From outside in to inside out

Whilst already awake, I awoke again, to a thought.

I talk to much. And I am tired of listening to myself.

So I had a little chat with my neuroses and in an effort to talk less we decided to take a break from blogging for a while, or not from blogging as such because we’ll be hanging out here, but from talking so much. Because the less I talk the more I listen and the more I listen the more I understand (and the less I annoy those around me).

So thankyou to everybody who has ever visited here and especially to those who have returned to punish themselves more than once, - goodbye for now and goodbye incessant chatter (and hello perhaps enigmatic but ever so slightly scary smile . . .)

peter

Questions

Tuesday morning, a quarter to eight. I need a car today so have dropped Nicola off to swim before work and now I am in Starbucks waiting for the shops to open at nine. It’s quiet, peaceful, grey. Distant, distracted people pass the window absorbed inside their own worlds. I am here with it all, calm, relaxed.

I think about work and the feeling changes. MY heart beats, butterflies flutter inside and I become anxious, slightly rushed, edgy . . . Why?

It could be the coffee but it’s not. I sit still but cannot pin down the cause. It could be the unknown, the uncertainty. It could be the closeness to other people, being within their personal space and mine. I am suddenly uncomfortable and cannot settle.

So I think about a couple of friends of ours, Dave and Carol. They seem to have this open calmness about them, receptive, ready to observe things, think and then act. To act without uncertainty, or to accept uncertainty as part of it all. As I picture the two of them I see myself being the same way. The butterflies suddenly multiply and swarm through me along with a voice from deep within.

“What if I am wrong? Just like I am always wrong. How will I explain that?”

“What will people say?”

“More likely they’ll say nothing won’t they? - I am not worth it, who would want to talk to me, to risk being associated with a strange one like myself?”

I stick with it and the feeling subsides to a nervous emptiness.

The feeling I have at work.

Life 101

Do you ever feel that you are missing something? That if you could only see the world as it really is everything would make sense. When I am learning something new I’ll struggle for ages reading and listening and eventually, overnight often, it suddenly sinks in, I understand how it works. Sometimes all it takes is a different explanation or the clarification of one small point and then I get it. But I don’t get life yet. Everybody else seems to be racing ahead and it seems so easy for them, while I am still at the back of the class unable to begin because nobody has told me which end of the pencil to use. I am the small child in the race that runs the wrong way when the pistol goes because he is just reacting without understanding what the race is. In public I am the older child in the choir who is tolerated but asked to mime the words because their voice spoils the song. I am still playing at “houses” and “parents” and “worker”.

Are there others like me I wonder. Has the man I pass on the park bench decided just to sit there and wait until it all becomes clear? (I tried that six months ago - it didn’t work). The woman in the supermarket staring lifelessly into space while her toddlers scream their heads off, is she wondering what the point of it all is?

Are we the undiscovered poets of the world, or just the future inmates of the asylums?

(Life is never dull when you are a complete nutcase)

Relapse . . . again

6am. Suddenly it all seems so pointless again.

I wake up and my tummy is slowly writhing, my body cannot settle and my hands shake. In my anxiety my brain works overtime searching for a cause. I am surrounded by bills. They keep coming in and yet I am not earning enough to pay the ones I already have . . . I will lose everything . . . various comments a couple of people have made recently about my working part time come back to me - I am just malingering really aren’t I. They may have been joking but it is true, if they can do it why can’t I ? I’ve always known I am a pretty useless person, so why bother at all?

It would be so easy to give in, to find some excuse to stay in bed and hide. But part of me is still functioning sensibly. It occurs to me that the feelings, the anxiety came first, then I searched around and found a reason for them outside of myself. Holding on to this thought I get up and have a shower. All I have to do is carry on. I do not have to change anything, nothing has to be “better” that can all wait, just carry on. This way things will remain the same, if I hide it will all get worse and the cycle the blackness will begin again.

I get dressed and I write this. It helps . . .

ps if you are in the same position reading this then do what I - keep going, I have have lots of these setbacks recently (you only have to look at the similarity of this post to my last one). It may feel like walking slowly and confidently past a group of hungry lions when inside you just want to run but if you want to recover it is the only way, believe me.

