Finding HopeChanging Therapist
Posted on November 5, 2023
TW: Mentions of self harm and suicidal thoughts and urges.
It’s been a year since I started therapy again after an unintentional break, essentially starting again with a new therapist. It’s been a hard and emotional process, and at times a distressing one; just going to therapy can make you feel so vulnerable and so open to further hurt as you dig into the hard stuff – wading into dark waters that you’d rather ignore and pretend don’t exist, even as they’re eroding your mental health – that adding difficulties to that already difficult thing can feel unfairly cruel. So, given that I’m me, I thought that, perhaps, writing about it might be helpful and maybe not just for me but for anyone going through a similar transition. And if not helpful, then hopefully validating in some way.
I’d been seeing Therapist A for almost seven years when everything changed. She was taking leave and I was on my own.
Pre-2021, I’d seen Therapist A once or twice a week pretty consistently since early 2016. Even when the UK went into lockdown due to COVID-19 at the beginning of 2020, we continued our sessions online; I didn’t find them as productive but it was better than nothing. We continued that way for a while, trying to manage my crippling anxiety over the pandemic, working on issues that came up as I persisted with my now online Masters classes, and continuing to work on the issues that had landed me in therapy in the first place. But then the schedule began to slip: Therapist A’s home life was pulling her away from work and I was working myself into the ground in order to complete the final project of my Masters. I barely saw her in the last four months of the course, which I really struggled with: I was digging into some pretty hard stuff, writing song after song about my experience of being autistic, and I craved that safe space to play them to her, to hear her perspective on what I was saying, talk about the feelings they were bringing up, and she wasn’t there. I told myself that it was a short term thing and that, once the Masters was over and her stuff was resolved, the schedule of our sessions would go back to normal. I think it’s safe to say that, given the title of this post, it didn’t.
I finished the Masters in September 2021 and officially graduated, walking the stage, a few months later in November. I had reduced and stopped taking Phenelzine at this point, in preparation for trying ADHD meds (and we all know how appallingly that went), and my depression was creeping back in; the situation was getting pretty desperate. But luckily, that was when Therapist A reached out and we started having sessions again. We had a lot of catching up to do but, by mid-December, we were up to date. Unfortunately, the ADHD medication was already hitting me hard and my depression had gone from a state I recognised to a whole new level of despair with increasingly overwhelming suicidal thoughts. My most vivid memory from that time is sitting in Therapist A’s new office, staring at the unfamiliar rug and hearing my voice in my ears as I confessed to those thoughts, my voice completely flat (this is known as ‘flat affect,’ a recognised symptom of depression and other mental health conditions). It still makes me nauseous to think about, even though so much time has passed and my depression has gotten so much worse since; I think, in my head, that was the beginning of this awful, awful time.
My last session was on New Years Eve and I was drowning, all of the impending new beginnings feeling more like a threat than a promise. When we hung up, I felt achingly hollow and that was only the beginning of a terrible night. But that’s a story for another time. January was passing around me, aimless and anxious, when I finally heard from Therapist A. But instead of setting up our next session, she was letting me know that she was taking leave indefinitely. Her reasons aren’t mine to tell but, between those, my ongoing abandonment issues, and my overwhelmingly bad mental health, I was devastated, spiralling into some grotesque hybrid of a meltdown and a panic attack that went on for hours: I screamed, I cried, I scratched at my face, I tore at my hair, I shrieked like an animal in pain. I guess that’s what I was. I felt like I was trying to exorcise a corrosive demon from my body but nothing helped, nothing alleviated the pain. I was shattered as brutally as if I’d been hit by a wrecking ball. That’s what it felt like, what my life felt like.
Eventually I physically ran out of energy and fell asleep, too tired and emotionally drained to even engage with the world. My depression became more and more overwhelming, compounded by the devastating effects of the ADHD medications and the loss of a massive source of support in my life, and, for months afterwards, I barely got out of bed, barely ate, barely talked. I abandoned social media and I avoided mirrors at every opportunity, to the point where I started to forget what I looked like. The suicidal thoughts were only getting stronger, stronger than they’d ever been in my life, and the feeling of being intrinsically, irreparably broken was – and is – a constant weight in my chest.
I’m not sure when or why I started getting out of bed, why I decided that I needed to go back to therapy. I think I knew I was getting into a very precarious position mentally and the excruciating pain of being inside my head was getting so unbearable that I was willing to do anything to lessen the pressure. I did see a consultant at the local mental health unit but the experience was another traumatic one: after a panic attack at the front door, a junior doctor took my history and then brought in the consultant who told me about ECT and the Ketamine trials before telling me why I shouldn’t do them and recommending doing more of the things I love (which I’d already told him I couldn’t engage with because I was so depressed). So that didn’t improve my relationship with doctors and the medical profession.
For a short while, I worked with a therapist I’d met several years previously but the sessions only made me feel worse and while I have no doubt that it wasn’t intentional, I ended up feeling more broken and more traumatised by some of the things he said, trauma that I’m still carrying around with me. So I stopped seeing him and met with several new therapists, trying to get a feel for them and their methods before committing to someone new. But, just like with Therapist A, Therapist B was the first of the group that I met (a year ago yesterday, I believe) and between her therapeutic approach, her personality, and the fact that she’d brought along a dog she knew in order to put me at ease, she was the obvious choice.
As therapists, they both trained in several of the same disciplines and their skillsets overlap to a certain degree but, when discussing a particular issue, there were differences to how they’d approach it; there has been a fair amount of whiplash in getting use to Therapist B’s approach after so many years with Therapist A. But the point of this post isn’t to compare them – they’re both lovely people and very good at what they do, at least as far as I can tell – but rather to reflect on the process of moving from one to another and the feelings that that kicked up. And a lot of feelings there were – I even wrote a song about it called ‘Grave Digger.’ During the early sessions with Therapist B, we made a timeline of my life and discussed some of the biggest moments, many of which were difficult and distressing (and remain so to this day). Revisiting and recounting the hardest parts of my life was gruelling but I did my best to push through the internal resistance and breathe through the resulting turmoil; between that and the ongoing mental anguish, it was a difficult few months. I don’t mean to make it sound like one continuous torture because that isn’t true -we’ve talked about the good experiences that’ve made me who I am, of course, and there have been sessions where we’ve laughed a lot – but I think that building a strong relationship with a therapist and making progress will always involve periods of incredible vulnerability, which is always scary and, at times, painful.
