*written in January 2022 for another blog*
Welcome back, and Happy New Year!
I’m sorry there's been a hiatus, but this lends itself quite nicely to this post. Firstly, because one of my goals for this year is to work more on things that make me, me, and things I want to focus on in my life, one of them being this blog and advocating for talking about mental illness.
But secondly because I, like a lot of people, have a mixed view on New Year’s Resolutions. They’re a great opportunity to refocus, but there’s also added pressure we need to do lots, and from a specific day or there's a sense of failure.
In reality, life is a constant learning process, something you chip away at every day, every moment. And because I have this view of gentleness, letting it be and seeing what happens, I don’t berate myself for not working on my blog, despite having just renamed and recreated it. Because, that’s life, basically. And it’s been a complicated time.
I had so many opportunities to write about things. I went back to uni, I went to Spain for a semester abroad, I’ve been battling bad mental illness. But that’s the irony of it, the difficulty I have with this kind of advocacy; the very thing I’m trying to talk about is something that makes it difficult to have the energy to work.
I really am so passionate about talking about mental illness more, and destigmatising. I come across at least one thing a day I could call out, whether it's someone saying they're 'going mad', calling the weather bipolar, or writing prescriptions of taking baths to mentally-well people via Intagram captions instead of meds and therapy to the sick. It's hard to summon the energy sometimes.
But, as I said, I want to try and make the effort this year. I’m going easy, but I think in the midst of being unwell I lose sight of the things I need. I spend hours on my phone instead of doing something creative, or going outside and breathing in the air. And don't worry, I'm not contradicitng myself here. I’m not saying this will help cure mental illness, believe me. But it may soothe the symptoms a little.
And these things, whether it’s expressing myself creatively, or having these little joys, really do help me pull through, and give more meaning to my life. I want to make time for things I made time for in lockdown, but have lost sight of since emerging.
This time last year, I was in a bad bout of depression and anxiety, brought on by drinking too much for New Years. It was this that finally prompted me to quit drinking, which was a great aspect of 2021 and something I’m bringing forward into 2022, and that I will continue to bring forward until I am in a better place to reintroduce it. So, I had a completely sober Christmas and New Years Eve, and I still was up, dancing the night away. Though it wasn’t an easy time, the lack of alcohol was not the problem, and I know that even though not drinking comes with many difficulties, and doesn’t make bad feelings go away, it would be so much harder to navigate if I was drinking.
The truth is that Christmas and New Year this year were difficult, and I’ve spoken to a lot of people who share similar feelings. I think every year I have the internal argument about whether I feel ‘Christmassy’, but this year the best way I can describe my experience is that I couldn’t step into it (sorry, Elton). I felt quite disassociated.
I had spent so long looking forward to it, hyping it up. It’s a time of year I really rely on to bring me some peace, joy, reflection, and focus of attention on what’s good; I step out of my anxious analytical mind and get a moment of presence. I had these expectations set for all the good times we normally have and traditions we do. I so desperately tried to plan myself happy. And when New Year's Eve arrived, I had similar expectations of reflective and emotional moments.
Yet, when Christmas morning came, when the New Year struck in in all its Hootenanny glory, I felt nothing. I saw people’s Instagram posts about profound reflections and learnt lessons and instead I had no energy, I was blank. I felt far away. This sort of existential observation is a big manifestation of my depression.
It just didn’t happen for me this year. Partly because of my own expectations and pressure, partly because the activities were slightly different, partly because of mental illness, and I had a lot going on. But you know what, that’s life. There’s no formula that will magically make you happy, it’s the luck of the draw sometimes. But it is just one day.
And the great thing is, despite me saying Christmas is my golden opportunity for greatness, it’s actually not. I have that opportunity every single day. I’ve got the rest of the year, a whole 364 days. And though I go into 2022 feeling, to be honest, pretty ill, I know I have those possibilities to find good amongst it all.
When the feelings I have feel so vast, so great, and I feel darkness surrounding me, sometimes the best thing to do (and I say this alongside getting plenty of therapy), is focus on that everyday joy, and be present.
I’m worried this smells of toxic positivity, adopting an optimistic attitude of good times to come without feeling it. I am in a bad place, and I let myself feel the entirety of it. I’m not afraid to say this to you. But it doesn’t seem right to not offer you a 'but everything will be okay' clause, and risk leaving you on a sadder note than when you joined.
I know that this knee-jerk reaction that follows every time I say 'I'm sad' is linked to this culture of toxic positivity and stigma of mental illness. But trying to re-shift my focus of attention and think myself into a slightly better frame of mind, even if I don’t believe it, might prove quite a useful exercise. Sometimes. I don’t know if I recommend it as general rule, I’ll leave that for the Cognitive Behavioural experts to figure out.
So, here’s to another year. Full of much of the same as any other, the messy stuff that makes us all human, something you can’t ‘New Year’s Resolve’ yourself out of. But that means we also get the same joys too. Rainy mornings, puzzles, coffee, poetry and Billy Joel will be getting me through the difficulties I know I’ll face this year. But I’ll be with me every step of the way, guiding myself through just another complicated year in this messy life.
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