Tag: Mental Health

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Made it

You know when people tell you to see what difference a year makes? But you struggle to do that because even though in hindsight a year goes by really quickly, in reality it’s a long time where all manner of things happen? It’s so annoying when those people are right.

At the start of this year, I was on my arse. I’d just come off the back of a shitty end to 2021, had just tanked an exam I had hyped myself for and was predicted an A in, and was going through the motions in a dead-end job that I despised.

I won’t make light of proper mental health issues and say ‘I had this’ and ‘I had that’, but I was low. I was on the floor. I couldn’t see how this year that was only a few days old was going to be any better than the last two stinkers that had gone by.

Eight days into it, I spent a really good day with a mate at the football. Accrington away. Had it not been for the freezing cold and the turgid 1-1 draw, it would’ve definitely been in contention for my favourite away day, given the fun journey, the food and the fact it was the first away game I’d done since Covid. After that, I started feeling better. For a bit, at least.

Then my head was up to its old tricks and produced what I’ve now named (after deliberating in literally the last few seconds) the Great April Wobble. I wrote about it then, I won’t subject it to you again now. But it was bad. Crying alone in the loft bad.

Then it got better again. Then it got worse again. Then it got better again. That seemed to be the rough pattern for about four or so months after that. Had I not been so open about it with one friend in particular, it may have again been a case of ‘then it got worse. Then worse. Then worse’.

I’ve never been that open with anyone. And we helped each other through our own rough patches. Whether it was at the pub or in the sauna at the gym, it was like therapy (and way better than actual therapy, at that).

I spent the summer doing a different job. I didn’t despise it like the last one, though at two days a week and crap money it was hardly anything to be excited about. But I think if I didn’t have that extra time to myself and had instead carried on mindlessly pushing trollies around Tesco, I’d have accepted that as my fate. Instead, I had time to finish what I was doing – getting back into journalism – and apply for jobs.

As summer ended, I kept getting the feeling that it was only a matter of time. I was getting exam results back that I had never thought possible. I was getting job interviews (not actually leading to anything but before then interviews were like gold dust). I felt ready to tackle the real world.

But, as the pattern goes, it ebbed again. The job rejections were piling up. I crashed my car and had to use the money I had saved for a holiday to sort that out. On that holiday I then had my wallet stolen.

All trivial things that can happen in life. But when they’re thrown at you in the space of a few weeks, it feels like life has got it in for you.

But then comes the bit at the end. The bit I was told to wait for at the start of the year. In the space of about four days, I went from applying to a job to finding out I’m moving away from the only town I’ve ever lived in at the start of next year.

Journalism is the only job I’ve ever wanted to do. I’d argue it’s the only thing I’m half-good at, even though I still have to deep breathe before phone calls and convince myself of the existence of certain words.

To be back doing that is a great feeling. To be going back to Accrington (as well as other places in East Lancs), the place where 2022 took its first good turn, is weird. Funny how the world works.

2022 has been strange. It’s been better than the two years before it combined. But it’s also had moments lower than anything I experienced then. I’ve made new friends, strengthened friendships with people I’d known for years, moved on from others.

I’ve gone from working at Tesco, to making chemistry kits in warehouse, to being a journalist again. I’ve gone from crying in the loft and dropping my AirPods in a bucket of piss (did I ever mention that on here?) to getting NCTJ Gold and having five of my closest friends fly out to Lisbon for my birthday.

I’m not on top of the world. I’ve learnt it’s better not to be, otherwise it’s too big of a fall. But I’ve gone from being on the floor at the start of the year to sitting comfortably at the end of it. I’m happy with that.

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The job that drained me

Back when it was fun and I did fun things to have fun.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. Like, anything. Whether that’s on here (as if that’s even a surprise anymore) or for Last Word, where I’m still clinging on despite not having done anything there for about four months.

Been a bit of an odd one, so far, 2022. In many ways, it’s just been an extension of the absolute shitshow that 2021 was. In others, it feels like I have actually made progress on the things that made it such a shitshow in the first place, although actually producing something to prove that is apparently a difficult task.

Truthfully, I feel drained a lot of the time, which is why when I do get a sudden surge of productivity I try my best to scrawl my thoughts down on here before it evaporates and I end up reverting back to mindlessly swiping through Tik-Tok.

But I used to be better than that. I used to be able to write all day, every day. Very few breaks. Not eating my first meal or taking my first drink well into the afternoon because I was so focused. Admittedly, that’s not great either – you should eat and you should drink before 3pm so please do that – BUT the point I’m making is that I COULD do it, whereas now it feels like a mini-achievement to have had some breakfast and dragged myself to the gym by that time.