Sometimes – okay, often – I feel like I’m not making any progress at all, partly because of all the disruption and the distress it’s caused. A year ago, I hadn’t expected to see 2023 and my depression and chronic suicidal thoughts haven’t lessened, even though I am taking Phenelzine again (at a higher dose, in fact) – after many discussions with Therapist B. It has made me more functional, to a certain degree, but the decision came with a price tag: my self harming escalated from cutting my arm to cutting my face. I’m not convinced anything’s changed; I don’t feel any better. But I can see that some things have changed and changed for the better, even though I can’t feel the effects yet: something has allowed me to start talking about some of the worst stuff in my brain, even if only a little. It’s something I could never have imagined doing so I know that that’s progress, even though I struggle to feel it.
I have heard from Therapist A several times now; the news has generally been positive, which has been a great relief (and I appreciate having a little less uncertainty in my life). Therapy is continuing as normal – the current version of normal at least – which I’m pretty sure is a good thing: the idea of trying to work my way through all of the emotions that I know would come up as a result of any potential change makes me feel physically nauseous.
I’m not always convinced that I’ve adjusted and sometimes I forget that I’m not going to see Therapist A, my body moving in the direction of that office as the car turns down a different road; that experience is more ingrained than I had realised at the time. And I know I’m still carrying a lot of hurt and anger over the whole thing, even though over a year has passed. I’m not angry at the people involved – nobody chose any of this – but there is anger and, although I’ve been slower to realise it, hurt too. I think it’s easier to be angry than to be hurt. Not always but sometimes. And, as I said, I have abandonment issues, issues that I’ve struggled with for a long time, which – unsurprisingly – have been exacerbated by this whole thing. It’s hard to lose someone that you trusted to never leave (a naïve ideal, I know) and it’s hard to trust someone new, ignoring the whispers that they’re just another person who will inevitably walk away. I think these issues are important to mention but they probably need their own blog post rather than taking up space here: when talking about changing therapists, it’s not something that everyone has mixed into the equation. All of that said, I’m trying to trust and I think that, for the most part, I am, even if it does sometimes feel like a conscious, concentrated effort. The progress isn’t as fast as I’d hoped it would be when I committed to therapy again last year but the proof is there. I’m sharing things I never thought I’d share and that’s certainly not nothing.
Increasing The Phenelzine (June – July 2023)
Posted on September 23, 2023
TW: Mentions of depression and suicidal thoughts.
NOTE: I wrote this a few months ago but waited to post it. There were a couple of things that I felt I wanted to comment on in the conclusion but I needed a little bit longer before I felt confident enough to do so. So I let things play out a bit but then some life stuff happened and this post got away from me for a bit. But here we are. Here it is.
Things had improved since I’d settled on the daily 30mg of Phenelzine but it still didn’t feel like enough. I wasn’t crushingly depressed but there were still problems, still areas of my life that weren’t back to what they used to be. So, for a while, I’d been thinking about increasing the Phenelzine, upping it to the high dose of 45mg (with my psychiatrist’s permission, of course). I had tried it before and it wasn’t the right thing for me – it was like the lights were too bright all of the time – but I hadn’t been coming from as low a place as I was this time; I hadn’t been trying to pull myself out of such a bad place. So, with that in mind, I wondered whether the higher dose would help, whether it would give me the additional rungs on the ladder that it seemed I still needed.
So I saw my psychiatrist and while he was quick to comment on how much of a change he could see since I’d started on the Phenelzine again, he listened to what I had to say and we discussed trying the higher dose. He asked me what the most important thing to me was and I said that I wanted my songwriting ability back. I’d written a couple of songs since I started taking the Phenelzine again and I loved them but they’d taken so much time and effort to write, much more than it would usually take. I used to write multiple songs a week with ease but, on the 30mg of Phenelzine, it was taking me months to drag one song out of my brain. So I wanted to write like I used to again. He listened and ultimately agreed: he said we’d use my creativity as a benchmark, using how many songs I was writing as a measure of whether the increase was helping or not (alongside whether I had any negative side effects, of course).
For a while, life was overwhelmingly busy and chaotic and there were things I needed to be able to do, that I needed to rely on my body and my behaviour (as much as I could normally, at least) to manage. So it was a while before I was able to increase from 30mg per day to 45mg per day. I started the increase on 17th June 2023 and took notes for the first six weeks (since the side effects and general effects can be quite subtle), finishing this record on 29th July.
And, as always when talking about medication, this is just my experience. Please don’t start, change, or stop taking any medications without the advice and support of a medical professional.
WEEK 1 (15mg in the morning and 30mg at night)
For most of the week, I didn’t feel any different. I have been more keen to engage with stuff, especially new stuff, but that’s not new exactly; it might’ve increased a bit but I couldn’t be sure. I was consistently tired and, on more than one occasion, I fell asleep before I could take my medication at night; I was also really drowsy during the day, needing naps to function, to make it to a decent bedtime. My back pain was relentless too, although my TENS machine did help.
Come the end of the week, my sleep was a mess and I was completely exhausted. I ended up needing multiple naps during the day and still barely making it to a respectable bedtime, forgetting my pills again. But I was managing to do a lot: I worked through my to-do list, went out to see some cool art, managed to avoid a meltdown when a creepy guy wouldn’t leave me alone, and spent my short evening snuggling with the neighbour’s puppies. But even though I hadn’t really had the time to sit down and do any writing, my brain was like a firework show, ideas appearing one after another at a dizzying speed. It was more than a bit overwhelming. I didn’t manage to find out, exhausted as I was, whether I could turn those ideas into anything but it was a definite start.
WEEK 2
The beginning of the week was so hot (the result of a hideous but thankfully short heatwave) that it felt almost impossible to do anything; moving around just made me even hotter, sickeningly so (heat like that makes my POTS symptoms go haywire, which just makes everything harder). For the most part, I dozed, cuddled up with one of the puppies. I was easily overstimulated and exhausted but I made it home to Brighton (with an impromptu nap on the train) and had a quiet evening before going to bed, falling asleep before I could take my pills or turn the light off.
The rest of the week was a really mix. I slept better, longer and deeper – and I actually remembered to turn off the lights and take all of my pills before falling asleep – but I was so tired; I kept falling asleep on the sofa or in the car or really anywhere I sat down. I was just so exhausted. I struggled during the day, unable to concentrate even though it felt like my brain was full of ideas and things I wanted to do. But I just felt like I was being sucked down by sleep and staying awake took so much effort. It made me feel like I might start crying at any moment.
