Landslide
Hello all,
Six weeks. That’s how long I’ve been away
from you all. Usually that would be because nothing important has happened, so
I haven’t wanted to bore you all, but that wasn’t the case this time. In fact,
the last six weeks have probably been the most eventful of my year so far. And
not in a good way.
In the last six weeks, my heart has been broken and mended and broken and mended and broken and mended so many times that it seems weird to think that I will eventually return to a normal emotional state. And a lot of the emotional turmoil has been to do with personal stuff not about me, so I feel it isn’t right to talk about everything in detail. That’s something I’ve done a lot with this blog and I don’t know if it’s always been the right thing to do. So, I’ve had a lot of trouble coming to a decision about how I wanted to talk about this. I started with wanting to recruit Jim and Steve, before deciding to do it as a series of diary entries, but I soon realised that either way felt cheap and was going to result in a very long post. Instead, what I’m going to do is talk about the effects the events have had on me. Cause, to be honest, that’s really what this blog has sort of become, a charting of my progression from someone who was deeply deeply depressed and lonely to someone who doesn’t feel that way anymore. I’ve become happier and felt amazing for the first time I think in my entire life.
But that was part of the problem I had. Because I’d been happy for the previous eight weeks before everything went down, I’d forgotten what it felt like to be sad. I know that sounds odd, how can someone whose been on the edge of a deep dark depression for most of their life suddenly forgot what that feels like? Well, it wasn’t that easy. It wasn’t like well, now I have a boyfriend I’m suddenly super happy all the time, it was a lot more complicated. I had to spend a very long time fighting the urge to feel sad and my wonderful boyfriend was patient and demanding enough to force me out of the pain, to not hit rock bottom anymore. It was long and difficult battle which I’d only recently won. I’d only recently known what it was like to feel truly, completely happy, when everything stopped being so wonderful.
Because even if I do have a perfect boyfriend, wonderful amazing friends and a positive outlook on life, the Universe is always cruel enough to send you a curve ball, to force you to struggle when you thought the struggle was over. And you realise that the pain that you’d spent most of your life trying to deal with was like some clingy partner who refuses to leave because they like the power they can exert over you. So, for the first time since I opened up my depressive tendencies (in a rather infamous blogpost), I spiralled. But this time, I was more equipped to fight it. This time, I wrote it down and struggled with it.
It’s not all you know. You’ve seen how to be a better person, you know what that’s like now. You have a model, something to aspire to.
But I can’t. I can’t deal with this, I feel like I’m going to break. I thought I’d got past this. I though I’d forgotten what this pain feels like. Like there’s no way out, that the only solution is to put my head in my hands and cry.
There is always a way out.
But there’s not. There’s not. There’s just not. Dad’s going unwell again. He’s not the same, he’s different, he’s broken and he’s different. And there’s nothing I can do but watch as it happens all over again. Watch as mum struggles and fails to come to terms with it. Feeling trapped as dad kills me with half-hearted kindness. It seems odd that him saying nice things to me actually hurts more than his silence. Maybe because it doesn’t feel real. It feels like a puppet show put on for my benefit. But I can see the strings and all credibility is lost. And within those nice words are backhands, sharp, severe, stressful. More than stressful, painful, oppressive. It hurts so much I feel like it’s easier to just let the pain wash over me. But whenever I do that, there’s always too much water and I grow closer and closer to drowning, losing everything I’ve tried so hard to build up over the last three months. So what’s the answer, just bury the water, driving it further and further down just so you can survive. But I did that. I did that for my whole life, letting everything blister and boil away but it didn’t go away, it just sat there, sapping me of all my energy and warmth and hope, until eventually it would grow so powerful that it just took me over and I’d spiral further and further down and down and I’d get to the point where there was nothing left. It seems almost worse now because I know what I’m doing. I know I’m spiralling, I’m crashing, I’m losing hope and bravery and every single inch of me is desperately trying to stop myself from falling just that little bit further. I can’t tell my boyfriend that mere minutes before he picked me up I’d wondered whether ending it would be a better option. That’s not fair on him. All I have to do is hold out until he gets here. But then that’s not fair either. What sort of boyfriend am I who meets his boyfriend on the verge of crying and breaking and losing? He shouldn’t have to deal with stuff like this. He doesn’t need this burden. He doesn’t. He doesn’t need the extra stress and pain and fear and loss. That’s not what he can cope with. What if he just leaves, because he can’t deal with it? Because I put all this stress on him? What then? So, I’ll just hide it, bury it all away, push it further and further down, but I can’t bear that. For once, my life was finally happy. I was free and good and happy and now it’s fading. That’s some cruel trick. Making me realise what true happiness is and feels like and how awesome it can be, but then taking it away because my stupid mind thinks it would be easier to become weak and lose all desire to live.
Just stop thinking like this! Stop it! You can’t think like this! This is what made you hurt in the first place! C’mon, do something, don’t just sit there, wallowing in your sadness, your self pity. Do something! Text one of your friends, listen to happy music, watch X-Men or edit your novel. Freakin’ write about the most depressing things, anything to distract yourself, JUST STOP THINKING ABOUT THIS!