Happy Pills

If I had a million dollars in the bank I don’t think I would have to take the antidepressants. I don’t. But I do have a wife and family and house that I love and would very much like to keep around me, so I take the tablets. Their purpose is to get me functioning again as quickly as possible in order to maintain those things that are important to me. They help restore my Serotonin levels and maintain them while my brain repairs the damage to my Limbic system.

Depression is difficult. The first thing the doctor says is take a break, get away from what is causing it so you can see the real world again. But how? I reached this point at them end of six months (at least) of gradual worsening which if you are self employed like myself means six months of your income gradually eroding away, bolstered at the time by using any savings as you try to maintain normality, not knowing what is wrong with you . . .

So here I sit, my doctor empathises with my situation but cannot help. Take a break he says. So I do, for a week, thinking in my all knowing way that I can manage.

It is not enough. As soon as I return to work, even part time now I immediately plunge back into the dark depths again. But worse because although my mood has bettered with facing up to what is happening and with taking the tablets, the anxiety that was always in the background takes over and I end up pacing the house at six in the morning, looking for an escape route and making plans to sell the house just to pay the debts. And so I end up back in bed hiding yet again.

When I resurface, reality hits. This is more serious than I would admit to, I am forced to look at my priorities, to pay the bills now or to take time to recover no matter what the consequences. I decide to take a proper break, to rethink things, to plan properly, to begin recovery.

This is the time that you thank God that you have friends and family.

So with the encouragement of my boss and work colleagues I plan to take three weeks off as soon as can be arranged (in a couple of weeks). I take out a loan to finance it, Nicola takes on more work and I borrow from my mum as well.

Now I can start to look within myself for the answer. Now that the tablets have helped me recover a little, I can hear that small voice in the back of my mind telling me this is the way to go, this is the path I should take.

You may have the most wonderfully luxurious penthouse in the most beautiful part of the world, but unless you are happy within all you are going to look for is the nearest window to jump from . . .  

Matthieu Ricard

  

We can cure you . . .

“You will get better” my doctor kept saying on that first visit, “We will cure you”. I know that he was just being positive to balance my negativity so that hopefully I would not throw myself off the nearest cliff (a possibility not as far from the truth a you may think), but afterwards as I sat in a cafe thinking about it my first thought was no I don’t want to be cured. This was something new, a part of me that had always been there but I had not realised, and I wanted to say hello first, to make friends rather than swat it like the mosquito on your arm that you kill without thinking.

Diagnosis can be a double edged sword. For some like myself it can be a revelation, suddenly everything clicks into place. I now was not a normal person who could not cope as I had always thought, but a depressed person who was doing the best he could, my past made more sense now. The danger comes if you use the diagnosis as a crutch, an excuse for not coping. I have a pregnant friend and it is amazing the things she cannot do now “because she is pregnant”. Like getting up and boiling the kettle to make herself a cup of coffee for instance! This route is to be avoided at all costs because then the diagnosis owns you, it takes control feeding your blackness as you spiral further down. No lets not go there . . .

Instead use this new discovery about yourself make friends with it understand this new part of yourself and use it, like a dog or a horse perhaps. Treat it kindly and it will return the favour helping you go places you could not otherwise get to, it’s intuition may even help you in times of danger but ultimately you remain in charge.

Having discovered all the artists that have suffered from depression, like Van Gogh I now see my depression as the artistic part of my nature pushing through to be noticed. It has made me stop and think . . . a good thing to do do occasionally I reckon.

But talking about stopping and thinking, do not forget the people around you - depression can be very inward looking and isolating but to cope you are going to need your friends, and I am so lucky to have Nicola alongside me . . .


Depression may be dark, but life will never be dull if it is part of you . . .

What is depression?

If you have ever lost somebody close to you be it person or animal, and been left feeling deeply empty and lost, and that life is pointless or too painful to continue with . . . that is depression. In the case of a loss that grief is a natural process and must be worked through in it’s own time. You will always feel it to some extent afterwards, I remember fondly all the cats I have lived with, but gradually you return and continue with life.

But in some people those feelings of hopelessness arise with no apparent cause. Why? I have no idea it could be genetics, it could be upbringing, I think it is probably a combination of lots of factors with chronic stress in there as well. We are all different physically and mentally and whereas some people may thrive under certain conditions others will not. Under stress some people will fly others will get stomach ulcers and a depressive person will descend into blackness. The limbic system of their brain which deals with emotional response becomes damaged leading to a drop in serotonin levels that causes alertness to reduce. Hence mood turns to hopelessness and you do not have the energy to even get out of bed.