I had some really bad days, where I felt overwhelmed and overstimulated and miserable and just so tired that I couldn’t do anything, which, on top of it all, left me feeling so frustrated. I had a horrible time in therapy and was just feeling really fragile. Plus, I was really stressed about the puppy situation: I want her so badly and I have no idea what’s going on; the idea of losing her from my life makes my heart ache.
But despite all of the difficulties, I was surprisingly productive, and was busier than I’ve been in years. At least that’s what it felt like. I started to work on some of the song ideas that I’ve been turning over in my head; I hung out with friends; I managed to swim; I went to see the fantastic Candi Carpenter play a show in London (I’d missed their last UK shows because I was self-isolating) and then we all went to the pub afterwards and had a great time (highlights include all of us singing Taylor Swift karaoke and running into uni friends I haven’t seen in years); I even did a drawing class. It was all really good but it was just A LOT. It was hard to process it all.
WEEK 3
For the first half of the week, things were okay. My sleep was pretty good: I was sleeping long and deep, although I did have the weird, busy dreams that I’ve come to associate with a medication change. I was still incredibly tired during the day (I fell asleep upright on the sofa several times) but I did manage to get some stuff done. And even though my back was hurting, I did manage some hydrotherapy.
Mentally, I wasn’t doing super well. I just felt really overwhelmed, drained and fragile. It felt like my depression was just hanging around, deep down, all the time. I was still functional and I even managed to do quite a bit of songwriting, more than I’d done in a while, but it was hard. I went to an amazing Maren Morris concert with my friend, Richard, and although I had an amazing time at the show, everything leading up to it and then the aftermath was a really struggle: getting there was exhausting and painful; the disability accommodations were as stressful as always; I was exhausted and freezing by the end of the gig; and it took forever to get home. I had a slow start the next morning, exhausted and aching after the concert, and despite the decent night’s sleep, I was a mess: I was completely overwhelmed and ended up in tears multiple times.
The second half of the week was really difficult. My sleep was a mess, making me a zombie during the day, and my emotions were all right at the surface, raw and ragged. I was beyond stressed and overwhelmed by everything that was coming up over the coming weeks; it felt like it was all barrelling towards me at an unstoppable speed. Both my body and my emotions felt so heavy and I was constantly bursting into tears.
WEEK 4
This week was pretty much dominated by my overwhelming, paralysing anxiety and stress over trying to get Taylor Swift tickets and the hurt and devastation of being treated so badly as a disabled person. I wrote about that here so I won’t rehash it all but I wanted to include what a devastating effect the experience had on my emotional and mental states. While the experience is, of course, separate from whatever the Phenelzine was doing, both are tied up with my emotional regulation and the effect my feelings have on me. As I said in my post, I was basically in various states of meltdown for all three days of the tickets presale. And it wasn’t just the suffocating anxiety of not getting a ticket: the way that Wembley Stadium treated disabled fans was appalling and it was just such a gut-punch to realise that they either didn’t care about us or they didn’t even remember that we exist. It was really distressing. I was so stressed and so depressed, even after I managed to get tickets. Just the thought of not getting to see this show, having looked forward to it for five years, had my emotions so big and loud and devastating that I felt this overwhelming compulsion to scream until my throat tore, to rip my skin off. With so little bringing me joy these days (and my chronic suicidality ever present and oppressive as a dark cloud), the thought occurred to me that, rather than endure the excruciating pain I know I would feel if the shows happened and I couldn’t be there, I should just kill myself to avoid it all. That thought just made me feel even more fucked up than I usually do. My emotions are so big and so precarious that even the smallest thing can tip me into serious and scary lows and this isn’t the smallest thing, given how much Taylor means to me. As I said in my post about the experience, these feelings are due to my mental health, to my depression and my chronic suicidal thoughts, not specifically to seeing Taylor; it’s about the fear of losing one of the few sources of joy when you’re in a really dark place. Those things will be different for everyone but the fear of losing them is so overwhelming that words don’t really do it justice.
The exhaustion and residual stress from that whole… experience had completely drained me of energy and, for several days, I was so tired that I could barely function (although I’d get sudden jolts of adrenaline, thinking I should still be on the phone, that I’d fucked up and forgotten, and was losing my chance). My sleep had been screwed up by my anxiety and I had pain from the physical tension I’d been holding in my body for three long days; both of those took most of the week to settle back to normal, normal being exhausted and sleepy and not able to do much. That was causing me a lot of anxiety too: I had so many things that needed doing but I was just too tired to do them and the anxiety over how they were piling up was starting to get overwhelming. I did manage to spend some time with friends, which was really nice, but I struggled to feel connected while still feeling so emotionally drained.
WEEK 5
The last week had exhausted me and it showed over the following weeks in various different ways. I was going to bed early, sleeping long and deep, and often struggling to wake up. And even with a long night under my belt, I was tired and drowsy during the day, often falling asleep on the sofa (and sometimes at my laptop); I struggled to concentrate, my eyes were tired and straining by the end of a day, and sentences stopped making sense. I was just completely done in. I hadn’t emotionally recovered either. I felt utterly overwhelmed, fragile and miserable; I was suicidal in the face of what just felt like too much. It wasn’t particularly surprising when I had an awful meltdown.
I did manage to be vaguely productive though, despite it all. I worked hard at my hydro and physio; I went to therapy; I managed some writing; I saw a couple of friends and had a good time with them, even if I didn’t feel as present as I usually would; I went to a show a friend runs (and the whole thing made me very emotional); I attended an interesting webinar about ADHD. But, even with how much I was struggling to be present in my mind, nothing felt quite enough, like I hadn’t done enough or gotten as far as I’d wanted to. I’ve been trying not to beat myself up but I’ve never been very good at that, being kind to myself that is.
WEEK 6
Another week and my sleep still wasn’t great. I was still falling asleep early (sometimes forgetting to turn the light off or put in my retainer) and sleeping long hours, although I was starting to wake up at a more reasonable time. I was still really tired during the day, taking some accidental naps, and struggling to focus. It was getting better but, as I said, it wasn’t great.
