I’ve been staring at the blinking cursor on a blank page for almost half an hour now. I’ve managed the first few steps in finally getting around to writing about my mental health; I’ve set aside time, away from distractions; I’ve made a fresh pot of coffee; I’ve gathered and read through some of the jotted down notes I’ve made recently, in preparation for this; I’ve turned on my laptop and opened a new document. And I simply don’t know where to start.
There’s a reason why I called this blog “The Erratic Pen,” knowing that despite my better intentions, despite having things I wanted to write about – cameras, photography, films and TV, mental health matters; maybe short stories, perhaps I’d get back to writing poetry even – I know that I am erratic in all of my endeavours. Laziness? I think perhaps sometimes, but really it’s down to my turbulent, unpredictable mental health. It impacts every aspect of my life, from basic self-care, relations with others (or, actually, the lack thereof) right through the gamut to hobbies and interests. The simple truth of the matter is that on most days I struggle to even manage those basic, everyday things that most people take for granted; washing, getting dressed, eating, going outside – these to me are often Herculean tasks that, if I can in fact manage them, require huge amounts of effort and energy, and often leave me too exhausted for anything else. “Just get in the shower, get dressed, get out for a walk,” – simple things you might think, and for years – decades even – that has been something many have said to me, advice given to me by GPs and mental health professionals. And of course those things can help – having a routine, self-care, interacting with others, exercising – there are numerous studies that found these things can and do aid with easing symptoms of depression. It’s that word though, “just,” a word that implies these things are trivial, easy, automatic. Oh how I wish they were.
The simple truth is that my mental health overshadows every aspect of my life, taints and distorts every moment, every interaction, every task. It has led to my living what I refer to as a “small life,” struggling and not always able to manage “basic” everyday tasks, such that there’s not much – if anything – left of me for anything beyond simply existing. The one thing I have been able to invest time and indeed myself in, is my photography; that has become my main interest in life, and has been able to flourish because it’s actually the means by which I cope with the outside world. It’s more of a coping mechanism than a hobby really, which is probably why I’ve been able to continue with it, invest so much of myself in it, when other aspects of my life, never particularly healthy, have withered away. The last fifteen years or so has seen the slow, continuous degradation of myself, and for the last few years my life has been…well, that “small life” I spoke of. But really the problems that have plagued me and reduced me to what I have become, stretch back beyond those last fifteen years, and in fact extend right back to childhood, to my earliest years.
That fact, that knowledge that my current problems aren’t really current at all, they are in fact problems that extend back to, or have their roots in the earliest years of my life, is another reason why I’ve found it so difficult to get around to writing about it all. To write about the last few years, I need the context of the last decade; to write about the last decade I need the context of the span of my adult life; and to write about that, I need to go back to childhood, perhaps even back to when I first started to retain memories, and given that my first coherent memory is of my first day at nursery, when I was three years old, and that I actually remember quite a lot from then on, is a hell of a lot of time and life to encompass in my writing about my mental health.
Do I need all of that background, all of that history, to write about my mental health? I think it helps for context, but really I think the problem is that I am a completist, and it feels wrong to just jump in and start writing without a full and extensive examination of my past mental health problems – which is really most of my life. It feels to me that it’s difficult to write about now without the context of then. And that feels like too huge a task, feels like not a series of short pieces of writing but a vast, volume spanning project, too huge, too extensive, simply too much to take on. And far, far too personal. Do I really want to reveal so much of myself, reveal more than I have ever let anyone see?
