The flavours of insomnia

Vanilla with chocolate chips
I go about getting ready for bed like normal. I turn down lights, I read and eventually I turn off all the lights and take off my glasses. I lie down, close my eyes and wait to drift off.  Sleep doesn't come straight away, so let my mind drift from topic to topic. And wait. And drift. I turn over a few times. I realise I'm thirsty, but decide to ignore it because I'm lying down. I think a new thought. And drift. And wait. Eventually I realise sleep isn't coming to get me, no matter how much I lie still and dark and waiting. Two hours have passed. I get up and start writing a blog post about insomnia.

Vanilla with chocolate ch rabbit droppings
I go about getting ready for bed like normal. I turn down lights, I read and eventually I turn off all the lights and take off my glasses. I lie down, close my eyes and wait to drift off. Sleep doesn't come straight away, so let my mind drift from topic to topic. As my mind drift it hits a sore spot, perhaps something that happened today that upset me.  Minutes later my drifting runs me past another one, this time something I've done recently I was disappointed with. It scrapes painfully along my mind and I make a conscious effort to steer away to something more restful. But it seems I'm sailing in the shallows, for the longer I lie with my eyes shut the more thoughts occur that bump and scrape and scratch, thoughts that bring to mind my embarrassment, disappointment, hurt, shame, dejection, aloneness , upsets, injuries and remorse.  When I realise what I'm thinking I try to move away to calmer things so I can sleep. But my floating mind runs into them endlessly.  As time passes, they come thicker and faster. Soon all I'm doing is bumping around from one pain to another. Sleep has been scared off, and I reach a point where I need to sit up and give up, just to have a way to get the thoughts out of my mind.

Am I Invisible?

Dear Invisible,

Sometimes you feel like you could just vanish and no one would notice. You feel like no one would care if you were gone. It’s an invisible feeling, and a lonely feeling. And it’s a feeling that makes it easier to consider suicide.

But it’s just not true.

I used to feel like this. I've had two bouts with depression, the first as a teenager, and this describes those years so well. I felt sure my so called ‘friends’ wouldn’t be too bothered if I drifted away. I tested my theory by cutting contact with them and sure enough they didn’t contact me to ask me where I was. I didn’t think anyone in my class cared I existed. I didn’t get invited to things. I didn’t get chatted to. If I didn’t turn up no one commented. I was the invisible girl. These feelings made me increasingly certain that if I were to die, it would have very little impact on anyone else. I could contemplate suicide without much guilt, because I didn’t think many people would notice.

But I was wrong.

Ben taught me that. Ben’s suicide prevented mine.

One evening my little sister came home from school all shaken up. The girls in her class had been crying over a boy in another local school who had died. She didn’t know who he was, but she was really worked up over this boy her own age who’d died.  

I didn’t know who until my own college classes the next day. In our religious studies lecture, a classmate tearfully asked how God could allow a boy to die.  That was when I found out the name of the boy. I’d never met him, but I realised when I heard the surname that his sister had been my friend years ago at school. I cried floods. The whole class did. We debated the existence of God for him. The world rocked because he was gone.

I never met Ben. But he taught me this lesson: everyone has more impact than they realise.  Although I never met Ben, I felt for his sister. I imagined what it would be like had it been my brother and I cried for Ben. He impacted people everywhere I went.  Everyone seemed to know him or his family or his friends, throughout my college, my sister’s school, my brother’s school, my church. The community, although it had never seemed at all close-knit before, was rocked by his loss.

Ben’s death was an awful awful tragedy. I don’t want to minimise it by making it a moral story. But I thank God that I was able to see the grief that poured out afterwards. It jolted me out of the depressed mind-set that believed I would be the only one affected by my death. If you’re not depressed, that sounds stupid and selfish. But the illness gives you blinkers, lying to you that you’re invisible and unloved. Ben’s death ripped those blinkers off for me. Of course other people would care if I died. Huge numbers of people would be affected! I’d cried for Ben although I never met him. Who would cry for me that I hadn’t even met?

Dear Invisible, you are being tricked into thinking you don’t matter. Everyone you study with or work with is touched by you. All your family, even those you barely see. All the friends of those people. All their loved ones, when they see them grieve. The net goes wider and wider. The world would be rocked by your death, and the grief would spread further than you imagine.  Your death would cause tears all over the world. You are not a useless thing, an unnoticed entity. You have an impact on the world. Please give us a chance to show you that in a positive way, rather than with our tears when it’s too late.

What would you be doing now if you weren't saved?