I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t bury this stuff anymore. What am I doing? I’m supposed to be happy, I’m supposed to be fine. My depression was because I was alone, because I didn’t have a boyfriend, but I have one now, so why does it still hurt? Why doesn’t it all just go away? Why can’t I stop hating myself even after all this fuckin’ time?
There’s only one thing I know for certain. You can build a house out of dreams and plans and hopes and friendships and relationships and family, but it only takes one moment, one landslide to change everything. And in that moment, you’re going to need everything you’ve got to rebuild, hopefully stronger than ever before. Because the landslides are always going to happen, there’s nothing you can do about it. All you can do is better prepared for when they happen.
Anyway, I’m hoping to going back to once a week blogging after this post. Hopefully, they’ll be slightly more uplifting and interesting than this one. This is just something I needed to get off my chest. However, the day will be changed. These posts generally go up around Wednesday (if I’m on time), but I’ve got Uni that day now, so I’m aiming to post now every Tuesday. Can’t wait to see you then!
Holmes (Life, The Universe And Everything According To A Writer)
Don’t Forget Me (Way Out West)
Sirens (Cher Lloyd)
Chasing Cars (Snow Patrol)
Mine (Taylor Swift)
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
Akira
The LEGO Movie (x2)
The Avengers
Edward Scissorhands
Festen
The Wicker Man
Philomena
High And Low
In the last six weeks, my heart has been broken and mended and broken and mended and broken and mended so many times that it seems weird to think that I will eventually return to a normal emotional state. And a lot of the emotional turmoil has been to do with personal stuff not about me, so I feel it isn’t right to talk about everything in detail. That’s something I’ve done a lot with this blog and I don’t know if it’s always been the right thing to do. So, I’ve had a lot of trouble coming to a decision about how I wanted to talk about this. I started with wanting to recruit Jim and Steve, before deciding to do it as a series of diary entries, but I soon realised that either way felt cheap and was going to result in a very long post. Instead, what I’m going to do is talk about the effects the events have had on me. Cause, to be honest, that’s really what this blog has sort of become, a charting of my progression from someone who was deeply deeply depressed and lonely to someone who doesn’t feel that way anymore. I’ve become happier and felt amazing for the first time I think in my entire life.
But that was part of the problem I had. Because I’d been happy for the previous eight weeks before everything went down, I’d forgotten what it felt like to be sad. I know that sounds odd, how can someone whose been on the edge of a deep dark depression for most of their life suddenly forgot what that feels like? Well, it wasn’t that easy. It wasn’t like well, now I have a boyfriend I’m suddenly super happy all the time, it was a lot more complicated. I had to spend a very long time fighting the urge to feel sad and my wonderful boyfriend was patient and demanding enough to force me out of the pain, to not hit rock bottom anymore. It was long and difficult battle which I’d only recently won. I’d only recently known what it was like to feel truly, completely happy, when everything stopped being so wonderful.
Because even if I do have a perfect boyfriend, wonderful amazing friends and a positive outlook on life, the Universe is always cruel enough to send you a curve ball, to force you to struggle when you thought the struggle was over. And you realise that the pain that you’d spent most of your life trying to deal with was like some clingy partner who refuses to leave because they like the power they can exert over you. So, for the first time since I opened up my depressive tendencies (in a rather infamous blogpost), I spiralled. But this time, I was more equipped to fight it. This time, I wrote it down and struggled with it.
Please
don’t do this to yourself. You don’t need to do this anymore. You’ve got him,
you’ve got friends, you know what happiness feels like, what it looks like, you
don’t have to go down that spiral again. You can’t think like that anymore.
But it’s all I know how to do.It’s not all you know. You’ve seen how to be a better person, you know what that’s like now. You have a model, something to aspire to.
But I can’t. I can’t deal with this, I feel like I’m going to break. I thought I’d got past this. I though I’d forgotten what this pain feels like. Like there’s no way out, that the only solution is to put my head in my hands and cry.
There is always a way out.
