After the storm...

Well, I woke up feeling better, but I still feel physically exhausted for some reason.  I couldn't hack walking to the Turner - so having nearly got there we walked back again.  I went to see Denise and had a good chat with her, and that made me feel a lot better.  I drank a good deal today, about a bottle - which is more than I've been drinking recently - indeed in the week before Edward's funeral I drank almost nothing.

Today I was torn between thinking it would help and that it would make me more depressed.  Finn kindly offered me some dope... not sure if that's the answer, don't really like skunk.  I began to go a bit down hill in the early evening - uncharacteristically overwhelmed by having to make pizza for 7 people - but it all worked out in the end...think I'll have cold pizza for breakfast tomorrow.  I am not feeling brilliant, but I do not currently want to kill myself...so that's a bit of a result.

This morning M attempted to console me about my novel and said it "needed something" towards the end.  I then read him the two major scenes that change the book - and noticed that one of them was a bit repetitive - and that both of them made him laugh in places.  So that's good.  He said I had got the man's viewpoint very well - the wriggling out of things, the not thinking far enough ahead, not taking the woman's needs into consideration.  So that was gratifying too.  Perhaps I will find an agent soon.

When I feel like this....

I've been down, but now I seem to be at my lowest... Suicide is always the last thing on my mind, I always say "I want to see how it ends" - but just now, as far as I am concerned it can go to hell... they can all survive without me, they will have to not have me holding up the sky for them.   Of course I'm not suicidal, just incredibly angry that life is being such an utter bugger, that my ideas of life's "ups and downs" seem to have erred on the side of the positive or over-optimistic - and the rollercoaster seems to be racing for the bottom.

There hasn't been a sudden shock, like divorce or bereavement - sad though it was to lose Ed - and in some ways our financial problems have temporarily slightly eased up - so why now?  The mysteries of depression.  I started crying in the Belgian Bar at lunch time - I don't know why.  It wasn't the latest blow - that some one wanted us to reduce our invoice by £1,000 - I felt calm enough about that.  It's only money after all.  I went and got a short notice appointment with the GP.  He said he wouldn't prescribe anything, wanted to do a thyroid test on me (why?) and to get me some counselling - I cried in his consulting room, he passed me the tissues.  He was very nice, he's a good doctor that one.

It's a bit like the depression I had last month over the advertising - almost exactly the same dates of the month too - residual hormones? I tried to talk to Mark about it, how I felt he never noticed me, or anything about me. He said it was because I had pushed him away so much in the last few years.   I said I thought things were getting better - he started to talk about himself and how he felt.  I said he would never know how I felt if he always talked about himself.  He asked me if James was always sympathetic.  I honestly can't remember - but I never had these real deep sort of depressions when I was with him.  Afterwards, yes - and the beginnings of feeling low - but nothing like this.  Is this the same depression as the 2010 one? Or a separate one?  I suppose it derives from the same circumstances - money, relationship problems, feeling unloved, by M and the boys to a great extent.  And the lack of success with the book is peculiarly awful.  I know rationally that it still has a chance of finding an agent, that it may well find one imminently - but there is just this awful fear that all this work and time and energy will have been wasted - no, not wasted, the conventional wisdom tells us "nothing is wasted" especially if one is involved in some sort of creative activity - but it doesn't stop me from feeling like screaming and shouting and curling into a ball and crying and completely freaking out.

What he says is unfair - we are together a great deal - in the kitchen, at meal times, in the evenings, we went out for a drink today - we have been in the car driving places together.  We spend considerably more time together than most couples because we both work from home. I "push him away" because I'm trying to work, I could just as rationally accuse him of trying to sabotage my work.  He doesn't notice because he doesn't notice, or he doesn't comment because he wants to avoid trouble.  So we return to the eternal (well, long-standing) question: is that it then?  Is this my quota of happiness for this life? Will things ever get better?  Would I be better off emotionally out of this relationship - either with someone else or alone... The trouble is he misjudges thing badly - he accused me of having been "influenced by" A's depression.  I was really cross - she's bi-polar, heavily medicated and almost supine.  I've got "exogenous" depression - and I'm getting up and getting on with things despite it - just crying when I begin to feel too horribly sorry for myself.  But I found it really hurtful that he felt I was somehow not authentically, individually depressed, but apparently following some weird girlie fashion for it.