'What would you be doing now if you weren't saved?' Phil asked out of the blue, in his usual open style. It was a fantastic question to ask the group at the pub that night. We were hanging out at the pub round the round the corner from the London School of Theology, all of us either graduates or students of the college. So the question was particularly interesting – if you hadn’t chosen to shape your studies and careers and the country you live in around this faith, where would you be? How would our lives be different?

One guy said he'd have been in studying law instead of Theology. One dug into what he might be like as a person without the influence of Jesus; arrogant and seeking self-worth in his intellect. Another reflected honestly on the influences and temptations he’d faced in his past and told us he'd probably have ended up a drug dealer! All the while my answer burned in my throat. What would I be doing now if I wasn't saved? I never answered in the end, because another said my answer too; if God hadn’t saved me I would be dead now. I would have taken my own life years ago.

Painkillers were often on my mind when I was seventeen. I didn't need them for physical pain, but the mental pain I was going through seemed endless and incurable. I wanted a painkiller. Something to stop me hurting. It was so overwhelming that, after months fighting through and suffering on I was so worn down, so tired of hurting, I wanted something to stop it for good. Painkillers were accessible. Naively I got it into my head that it would be a painless way to go.But God had different plans. Nights of desperate crying prayers were met with gentle words through other people's mouths. I found strength I knew I didn't have. I was met with support and encouragement and medical help. I had clear moments where God was with me and probably a thousand more unclear ones. I still struggled and suffered...but God made sure I had just enough to keep me going. He gave me hope.So

I'm still here. Alive, and I wouldn't be without God. I'm really glad Phil's question led me to reflect on that this week, my birthday week. It reminds me that I've had nearly ten years of life that I almost threw away. They've been wonderful years, almost all of them have been healthy and joyful. I've met wonderful people and made great friends, loved life with my family and found a love for life in my fiancé. I've been to amazing places and done things I didn't even dream of. I've been blessed endlessly, and have managed to make a difference to others too. Praise God for protecting me from my depression so I could have all that life!Although I'm struggling again, remembering reminds me that God is both faithful and good. He faithfully looked after me in the past and is doing so again now. I can trust him to continue bring good out of what seems bad, because he did it before and will do it again now.

Thank you Jesus for all you've done for me so far, and all you're going to do.

Sleep

Sometimes it feels like I spend the whole day waiting to be allowed to go back to sleep.

Sleep is wonderful. My brain switches off. That’s what I want most out of life at the moment, for my brain to stop. It’s an endless daily battle to make it quiet, but every night I get a chance to stop and rest. My brain switches off and I get quiet relief in sleep.

From the moment I wake up, my brain is churning. I used to just have normal thoughts, about what I’d do that day, plans and daydreams. Now I have commentary on all those thoughts. It’s always negative. No matter what my plan for the day, the commentary will think of a ways that could end in embarrassing situations and pull up every time in my memory that things have gone wrong in the past. It’s barely words. It’s not so much a voice saying ‘you’ll be embarrassed’ as it is the feeling. My brain slaps me with the same red-cheeked shame that came with being laughed at in my worst teenage – I wish the floor would swallow me - moments. There’s fear with the embarrassment too. Not just the worry something will go wrong, but the actual feeling of fear, the fight-or-flight, heart pumping adrenaline. The I’m so scared right now I could puke feeling. What am I scared of? Doing the dishes. Brushing my teeth. Stepping outside the front door. My heart pumps like you’ve asked me to walk a tightrope across Niagara falls, and as ready for embarrassing failure as thirteen year old me was if the teacher had asked me to perform for the class.

And that’s just the surface layer. If I let that bubble and boil, I get to the stuff underneath. Then it starts to feel more like a voice. Then I discover what I’m really scared of. I’m not actually scared of making dinner. I’m scared I’m an awful person, and the way I make dinner will somehow prove it. I’m not embarrassed by catching the bus, I’m worried I should be embarrassed by myself, and everyone on the bus will see who I am. There’s something wrong with who I am says the thought. I hate myself says the voice, and it sounds like mine. If I let them, the acid thoughts come swelling up in my brain, more and more bile flooding in.

So I fight. I fight to keep my mind occupied. I fill it with so much other stuff that there just isn’t space for the embarrassed feelings or the fearful feelings. A bit of those might creep round the edges of my defences, but as long as I hold them back, the voices of self-doubt and self-hatred are kept far away. Distractions are what I use mostly. I read novels. I play computer games, watch films. I read mindless websites. When I run out of ideas I just scroll through pinterest and let the endless bright pictures hold my attention. As long as my thoughts stay mindless and unreal, disconnected from my life, there’s nothing to be attacked by depression.