I was working hard to build in better habits too, alongside the medication and therapy. I worked hard at hydrotherapy and started physiotherapy too. The physio was a bit of a shock to my system and I was sore for the first few days (which disrupted my sleep but then pain always does). But, midweek, I ran for a train and actually caught it, despite thinking that there was no way I was fast enough or strong enough to make it (I would’ve had to wait an hour on a cold platform for the next one so I was certainly motivated). There’s no way that, a year ago, I could’ve managed that; I was so ridiculously proud of myself. So the hydrotherapy has definitely made a difference and I feel confident that the physiotherapy will only complement that.
I was also trying to drink more water. I definitely don’t drink enough and, given that the Autonomic Dysfunction I struggle with as part of my Ehlers Danlos leaves me prone to chronic dehydration, I should be drinking a lot more than the average person. I’m nowhere near that yet but I’m already drinking more than I was when I first measured my liquid intake.
It’s hard to know for sure but I felt like I was more productive and motivated than I had been previously. I was actually getting things done and getting them done at a faster pace: blog writing, songwriting, researching. I even went to an online writing workshop that I really, really enjoyed: the session was fun, the people were really nice, and I was really excited about what I wrote. My brain was just desperate for new things and new information; it was excited to learn. I don’t really know how to explain it any other way. I also went out and spent time with friends, went to a songwriters’ circle, and saw family friends. I was more social than I’d been in ages but I was kind of feeding on that, which is really unusual for me. But it was nice. And exciting. Oh, and I also started mentoring sessions for my creative projects, which I felt really optimistic about.
Unfortunately, the week didn’t end as well as it had begun, my depression hitting me like a tidal wave at full strength. It was so overwhelming that I felt like I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything. I was also really stressing about food and eating, feeling guilty as soon as I ate anything. I was miserable and exhausted and couldn’t focus on anything; I slept on and off during the day, dizzy and ears ringing. One side of my body was tingling too and we were this close to calling the doctor. It was horrible. I also found that I physically couldn’t relax: my body felt tensed up even though I wasn’t tensing my muscles (so I obviously couldn’t relax them if I wasn’t actually causing the problem). After several hours, my muscles started to hurt but I still couldn’t unclench them. My legs were twitching too and when I thought about it, I realised that that wasn’t new, that it had been happening on and off for weeks, as had the tensing in certain muscles. The more I thought about that, the more stressed out I got. I know that certain doses and/or extended use of certain medications, including Phenelzine can cause Tardive Dyskinesia, a movement disorder with symptoms including sudden and irregular movements in your face and body. It’s something that gets worse over time and the idea of developing it was really distressing to me.
In the following weeks, my sleep evened out, helped by CBD gummies and the occasional Diazepam or Zolpidem. I spoke to my psychiatrist about the twitching and whether it could be Tardive Dyskinesia. He felt that it was unlikely, that a much more likely cause was the physiotherapy, which I’d started around the same time the twitching started; he thought it was more likely that it was just my muscles waking up with the exertion I was putting them through for the first time in so long. So my anxiety was abated.
But now, several months later, the twitching is still happening and my anxiety is growing again. I’m going to go and see my psychiatrist and have a proper conversation about it because if it is something – something that needs to be dealt with rather than something that’ll just resolve in time – I need to know so that, at the very least, I can think about the options, whatever they are. It’s hard to believe they’ll be anything but bad though; past experience doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.
A Week In My Life (June 2023)
Posted on July 29, 2023
The last Week In My Life post seemed to go down well and I have fun writing them so I might do them on a semi-regular basis, if I’ve got a week with some interesting stuff in it. I’ve been super busy recently and will be for a while so there may be a handful of weeks worth writing about; I guess we’ll see. This week was crammed full of interesting experiences, exciting and inspiring, but it was also really hard between the heat and my ongoing, searing back pain, plus the relentless mess that is my mental health. It seemed like a week that would be both interesting to write about and potentially read about.
The week in this post started on Monday 19th June 2023 and ended on Sunday 25th June 2023.
MONDAY
I got up early-ish, had a shower, and settled at my desk in the living room. I worked through my daily habits, like my daily Duolingo Dutch lessons (trying to revive my connection with my honorary Dutch heritage), and got to work on some blog writing and research. It was a quiet morning, which was good given how chaotically busy I’ve been and still am.
Early afternoon, I had a physiotherapy appointment to hopefully figure out what was going on with my back and how we might help it heal, help me manage the pain. But we got there and it wasn’t in their schedule: there’d been some administrative confusion but she had some time the next day and fortunately, the practice wasn’t far from my house so it wasn’t a huge amount of time wasted. We were back home pretty quickly and I could get back to work.
I wrote more of the blog post I’d been working on, did some diary catch up, and sent some emails that I’d been procrastinating. Emails are actually one of the ‘mundane’ things that I really struggle to do, I think because I had a deeply traumatic experience involving an email when I was a teenager that I’m still trying to get over. But still, every time I have to open what feels like a high stakes email, the level of anxiety I experience is overwhelming… and exhausting. I’m still working on it but I’ve trying different things since I was in my twenties, when I realised what a problem it was. I’m thinking about hypnotherapy…
I also had a couple of cool things to do. I worked through a series of interview questions for Indiefferential Magazine and sent them off (I think the issue is out at this point) and I revived my cat instagram, aprideofcats. I get so much joy out of posting pictures of my cats but I’m sure people would get bored of constant cat pictures, plus my main instagram account is basically my work account (that does sometimes involve pictures of my cats because sharing my life as a singersongwriter, neurodivergence and mental health activist, etc does mean sharing from all parts of my life and my home life is pretty full of cats, hence the ‘pride’ in the title).
They’re just so cute! So it’s going to be good fun to get to post about them more often again, hopefully making social media a happier space for myself after some difficult times on various platforms.
In the evening, I had a hydrotherapy session booked but my back pain was still so bad that the thought of going through the exercises and then having to shower afterwards made me feel nauseous. My back shouldn’t still have been hurting – the painkillers should’ve done the job according to the doctor – but I was still in so much pain even when taking the medication. Moving around without it was unbearable. So I needed to go back to the practice and ask what to do: the doctor had told me to give the drugs a couple of weeks and then come back if it wasn’t improving and it wasn’t. So, time for another trip to the GP.
So I put on a movie, did some more writing, had a scroll through social media, and went to bed at around eleven, although I didn’t get to sleep for a couple of hours.
