken up, and I am so angry at myself for letting it come to this. For hours afterwards I feel pathetic, cowed, weepy. I’m big and smart and articulate and three decades old but none of that matters because I can’t even fight through the fog to say what I mean out loud.

* It is some time in the morning and I’m trying to get Bean dressed to go out. She wants to go, she’s been begging me, but she won’t lie still and I can’t dress her. She’s jumping naked on the bed, squealing, laughing: it’s a game. But not to me – today I am all hardness. Sudden rage bubbles up, and I yell and yell until she cries and lies still. In a moment she’s bouncing and happy again but for me, the shame smarts all day. (Actually, it still does now, still makes me weep). I want to tell her: that wasn’t me. I’m never that angry at you, I would never hurt you, I never want to frighten you. And I do say it, but she’s two years old so there’s no way of knowing what she’ll remember.

* I have had a difficult day. Everything got on top of me, the house was a mess, The Fireman was late home, dinner was late and disastrous and not the right thing to satisfy my hungry body. But that is okay, I think, because I’m off to a study meeting and I will be out of my house and out of my own head for a few hours. Adult time. Except that I’m still reeling from the day but I don’t know it, and the night is dark and the street I have to park on unknown, narrow, windy and steep. I can’t see where I could park my car safely, another driver blinds me with highbeams, I’m not as early as I hoped, but none of these things is insurmountable. I’m a grown-up, I can drive just fine, I can meet new people, I can get on with it. Except that I can’t. My teeth start to tingle which is the first sign that I’ve been hyperventilating without even noticing and so I have to do breathing exercises and try to navigate my car at the same time because there is nowhere to pull over. I feel light-headed and nothing seems real. And then I am crying and shaking and ashamed and I just drive home and sit in the driveway and weep because what kind of pathetic person can’t even do a simple thing like go to a meeting and when will I ever be able to do anything in my life if I can’t even do that?

I’m getting some professional help for my brain really soon; and although I feel worse than I have for months and months, it’s not so awful, really. Except that I am exhausted from limping through the days. Some cruising would be nice. Some sunshine.

Fat Goddesses

At the gym this morning a woman I used to chat to after our cycle classes jumped on the treadmill next to me. We hadn’t spoken in a while, but we have our fatness in common so it was easy to find things to talk about. Especially since I was wearing my Fat Goddess t-shirt.

My gym friend (I’ll call her Mary), was pretty awed by it. She pointed to her own colourful t-shirt and explained it had been purchased on her recent trip to Thailand, in a special plus-sized store, where they made her pay extra for ‘more material’ and followed it up with a loud statement about how freakishly huge she was. (And yes, I know extra material probably does cost more – but that is not the issue at hand.) Mary also had some other interesting experiences on holiday. Like the time she walked into a massage place and asked their prices, only to be told that since she was so big, they would charge her double. And then they laughed at her, in front of the other, slimmer, tourists. Now, I’ve been to Thailand for a holiday too and I never had these experiences. Mary was unlucky, by the sound of things – I’m certainly not saying that Thai people are all unfriendly or fat-phobic. But perhaps what happened here is that cultural and language differences allowed for the kind of things that many people think all the time about fat people but just don’t say out loud.  (Which is something to think about, if you’re walking around with thin privilege).

Mary was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes last year, but she hasn’t been to the doctor in six months. She knows that this is probably unwise, but the last time she went to the doctor she felt down for weeks. She’d bounced into the surgery, saying how she felt energised by the progress she’d made in our spin class, and that although the strict dietary changes recommended had been difficult to implement, she’d been making some healthful choices. Her doctor’s response? Come back and tell me you’re doing well when you’ve lost thirty kilograms. No recognition of her health-improving efforts, no checking of test results before the admonishments. Amazing how so many doctors can tell your blood pressure, blood sugar levels and cholesterol just by looking at a number on a scale! The net result of this, for Mary, was some more weight gain after yet another failed attempt at a diet. And confirmation that she’s not good enough, that doctors won’t or can’t help her because she’s too fat to deserve it. For her, this means a lot of days where she can’t make it to the gym because just getting out and about, amongst bodies different to hers, makes her feel painfully ashamed.

