November 4th, 2021

Ok. If you’ve been here before, you will know that I suffer from depression. I think I owned that much.  Kind of. Whilst this diary is predominantly about my journey towards physical fitness, I do from time to venture into the state of my head.  I have posted on the subject before, I no longer care not to – I guess because I can now admit it to myself, and it’s always easier to talk to strangers, or hide behind the screen.  Maybe it’ll help someone else to get help.  I hope so. Plus – healthy living isn’t just about physical health, it’s also about mental health.  After all if our mental health isn’t on top form, our physical health will suffer too, no?

So, the following post, and indeed the following 4-5 posts, are an update on the current state of affairs in my head, rather than my struggles with exercise.  Read, dismiss it, laugh at it, take it with a pinch of salt, learn from it, disregard it, make of it what you want.  It is what it is, and that’s what it is. I’m posting these in order of events, and also several weeks after the events. Needless to say, if like me you suffer from depression – you may recognise the signs, and I hope like me you’ve been able to work through your latest triggers and get better.

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I’ve been thinking about it the other day – my sleeping dragon.  

If my depression is a sleeping dragon, then what’s my anxiety?  The closest I can describe it to – is one of those horrible toys – those clown heads and like, that reside in a box, secured to a spring, and every now and then, they pop out unannounced scaring the hell out of you.   You know it’s there.  You know what it does.  You know it will pop out at some point.  You think you’re prepared.  But when that f****r pops out of the box, it still scares the shit out of you.  Flooring you completely.  I’m finding it easier to control my depression (well, at the moment at least), than my anxiety. 

That b***h, I don’t seem to be able to control at all.  She’s like a Tasmanian Devil from those looney tunes cartoons – totally unmanageable – does what she wants, when she wants, however she wants.  And it’s not pleasant. 

Between the depression and the anxiety, I feel like I’m living in constant fear that something will trigger my depression again and this time round I may not be able to get out of it.  That I will completely spiral out of control, end up on serious doses of meds and possible maybe even end up being sectioned.  That last outcome may seem far-fetched to others, but I know my personality traits and I remember some of the stuff I got up to during the last episode.  My fear is that the combination of next serious depressive episode combined with my ‘temper’ fuelled behaviours, and now sprinkled with increasingly frequent anxiety explosions, will send me into a complete spin. 

I don’t know why I’m bringing this up.  Well, no, that’s not true.  I do. It’s because I’ve been thinking about it – again.  Or rather, it’s because I think about it frequently, almost constantly.  I am forever keeping tabs on myself. How am I feeling? Why did I cry today?  How do I feel about engaging with my friends?  Do I feel like crawling under a rock and hiding?  Do I want the world to f**k off and leave me alone.  Do I want it all just to be over?

It must be blissful for people who don’t suffer from these conditions – to go through life, never thinking about them, never worrying that something will set you off once again – and once again you’re going to give up on your friends, your life, wallow in self-pity, cry yourself to sleep, cry yourself awake, cry yourself throughout the day, hide yourself away from the world.

I’m feeling happy at the moment.  Things are good, better than good – I want to say unexpectedly so.  In reality it’s because of all my hard work and effort, but when I wasn’t in a happy place – I couldn’t see how life could ever be anything than what it was then.  I couldn’t envisage where I would be today – so much so, that for the first time today I expressed a thought I didn’t ever think of before.  There are still a few things I need to sort out in my life, and for the first time in perhaps ever, I though that this one other thing may not be beyond realms of possibility.  I don’t ever recall thinking that before.

I guess that’s why I wanted to bring this up.  Because although everything is good, seems fines – it’s all just a surface.  Underneath, my ankles are shackled with a chain to a slumbering dragon – and that fear that one day it’ll wake up again, is a constant presence in my life.   I can’t forget that.  I’m not able to forget that.  And for those who are sharing these chapters with me – and have similar history – I understand, and you’re not alone. There are others out there.  My happy game-face (our happy game-face), will be an ever permanent cover for an ever present danger.