Finding Hope2023 in Review
Posted on January 1, 2024
TW: Discussion of depression, self harm, and suicidal thoughts and ideation.
Much like last year, I have no idea how to sum up this year. I don’t think I have it in me to write a long post that involves such intense emotions and I think that, if I wait until I do, we might all be waiting a very long time so I’m just going to write until I can’t anymore and that’ll be that. It’s just too hard.
While there have been good moments (some of which can be seen in the collage below), it’s been a fucking painful year and it’s now the third New Year’s Eve that I’ve spent crippled by depression, suicidal thoughts, and overwhelming fear and dread around the future. I’m pretty sure I’m in full autistic burnout and I feel like I’m living in a fog. Last year, I think I described my depression as a drought but, this year, I think the better metaphor is drowning: I feel like I’m drowning in this depression and I have so little energy left that staying afloat is feeling more and more impossible. I’m so tired. I’m tired of trying so hard, of feeling like I’m not trying hard enough; I’m tired of feeling this way, of feeling like things will never get better, like there’s no point in even trying to feel better because there’s nothing worth feeling better for. It just feels like there’s so much bad in the world, so much agony, that it isn’t a world I want to live in. I feel broken; I feel like a prime example of a defective human being. There have been good things, like I said, but it seems like they can never just be good things: there’s always so much bad or hard twisted up in them that enjoying them isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. I miss feeling safe. I miss feeling safe to feel things.
A big, hard part of this year has been that I started taking Phenelzine again, for the third time. I didn’t want to and I felt coerced by the circumstances to take it. I was so angry about it all that I made potentially my most dramatic, self destructive move so far: I cut my face and then, when it got infected, I was so reluctant to treat it that I’ve ended up with a fairly visible scar. The most confusing part of it was that, even though I didn’t want anyone to bring it up, I was surprised that no one did; it seemed like the kind of thing that would trigger some alarm. Just as I imagined voicing consistent suicidal would but no one’s really commented on that either. It only makes the experience more isolating and lonely. But back to the Phenelzine: while it helped me get out of bed and go out now and then, it hasn’t had the same impact that it’s previously had on my mood, even on the higher dose. And that means that I’ve officially run out of medication options. I’ve been going to therapy consistently, for the most part, but I feel like it’s getting harder and harder; there have been sessions where I’ve left feeling traumatised. We’ll be trying something different in the new year but I’m struggling to feel hopeful, but that’s not specific to just therapy.
I look at the collage I made for this year and although I remember each of these moments, I feel disconnected from them; the emotions feel dulled. A lot has happened, somewhat to my surprise…
I went to multiple small shows; I went to hydrotherapy religiously and started physiotherapy; I got adopted by a puppy and then had my heart broken when she was taken away; I went to Nashville for Tin Pan South; my application for an Autism Service Dog was successful; I released my single, ‘House on Fire,’ as well as creating all of the visuals for it; I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia; I went to art exhibitions (and even helped to build my favourite art piece, Breathing Room); I hung out with friends, online and in real life; I travelled to Germany for the wedding of one of my best friends and was reunited with multiple friends that I hadn’t seen in years; I got to hang out with some of my American friends when they performed here; I fought for Taylor Swift tickets; I had my heart broken again when the rescue puppy we applied for was homed with someone else; I went to some amazing concerts; I met Amanda Tapping again and she’s still one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever known; I started performing again; I read books and watched movies and TV shows that are now among my favourites; I adopted a puppy (which still doesn’t sound real to me); I swam 5km for Mind, raising over £600; I went to multiple Maisie Peters shows and got to meet her too; one of my cats got very sick and we had to nurse her back to health; my aunt died; I changed heart medications; and I worked on lots of different musical and academic work. I know all of these things happened; I remember them clearly but it’s like watching them play on a screen. I know these memories are mine but they don’t feel like mine. It’s weird and sad.
I’m so tired. I’m tired of masking but I don’t know how to stop. I feel broken – physically, mentally, and emotionally – but as hard as I try, it never feels like enough. Over ten years later, it should be getting better not worse, right?
I don’t know what else to say. Life feels increasingly scary, internally and externally, and I just feel too broken to manage. I don’t know how people walk around without all of the fear and grief and anxiety that I do, that I see as such an intrinsic part of being human. As I wrote last year, “I don’t know what tomorrow brings. I don’t know what I want it to. I didn’t want this year. I didn’t expect to still be here and I’m not happy or pleased or grateful for that. I feel pathetic and stupid and cowardly; I feel broken beyond repair. I feel frozen, overwhelmed by all of these big feelings. If feelings could kill you, I think these would have.“
2022 in Review
Posted on December 31, 2022
TW: Mentions of depression and suicidal thoughts.
This may be the hardest post I’ve ever tried to write. I did seriously consider abandoning it but something in me kept me from doing that; I don’t know what or why. Everything I feel at the moment, and for the last year, (even when I’m feeling nothing) is so overwhelming that it’s very hard to see straight, to think straight. But I do know, without a shred of doubt, that this has been the worst year of my life, my depression as devastating as a drought. It sounds dramatic but the metaphor feels accurate. It’s hard to write about but, for some reason, I’m still trying. Here’s my best attempt to sum up 2022.
