Red Queen Crisis

A few times lately I have had to try to describe/explain the mental flips I can do when in a fit of depression to others; Of course it didn’t actually work last night but I managed to get other coping mechanisms in place.

I think as a consequence of me growing up I have actually come to start to understand my depression, what I thought was somehow a defect in myself, a mark on my character is actually just another condition, a disease I have to fight against.

It tells me life is hopeless when it’s not, it weaves webs of mistruths in my head until I can’t see anything apart from my loneliness and the blackness of my future. It tells me to do things I shouldn’t to try and kill my pain or to not do things that will help me because there’s no point.  I have always felt like this, it has just taken me a long while to come to terms with the fact that I have this in my life and I’m not quite normal, I’ve always known that I’m not. I just never took it as a difference but as a flaw, I think my double standards make me able to see all sorts of shades of grey for other people but not in myself.

Now I start to see it as a strength, I have many coping methods others don’t. I can give myself and my time without thought to others in a way that other people would find absolutely exhausting. When I am feeling totally black and without hope I can quite often just go “NO! I REFUSE TO FEEL THIS WAY!” and spend my time doing everything and anything to distract myself to the point of exhaustion when I can normally quiet my thoughts enough to actually sleep. This is a real strength.

This is what I mean when I say I can flip, I also tend to do this when my physical health is bad, like a self righting mechanism of some sort, because if I kept feeling bad then I would just go into a completely downward spiral. The other contributing factor is that I often make myself physically more ill, as a part of my depression’s action; that is, I push my body until I make myself ill because it makes me feel more sane again or I don’t do things like eat properly or take my medication.

All of this takes me to why I was so bad last night, my pain has been increasing and I should go back to the doctors and get my medication adjusted but this is just another aspect of depression ruling my world, I don’t want to, I can’t bring myself to, I just want everything to go away and for me to fade away to nothing. So with increasing levels of pain my mood rises but then it has nowhere to go once it’s up apart from down, if I try to make myself feel better by taking part in exercise I end up at square one.

Me feeling absolutely terrible last night was just me, not being to cope with the various currents of physical pain mixed with emotional pain and mixed with plain old exhaustion lead to a crisis.

I am really quite proud of myself for managing to ask for help when I needed it, the plan now is to go watch my gorgeous sister being a tree in Roald Dahl’s Snow White and then to make myself a doctor’s appointment in the morning, however I’m kind of hoping I might get some sleep in the in-between time.

Brilliant Play, I am one VERY proud sister, she wasn't just a tree but a narrator too!