Bad days and winters

Bad days...

Some days are just bad days. Sometimes you might just be having a hard time. It might be a blip on a generally upward slope.

Apart from its not that simple.

Depression sure feels like a large charcoal crayon that scribbles out everything good in your picture without asking.

But it's not that simple.

I woke up one morning earlier this month feeling disorientated and anxious. Like I had repeatedly for several days.

I felt blank. Like I'd been bleached.
Everything was bleak.
I was confused and angry at every little thing.
I couldn't bear how cold it was in the house.
I couldn't bear the thought of showering and being wet and cold.
And I felt like I couldn't move. Like all I could do was lie there. Every suggestion my husband made to help was a personal assault, I was in pain and suffering, and I wanted everything to stop.

When I'd woken up stupidly early I'd gone to check my phone, for the time, apart from it was flat.
It had been left charging when I went to sleep, it wasn't charged.
My husband fixed this for me, he ran and found a charger and plugged things in.
And I should have been grateful... I was grateful... But I couldn't feel grateful. It's hard to express genuine thanks when you're having a hard time working out if you are functioning.

I found, as I started to take tiny steps, I was in fact functional enough to get dressed...  I skipped the shower...  I couldn't find the reserves to wash thoroughly too.
I found I could drink a cup of tea.
I managed to put how I was feeling into enough words to send an email to a friend.
A cry for help...
A cry... on that day when there had been other days I've woken up ready to sob...  But they weren't bad days.

And that day wasn't a bad day either.

I got to work.
I taught some classes.

On my lunch break I got some water, grapes, snacks and crackers from the shop... I walked there.. In the cold.

I called my husband and apologised for my irritability... And the yelling I had done that morning.

I smiled...  I saw something bright green in the hedges and realised I was staring at a real life intact ball of mistletoe.... That had obviously been noticed by no one during the festive season.

Small thing, a tiny glimpse of joy.

I clung to this image of the bright green amongst the stiff grey branches and thought about how depression is a lot like a winter... The need to shut down and rest, to reserve energy until things are warmer and brighter. It's sensible... We don't punish the trees for winter... They are within a system where it makes sense for them to rest. Shouting at the Sun to spend more time with us doesn't do any good either... Sometimes the right behaviour is the one that conserves and heals.

The distinction I have learnt to make is that my bad days, have not all been bad days in that they're not exclusively bad... It's possible to experience glimpses of joy in the gloom... If I look carefully just now at my precious Acer in my garden I can see the buds ready and prepared for the eventual spring... And where I can't see under the ground she has roots holding her up.

There has not yet been a winter so harsh as to destroy her... Me neither.