Firstly, flights to and from Barcelona with my boyfriend (with a holiday sandwiched in between) has perpetuated my desire for travel and doused the flames of my flying fears!
Secondly, a move to university to study my passions of English Literature and History has done wonders in introducing me back to my academia, and is helping me re-discover myself in the solitude of my little cell on campus accommodation. In many ways it's been a flight of myself.
Thirdly, and not so warmly, there has been a sharp increase in my anxiety symptoms; one in particular breakdown a few weeks ago left me in complete agony, although thankfully with medication I'm climbing back up the ladder. I used to see mental illness as a flaw to myself. In many ways I probably still do. However, I look at some people and wonder if they've ever had to suffer the torments of their own mind. To be tortured by your own mind, your own thoughts, your own reflection of reality, is single handedly one of the worst things you can be subjected to. You are the perpetrator and the victim. But trying to work out which is which can contort you into such feelings of misery. And, I suppose, many of my upsets are brought on by my sensitivity and my empathy for others. To imagine myself without these tenancies would be like imagining a factory without workers. I need this ability to be able to sort myself out, and to function. I couldn't bear being without vulnerability, as it is what makes me human. I would rather have this vulnerability on show for people I care about to highlight my fallibility and my human nature, than to appear like a robot who cares for no-one.
However, I digress. One needs an outlet for emotions like a crab needs specially made shoes to aid its side-ways walking. So, I have ambitiously invested a vast amount of money (£2.40) in a sketch pad, to work on sketches and drawings for some comic ideas I have in mind. This may turn out diabolical, with lashings of violence and misery, but rather on a page than in my mind?
On another note, I was contemplating with my friend why people don't just die. People who cause such pain in your life and care only for themselves. I leave you with a helpful quote from said friend (ironically, one of the prettiest and daintiest creatures you could find) designed to help quell your violent intentions:
"My sister and I used to imagine ex-boyfriends, friends, people in a blood bath of agony. This was some time ago. The people we put in are probably all dissolved by now, so there's still room for your misery. It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside."
You raise such an interesting point about seeing your anxiety and depression as flaws in yourself. I felt this way about my anxiety and depression for many years, but more recently I've come to see them not as flaws but as teachers.
ReplyDeleteAnxiety and depression can be teachers if I learn their lessons. They are as much a disease of *how* I do things as of what I'm doing. I have an obsessive streak in my personality which means that, no matter how right something may be for me, I can pursue it with a fanaticism which changes that boon into a burden.
Ever since childhood I’ve been convinced that I want to make my life significant, meaningful, purposeful. This conviction has doubtless driven my perfectionism and my unrelenting need to achieve. Yet somewhere in my heart I know now that all I can reasonably do is to live my life: its significance is more likely to be discerned by others than by me, and I could say that the meaning of the whole is God’s department, not mine.
So gradually I've come to see my anxiety and depression as teachers, inviting me to observe what they make me do, and what they stop me from doing. I've learned many lessons from them about how I should live, and I'm grateful for their teaching.
And one more thing - you're so right about people with mental distress being blessed with extraordinary reserves of empathy and compassion. Surely empathy and compassion are the most beautiful qualities of the human condition and, in my experience, people with anxiety and depression have these qualities in abundance. So that's another thing we can thank our anxiety and depression for.
Christopher, I'm sure it will come as no great surprise to you for me to say simply: 'I wholeheartedly agree'
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Well, that proves it ... we Cranky Club members are extremely agreeable people :) x
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