Stress is a factor for me but I imagine it is different for everybody. And actually, having thought about it the stress is there for everybody, it seems to be part of modern life. So it is not the stress itself that is the cause but how I deal with it, how I handle it that is the problem.

And the way to recovery . . .




You know, depression is such an inward looking thing that I have not felt much like writing over the last couple of months, or at least not sharing, some things are just too personal . . . 

But “keep writing” said swallowtail in a comment on my last post, and she was right - it helps, thankyou.

Life in Black and White

Imagine waking up in the dark. Not the usual darkness though this is close and black like there are walls surrounding you, shutting everything else out. Looking up you can see a small circle of daylight way above you and hear everybody else up there. The blackness is pressing in and you need to get out. You could call out but people may just point and laugh at the daft situation you’ve got yourself in, and anyway you pride yourself on your independence and resourcefulness. So you start to climb.

It is not easy, the blackness is cloying and sucking and you have no energy. Just moving takes a tremendous effort but by the end of the day you make it and collapse at the top, exhausted but glad to be back with your family where you belong. It was a strange experience, one that you don’t fully understand so you do not mention it out loud, perhaps it was just some sort of virus you think as very tired to go to bed early that night.

Next morning you wake up at the bottom of the pit again. And the next morning, and the next. Each day you climb out or attempt to, for some days you are so tired that you fall asleep halfway out and just slip back again as you sleep. Eventually the weariness becomes so great that you cannot climb, you decide to rest at the bottom for a day to regain some strength. That helps the next day and for a while things seem to be improving but the effort of constantly climbing day after day with no respite, no sun, no joy, gradually becomes too much again and you sit at the bottom wondering what is wrong with you . . .

“Go to the doctor” said Nicola, “And tell him how you feel, the truth!”

So I did and it seems that I am suffering from depression. It also seems that I have been this way for a long time, most of my life probably and because of that have become very good at hiding it from others.

But it can be treated . . .

Memories

I have been looking at old photographs. I think it is good to look back occasionally to remember where I have been, the people I have met and the things I have done. I am lucky of course that nothing truly tragic has ever happened to me but even if it had I think like Dr Phil that we should still remember, should accept what has happened because it is these things that make us who we are now.

On the odd occasions when I do some digging in the garden I am always fascinated by the roots of all the plants growing down together twisting and mingling. One earth but a million different paths. We each have a taproot of experiences stretching back from now twisting and burrowing in and around everybody elses lives. We all live in the same world yet no two of us, no matter how close, share the same past.

Looking back I have also noticed that Nicola and myself are people that are not afraid of change. At least not afterwards! There are different kinds of people out there. We used to live in a small village and there were people that were happy to spend their whole lives there. Village life is special but it is not for me - I get the urge to break out now and again, to do something different, to go somewhere else. None of these changes would have been posible if I did not have a good root system of experiences stretching back through the past. It is these that have allowed me to grow up and out into the future each time . . .


I built a small shed once. It was painted green and had a roof of wild flowers and herbs. I have left it behind now but one day I’ll build another one.

Green

Saturday 6am

6am. The sunlight squeezed between the earth and a thick blanket of cloud just catches the treetops. The whole world is green. There is a wind too, warm and heavy with the promise of showers. Summer showers of big raindrops that briefly drench everything before turning to mist and silently return upwards and move on.

It must be 20 degrees already.

In Scotland it is 2 degrees and snowing. The world there is white.

Just lately, in the books I have read and the movies I have seen a message keeps coming across - it is all in the details but you must take a wider view of them.

There are patterns are forming.

Immortality

Saturday 5.23pm

Nobody wants to die. Some of us do so far too early, some linger on beyond their time. But no matter what, death is inevitable. It is the natural order of things, and without death would we know what life was?

Immortality should be life without death. The gods have it and evil super villains constantly strive for it and yet as befits something an evil person would lust after, it is cursed. You may be immortal but as the villains soon discover you do not escape death for it constantly taunts you - everyone around you will eventually die.

Most of my life so far I have shared with various cats. I remember and miss everyone of them. A small glimpse of what immortality would hold perhaps. So no, immortality is not for me. What I hope for is that death comes for me when the time is right, when I am ready for it.



The photo is Ranna.