TUESDAY
I woke up just before nine but lay in bed for a while, working on my habits, scrolling through social media, and replying to some messages that I hadn’t had the energy to reply to the night before. Then I had a shower and set myself up in the living room. spending several hours writing more blog stuff. It was set to be a chilled but productive morning but then the pain in my back slowly started to build. By the time a couple of hours had passed – just as it was time for my physiotherapy appointment – the pain was so bad that I couldn’t actually move. The slightest movement sent pain roaring through my back and what was even worse – and quite scary – was that I also had pain creeping down my leg until I couldn’t move that either. It was awful; it might be the worst pain I’ve ever been in, worse than the cracked rib, worse than when we’ve had to call ambulances because of migraines. I don’t know what I did – and neither does anyone else, it seems – but clearly I seriously fucked up something in the muscles in my back.
Because the physiotherapist was so close, she was nice enough to run down and come and talk to me where I was stretched out on the sofa. She was lovely and suggested physiotherapy when I’ve recovered from the pain, which she’d be happy to guide me through, as well as recommending a TENS machine – a little gadget with wires and electrodes that passes electric pulses through your muscles to relieve pain – to help with the pain while I recovered. I’d never heard of them but her explanation was enough to convince me and when she left, I ordered a highly recommended one straight away.
Pausing to look at social media, I saw that Candi Carpenter – whose EP I’ve been (and still am) completely obsessed with – was playing a show in London, a rare occurrence since they live in Nashville. I missed their show last time, I think because I was still too anxious around COVID so I wasn’t missing this one. I booked tickets, for both me and my Mum, who is also a big fan. It was gonna be a blast; I couldn’t wait. (Spoiler alert: it was fucking fantastic.)
The pain eventually receded and I spent a couple of hours working on blog posts before going to therapy. My therapist and I had both created lists of things that we feel need to be discussed and worked through and we compared them, merged them; it wasn’t fun. In fact, it was pretty miserable and stressful. I know therapy isn’t supposed to be sunshine and rainbows but god, sometimes it feels like peeling layer after layer of skin off until there’s nothing left. Sometimes it feels unbearable. But I got through it and there have been harder ones since.
I walked out and when I checked my phone, I saw that Taylor Swift had released all of the international dates of the ERAS Tour (I swear, she always announces or releases stuff when I’m therapy – it’s weird). That is super exciting news because I want to go so, so badly but it was also really stressful, thinking about what an absolute disaster the ticket sales in the US had been. I’m not keen to go through an experience like that; it’s meltdown territory for sure.
I flung myself into the car and started the registration process on my phone as we rushed home. I set up multiple screens at my desk to register properly and register on behalf of a couple of family members; being ‘the Taylor Swift girl’ does result in this kind of scenario occasionally, not that I really mind. It wasn’t stress-free process, especially after the mess that was the US ticket sales. And the venue accessibility doesn’t seem to make it any easier; in fact, it’s probably harder because there are fewer accessible seats. So that was stressful but I did have a handful of chaotic and funny conversations with friends who were also trying to register. We’d all love to go together but I’m not sure we’re organised enough for that; I guess we’ll see when the tickets actually go on sale. It would be so, so fun though.
I spent the rest of the evening having a somewhat calmer catch up with some friends. I was too tired to do much more than that. I did do some (very) early Christmas shopping, something that’s consistent with my previous experiences with Phenelzine: for some reason, my brain just gets hyper-focussed on the idea and the urge to be prepared takes over and suddenly I’ve bought presents for half of my family (December and January are always a lot because, as well as Christmas, most of the family have birthdays in those two months – it can get very expensive so starting this early isn’t necessarily a terrible idea even if it looks weird on the surface).
I also continued making bead bracelets, inspired by the ERAS Tour and my current ADHD hyperfixation; it’s really soothing and it’s fun to make them for people, with colours and words that are relevant to them.
I went to bed too late and then couldn’t sleep; I was still awake at three, which wasn’t fun.
WEDNESDAY
I woke up around nine to a very warm day. I was struggling very quickly (hot weather makes the symptoms of my hEDS and POTS even worse, especially if I get dehydrated), as were the cats…
This is Tiger in her classic ‘IT’S TOO HOT’ position. I felt for her but I can’t help but laugh too because she just looks so funny. I felt even more for our two fluffy cats (who were nowhere to be found – most likely in a cool spot somewhere).
I worked through my daily habits and then got ready for the day, plus packing for the next day since I’d be staying over in London. Then Mum and I got on a train and headed into London and over to South Kensington to experience Dopamine Land. I’ve heard several people say that it was a bit lame but I absolutely loved it. Maybe it’s the ADHD and the craving of dopamine but I had such a great time, playing in all of the different rooms with different lights and colours and environments; it all just made my brain so happy, like it was singing to the same frequency as everything happening in the rooms. It was just a really joyful (and actually quite inspiring) experience.
I kept my Instagram post quite brief but I thought I’d include some more pictures and thoughts here because it was just so fun and made my brain so happy; I wanted to share my favourites and why I loved them so much, although I am tempted to make a longer post about the whole experience. I guess, we’ll see.
The first room was similar to Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Rooms, which I’ve always loved so I had a blast in there and wished I could’ve stayed longer (that was one of the few that had a time limit)…
I’ve been thinking about it a lot – apart from it being colour and pretty and cool to watch – and I’m not sure I know how to explain why I love them, both Kusama’s Infinity Rooms and this room; there’s just something about them that presses all of the right buttons in my brain and I just feel so joyful in that environment. I could happily have a sensory room in my house like that for when I’m struggling, not that I could probably ever afford it.
Another of my favourites was called Lucid Dreams with a looping video of all these different visual effects with different colours, different sounds, and what look like different textures. It was beautiful and soothing and mesmeric and I didn’t just want to touch it, I wanted to live inside of it. I’d love to know who designed it and who created it; it was just so beautiful and I could’ve sat there, watching it over and over again for hours.
And my other favourite was called Fire Lantern and it was probably the most soothing of the whole experience. It was almost completely dark with all of these lanterns hanging from the ceiling and big beanbags strewn around on the floor. I could’ve wiled away hours and hours, lying on one of the beanbags, looking up at the lanterns in the quiet, just the murmur of other people’s voices in the background. Again, it was another space that would be welcome in my house for when I get stressed and overwhelmed and need to disappear from the world.
The description for that room read: “Give a moment to appreciate those around us, and those who are not, as you bask under our canopy of glimmering light. Dopamine plays a part in encoding and consolidating memories and fire lanterns hold an important role in many culture’s social events and festivities, lighting the way for souls of the ancestors. Contemplate the beauty of these mesmeric lanterns and remember fondly those with whom you have parted ways.” I thought that was really gorgeous and a nice counterpoint to the more mindless fun of, say, the shadow puppets and the ball pit.