It would be easy to blame all of that on Covid. Not that I had it, because evidence would suggest that having gone through three pandemics with nobody in my house contracting it, I am immortal. But to blame the pandemics themselves? Yeah, a little. When it manages to stop the thing you write about most (football, if you haven’t kept up), it’s a bit of a struggle to be arsed about tapping away at the keyboard for six hours a day.

But I can’t pin it all on that – and I don’t. I blame my old job.

I never wanted to say what it was while I was actually working there, but I ‘revealed’ (big exclusive for the seven people that read this) that I had been working at Tesco as a picker for over a year.

Before I started there in January 2021, I had managed to keep my motivation with writing up throughout Covid. It had had its dips, but that’s normal. But the longer 2021 went on, the more I could feel myself slipping away with it.

As it would turn out, no matter whether you’re still getting 7-8 hours of sleep, waking up at 4.30am to go and work a pretty physical (it’s not exactly heavy lifting but you’re on your feet a lot) job that you absolutely despise doesn’t really go hand-in-hand with then coming home to write for three or four hours. And the more you try to keep it up, the less you want to do it.

Obviously, Tesco was my main job at the time, and by the time it came to having to make a choice, I also had my journalism training with the NCTJ to throw into the mix. Unfortunately, proper-job money and training towards no longer having to drag my ass to Tesco beat the thing that I really wanted to do, which was to carry on the (sorry, I’m going to boast) ‘pretty good’ work I had been doing managing Last Word.

And so life at Tesco continued. On paper, it’s a very easy job. You do what the little machine tells you to do. For eight hours a day. That’s standard. But when you’re in a small-ish shop with not a lot of customers, and colleagues that you barely talk to, you feel isolated. And for me, complete isolation like that is bad, because then it means I’m left alone with my head, and that means I can think about absolutely EVERYTHING.

Particularly when I’m tired from having to haul myself to that hell-hole every day, ‘EVERYTHING’ can consist of some pretty crap shit. Thinking back to the old job I actually enjoyed; worrying whether I’ll ever get another job like that; whether I’ll ever get out of Tesco at all; thinking about all the stupid things I’ve ever said; the things I had the opportunity to say to people but never did; all of the embarrassing moments from school; all of the things that DO NOT MATTER, but while you’re stuck in the cycle, your brain will convince you are the most important things at that moment.

And that’s what it was like – for the whole 16 months I worked there. Thinking like that, constantly, is draining. I never thought about it before, but I find it baffling how much of your energy in a day can be consumed by your brain just functioning. It left me with no energy to do anything else. All just for a job. A job I never wanted to do in the first place and knew that I wouldn’t be staying in forever (however much my brain tried to convince me otherwise).

I’ve been out of that place for a month and a half now. I have another job which, while on paper should be much more boring, I find I’m enjoying way more because I’m not bound by the dismal hours and dreary environment of before. I’m more attentive, my sleep is better, I can see my mates more (shoutout to them for finally getting a WhatsApp group together, too).

But the buzz for writing still hasn’t come back, fully. Yes, I’ve sat here for 20 minutes and smashed my face into the keyboard to produce whatever nonsense this is. But writing about football – the thing that I used to be able to do for hours on end – I want it to be like that again. Like 2019, where it was my job, my hobby and the only thing I wanted to do.

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Feast or Famine?

The last time I graced you all with my presence on here, I spoke about the short and sweet stint I had unloading all of my negative thoughts to a therapist/counsellor/paid listener.

I also said that it had worked – which was true to some extent because I did feel better at the time. I had less brain fog, I felt happier and, crucially, the thoughts I was having had gone away.

Well, now they’re back. Which sucks.

I’m not ready to release to the internet what the problem thoughts are. Some people know and they’ll instantly be able to put two and two together. Maybe one day when I’m famous and they finally make that already long-overdue sitcom about my life that I imagine episodes of in my head on a daily basis, the wider public can be made aware of my deepest, darkest secrets. But for now, all you get is a metaphoric description.

I’m actually surprised I never thought of it this way before, considering how much overthinking I do. But walking around at work last week, I came up with probably my most accurate long-winded description of something ever (I can promise you there is plenty of competition for that).

The scenario: you’re reminiscing over something you shouldn’t be reminiscing over any more.