I think this is the first time I've recognised how angry I feel when I'm depressed: maybe I'm making progress.

Tired...What do women want?

So why write, why not just curl up in bed?  Dunno really - just the need to be, to feel, to sense something was done or created today.  It wasn't a bad day, I had my hair done, had a long talk with my hair friend Marion - chiefly about the friend who introduced us and is going through an incredible down - clearly her medication which she's been on for 20 odd years is out of balance.  Had a nice lunch together in a cafe in a craft centre in the middle of the countryside beyond Sittingborne... a feast of reason and a flow of soul indeed, and all this on one glass of Biddenden Ortega.... But the last few days post funeral have been tiring - the "lovely trip" to Hampton Court Flower show was exhausting - as walking more than 4 miles in 30 degree heat tends to be - even when interspersed with sit downs and cool drinks... I don't like floral trade shows, it was v. sweet of A to get me a ticket, but liking plants and gardens is not the same as liking flower shows, and she was in a desperate state, and required a lot of common sense to counter it - and she was not able to listen to it.

In the scheme of things, which is worse, to be a  depressive for 20 plus years, or to have a more critical sudden condition like cancer?  I don't know, but it's easier to deal with people who aren't bi-polar, since not everything they say is the product of complex emotional states which they don't have much insight about.  A wouldn't really be up for a talking cure at the moment - even if she were interested in it, which she's not....so, on with the cocktail - the chemical cosh.  There are times when her thinking seems truly deranged - or demented.  It is so sad.  We feel impatient with her, because objectively her life is about 200% better than it was 2-3 years ago.  She is no longer a carer since her father is no longer ill, he's dead, and her mother is in a home, not living with her winding her up, her youngest son who was also very ill with OCD has got a job and found a flat... my God, if my life had improved like that in the last few years I would be skipping about full of the joys - or at least doing my equivalent.  But poor old A is just not up to any kind of enjoyment, cannot cope, is seething with anxiety - and apparently becoming increasingly helpless.   This is the woman who is jittery with anxiety because she has booked two holidays this year and doesn't know what to pack.  For f's sake - it's the Med, in summer, you're 56 - what did you pack the last 30 times you did that?  Well, pack it again!

I am pleased with the hair - and I enjoyed my time with Marion...but I am just so tired.  I cannot believe that if my life improved by 200% that I would not be feeling considerably more cheerful than A.What would my life feel like if it were 200% better?  200% more money would be nice - although that wouldn't be an absolutely massive income it would be closer to a living wage.  200% more creativity and productivity would be excellent - 200% more emotional fulfillment - or do I mean love?  Hmmm.  Actually, since 3 of her problems were solved her life is 300% better - and if we were talking about 300% more money that would be really quite decent.  But 300% more emotional engagement - how would we measure that exactly, and 300% of what?  There have been small steps towards improvements I suppose it's futile to expect a great improvement.


What do Women Want?
...is a new book that has come out by Daniel Berger, whom I heard speaking on Woman's Hour this morning.  Apparently what we want is variety, excitement and not to feel repulsed by our husbands.... Apparently men are far more loyal and faithful and less likely to roam.  I think I ought to read it - I am thinking of writing a really anti-romantic novel some time in the not too distant.  Love is a very mysterious beast - and its comings and goings seem quite unpredictable.  It is unbiddable? - love that one ought to feel, ie spousal love, cannot be ordered to be present, if it goes, it goes.  Does it come back?  Is it driven out temporarily and will hang around and plot a chance to return. Who knows?  And if this is the case, why bother to even consider starting again. I've spent a lot of my life arming myself against disappointment, maybe I've finally succeeded in becoming less vulnerable.