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.

Sometimes I'm just too bouncy...

I'm in Year 3 at primary school. I'm in the Juniors now... I'm not supposed to ever ask to leave class for the toilet any more... Our bladders should be made of steel apparently, I think this rule is ridiculous.

We're learning to write 'joined-up'. Last year we were the first year to do the Year 2 SATs pilot. I was in an extra class for the "gifted and talented" pupils in the class... Handwriting went towards the level so we were taught to join up...

I enjoyed joining-up in pencil.

But now I'm in the Juniors and I've been given a pen... And apparently I'm not managing very well with it... My teacher wants to teach the whole class to do joining-up... So I'm told to stop joining-up my way and do it his way... It's difficult and I can't read what I've written.

I'm often told not to rock on my chair... Apparently I'll fall backwards and crack my head on the floor, or a table, or something. I've been rocking on my chair, I've been shuffling on my chair... We're meant to be quiet... We're writing something (22 years later I'm not sure what exactly is was we were writing) but my teacher has had enough of my rocking and fidgeting, and my talking, and fussing, and general exuberance. And I'm going to have to do without my chair for the rest of the lesson. If I can't learn to sit still I can see what it's like with no chair at all...

Everyone else still has their chair...

I try not to cry, to not be totally embarrassed, but I am, I'm flushed and angry, and I really was not rocking on my chair just to annoy the teacher.

I try writing while standing up and but I'm taller than every other girl in the class.. And I'm taller than the 6 boys as well.... I'm the tallest and I'm trying to stand at a desk and carry on working and everyone is looking at me.

Tall and chair-less...

I decide that I'll have to crouch I tuck one leg under the other and I spend the rest of the lesson balanced... I am now definitely being defiant... All I can think of is annoying the teacher because he embarrassed me. So I'm determined to balance AND do my work... Balancing and being able to write become the most important two tasks in the world... And I think that the teacher should know that I'm perfectly okay WITHOUT my chair... And so I tell him so... Not a good idea... He's more exasperated than ever and even though I get my chair back, eventually however, it's clear that I'm just too bouncy.

Later on I'm in Year 6... My parents are good friends with the teacher of the parallel class and her husband (he and my father were colleagues.)

I'm now the tallest girl in the school, I still talk too much, I still have too many opinions, I still shuffle about on my chair and don't finish my work. But still seem to learn everything I need to... Other than correct spelling, punctuation and handwriting. I have yet to finish a whole book from the reading library... (In the whole school year, I read two books, eventually)

It's Christmas, I'm at school late a lot for rehearsals and events... The night of the Carol Service, it's late (past 9) and I'm still going strong, I've played my flute, I've played my recorder, I've sung, we're all standing around... Mum, Dad, Jackie (the teacher) and John (her husband) and I am involved in the adults' conversation and I am being polite, but voicing my opinions and (for some moments of peace for my parents) I'm sent to fetch some mince pies.

I return to the circle and Jackie says (because it's the end of term, and they are all teachers and teachers work crazy hours)
"Aleks, I don't know what you're on, but I think we could all do with some!"

I'm 10... I am not entirely sure what she means, but I'm pretty certain that she wouldn't... I seem to elicit an "Oh no, 'too much Aleks'" response from most adults and even though they think I don't understand I'm like an over-wound spring, I totally do, I just can't do anything about it.

This morning I arranged to meet a friend, someone I've known for years online, but have never met in person. We meet at 10... I have a coffee and then something to eat and another coffee.... For the two and a half hours I talk almost nonstop... I talk with my hands, I draw invisible diagrams on the table with my fingers and I'm vaguely aware that I'm jiggling my own legs occasionally. But I'm engaged and the time flies by, and soon we're walking down the high street, and hugging, and saying "Goodbye" and "We must do this again soon."

I do some shopping and come home and still have buckets of energy... And I realise I need to pace myself.

Today is my first day working for myself. Not to make money or to become famous. But to be able to balance out the requirements of my work, with the requirements of my own life and wellbeing.

