I’m writing this from bed, wearing a white balaclava that my mum sent me as part of a ‘cwtch* parcel’ that she posted after reading my last blog (*http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cwtch).
It came with a note that said ‘needs washing, smells of sweat and eternity’. I think it’s her perfume, but I like to think she meant unending time.
This makes me laugh.
Laughter has been coming much easier to me in the last week or so. A sense of humour is how I know I’m alright again. The pills are kicking in, and despite STILL having this bloody cold (the ‘hundred day cough’ as it’s been recently coined) I am generally feeling more sturdy and balanced. Thank you for all of your comments and messages of love and support.
I like to think that there is is a kind of underground collective of wonky bonces who can share and speak and seek each other out and strive for balance and kick against stigma together, even in our loneliness. We’re like butterflies in the heat, who can only fly if their body temperature is above 86 degrees.
The last blog provoked a discussion on Facebook about where depression comes from, in a clinical sense. I’ve also been talking to friends about the difference between depression and anxiety disorders, which has been interesting. Personally, whilst I do believe both things are an illness, I don’t think that means we are powerless within them. Neuroplasticity is real. I’ve experienced it most acutely having had therapy for post-traumatic stress (I had EMDR)
Whilst I mean this to be empowering, for those of us who find ourselves wanting to climb out of our own brains because of depression or anxiety I know that is can also be bewildering when you’re actually in it. Ruby Wax described as being like a block of concrete in that moment: immovable and grey. But either side of it there’s a lot we can do, and I’ve been finding that meditation helps me to build my ‘focus muscles’, so that when the memlins strike I have some reserves and can help reduce the noise.
There’s a Tori Amos lyric in ‘Hey Jupiter’ that goes like this:
“Thought I knew myself so well
All the dolls I had
Took my leather off the shelf
Your apocalypse was fab
For a girl who couldn’t choose between
The shower or the bath”
That feeling – of not trusting yourself enough to choose the most simple of things – let alone how to choose a healthy lifestyle, a partner, to have children, how to parent the children we have, whether to go to uni, whether to quit/take the job, etc. – is one I know very well. Fear of making the ‘wrong choice’ and the consequences that might come.
Fear has been something I’ve written about in songs since the beginning. The first song I ever wrote started with the lyrics:
‘Have to come away from the window, before I become part of the rain,
Want to be a part of the rain, falling down but making a noise.
Want to tell you my darkest dreams before I become part of the rain
Whilst I’m unoccupied by fear, I want you near to me’
I’ve spent a long time and energy on fear, it’s part of our primal fight or flight makeup. I don’t even especially care what other people think about me any more, not like I used to, but here I am, giving the fear and guilt more airtime because it’s a constant challenge to be mindful of it and the self-flagellation, which is born out of a suspicion that we are not good enough somehow.
I’ve banished guilt as much as possibly can, through mindfulness and checking in with others about what’s normal and healthy and what’s excessive. And I’ve started to wonder if guilt is another way of feeling like I’m in control, because it corrals all of my other emotions into one handy tank – but guilt is the big predator that ends up eating all of the smaller, colourful, exotic little fish.
I’d go as far as to say that there’s almost an arrogance to feeling guilty all the time, about everything. It’s a way of making yourself feel more important somehow. So it’s no surprise that in getting used to my new way of being – of holding things back for me and seeking more solitude and pleasure for myself before others – the guilt has returned, and the memlins say ‘you’re being selfish’. This is based on all the ‘shoulds’. It’s a pendulum.
I am very grateful for the childhood my family gave me. It was full of joy and adventure and discovery and unbridled encouragement to be creative and as honest as possible. There was also a heavy influence from growing up in a pretty intense church environment. For a long time I went along with things to please others. It’s impossible to like yourself if you feel like you’re lying all the time.
I went to church from the age of 4, and whilst I’m grateful to my parents and my church family for the love and the security this gave me, I think this it was too young to be exposed to ideology and be expected to fully comprehend it (NB: I’m not saying that young people should be brought up rudderless, without any value system at all, but I think freedom of choice and expression, to change one’s mind and not have all the answers to life are all imperative when we’re children.)
As a teenager I started to develop an understanding of my personal politics, which was based on the fundamental principle that everyone is equal. This became problematic for me when I realised that sexism was endemic. Women couldn’t be elders. And I was told that if I wanted to keep singing in the worship band, I would have to wear a skirt. At the time (early-90’s, massive tomboy) this was tantamount to identify theft. I refused to do it and was slowly but surely no longer in the band. The prevailing signal I kept receiving from that environment was ‘be perfect’. I knew that I definitely wasn’t, and hostility – towards myself and towards others – was the only way forward from this starting point.
I was angry with the church for a while. I felt like the feeling of being part of someone else’s game and the subsequent untangling lay at the heart (If something has to lie at the heart of it) of my mental health stuff. I wanted to be part of a people who based thinking and behaviour on equality, honesty, intimacy, acceptance and the healing power of love, but I didn’t know how to say it, and I don’t think it’s easy for anyone, so I just kept going and raising my arms.
For someone as sensitive to the will and influence of others, and as analytical around language as I was, let alone the will and influence of an omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient God, church became an overwhelming and dilemmatic place to be, and when I got to university at aged 18, I made the decision to stop going. I guess my spiritual life was front-loaded and I drowned under the weight of it.
I now know that church is a milieu that suits some people and not others, and that it doesn’t necessarily have a huge amount to do with real spirituality. I can choose to either be part of or step outside of. Perhaps church, like any institution, is an elaborate, language-centred invitation to a drama-game that positions adults as children in a ranked room full of flawed people who are often trying their best to apply imperfect doctrine to their fallible lives. If you’re in a place of analysing things at that kind of level whilst everyone around you seems to be finding peace, joy, love, and other fruits, you quickly feel like you don’t belong.
To me, God and religion are not the same thing. God is non-hierarchical, and is way more advanced than we can possibly comprehend (because we are more advanced than we can possibly comprehend, and we are all made from the same stuff.) It’s like trying to understanding the vastness of space or Bruce Springsteen’s back catalogue. Our minds just can’t do it.
But God is also the God of small things. Good snogging and laughing until you cry. Vinyl and log fires. Lie-ins and smile lines, and the guitar part in Some Girls are Bigger Than Others,. Hilarious taxidermy-gone-wrong, and the first time you spoke or heard your child giggle, and the last time you realised how incredible Romanesco brocolli is, and God is in the poems by Dylan Thomas and the smoothest skimming stone you ever threw, and all the ripples on the surface and all the leagues underneath.
And maybe, just maybe, God is also the darkness in us. Our flaws and shortcomings as well as the weakening of the rot and the raising up of new growth inside each of us each day. The learning.
God is in the underground collective of wonky bonces.
God is my depression and my delight.
iwasborntomorrow 