Exploring Mt. Everest in slippers.

Predicate:   to found or base something on. Surviving suicide, properly surviving, moving on, moving up, getting 'better' - it's all predicated on the premise that I want to survive.  Feeling suicidal is the complete lack of that desire.  Talk about a no-win situation. Particularly this week.  This week, I was given an end date on my job.  I've been there for just 5 months, and I love it.  The people are amazing, the support I've received has been immense, and I find the work incredibly satisfying.  But in the last 5 months; I've worked a full week just once.  Most weeks I've managed between 15 and 25 hours; a few weeks I've worked less than 5 hours; and a couple of weeks were complete no-shows.  So learning my contract won't be renewed wasn't any kind of shock.  Just really sad. Now I'm looking at how little progress I've made.  I'm stalled.  I'm still here, aware this isn't 'normal', but I haven't made pr...

♫ Can't trust that day ♫ Monday's (I think) make it look like I'm less Depressed on a weekend. Weekends, no-one pays any attention to what time I get up.  There's nowhere I have to be, nothing I have to get done.  So if I choose to shut myself away all weekend, not bother showering, or even get out of my pyjamas, it doesn't register as anomalous, because the rest of the family are doing things in their own time too, wandering around in dressing-gowns and generally taking things easy.  It's the weekend after all, a time we're all allowed to be lazy. Roll on Monday.  All the other grown ups in the house are bustling around, getting showered, dressed, ready to face the day, making sure the youngster is ready for school, getting lunches sorted, finding shoes, wishing each other a good day.  Today it will be registered that I wasn't up when everyone else left for work, they'll be conscious that I didn't shower again (yet - the day isn'...

Last week, I used Labyrinth to explain how lost I can feel in my own head.  This week, a single quote comes to mind, from Vizzini from The Princess Bride.  Every time something went differently to how he'd planned, he would exclaim "Inconcievable!" This week, was pretty horrible.  A bout of extreme dizziness.  A four day migraine.  An alienated son's birthday, coming just after my younger alienated son's birthday.  That's before taking into account a very confronting doctors visit. My meds aren't working.  Even my doctor is lost for direction.  A second psychiatric opinion has been requested.  One option is to find funding for additional psychotherapy.  To talk through the suicidal ideation, and find ways to overcome it.  To discover and disempower the thinking that feeds the Depression.  Basically?  Find a way to talk/think myself out of it.  Inconceivable. Maybe increase the exercise I do?  Find the energ...

Have you ever seen Labyrinth? Labyrinth was hired almost weekly from the video shop when I was young  As an adult, I have it on DVD, and joyously share it with younger family whenever I get the chance. In Labyrinth, Sarah (our protagonist) is trying to find her way through a maze, and (because it's a fantasy of magical impossibilities) is faced with the maze changing it's structure around her, with walls that are pretending to be doors, gates that are pretending to be walls, riddles, monsters; and whenever she seems to be making headway, traps and ambushes to halt her progress. That's kinda how I feel this week.  Making progress, then, like Sarah, I got cocky.  "It's a piece of cake" she says, after solving a riddle to get out of a blind corner.  She immediately falls through a trap door into an oubliette.  The Oxford dictionary defines oubliette as " a secret dungeon with access only through a trapdoor in its ceiling "  There's no way out bu...

Dory is oddly inspirational.  Things aren't going how you hoped?  Keep swimming.  Lost sight of your goal?  Keep swimming.  Not sure which direction to go?  Keep swimming.  Going it alone?  Keep swimming.  What to do tomorrow?  Keep swimming. Dory has no expectations of her days.  Not how far she'll travel, how fast, or even in which direction.  Dory just keeps swimming.  She also stays confident.  Even when she doesn't remember learning the skills she needs, she trusts she can do stuff, and, well, she does the stuff. I'm still learning how to let go of my expectations for myself.  The weight of what I should  do, and what I used to be able  to do, is a burden that seems glued to me - I can't seem to figure out how to leave it behind.  Acceptance of what I CAN do is like a foreign language I have to concentrate really hard on.  When I take the time to process how I feel, figure out th...

Friedrich Nietzsche, over 130 years ago, wrote this: The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night.  Well.  That just blew my mind. His ponderings have been taken as deep and meaningful by those in the know.  Personally, I think he might have been onto something. This particular quote is resonating with me at the moment, because nights are a peculiar battle all on their own.  After day-times of (mostly) successfully fighting the Depression with distraction, busy-ness, and deliberate mindfulness; the nights are a different story.  The hustle and bustle of the family around me settles into the quiet hush of sleepers.  Depression likes silence.  It makes the things I think seem really loud.  Using the cover of darkness, Depression sneaks around my brain like a cat-burglar and unlocks as many memories as it can warp.  It splashes through the settled sediment of long rested mem...

What a week.  A really positive few days, back at work, breakthroughs with counseling, feeling pretty good.  It was raining, which I don't mind; because everyone  is inside doing nothing. Then I had a car crash. I'm ok.  The car's a write off.  It left me standing in a ditch considering how bloody hard making progress is.  When even getting out of bed is an achievement, having to sort out how to get to and from work is medal worthy, and getting a 'new' old car seems an insurmountable barrier.  It's hard not to fall back into the pit of nothing, when life will be so much harder for the next few months. But. I didn't hit the tree .  As I was spinning around, uncontrolled; the parallel to my mental health was unavoidable.  I had lost control.  Crashing was inevitable.  All I could do was watch, and hope I could recover from the damage to come. I didn't hit the tree.   The slow-motion spin had me fervently ho...