I wrestle with all of that, it bubbles away in some small corner of my mind, and all the while I struggle with the everyday. And I have been struggling – I’ve always struggled with life, with existence, but lately it has gotten worse, my low moods drag me lower and last longer, the better moods, the good moods, less frequent, less intense, and brief, so very brief. I’m incredibly lonely, but don’t know how to change that; I find it difficult to interact with people, I find that I keep getting it wrong, and over the years most of the few connections I have managed to make have faded, degraded, disappeared. I do have a few friends who I dearly, dearly love, but I rarely see them – my last interaction, in person, with a friend was over seven months ago. And that’s not particularly unusual, several months between interactions has become the norm for me. I find it hard to reach out to people, I feel awkward, feel like an imposition, feel like I’m taking up their time, being a bother. And what can I offer, when most of what I have to talk about is how badly I’m doing, how hard I find life? And so I shy away from reaching out to people, and the longer I go without seeing someone the harder it becomes to try to make that connection. I hate where I live – a bedsit with shared bathroom and toilet facilities, said facilities adjoining my hovel, and as I’m sensitive to noise that can really bother me. It’s cramped, and very often difficult to get using the facilities as in the last few months there’s a tenant in the room below mine who constantly uses them, takes five or six showers a day, some lasting for over an hour, is in the toilet many, many times a day and during the night, waking me usually at around two and again around four…and then he’s in for over an hour later that morning. He’s heavy handed and stomps about, bangs doors, annoys me. My home doesn’t feel like a home; a bedsit, basically a small room with a bed and some kitchen units, is meant to be temporary accommodation, a stop gap, but I’ve been here for a decade, unable to afford somewhere even half decent to live, my enquiries for help, for assistance, to find somewhere else to live have gone unanswered, ignored. Those are just two things – my loneliness and my living conditions – that I know are having a further negative impact on my already fragile mental health, things that I know if they improved would be of real, tangible benefit to me. I just don’t know how to facilitate those changes, it’s not something I seem to have the ability to deal with. I’m at the point now where, on most days, I cry each morning, and at times during the day, and most nights – it’s the loneliness, it’s my living conditions, my frustration, my failed attempts to get help – it’s all of those things that add to an existing, long term mental health condition. An as yet undiagnosed mental health condition, as during the last eight years as I have sought help I have been bounced around inside the mental health system, being told it could be this, it could be that, but ultimately receiving no help, no treatment. That’s something else I want to write about, something I’m still trying to get help with, because it’s something I need to do, despite being told by a psychiatrist last August that “maybe this is just the way you are” I refuse to believe that how I am now, how much I struggle, how difficult I find existence, is just the way things will always be.
It’s these things, amongst many other issues, that act like a slowly crushing weight, pushing me down, making even the smallest task so difficult to undertake. It affects my ability to get anything done, much less any writing; those last few paragraphs have been written and edited over several months, maybe six months after I wrote the first few paragraphs, and whilst yes, I am once again writing I cannot say if I will be able to write again tomorrow. I never know what I’ll be able to do tomorrow, my moods are that erratic. The last few days I’ve struggled to get out of bed, to eat, to exist; although today I managed to shower, get outside, get some exercise around the local park and even managed to get some groceries, I found that incredibly difficult. That’s something I want to write about, just how difficult I find going outside, being around humans – and again, there’s another thing to write about, how I generally refer to people as “humans,” and do so mainly because I don’t think of myself as human; I feel detached, separate, other, an intruder in the human world each time I step outside. Do you see the problem? I write about one thing and then another issue raises its head, and I feel I need to write about that too. It can be overwhelming, and to be honest, right now, when I’m finding basic self-care somewhat beyond me I really don’t have any mental capacity left for feeling overwhelmed about these more abstract things. Simply existing in this diminished, less-than-human, not-really-living condition is proving hard enough.
Perhaps the only way to do it is just to dive in, and let it all take its own shape and direction, let it be non-linear; it doesn’t have to be point A to C via B, it may – and will, most likely – jump all over the place. It might be confusing. It will certainly be very dark, very bleak. And decidedly, frighteningly open and honest. Because there are many things I want to write about that no one knows about, the full, dank depths of the darkness. Even those closest to me – and there aren’t many of those people left, another thing I want to write about – know so little about just how much I struggle, how hard I find it to exist, and have done, for decades, my entire life really, with hardly ever a moment of respite. A huge undertaking, hence perhaps why I stutter on the brink of this journey. But it is a journey I want to take. I think it will prove cathartic. I think it will let those few around me gain a better understanding of not just who I am, but why I am the way I am. I also hope that it might resonate with someone out there, someone else who is suffering, and perhaps be of some comfort, scant as it may be, to know that they aren’t alone in feeling the way that they feel. And perhaps it will make someone take notice, because for so long I have felt ignored, overlooked, belittled even, by the mental health services I have reached out to in search of help. Perhaps by writing about it all I’ll finally be listened to, I’ll actually receive that help I’ve been struggling to get. I’ve tried my damndest to cope on my own – I’ve had to, because despite years of trying I simply haven’t gotten anywhere with the NHS. I can’t do it on my own, I’m not ashamed to admit that. I need help. And perhaps with that help I’ll gain the means of escaping from my small life and finally, after so long, actually begin to live and not to simply exist.
Since writing this I have been accepted for and started Group Psychotherapy, and whilst I’m quite sceptical about that, and unsure if it’s a good fit for me, I am willing to see if it can help in some way. It is, after all, the only treatment I’ve been offered – aside from the many, many antidepressants I have prescribed over the years – none of which have been of any help. Many issues still remain unexamined, overlooked, ignored even, but I am hoping that whilst engaging with these services I’ll be able to address some of the heretofore disregarded symptoms and resultant problems.
The Erratic Pen 
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