SIDE BALL

 Writing on my blog has been very difficult of late.

I have been suffering from depression and I have tried to hide it. I felt unable to write on here because after all the main reason for writing my blog to help my Fellow survivors.  To share with you how I had recovered from my childhood abuse. Therefore, when I became depressed my first reaction was deep shame and I felt unable to continue to write here. I was writing on Facebook because I was getting instant feedback and it saved my life because two people who knew me and knew how unlike myself I had become and they could read between the lines of what I was saying, that I no longer wanted to live.

This could not have happened on my blog. However I made the fundamental mistake of connecting my depression with my childhood abuse. I have very good GPs and may have explained to me how depression can hit anybody at any time for any reason and to no reason and that it was particularly hard on people like myself who are intelligent and who want to know the ins and outs and the reasons. This has been the most difficult part of this disease. I have no doubt at all now that it is a disease. I started on medication and have gradually increased the dose and I think the next time I see my doctor in two weeks it will be increased once more but that will be the maximum.

Depression can sneak up on you as it did on me. The last 2 1/2 years of my showing dogs that was all I did because I was fighting my disease, my physical disease, which I wasn't going to allow to beat me. It took all the energy I had. I stopped knitting I stopped reading  I stopped everything but swimming. Because all I could do was sleep and bath and groom dogs. I eventually realised I had to stop.

This could well have been the trigger for the depression but and this is the difficult part to understand it is not the reason I am depressed. I have come to terms with the dog showing and I am glad that I no longer do it it is such a relief for me to not do it any more. What is much more telling of my depression is the fact that I do not die yarn or knit any more because I can't find my muse for it.When a person stops doing the the things they love, like I have also stopped listening to music, this is another sign that one may be depressed.

Depression is NOT having an off day feeling miserable. It isn't feeling down for a day or a few days. It is like being swallowed by a big dark cloud and one is trapped. One often wakes, if one can sleep, in tears. Or one doesn't get up at all, stays in pj's, take care of washing themselves, cleaning their teeth etc.It is barely being able to do anything. I have dogs so I have had to feed them. And let them in and out of the garden so I have not been able to stay in bed duvet diving.

I fear that I may have given the impression that once recovered from child, abuse, it was all over and done with. Though I feel sure I must said that there is no no getting over it, just learning to live with it. I don't think I ever covered depression because it never came up. Well now it has and so I am sharing it with with you. 

It is NOT a sure sign of abuse and isn't even a necessary apart of abuse or recovery. It can just happen as it did with me.

I always said I would be honest here and I have avoided being so. Well, now I have been. I am still depressed, depressed enough that I still considered a suicide risk but I have a lot of support and self knowledge and knowledge in general so I am safe.

None of this means that my recovery from abuse was fake or that what I have been sharing with you is fake. It just means I was hit in the head by something I was not expecting.

LIFE WITH A WONKY BRAIN

I have put our holiday forward yet again this time to 22 February. I realise that 4 January is only eight weeks away and my antidepressants have not settled yet and my eating is not settled yet and I generally am not settled yet. As usual I always think I can do too much too soon. We're still ahead financially because we only had to pay an extra 200 bearing in mind that we'd already been refunded 800.

Last night in bed I suddenly realised I had not taken my nighttime set of pills which are important because they are for my liver and my heart and my brain I started the process of getting up and John said you stay there while going get them and he was gone before I had time to argue but when it came back I said to him why do you do that? I can go and get my own tablets!  he said the kindest thing in reply: I hate to see you struggled to get out of bed when it is much easier for me to just go down and get your pills and get back and you'd still be struggling to get out of bed.  I hadn't even thought of that because I just take my "problems" as part of my daily life and I don't think about them and for two nights a week and days a week I have to deal with myself anyway. I'm afraid I would not be as kind as him not because I am mankind but because I just wouldn't think in the way that he thinks.   I nag at him about his hearing aids  but for completely selfish reasons. When he is not wearing them he does not speak loudly enough for me to hear and I also have to shout at him for him to hear me and I get very tired of that very soon.  It is also dangerous for him to not wear them because he can't hear traffic coming at the   Zebra Crossings. he thinks they will just stop but he is not a driver and doesn't realise that we often don't have the stopping distance that he gives it is taking quite a while to get him to act set his hearing loss fortunately we have a very good audio system and I bought him Grado PS500's  headphones. Yet again I must have foreseen the problems that were going to arise. I can't believe we were both sick during the week of the holiday we had booked and that I moved to January and they have now moved to February. But that move is just more sensible for me to give me enough time to get well properly.

 I do read and take in everything that is written on here even though it appears that I haven't. It just takes some time for the penny to drop with me I can't just read something and change just like that I have too slowly digest it and understand it.  it can take some concepts months to settle into my brain but once it has it has the good and I no longer make that same mistake. I think also because I have followed ill given advice before but I am very wary of it now because I have believed some utter shirt in the past because I have looked up to people while I don't look up to people any more and I don't look down on people any more I look at their eyes. Even beggars on the street I make eye contact with whether I give them anything or not. The eye contact is to show them that I recognise that they are a human being just the same as me but in different circumstances. I do try to keep to the point honestly you should hear me when I'm talking I go all round the world back. So anyway I just wanted to let you know that your messages of encouragement never go ignored even if I forget to click like it's not because I dislike them if I did I have a dislike button I can press.

On the subject of stubbornness: I thought my hands were feeling better and so I started to net a pair of socks on 2 mm needle is after 20 times of having to undergo it having not been able to get past the first two rows. And yet my toes on 2.25 mm needle is went like a dream. So I guess 2 mm needles are no longer a viable option for me and that really does upset me. Only knitters would understand this.