I’ve encouraged Mary to try another doctor but you know what, I get why she hasn’t. Because this story? It happens all the fucking time. I can’t even begin to tell you how angry it makes me.

It happened to me last week. Because I am fat, my doctor is reluctant to prescribe medication which may cause further weight gain. (It’s been a year since this particular doctor took my blood pressure or ran any blood tests so how he knows that weight gain will actually harm me more than remaining unmedicated is, again, anyone’s guess.) Because I am fat, my doctor admitted that he’d assumed my daughter was conceived using reproductive technology and birthed via c-section (the truth is that she was conceived the ordinary way, and during my pregnancy I had no complications and delivered a lustily crying babe without intervention or complication). Because I am fat, my doctor thinks that a good treatment for my depression would be Weight Watchers, even though he knows that my depression began long before I was fat. (Presumably, he also doesn’t know that no diet, exercise or ‘lifestyle’ program has ever been proven to result in long-term weight loss in more than a very small percentage of people. The ‘cure for fatness’ just doesn’t currently exist, but they keep forgetting to send out that memo). My doctor, who I thought was a good and sympathetic doctor, said all of these things to me without once asking me what eating habits are actually like and what my activity levels are.

Naturally I felt deflated, angry, let-down by this treatment.

But I’ll get over it. I can find another doctor. I have the courage of my convictions and a lot of support. And I know that despite what this doctor – or anyone – may think, I am a person who cares about my health (even if I don’t always get it right). But for every fatty like me, there are many others who still feel cowed by the world telling them they are worthless. There are many others who don’t have a supportive partner or the time and inclination to read about Health At Every Size or to stumble into the affirming Fatosphere. There are many others, like Mary, who would rather risk exacerbating a health condition than be shamed and dismissed by just one more person who is supposed to be helping them. Because fat-prejudice is real and it is demoralising and it affects people’s lives in sometimes debilitating ways  – and it makes people sick.

This whole fatties-united conversation I had this morning happened whilst Mary and I were on the treadmill, and then the stepper, and then the cross-trainer.  I worked hard because anger was fuelling me. Anger that Mary’s mother, like my own, had told her she was disgusting and made fun of her body before she even hit puberty (and well before she was actually fat). Anger that Mary’s child, like mine, had already been subjected to a running commentary on his weight.  Angry that until that moment when another fat woman stood beside me, I had been unable to overcome my self-consciousness about wearing my Fat Goddess t-shirt.

But another fat woman did stand beside me. And another one was on my the little TV screen on my treadmill, and another in the magazine I thumbed while I had a coffee afterwards.

We are everywhere, and we deserve good and unbiased medical care, and we deserve to be treated as the diverse and worthy human beings that we are. The Fat Goddess, she demands it!

When fighting rape culture means changing birth culture

Trigger warning on this post: sexual violence and birth trauma/coercion*

Over at Feministe, there is a series of posts underway for Sexual Assault Awareness month. This amazing piece by abby jean (please read it) highlights why we cannot fight sexual violence on only one front. Oppressions feed each other and their sum is greater than their parts: when you hurt one person by othering them because of their disability, their skin colour, their gender or sexuality, the size of their body, you make them more vulnerable to assault. And you also other – and hurt – everyone else with shared traits by reinforcing their vulnerability. Or, conversely, abby jean writes:

Even if not directly connected to social violence, fighting ableism helps undermine the messages which make women with disabilities more vulnerable…Fighting ableism is fighting sexual assault. And, to extend that, fighting racism and classism and homophobia and trans oppression also fights sexual assault, by fighting the interlocking and intersecting forces that make women more and more vulnerable to rape and sexual assault.