When Mum and I finished there, we headed over to my London home base, to one of my other parent’s flat, and found her and her neighbour in the garden with the neighbour’s two dogs and their puppies (I can’t remember if I’ve talked about them on here before). The little girl, Skye, seemed to just choose me from the moment she saw me when she was a few weeks old and with every visit, she somehow seems even more excited to see me, basically defying gravity to climb up my leg and into my arms. Once there, she settles right down and all is calm again – apart from the other two. It’s one of the most adorable things I’ve ever seen and I’m completely besotted at this point. I tried to stay detached but, with how we’ve bonded, I don’t think I could have, even with all of the willpower in the world.
After catching up with everyone, Skye firmly snuggled into my chest (often tucked under my chin or with her head resting on my shoulder), the two of us lay down on the sofa bed and had a nap together. I was exhausted – from the travel, from running around Dopamine Land, from the still significant pain – and fell asleep with Skye stretched out on top of me.
I woke up a couple of hours later and Skye was still there – she is just too cute to handle. She was staying for a sleepover, practicing being away from the rest of her family but she remained curled up with me for most of the time we were both there. The three of us had pizza from the amazing Italian place around the corner (the human three of us – Skye was not included regardless of how badly she clearly wanted to be) and watched a movie before going to bed nice and early since Mum and I had to be out of the house at about eight. I didn’t sleep particularly well, anxious about the next day and the potential for triggering more pain in my back, but every time I woke up Skye was either stretched out on top of me or pressed up against me; if I had to keep waking up, that was the way to do it.
THURSDAY
So, before I talk about this day, I need to talk about Breathing Room by Anna Berry, an installation I came across when I was searching for autistic artists during the final project for my Masters.
Breathing Room by Anna Berry (x)
It’s a tunnel-like structure made up of panels covered in paper cones; to me, they look like petals or leaves or feather but I don’t know what other people see. The outside is rigged to recycled bicycle parts that seem to move at random, causing the panels to shift almost imperceptibly and making it look like the structure is breathing. You almost can’t see it, it’s that subtle. I instantly fell in love with it and waited impatiently for it to travel further south, Bristol having been the closest exhibition site to me. But the week before, I’d seen on Instagram that it was coming to London and not only could I finally visit it, I could volunteer to help put it together in the days before. I was beyond excited. I had to think about it seriously because the back pain was still brutal and I was worried about whether I would be capable of doing everything they’d want me to do but this was an experience that I desperately wanted to do, one that was potentially once-in-a-lifetime. So I decided to try and do my best with the mobility (and strategies) that I had and having talked the whole thing through with my Mum, she decided to volunteer too, both to support me and because she knows how passionate I am about it and we thought it would be fun to do together. So, all caught up…
The morning was a struggle, especially with Skye trying to help me with every task (none of which required the help of a dog, although it was cute), but Mum and I managed to get up and out of the house on time and drove over to the site of the installation. We did get very lost and confused but we made it, only a little late, and everyone there was really lovely (between the permanent team and the volunteers, there were probably about fifteen of us in total). They briefed us on the different cones and how to attach and arrange them and then we got to work. It was quite meditative work, following the instructions over and over again. My only difficulty was the material of the rods, which you could give you some pretty nasty splinters, hence the gloves. But even with the gloves, every now and then I felt like there were tiny slivers of fibreglass burying under my skin and the stinging sensation didn’t go away for days, which wasn’t particularly pleasant.
For most of the session, we were in the direct sun, which did get pretty hot and I managed to get a pretty solid sunburn along one of my arms. And, of course, it’s the only time in my life where a sunburn has turned into a tan and because of the gloves, the line is noticeably high up my wrist – I’ve had it for over a month now and I’m not kidding when I say that it entertains me every time I see it. It just looks so silly.
It was a really cool experience and serendipitously, I ended up getting to meet Anna Berry herself. She was really lovely and we talked about how I’d researched the piece for my MA, how it fitted into a songwriting MA (I might do a whole post about it because I love it so much and find it so fascinating), which got us into a very exciting creative conversation that will hopefully lead somewhere. Well, it will lead somewhere; it could just lead to a handful of different interesting places. All of them could be very cool.
I would’ve loved to have stayed and do the second shift but I was getting tired and my back was really hurting, even with painkillers. So we said goodbye to everyone (that involved walking through a completed section of the tunnel, which took my breath away – it was just stunning) and headed home (London home). I was completely exhausted and ended up crashing on the sofa and sleeping for about three hours. Four hours of coning was surprisingly tiring but I guess I was also trying to cope with the pain.
When I struggled up, we had an early dinner together before me and Mum drove out to High Wycombe to see Tim Minchin; it was the only date that had any tickets at all and even then, me and Mum couldn’t sit together. But we were there for the show and had plenty of time in the car to talk about it afterwards so it was all good. We were just happy to be there. And holy shit, we were right to be. The show was amazing. There’s a weird sort of cognitive dissonance to being at a Tim Minchin concert without any comedy songs although, to be fair, many of his ‘serious’ songs do have lyrics here and there that have a humorous twist. And even though he plays very few, if any, of his iconic songs, the show is incredibly compelling (I found it particularly mesmerising being so high up and watching him play the piano, plus watching him make mistakes was both entertaining and oddly comforting because it showed such a deeply human side to him when often we see him just as this hugely skilled musician and writer). He talked about the theme of the show being songs from different people’s points of view but I thought it gave us a really unique insight into him in a way that his comedy songs don’t. Getting to see both kinds of songs live was really special. I was just lost in the magic of it from start to finish.