One day I'll be vegetarian

Saturday 8.30am

I envy my cats straightforward views on life and death. If they are hungry, if it moves and if they can catch it - they will eat it. No questions asked, be it bird, rabbit or grumpy cicada. There is none of that tortured worrying that I go through.

But actually, lately I have noticed that my animal nature is not so far below the surface. When my youngest caught a fish recently (much to the surprise of both of us), it was only on the dock milliseconds before I had it whacked on the head and in a plastic bag ready to take home and cook. Youngest was a bit miffed though because he had wanted to keep it alive in a bucket to take to school!

And again yesterday when he dug up shellfish on the beach (Tuatua, a type of clam I think) it did not take me long to swap from "lets put them back" to "I wonder how you cook them?" Youngest will again be disappointed because he has plans to breed and sell them from home. Strong entrepreneurial tendencies there I think.

So I have no problems with wild food it seems, I just feel that if we are going to farm animals then we should treat them well and not as some sort of machine put here for us to use and then discard. The future lies in the organic movement I think along with education and knowledge helped by people like Jamie Oliver.

And vegetarianism? Well meat of course is the original fast food. The sheep and cows have done all the work of converting grass etc into something we can eat. But being vegetarian involves a lot more thought, cooking from the basics, and being the sort of person who deconstructs everything and anything, I think that this is the next step up in my cooking education and once the children have left home I'll be giving it a go.

Happy New Year

Saturday 1.56pm

When Nicola and I got married, nearly four years ago now, we knew we would be moving to New Zealand. So at the time we were already practicing by drinking as much kiwi wine as possible. For the wedding we had New Zealands answer to affordable bubbly stuff - Lindauer. And of course we are still drinking it today on special occasions. I like to write the occasion and date on the corks and have kept them.

Not sure why really.

2009 is going to be the year that I build on the successes of 2008 and so my catchphrases during the next twelve months will be :- "Consolidate" and "Keep hitting it until I hit it"


Life is never dull when you perhaps come across as a couple of alcoholics.

Everything Changes

Sunday 10.00am

There has just been an election here and whilst America is moving forward, New Zealand seems determined to put blinkers on and go backwards . . . .

I am not good with change, but change is inevitable. I think the trick is to be in balance with everything around you.

A fully grown tree is a beautiful thing and will have seen many things in its lifetime. It gets there of course by quietly bending with the wind and then springing back, all the time continuing in its purpose.

Balance and Vision. Two qualities I need to work on.

Dreams

Stardate 81012-727

System Sol, planet 3, colour Blue/Green, atmosphere 78% Nitrogen 21% oxygen, surface water present.

Preliminary report from planetary photoprobe atmos 563, low altitude fly-through. - Additional notes.

Whilst primarily to provide data for atmospheric colour analysis the photographs have provided some interesting additional observations worth noting seperately.

1. This planet supports intelligent life. Analysis of the photographs have indicated the presence of what appears to be an iron/silica based life form. Several subspecies are present inhabiting land, air and water. Little detail can be seen as yet but initial impressions are of an oxygen breathing creature with a hard exoskeleton and what appear to be limbs that use rotational motion for propulsion. Early observations of behaviour indicate low intelligence but interestingly the creatures have overcome this by forming a symbiotic relationship with a lesser carbon based lifeform. The dominant species appears to form a long term relationship with particular individuals, using them for feeding and grooming and carrying them around within its body cavity to provide this service, much as small child might do with it's favourite toy.

Further investigation is recommended

In my dreams I see a world without cars. At least in the cities. Country life would be more difficult without them but they would be left at the edges of towns, where all movement would be on foot or bicycle or perhaps by public transport. The streets could be dug up and planted with trees, carparks would become parks and those multistory ones would become public sports areas for football, netball and basketball etc. From the skies the green of the countryside would stretch unbroken within and through the cities. We would all be fitter and and having been forced to slow down a little, be much less stressed.

Just a dream? perhaps . . . .