In the past, I’ve separated the year into chapters of sorts but that’s hard to do with this year. For the first half of the year, I was on medication (first ADHD meds – which fucked up my relationships with food and sleep in a way that I’m still struggling with – and then antidepressants) but I was so depressed and suicidal that I had to come off them. But things haven’t improved since then. I’m still depressed and consistently suicidal, overwhelmed by anxiety; it’s beyond miserable. (This is partly why I dislike – and therefore haven’t been – writing about it, because I just feel like I’m complaining, even when I’m simply stating facts.) On the worst days, I feel like there is no joy to be found in the world, and on the best days, the joy to be found can’t possibly outweigh the bad. And there’s just so much bad. I miss feeling safe. I feel like, somewhere along the way, something in me was irreparably broken and there’s no coming back from that, not properly. I miss who I used to be. I miss who I thought I would be. And I’m just so tired: tired of feeling this way, tired of trying so hard, tired of not knowing what to do, tired of tearing open my chest multiple times a week at therapy and feeling like I’m only making things worse. Like they’ll never get better. Like there’s no point trying to get better because there’s nothing worth getting better for. I feel like as deep as I reach for the words to describe how I feel, they’re never enough; that agony that comes with feeling like the world is just too difficult and painful to live in, I’m not sure that that’s something you can truly understand if you haven’t experienced it. I’m not sure you can understand it unless you’re in it, and maybe not even then. This year has been a war, and one I didn’t sign up for.
Looking back through my photos, I can see that, objectively speaking, good things did happen: I got to spend time with people I love, I saw beautiful art and music, I cuddled with my cats…
I don’t want to diminish those moments but they very much feel like the odd, precarious stepping stones across an ocean (I know, my metaphors are all over the place in this post). They were good things but they were fighting to be heard through all the noise of the bad. It’s like what I said in my Grateful post this year: I can know that they were good even if I can’t feel them in a way I could eighteen months ago. And it’s hard and messy because the good also reminds me of the bad, of the feeling broken, of the things that feel impossible, of the ever-present presence that is my depression. It’s also hard to talk about – the good things existing amongst the suicidal thoughts – because for each understanding response, there are so many negative, judgemental ones.
I don’t know what tomorrow brings. I don’t know what I want it to. I didn’t want this year. I didn’t expect to still be here and I’m not happy or pleased or grateful for that. I feel pathetic and stupid and cowardly; I feel broken beyond repair. I feel frozen, overwhelmed by all of these big feelings. If feelings could kill you, I think these would have.
I really have no idea if I’ve managed to accurately capture my feelings about this year; all of these feelings are so big and overwhelming that it’s hard to really know anything. It’s like trying to find your way home in a blizzard. I don’t have a neat and tidy end to this post either. This is just how things are.
Quotes That Helped Me (Hope Edition)
Posted on January 16, 2021
There’s something about new year that always makes me feel hopeful.
I think that many of us move through life as if it’s a story but in reality, there aren’t many clear endings and beginnings and so we often have to create them for ourselves. They help us make sense of things; there’s something helpful and healing about being able to put a difficult chapter behind you and start fresh. 2020 was a lot so I think it’s been good for a lot of us to create some mental distance from all that happened even though 2021 has already had some previously unimaginable moments.
As the events in Washinton D.C. have shown, we have no way of knowing, of course, whether things will be better, of knowing what is to come, but I still have to have hope for the next twelve months, for the future. I think that’s probably one of the most powerful tools we have in general, but also specifically in this period of time: the ability to have hope, even when what we’re facing feels so big and so insurmountable. If nothing else, there is always hope, something that these quotes remind me of.
“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.” – Anne Lamott
“Hope is a choice of courage.” – Terri Guillemets
“The future is always beginning now.” – Mark Strand
“You can’t wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time.” – Pat Schroeder
“People are made of flesh and blood and a miracle fibre called courage.” – Mignon McLaughlin
“But all I could think of was how when nothing made sense and hadn’t for ages, you just have to grab onto anything you feel sure of.” –
“Hope never abandons you, you abandon it.” – George Weinberg
“Tomorrow is fresh, with no mistakes in it.” – L.M. Montgomery
“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.” –
“While the heart beats, hope lingers.” –
“We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Hope rises like a phoenix from the ashes of shattered dreams.” – S.A. Sachs
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” – Albert Einstein
“The present is the laboratory of the future.” – James Lendall Basford
“When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.” –
“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.” –
“Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.” –
“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.” –
“We need hope, or else we cannot endure.” –
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” –
“The birds of hope are everywhere – listen to them sing.” – Terri Guillemets
“And in today already walks tomorrow.” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” –
“Hope was tricky like water. Somehow it always found a way in.” –
“Hope is a force of nature. Don’t let anyone tell you different.” –
“There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t.” –
“Sometimes good things fall apart, so better things can fall together.” –
“Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.” – Robert H. Schuller
“Hope is the silver lining of dreams.” – Terri Guillemets
“Once you choose hope, anything’s possible.” – Christopher Reeve
I hope that reading these has given you some hope, just like they’ve given me. As I said, none of us can say for sure whether this year will be better than the last but we have to have hope. And we have reason to hope: Trump is leaving and Biden will be inaugurated; the COVID-19 vaccine is being administered around the world; people have come together, both in the wider sense and in the smaller, more local sense, something that will hopefully continue; the new year is an opportunity for a fresh start… And those are the most obvious things. 2020 was a year unlike any other most of us have experienced and I have to hope that 2021 will be better. I don’t think I – we – have any other choice.
Finding Hope 