When introducing one of the songs, he started talking about neurodivergence and I suddenly got very nervous – almost panic attack nervous – expecting him to make some naively ignorant and offensive comment as so many people do. But he didn’t. He clearly had a nuanced understanding of it and while I doubt it was perfect – none of us get it perfect all of the time – it meant a lot to hear him talk about it:
“There’s a punchline to all this self-indulgent reflection on my capacity… or my tendency, to write songs from other people’s points of view, which involves the extraordinary prevalence of autistic people in my audiences… and my family […] and how they’re so much better than normal people. ‘Normal!’ [Laughs] [Audience laughs] Neurotyps. My daughter is on the Autism spectrum – we talk about ‘neuro-quirky’ – and obviously these days there’s all this terminology. People talk about neurodiverse people, if we’re into policing language, which we seem to be these days: ‘It’s the most important thing: get the language right and all of history’s problems will go away!’ [Audience laughs] ‘Wagging the tail of the dog and the dog’s happy!’ [Audience laughs] Anyway… We’re all just all about words these days. Post modernism. It’s fucking great… [Audience laughs] Words… words, of course, are powerful. So we talk about neurodivergence as well as neurodiversity, [which] is what we all are. Neurodivergence is a certain… is Autism and ADHD and these categories, which of course will change as we discover more. The umbrellas will go inwards and outwards and stuff. [He told a story about a woman asking him to play a song, ‘So Much Love,’ from a musical he worked on about twenty years ago.] Anyway, the woman who slipped into my DMs and asked for that song explained to me that the reason she loves it is because she’s autistic and she finds it very, very hard to communicate with people how she’s feeling and often upsets people because she struggles with… you know, she’s masking all the time and finds it hard to have genuine relationships with people so that song means a lot to her, which meant a lot to me… that she shared that with me. What’s extraordinary is that it’s certainly not the first time I’ve had a message from a neurodivergent person because, since I wrote Matilda, I have had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds […] of messages from autistic people, ASD people, parents of non-verbal ASD people, um… talking about ‘Quiet’ and what it means to them and it’s one of the great joys of my career is that somehow, by writing from the point of view… by me trying to step into the shoes of a six-year-old with a big brain… I’ve managed to tap into an experience of what it might be like to live in the crowded or busy or difficult brain of an ASD person. And it’s kind of also weird because it’s all sort of come full circle because my other connection with Autism is that my daughter has ASD, which is interesting because the song I wrote about her when she was three weeks old, ‘White Wine in the Sun,’ has been donating its proceeds to Autism charities for sixteen and a half years, many, many years before we knew Vi had ASD. And so… I think what I’m trying to say is I always thought I was, like, the absolute definition of the neurotypical person. [audience laughs] I… Really. And I still think I am. My autistic fans and my daughter are, like, [makes a face that looks like ‘are you serious?’] [audience laughs] But… Obviously, understanding what ASD has expanded greatly since my cousin who is very high needs ASD was diagnosed many years ago. What I’ve realised is the thing that I think makes me most neurotypical, which is that, when someone presents me with data that flies in the face of a previously held assumption, I just change my mind. And I’m like, ‘That’s what a normal person does. Like, they’ve got these feelings, then someone presents data that invalidates their feelings and so they go, okay, I’ll feel something differently. And that’s, like, normal, right? And it’s like, that’s not normal. [Audience laughs] And it’s very, very frustrating and probably the source of most of my comedy career is my frustration with the fact that people prioritise their feelings over data. But anyway, fucking humans, eh? I don’t know why we fucking bother. Anyway, here we go, here’s ‘Quiet.’ Just one more thing, my audience as I said earlier tilt neurodivergent and I… I FUCKING LOVE how interesting my audiences are. It’s like… If I feel doubt about my work, I look at the types of people who come and watch me and I just go, ‘Fuck, I’m doing something right.’ [audience cheers]”
That speech almost had me in tears. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so recognised and so valued by a public figure before and I appreciate it more than I can express. I actually wrote him an Instagram message but I have no idea if he ever saw it; he must get so many.
It was an amazing show and even though I was exhausted, I was emotionally and creatively invigorated by it, by the whole day. I’d been thinking about the song inspired by Breathing Room and the show had me scribbling in my notebook despite the dark with multiple different song ideas. If I hadn’t been so tired (and my hands hadn’t been stinging so badly), I would’ve gone home and sat down to write then and there. But when we did finally get home, I was so tired that I just had to go to bed. I think I was asleep in less than five minutes.
FRIDAY
I slept in and then lay in bed for a while, doing my habits – Duolingo, reading a bit, and so on – and having a quick look at social media before getting up just before twelve. After a shower, I settled in the living room and spent a couple of hours working on various blog posts, as well as replying to various texts and social media messages that I hadn’t had the time or the brain space to deal with over the previous few days.
At two, I had my weekly Zoom date with one of my uni friends and we got caught up – and went on many, many tangents – for several hours before watching an episode of Primeval, the show we’re watching at the moment (we both watched it when we were younger and decided that we had to revisit it – we laugh a lot…). It was a really nice call. We always have really nice calls; they’re always a highlight of my week.
We ran over my soft deadline, as usual, (we both have ADHD and neither of us are particularly good with time) and then I ran around like a headless chicken, trying to get everything done and find the stuff I needed before I had to leave for therapy. We talked about a lot of things – I felt very all over the place – and while it wasn’t a brutal session like some of them can be but it wasn’t easy and I was exhausted by the time we finished, plus my back was killing me. I’d ended up almost lying on the sofa in my therapist’s office, trying to find even one position that didn’t make me want to cry or throw up.
When I got home, I discovered that the TENS machine the physiotherapist had recommended had arrived so I tried to figure that out. We attached the electrodes to the most painful parts of my back and, once I’d found the right settings for me, the pain seemed to just smoothly dissipate. It was such a relief that my knees nearly buckled. And after wearing it for a little while, the pain was all but gone; suddenly I could actually move again, although I still had to be careful. The pain would slowly reappear when I turned it off but it did give me real periods of relief, which felt so, so good.
Given that I was heading up to London again the next day, I went to bed early and actually managed to drift off relatively quickly.
SATURDAY
I woke up painfully, before six, and couldn’t get back to sleep. I worked on my habits, had a scroll through social media, and sent some messages when it got late enough that I wouldn’t be waking people up. Then I got up, had a shower, and settled in the living room. I did some blog writing but I struggled to concentrate after such a bad night. But it wasn’t long before Mum and I were packing our stuff and heading for the train.
The Royal Docks isn’t the easiest place to get to and it took a long time – and a lot of effort and pain – but eventually we made it, reaching a complete and beautiful Breathing Room. We sat for a bit and had some lunch, watching people go in and out; I was surprised by how many people just walked past without investigating, especially since it was free. If I saw something that weird, that intriguing – and it was free – I’d be inside in a heartbeat.