But there’s not. There’s not. There’s just not. Dad’s going unwell again. He’s not the same, he’s different, he’s broken and he’s different. And there’s nothing I can do but watch as it happens all over again. Watch as mum struggles and fails to come to terms with it. Feeling trapped as dad kills me with half-hearted kindness. It seems odd that him saying nice things to me actually hurts more than his silence. Maybe because it doesn’t feel real. It feels like a puppet show put on for my benefit. But I can see the strings and all credibility is lost. And within those nice words are backhands, sharp, severe, stressful. More than stressful, painful, oppressive. It hurts so much I feel like it’s easier to just let the pain wash over me. But whenever I do that, there’s always too much water and I grow closer and closer to drowning, losing everything I’ve tried so hard to build up over the last three months. So what’s the answer, just bury the water, driving it further and further down just so you can survive. But I did that. I did that for my whole life, letting everything blister and boil away but it didn’t go away, it just sat there, sapping me of all my energy and warmth and hope, until eventually it would grow so powerful that it just took me over and I’d spiral further and further down and down and I’d get to the point where there was nothing left. It seems almost worse now because I know what I’m doing. I know I’m spiralling, I’m crashing, I’m losing hope and bravery and every single inch of me is desperately trying to stop myself from falling just that little bit further. I can’t tell my boyfriend that mere minutes before he picked me up I’d wondered whether ending it would be a better option. That’s not fair on him. All I have to do is hold out until he gets here. But then that’s not fair either. What sort of boyfriend am I who meets his boyfriend on the verge of crying and breaking and losing? He shouldn’t have to deal with stuff like this. He doesn’t need this burden. He doesn’t. He doesn’t need the extra stress and pain and fear and loss. That’s not what he can cope with. What if he just leaves, because he can’t deal with it? Because I put all this stress on him? What then? So, I’ll just hide it, bury it all away, push it further and further down, but I can’t bear that. For once, my life was finally happy. I was free and good and happy and now it’s fading. That’s some cruel trick. Making me realise what true happiness is and feels like and how awesome it can be, but then taking it away because my stupid mind thinks it would be easier to become weak and lose all desire to live.
Just stop thinking like this! Stop it! You can’t think like this! This is what made you hurt in the first place! C’mon, do something, don’t just sit there, wallowing in your sadness, your self pity. Do something! Text one of your friends, listen to happy music, watch X-Men or edit your novel. Freakin’ write about the most depressing things, anything to distract yourself, JUST STOP THINKING ABOUT THIS!
I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t bury this stuff anymore. What am I doing? I’m supposed to be happy, I’m supposed to be fine. My depression was because I was alone, because I didn’t have a boyfriend, but I have one now, so why does it still hurt? Why doesn’t it all just go away? Why can’t I stop hating myself even after all this fuckin’ time?
Finn picked me up in the end and I told
him. And he told me not to think like that again. He’s the best thing to ever
happen to me. But I know that I was right in some respects. It’s not fair to
put all that stress on him. I know he worries sometimes that if something were
to happen to him or (heaven forbid) to us, I wouldn’t know how to cope. Because
that’s what I do know. I don’t get all sad about it because I console myself
with the fact that even if he’s not here with me right now, he’s somewhere out there
and I can bring his face before me and remember the way his voice sounds as he
says he loves me. Him saying he loved me was one of the few highlights of these
past six weeks. But I must admit, that’s something that keeps me up at night.
‘Cause at the moment, I don’t think I could cope without him.
Six weeks. Six sad painful weeks. Six weeks were I clutched desperately
at whatever hope I could find. Six weeks that will change the direction of my
life. Six weeks which saw me spiral down and down and down and down before I
saw my boyfriend’s hand and he helped me pull me up to a higher level. But in
that gesture, I was forced to wonder what I’d do without that hand. Six weeks
which saw me question everything I held close. Six weeks which made me realise I
may not be cut out for the writing world, where I wondered whether I had made
the correct life choice in going for writing. Had all those who asked ‘and
where will that lead you’ been more right than I? Only time will tell what will
happen to me. Whether I had made the right choices, whether I was strong enough
to fight, or strong enough to give in, whether I was chasing at a pipe dream or
giving in to fears which I will one day find ridiculous. Only time will tell
what happens to me, what happens to all of us.There’s only one thing I know for certain. You can build a house out of dreams and plans and hopes and friendships and relationships and family, but it only takes one moment, one landslide to change everything. And in that moment, you’re going to need everything you’ve got to rebuild, hopefully stronger than ever before. Because the landslides are always going to happen, there’s nothing you can do about it. All you can do is better prepared for when they happen.
Anyway, I’m hoping to going back to once a week blogging after this post. Hopefully, they’ll be slightly more uplifting and interesting than this one. This is just something I needed to get off my chest. However, the day will be changed. These posts generally go up around Wednesday (if I’m on time), but I’ve got Uni that day now, so I’m aiming to post now every Tuesday. Can’t wait to see you then!
Things
I Learnt While Dating #8
I was always told that we find someone when
we aren’t looking for them, when we least expect to find them. I don’t think
this is true. I think we find people when we need them most.
Friends’
Blogs
Lola (The Blogging Of An Aspiring Writer)Holmes (Life, The Universe And Everything According To A Writer)
The
Playlist Of 25 June – 28 July
Really Don’t Care (Demi Lovato, Cher Lloyd)Don’t Forget Me (Way Out West)
Sirens (Cher Lloyd)
Chasing Cars (Snow Patrol)
Mine (Taylor Swift)
The
Top 10 Films Of June 25 – July 28
NetworkEternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
Akira
The LEGO Movie (x2)
The Avengers
Edward Scissorhands
Festen
The Wicker Man
Philomena
High And Low
Thanks,
David Gumball-Watson
This is intensely moving. Look after yourself and stay strong. And when you can't be reach out. You're only human.
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