I can’t live my life like this. I need to be able to deal with real things. I need to get on with my life. But thinking about anything real opens the doors to all those feelings and thoughts. So I only open that door as much as I need to each day. I’ll do what needs to be done dealing with my finances, getting to the doctors, exercise, socialise, whatever reality demands of me today. And then exhausted and wounded I’ll submerge myself in distractions again.

Distractions are also tiring though. I spend all day battling my brain like I’m swimming against the tide, and I can’t wait to be able to sleep again. It’s a relief to put down my shield for a bit.

But there’s an evil seeming twist to things at bedtime; I can’t use my distractions while I’m trying to fall asleep. I can’t nod off while I’m reading or on the computer. So I have to put them aside, close my eyes, and have nothing between me and my churning brain. You have to let your mind wander and go blank to sleep. But my mind is never blank. It’s churning. So I have to fall into it and hope I’m tired enough to fall asleep in the midst of it, before it grinds me up.

It doesn’t work very well.

The thoughts often get too much. I frequently have to pull my thoughts back together and set them down a more positive track, the conscious effort involved waking me back up from my dozing. Sometimes it’s not enough to do that, and no matter what track I try to go down the negativity is overwhelming. The fear and self-hatred become so real and palpable, I can’t just lie in them, I have to do something to get out of them. When they get that bad, my other defences start to flood in, the voices that tell me the solution lies at the bottom of a pile of chocolate wrappers, the bottom of a glass, the edge of a knife, or….. Those voices hurt as much as the ones they’re escapes from. They’re the same thing really, wrapped up differently. But if I don’t run away from them they crowd in and get imaginative, laying plans for me and proposing dangerous ideas. So I sit up, turn on the light and grab my laptop.

The sleep I wanted so badly is out of my reach. It would have been a rest from the battle, but I can only get there if I can fight through the worst part. Instead I find myself blogging at 2am again. Writing about pain is a distraction from it. Maybe in a while I’ll be tired enough to fall asleep before the thoughts get too far. In a while I’ll attempt another bout against depression. And probably then another and another. But eventually I’ll win, and I’ll get to fall asleep. I can put down my shield for a while and rest. Sleep.

 Until tomorrow.

Why it's called 'Hope Wins'

I picked the name for this blog very deliberately: Hope Wins. (Unfortunately it was already taken on Blogger but one day I’ll buy the right address for it!)

Although it’s a space for me to share my battle with depression, that’s not why I wanted to write this blog. Although it could be an insight for others into the reality of this hidden illness, that’s not the primary purpose. Although I hope these writings will be a comfort and a help to others going through the same thing, even that isn’t the actual reason I’m writing.  I’m writing this blog because I want to show that even in struggle and pain and dark places, hope will always still win. It wins because of Jesus.

I know that statement needs explaining, and I’m going to use a good chunk of my posts here to show how Jesus = Hope. My first draft of this post tried to explain it, but there’s far too many things to say to do any of them justice in summary!

In my more everyday posts, I also intend to show you how God moves in my life. The times when he is faithful, when he’s my firm rock. The love he shows and the way he provides for me. On my bad days, I don’t notice God at work. Part of depression is being blind to the good things life has in it.  But even the bad days are days he’s made me strong enough to survive them. Even they are a testimony to my belief that hope will win in the end, a hope worth waiting and fighting for.

Would you pray for me that this blog achieves all that? I want it to serve God’s purpose. 

A brush with suicide

Warning: This post may be upsetting

It had been an ordinary day at work – busy and manic as always on an understaffed Saturday, but my shift ended early enough that I could get to Kay-Marie’s birthday party. Lots of my favourite people were coming specially for the party, friends I hadn’t seen since we all graduated a few months ago. A lot had changed since then. I’d searched all summer, but in September I was offered a job that was exactly what I’d been hoping for. I’d moved into a new home with one of the great friends I’d graduated with. But best of all the man I loved had made me his fiancé, so recently I was still aware of the feeling of the ring on my finger.

Life was wonderful, and that evening was shaping up to be brilliant. But as I walked through the autumn darkness to the station, my mind was somewhere else entirely. It’s hard to describe it now. It was both all-consuming and ephemeral. It was despair. There weren’t any reasons for it. There was nothing worrying me or going wrong. But in my head I felt like I was grieving and hurting. I switched trains at Northwick Park, and waited on the platform. The night-time dark around me was the same as the dark inside.

You know that impulsive voice that sometimes comes into your mind that might tell you to dance perhaps, or touch a dancing candle-flame? The impulsive voice in my head saw the train whizzing by the station and shouted ‘jump, jump, jump!’