It was an incredible experience, even better than I’d expected in all of the time I’ve been waiting to visit it (over two years at this point). It was pretty quiet and after a while of walking up and down inside it, I just sat in the corner of one of the turns and absorbed the experience. I watched it ‘breathe’ as the panels moved, the cones quivering almost imperceptibly, and listened to the gentle creaks and groans. I loved it. I wanted to live in it. I could feel the song ideas spooling out in front of me, like balls of string unrolling and I just breathed it all in. It was one of the most breath-taking experiences I’ve ever had (I know I’m using a lot of breath related language but that’s just what’s coming naturally). Emotionally, I could’ve sat there for hours but between my physical limitations and my time commitments, that wasn’t exactly practical. So, eventually, I very reluctantly dragged myself outside and sat on the edge of the water with Mum. It was so hot and I was so tired that I actually fell asleep for a little bit and then desperately struggled to wake up, drifting off over and over again (which one of the guys on the team found very funny – totally fair).
But eventually we were up and moving again, parting at the DLR station. I said goodbye to Mum and was sitting, waiting for my train when everything started going wrong (not seriously but in a very not fun way). A man approached me and asked if I could check whether he was on the platform for his destination and because trying to help is my default position, I helped him with his route and then politely made conversation until the train arrived. But then he had me semi-trapped and started oversharing about his life and asking me out (even though he must’ve been at least ten years older than me). And when I said no, he just kept reframing the question and basically trying to emotionally manipulate me into saying yes, trying to make me feel bad for him so that I’d say yes; I couldn’t escape and early on, I’d stupidly mentioned when I was getting off so I was stuck. He wasn’t doing anything but I felt distinctly unsafe and pressured and when we finally stopped at my stop, I flew off the train and was up the escalator and halfway down the street before I turned to see if he’d followed me (that is something that’s happened before and I was not leaving that opportunity open again). I didn’t see him but, shaken, I called one of my parents as I tucked myself into the bus stop and we talked the anxiety down. Writing it out, it seems silly to have felt so freaked out by it but that’s the truth; that’s how the experience made me feel.
By the time I’d done my bus trip and reached my London home, my heart rate had returned to normal and I felt pretty much like myself again. And being greeted by six dogs was definitely a good way to completely distract me and change my mood entirely. Skye climbed up my leg and into my arms, which was possibly even more adorable than it usually is, and we all went inside so that I could lie down on the sofa… at which point all six dogs tried to sit on me. That started out being very cute and ended up being deeply chaotic given that they all got jealous of whoever was being stroked at the time (obviously it’s a bit hard to stroke six dogs at once, even if they are very little dogs). After that, it wasn’t long before most of them went home and me and Skye curled up together and me and my parent settled in for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I’d thought that I’d tried to do some work but, in the end, I just didn’t have the energy and snuggling with Skye and having a family catch up and hang out felt like a more important use of my time.
I did make sure to post some cute pictures on my cat instagram though…
We’ve been trying to sit down and binge watch Citadel, something we both love doing together with a new show when we have the time. We got ourselves pizza (we do actually eat vegetables when we have pizza, by the way – just to reassure you guys that I’m not in danger of developing scurvy) and settled in to watch. We didn’t quite manage it all before the both of us started falling asleep (and Skye was long asleep but I think it’s safe to say that she isn’t Citadel’s target demographic). So we decided to finish it in the morning and I stretched out and went to sleep, Skye tucked into my side. I was so tired that I forgot to take my pills, which shocked the hell out of me: in ten years of taking medication, I could probably count the number of times I’ve done that on one hand.
SUNDAY
I woke up early again, although not as early as the day before, but I couldn’t really mind: it just gave me more time to snuggle with Skye, who was still all warm and sleepy. She just wanted to be close and I was very happy to oblige. So we spent a couple of hours that way; I stroked Skye with one hand where she was curled up on my chest and went through my habits, messages, and social media on my phone with the other. There are certainly worse ways to start the day.
Then, after a shower and some breakfast, we finished Citadel (Season 1). I’ll obviously be writing about it more in my end of the year, media review post, but I really enjoyed it on the whole. There were moments that were a bit too clichéd for my taste but I liked the characters, the storyline, and the stunts looked fantastic. I’m intrigued to see where they’ll take the second season.
It was a very, very hot day, so hot that, even though I absolutely adored Breathing Room, I grudgingly decided not to go; the idea of getting there and back in that heat felt overwhelming. I’m not sure I actually good have done it, between my pain and autonomic dysfunction. So, instead of rushing off, I hung out in the garden with the little community of neighbours, which was really nice. Because of the personal stuff that isn’t mine to discuss – before the last couple of months – it’s been a long time since I’ve been visiting consistently and so I haven’t really been present in that space and multiple people have moved in and out of the block of flats in that time so, since coming back, I haven’t really felt part of the little community of neighbours but now I’m starting to and it’s really, really nice. We had a nice time hanging out, even if I was running on less brainpower because of the heat.
I didn’t take many pictures that day but here is a collage of the photos I took of Skye over the weekend…
I just can’t get enough of her.
The stars aligned and another of my parents was also heading home from London so we managed to meet at a convenient station to catch the train home together. As I was walking there – very slowly because breathing in that heat was like trying to breathe underwater – I listened to the new Maisie Peters album and absolutely fell in love with it on first lesson. I honestly can’t pick a favourite song, or even five favourites; there are a couple that I don’t love quite as much as the rest but I basically love every track. I’ll write about it more in my National Album Day 2023 post when I’ve had more time to listen and think but I think it’s already safe to say that it’s one of my top albums of the year.
I dozed on the train home, even though it was hot and busy and loud, and then, when I got home, I fell asleep properly on the sofa (it was an exhausting week, what can I say) and slept for a couple of hours until screaming pain in my hip woke me up. That was unpleasant. After I worked the pain out of the joint, I struggled up and Mum and I spent the evening catching up, watching a movie, and I did a bit of blog writing. But even with all of my naps, I was still exhausted and went to bed earlier than usual. And I was so tired that not only did I forget to take my pills again but I also fell asleep without turning the light off; I was that tired. I woke up confused in the middle of the night and turned it off and it wasn’t until the next morning that I realised what had happened. Life is really pushing me to my limits at the moment.
So, a busy, emotional week. This was back in June and I was definitely burning myself out, if only because I was so excited to feel joy again (the hard stuff was still there, of course, but I haven’t felt real joy in so, so long – it’s hard to turn opportunities for it away when they present themselves). I kept pushing for another few weeks before I really had to take a break, both for my physical energy levels and my emotional energy levels; it was all getting too much. But exciting things are still happening, even as I try to slow the pace down a bit.
Finding Hope 