This is absolutely, searingly true. And it goes both ways. We are all connected: when women with disabilities are made more vulnerable, I believe that harms all women. When sexual assault is allowed to happen to trans women without public outcry, what does that say about the power of the perpetrators and the silencing of victims in our culture? When some people are not safe, it doesn’t make the rest of us safer. It makes our whole world uglier, more violent, more heavily populated by criminals who know they have gotten away with violating another human being.

And this is why, although I do not want to detract at all from the importance of abby jean’s post about ableism and mental illness, I think the intersections extend even further. The pathologising of women’s pregnant and birthing bodies and the erasing of their bodily autonomy in a medical setting should be of concern to all feminists, not just those of us who want to have or have had children. Reproductive freedom extends beyond abortion rights — and fighting for it is fighting against sexual assault.

When a woman has a hand or an instrument inserted into her vagina whilst she screams and thrashes out her non-consent, and when this action is sanctioned by society because it occurs in a medical setting (and because it is believed it must be for the ‘safety of her baby’ if carried out in this setting, regardless of whether or not it was medically indicated or evidence-based care), we have a problem. When women are routinely given vaginal examinations without their consent being sought or given (either without their knowledge under aneasthetic or in an obstetric setting), we have a problem. When a woman attests that she was raped in an obstetric setting and her story is greeted with at best derision and at worst outright hostility, we have a problem. We all have a problem.

The problem is that in a culture that allows the bodily autonomy of women to be eroded, denied, violently erased in any setting, bodily autonomy only exists as a value that is demonstrably vulnerable to attack.  In other words: if you have a childfree, currently not disabled body and you like having your right to give or withold consent protected, then you’d better care about the possiblity that it could be taken from you if your body changes. And more than that: you’d better care that whilst the medical community and other facets of society sit by and tacitly condone the violation of certain women’s bodies, that the violation of other bodies could also make it onto the agenda. When there are circumstances where sexual violence is deemed acceptable or inevitable or even desirable, it is only the circumstances that protect the rest of us and circumstances change, expand and multiply.

Birth rights are about more than birth, and advocating for birthing women is advocating for all.

—-

* I haven’t employed the term ‘birthrape’ in this post because I am quite ambivalent about it as a label and also certain elements of its usage. If you are unfamiliar with the concepts of birth trauma and birth rape, try this excellent post here, and further thoughts here and here .

When secrets are lies

I am secretive. Avoidance, acting and deflection are well-honed tools in my belt. Emotional disclosure, I’ve learned, comes at a price and it’s not one I’m usually willing to pay when I can’t dictate the terms.

I can’t say exactly why. Perhaps, like Josie at Sleep is for the Weak, I have a thin skin. Honest people do risk censure. It’s sometimes easier to hold back than to have to worry about what people might think. That’s a concept very familiar to me.

But I write this blog. I write this only-semi-anonymous blog, which many people who know me in the flesh read. Sometimes, they talk to me about what I have written, or they look at me knowingly when topics I have covered here come up. I don’t mind. (Ok, I do, I actually feel quite panicky if I think about it for too long, but that has more to do with perfectionism than privacy. I don’t much care if people know I use a menstrual cup or see a psychologist but I do care if they think I’m a shit writer, and I don’t exactly glow on the page in all my posts.)

One of the reasons I write this blog is because I am very bad at talking. About myself. It can physically hurt to do it. But I obviously need to! A psychologist once said that my mother gave me some gifts, one of which is shining independence of spirit and outspokenness – products of neglect, it is true, but still worthy bequests.  She is right, but they are not always easy to access, these gifts. I sit with them covered tightly in nervous hands, my natural impulse towards honesty heavily leashed, sometimes ailing.

I don’t like to be asked how I am and I will rarely respond honestly to that question when asked face to face. Yesterday, I told a friend, over the phone, that I was experiencing difficulty withdrawing from anti-depressants and that I felt overwhelmed and weepy. She may not know that it’s a huge compliment to her and her friendship, that I said that out loud. A compliment I would probably not have been able to pay if it wasn’t for this blog.