I’ve started to think of the reminiscent thoughts as some kind of monster. Or beast. Or angry dog. All metaphorical, obviously, therefore you can take your pick as to what it is, but monster was the thing that came to head the first time around.

You’ve had this monster inside your head for years now, and every now and then it wakes up, demanding to be fed. It keep snapping at you and bearing it’s teeth, letting you know it’s hungry. Do you feed it, or let it starve?

I used to be pretty good at letting it starve. I didn’t want the monster anyway so I was happy to leave it be until it went back to sleep. Every now and then, during a moment of weakness, I might have given it a snack, just to ensure it didn’t die completely, but ultimately that was just to shut it up so I could carry on with my life.

The problem is, if you continue to starve it and just throw a few scraps at it every now and then, every time it wakes up, it’s hungrier. It wants more. In this metaphorical case, it wants you to sit there, reminisce, beat yourself up, feel guilty, overthink. If you do that, you feed it. Therefore it grows stronger and stays awake for longer. But you do it in the hope that when it does go back to sleep, it’s nourished enough to stay down for a while.

I find there’s different ways to wake it up too, just like there’s different ways to wake up in real life rather than this made-up, in-your-head bullshit. When you’re in a deep sleep and you’re woken up suddenly, like someone shaking you, you could act aggressively. Whereas if you’re allowed to wake naturally, it’s a more gradual process.

This is the same. When I decided to have those therapy sessions, it was because the monster was aggressive. It had been asleep for ages, possibly more than a year, which is the longest it had ever been. But it got a violent jolt, and suddenly it was up, realising how hungry it was and making that very much known to me.

This time around though, it’s been allowed to wake of its own accord. That’s allowed me to judge better what I want to do with it, which was, after cautiously throwing it some bait for a few days, giving it what it wanted. Hopefully, that will keep it satisfied for a long while.

As much as I resent the monster, I don’t want it to die. That would mean losing its memory completely, and I think it’s fine to think back to things as long as you can be in control of how you feel about them. Therefore, that’s what I need to learn. How to be in control. How to make the monster sleep and wake on my terms and not its own.

The monster is still awake at the moment, it’s still hungry and I’m still feeding it. Hopefully, when it’s had enough, it’ll piss off again back into the dark abyss of my brain and not come out for a while. I’m resigned to the fact it will happen at some point, but I hope it gives me the break I need.

This has been really weird to write. I’ve always been pretty open about my mental health but I’ve always done it in a real way, rather than talking bollocks about monsters and dogs. I also don’t plan anything I write; I just type and see where it takes me, so if there’s a big gap in the ‘story’ and something you don’t understand, let me know and I’ll be happy to explain it and add it to the piece if it makes sense to.

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Peaks and Troughs

Evening all. Like the last few times I’ve been on here, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Just a quick one tonight, I promise. You’ll want to save all of your reading energy for the 2021 review in the works!

My first year of blogging, evidently, hasn’t quite gone how I planned it to. All of the ideas I had at the beginning never came to fruition for one reason or another. One of those I want to address.

My mental health has been shot to pieces this year. I’ve spoken about it on here before and it’s been fluctuating massively pretty much all the way through 2021.

Just over a month ago, it hit the lowest low I’ve ever experienced, so after six or seven years of just ‘plugging away’ and ‘getting on by’, with a little push from some people, I decided it was time to actually do something about it.

For the last month, I’ve been ‘seeing’ a therapist. That comes with added inverted commas because I haven’t actually met the person as she works in the US. But through a site called BetterHelp, they can help people all over the world using either chat rooms, video calls or voice calls.

Even though it’s only been a month, I’m already feeling a lot better. A lot of that will be because the wave naturally came to an end. But given how big a wave it was, I know there’s a chance I could experience one like that again, and that’s where this is helpful.

Yes, it’s helped me in the moment, but I’m also going to be way more prepared in the future when this happens again. And I know it’ll happen again. Of course it will. It’s all ups and downs. But going into those downs with a better knowledge of how to cope is going to make them much more manageable – properly manageable, not hoping that a two-hour walk will magically clear the fog in your head.

Everyone suffers from these days. I’m no different to anyone else in that regard. But not a lot of people seek the help they need. I now know how beneficial getting help is. It’s hard to admit – I went years without doing it and even needed a push while I was at my lowest moment.

But if you are struggling, please do it. It might be a slow process, you might feel better in a couple of weeks. It doesn’t matter. It takes as long as it takes.

The world is becoming a fucking weird place once again. And that can be scary for a lot of people for a mass of different reasons. Be nice to each other, be there for each other and look after yourselves too.