Back Again

Saturday 3.45pm

It was dark inside but still I entered. I had to, my mission dictated it. "Track her down" a voice deep in my head kept repeating, "If you really want your previous life back, you have to do this". So I walked guardedly through the doors and allowed the atmosphere inside to enfold me. It was crowded. Deep repetitive music throbbed all around and coloured lights were everywhere. The hypnotic images on a row of large screens in the distance caught my eye and drew me onwards, inwards to the very heart of the room. Carefully moving through the crowd I kept glancing at the faces around me. Everyone seemed dull, empty, zombie-like almost, as only an overexposure to recreational drugs or in this case modern technology can cause. It was easy to succumb, I was already disorientated and moved ever inwards. Trying to get me bearings, I stopped briefly in front of one of the screens and of course, it happened. In an instant, as I stopped a woman locked on to me and began to thread her way through the crowd. Muttering under my breath "Keep moving" I did so and she lost interest once more, scanning the crowd around her for easier prey. They were everywhere, I could see that now. Predators, given away by their sweaty desperate expressions, unhealthy pallor, and too tight clothing they moved through the crowd picking us off one by one. This was their honey trap, and I was no match for it.

But as I turned to leave I noticed a gap in the crowd to one side, beyond the silver and chrome. Intrigued, I moved towards this still point amid the cacophony and realised I had found my objective. Ignored by those around her she sat on a table, aloof, quietly separate from all around. Approaching hesitantly I stood and watched her for a minute. Quietly dressed in a simple black number that contrasted sharply with the surrounding garishness, she seemed to be asleep. Unknowingly I had reached out a hand and as I gently caressed her skin she awoke instantly with a flash of light from deep within. I withdrew in awe, this was where real power lay.

Of course, having been seduced by the exotic charms of an Apple MacBook, I didn't buy it at Noel Leeming. I went to somewhere much less scary - Dick Smith.

Now all I have to do is work through the psychological trauma of spending so much money in one go . . . . 

Computer says no

My computer has died . . . . 

Changing things

Sunday 7.30am

In a way similar to Pherenike and also in this post, over the last four months or so I have been trying to get more organised, to find time for the things I enjoy and also to get my finances tamed. Because you know it doesn't matter how long you keep your head in the sand, the bills are always their when you look up and also, contrary to popular belief I am all grown up now and should be able to do these things.

I love self help books and this site has helped my keep on track and I feel I am doing quite well. But having been finally forced to think ahead it occurred to me that this planning and changing things to suit ourselves is what defines us as a species. Most animals seem more accepting and work with what is around them but the human race? if we are not happy we change it. But is it for the better? Not for the planet as a whole, that's for sure, although it will survive us. And not for ourselves either. I feel a change in attitude is required, we need to step outside our human centred view of things, to take our heads out of the sand and look at the bigger picture. I feel confident because a lot of people already do of course and in myself I feel the connection to the world is always just under the surface.

There is an election here soon and although I don't know much about politics I would like to vote for a party that stands outside of all the petty posturing and name calling that has been going on lately. A party that does take a wider view of things and is working for a change in our attitude to the world as a whole.

Picture is of the Beehive courtesy of Nicola.

Me and the Ducks

Saturday 2.48pm

It was lunchtime on one of those still, grey days. Just me, the ducks, and the park. There I was sitting eating my cheese sandwich, just idly thinking, feeling a bit down. "Wouldn't it be great" I thought "if I didn't have to go back to work this afternoon, If I could just sit here all afternoon like the ducks." But of course one day I will be able to, because I have thought this way in the past and things inevitably change. I sat thinking of the past for a while, the places I had been, the things I had done since - there has certainly been change, and for the better as well.
And a thought rose up through it all. When I do look back one day, what would I like to be looking back upon? Myself feeling miserable? or the experiences I had on my way there?

Obvious really.

Caught Between Heaven and Earth

Sunday 9.49am

Six thirty in the morning and I am outside in my pyjamas. The grass is sodden, chilling my feet as they sink in and the air has that wet coldness that goes straight to your bones, bypassing any flesh. It has been raining for a day and a night but has stopped now. All is still apart the dripping of the trees. Looking across, far, far to my right is the distant brightness of dawn. Above me the towering clouds still boil and churn with the last of the rain, whilst below me I can feel the earth, vast, solid, supporting. Caught as I am, pinioned between these two great forces I should not be able to move - and yet I can, sliding down and sideways into my morning exercise. Tai chi.

Finished, I stand again, just a few minutes later and in a different place. And there has been a change. I look to the distant dawn again, expectantly this time for that is where I am headed. No matter how black things look or what is against me, I can use that to move away to where I want to be.

The first step is to see.





Life is never dull when you have a vision.