Because I’m learning that speaking in here makes speaking out there less painful.

The notion of radical honesty intrigues me. For a while I flirted with the idea of experimenting with it. For me, as for most I think, it would be unsustainable. I need my armour. The world feels abrasive enough as it is, without risking my raw self out in the social wilderness. A mediating screen makes it safer here: a right of deletion on the comments helps too! And then there is the self-censorship I can forgo here in this space I have made for myself. Many people in my life are not feminists, not activists, not interested. Many of them would think me strange or too radical or too me if I spoke as loudly out there as I do in here. And some of them would learn personal things about me that would hurt them to know.

So not everyone I know reads my blog. Some very important people in my life are not aware that it exists, and I actively keep it that way, precisely because what I speak about here is not part of the self I offer to them. Is this lying? Is offering one face to one person and another to the next, lying? Is the dishonesty of ‘I’m fine, thanks’ the same as any other deceit, if you say it often enough?

Are the unspoken things, untruths?

In which I speak its name

I used to say that I had ‘had a mental illness’.

I used to tell people when I was younger, I had depression. Or I used to have Panic Disorder but I don’t have panic attacks anymore. Or maybe, if I knew them well enough and trusted them enough, I would tell them that when I was nineteen I took several handfuls of pills because the pain was so bad I thought I’d rather be dead. And then I would say but everything is different now. That was a long time ago.

And it was a long time ago. Twelve years.

The first time I was treated for depression was more like twenty years ago. The first time I communicated profound suicidal ideation was around twenty-two years ago.*

I am thirty-one years old.

Currently, I am being treated for depression and anxiety. Both of these conditions are with me now, although they are certainly not debilitating. I am withdrawing from my medication, I am off the fortnightly roster with my psychologist. On the whole, I am sleeping and eating and living as a well person and feeling pretty good. I am definitely coping – although coping is not a good indication of how I am really, since coping is something I do well. I have adapted to a very high level of coping even throughout times of extremely low levels of wellness. It’s kinda my thing.

Within the last twelve years (the time period during which I got used to telling people I ‘used’ to be depressed), I have experienced at least two lengthy, major depressive episodes. One of those came in the year following the birth of Bean and crept up underneath the cloak of sleep deprivation, only to say ‘boo!’ right after she stopped breastfeeding. The other went largely untreated because I – and others – put it down to ‘workplace stress’. And the many shallower troughs? They became my personality. I am a troughy kind of person – or at least I was, before I was medicated.

All of this is my way of saying that I will no longer call myself someone who has ‘had a mental illness.’ Because this is not in the past. This experience is not something I can put down to a troubled late adolescence or even to the upheaval of postpartum life. Actually, this illness: it is chronic and it is almost always here and it is part of who I am. I live my life in ways designed to cover my gloominess and compensate for my fears. I go for days, weeks, or sometimes months without that energised soul-singing feeling, because my brain chemistry is such that joy doesn’t have a direct line: sometimes the connections are static-y or the service is cut because the bill wasn’t paid. And I get tired, and irritable, and lose concentration; and I get insomnia, anxiety attacks and mood swings.

No one can tell me why my brain is this way. It’s likely that early loss and trauma plays a part, as well as past and present physiological causes. Genes are a possibility – a significant one, considering my mother’s likely mental illness and her own mother’s apparent psychotic symptoms.  I don’t know how much of the chain of ‘bad’ mothering that stretches before me can be put down to illness but I would be surprised if the answer isn’t most of it.

Which is a sobering thought for a woman, who has a mental illness and is a mother of a daughter, to think.

But my mothering is all about changing how the story ends – and that starts off with telling it straight. Even if this is the hardest post I’ve had to write.

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*The last time, in case you’re wondering or worrying, was over ten years ago. In many ways, everything is different now. Even when I’m not okay I’m pretty much okay.