Combining forces with the irrational despair, the impulse sung out so loud it almost drowned out my own mind and felt like pulled directly on my legs.  It was as though there were two people fighting for control of my body. Depressed-Maria felt despair so deep and so painful she couldn’t think of anything other than how to stop the pain immediately. She was driven beyond all reason by it, and looked at each train rushing by in the dark as an opportunity to end her pain with one last final burst. But Real-Maria was there too and she wanted to live. She still had the sense to know what it would do to everyone she loved. She was still rational enough to understand that pain could and would end. She still had hope. She was the one who dragged herself on to a bench on the platform and wrapped her arm tightly around the armrest, anchoring her body against the impulses of that other Maria. I sat on the dark platform and cried at the battle within me.

Eventually the train arrived that took me safely to the station where my housemate was waiting to take me to the party. I was the last to arrive and got a really warm welcome when I walked into a room full of my friends. They are a few of my brothers and sisters in Christ, people who over the years I’ve known them have shown me love.  I cried to myself afterwards with a mixture of relief that I’d got through and a fear of the impulses that had been pulling at me. But for now, the memory of an evening with people who cared about me gave me enough strength to hold them back. For a while.

I wrote out this incident, one of the clearer memories of many, to try and give an insight into the way suicidal thoughts have been affecting me these last few months. But I don’t know if this will be any help to you in understanding my depression since even I don’t understand my own mind right now. I hope it at least gives a feel for what it is like.

But also my friends, I love you. You are so often Christ to me, and you give me strength just by being. Thank you.

Hope Wins

It’s New Year’s Eve. This year has hit some major milestones in my life. I turned 25 in February (and had a party full of my wonderful supportive friends), graduated in June with a degree in Theology, and was proposed to by my wonderful Dan in September. In October I moved into my first home that wasn’t either living with family or in halls, and I started my first full-time job. In so many ways I was the happiest I’d ever been and happier than I’d ever thought I’d be. I achieved things I’d always wanted to and stumbled on joys I had only imagined.  I was blessed abundantly. I had everything I ever wanted in life.

Or almost everything.

Around Easter Dan noticed a change in my mood. I recognised it. It was depression, an illness I’d already fought with and thought was long gone. But it came back with a vengeance in 2015. The only thing I still want in life is peace of mind.

2015 has been a year of joy. But it has also been a year of struggle and pain. Hidden inside my head and heart has been a battle I almost lost and a weight I can hardly bear. I’ll be writing about it more on this blog in 2016.  I want to talk about how it has hurt me so you might better understand this secretive illness, and how I cope with it so that you might find ways to live with it too. 

If you’ve found this post from the link I posted on facebook, chances are you know me personally. So in the last year you’ve seen me laughing and smiling and joking. When we’ve talked I’ve seemed to be having a good time. Perhaps I told you my great new anecdotes from my new work, or about the adventure we’ve been having with my new house.  Or I’ve told you with a smile about how Dan proposed and showed off the ring he designed for me. A lot of that has been genuine….but sometimes I’ve been pretending. I’m getting very good at faking happy when I’m not. But that means that unless I want to show you I’m depressed, you probably won’t have realised how ill I am. I preferred to pretend I’m ok.  After I had to be signed off sick from work because I was too stressed to go on, I didn’t tell you, I just pretended it was a day off. On the days I could fake a smile to cover my hurting feelings, I did. On the days I couldn’t I hid. I cancelled my plans and made excuses. I even stayed hidden in my room while you were visiting my housemate. Between faking it and hiding, I’ve ensured almost no one knows quite how ill I actually am.

 Lying and hiding are far easier. If I tell you I’m fine, I won’t have to tell you that I self-harmed today. If I smile and change the subject, you’ll think my life is going ok and not know I’ve had to quit my perfect job because of this illness. If I hide on my bad days, you won’t see the messy, tearful me who can’t cope today.  I have good days and bad days. On my best days I’m entirely normal, healthy and whole. On my worst days….well read the previous post. On my worst days I lose hope and wonder about suicide. I hate those days, and never want to go through another one. But they keep coming.   

I’m sick of facing it alone. I’m fed up of lying to you. Lying and hiding work for a moment, but they leave me and Dan to face this alone. For 2016 I’m blowing the lid on this conspiracy. I’m struggling, I’m ill, I’m hurting, I need help. This blog is a safe way for me to talk to you. Writing it down doesn’t hurt as much as talking to you. If I burst into tears, you won’t see it. If I’m not able to write that day, I won’t have to. So welcome to my blog friends and family. I’m writing it for you.  

But there is one thing that I cling to: hope wins. I’ll write about that in 2016 too.