Days like these

I don’t really want to write this blog entry. I’m not sure I can demonstrate anything other than glumness, but perhaps I’ll surprise myself. Of course, I don’t have to write it, but I’ve set myself this goal of writing a blog, this discipline, so I feel I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. I guess it’s just taking the rough with the smooth. In this spirit, I’ll put some pics I took up Brent Knoll a couple of days ago in between each morose paragraph.

Sometimes it’s so hard to pull yourself out of a funk. I’m eating properly, getting out and seeing or speaking to people, I’ve been exercising daily and trying to be positive. I’ve been up Brent Knoll each of the last three days, and I’ve just returned from a five mile bike ride. But today, like so many days of late, there’s been a lack of creativity. On a work-free day, this feels like a day wasted.

Yesterday, I went to see a play at Strode and that got the juices going a little – Girl on a Train. It made me think about writing and directing plays, collaborating with people. I have a play in the pipeline, but today all my plans to work on it have come to nothing. Just a barrage of negative thoughts and self-doubt. To distract myself, I spent time planning an adventure and, although the adventure will likely be worthwhile, the planning felt like a shallow escape, a drink, a pill, a binge.

My life is good, but my brain feels faulty at the moment, spitting and splitting, cracking and popping, a nerve pain like a razor-sharp string down the side of my head, the upward prang of a trapped nerve in my neck that’s also causing a downward prang in my left arm. And perhaps it’s just this which has made today, these last few weeks in fact, hard. I had an appointment at the docs this morning and the upshot was keep taking the pills, do some exercises and wear a scarf. She said the nerve is not crushed, just trapped, and the pain signals are exacerbated by fibromyalgia.

There’s other stuff going on for me at the moment, too. Things I’m not ready to talk about. I’ve had a massive revelation and I’m still coming to terms with it, but it’s also just the beginning of a long process. I broke down crying about it this morning - I couldn't help it, it just fell out of me when I was in the shower. I’ve avoided antidepressants for the last decade or so, and I actually found myself wondering whether it was time to try them again.

But I really don’t want them back in my life. I don’t blame anyone for taking them, but personally I don’t think I could stick the emotional blunting. I’d prefer the odd breakdown, because things will pick up again at some point. If I’ve learnt nothing else over the years of my life, it’s that there’s no truer statement than ‘this too shall pass.’ It might pass like a kidney stone, but it will pass.