Now I'm 30, I can go to the toilet when I wish, if I want to rock on my chair, I can, no one is going to mark my handwriting. As long as I harm no one else I can, within the shape of my Friday every week, work towards my own goals and objectives. And I'm overwhelmed and I'm so bouncy... I am occasionally 'too much Aleks' even for myself. But it's good harness-able bounce... Energy that, if I spend it wisely, can make a difference in the world.

So I'll try, and even if I can't change the world it will make a world of difference to me.

Perspective

"It's so lifey" says my friend as from an open jar wingless fruit flies stumble into the fish tank. Supported by the surface tension of the water they bob about until they are spotted and eaten by the goldfish below.

It's so lifey... Real, brutal, cyclical, the transfer of energy, growth, change.

The Internet brings me news. That of national and international importance and the opinions that come along with it.
Slavery.
Racism.
Abuse of power.
Abuse of innocence.
Oppression of the disadvantaged.
Degradation of their humanity... Of our shared humanity.

A lot of the time it's the obligatory ranting about the political system. I am liberal, I am progovernment (not the current administration, but democracy in general and the machinations that keep a country running successfully) I read opinion with interest. Issues that I never thought affected me, swerve into my view through the comments and shared content of my friends.
The opinions vary.
Some leave me saddened at the reality faced by others and those people are afraid. A few shock me into realising that some friends don't share my own views and those people are afraid too... And that scares me in turn... As I see my own moments of weakness where I am all too quick to "other" people... And I am grateful to the country that saw fit to rescue my grandmother from the slavery she had endured during the 1940s. I am afraid that in this time, here and now, she would not be treated so kindly.

Closer to home people I know and love, live the fullness of life. And I hear of a friend in her 50s who lost her mother... A close friend whose grandfather is gravely ill, a young family grieve for their newborn daughter. And I weep. A mother comes upon the anniversary of the death of her son. A friend contacts me daily to say how bleak their life has become in their own eyes, and I will them to keep reaching out and walking forwards. Three young women share their daily battles with a crippling chronic illness that is all too real yet so often dismissed.

I know so much life, too much life and I can not unlearn what I know of the pain and sorrow of others and I would not want to. All of those who are suffering reached out and held me when I was, they listened, they commiserated, they reminded me of life's fragile beauty and they held my hand and kept me connected and journeying forwards. This reminds me not to fear... To remember that my opinions are built on the foundation that this life is both good and bad, but more importantly... it is all important.

#ThinkThanks... It begins!

[Pre-Script: I like Gilbert and Sullivan... I sang some as I entered the church when I married my AMAZING HUSBAND in August this year... They sometimes gave their works alternative titles the alternative title for this blog is as follows...]

How I got to be grateful for some really odd stuff (and other stories from friends)

I am grateful for some really odd stuff. Some things especially about myself which I have come to love.

I am really grateful, for example, that I'm relatively shy when it comes to dating... I wouldn't have met my husband otherwise. We met online our friendship and subsequent relationship was kindled across vast distances and we didn't spend a great deal of time in each others physical company... this was ideal for us... we grew together slowly and deeply. It's an oddity we each have that has been the making of our most precious and joyous marriage. How amazing is that?!

I'm grateful I'm tall I can wear beautiful long dresses and I am always first to spot my friends when meeting up somewhere, plus a quick glance can tell me if a restaurant or cafe is too full.

I'm grateful my mother made me stick at the piano lessons when I was six... I am still a terrible pianist, but I can play well enough to write my own music and then I get to hear people who are far more talented pianists than I am perform it!

I am grateful for Facebook and Twitter. Most people could live without social media.
I could, however the internet generally has brought me some of my strongest and closest friendships. If I had never met some of the folks I have over the years I would never have grown in all the unexpected ways I have done. I have found reserves of kindness and goodwill within the words and gestures of people from all over the world. I have been tested and challenged and have seen others share their brightest and darkest days with me in trust. I feel greatly privileged to be part of the lives of so many other souls out there in the world.

Rainbows always make me grateful!

And that brings me to the second part of my title I'm inviting other people onto these hallowed pages for the month of November. It's a month when many people I know practice gratitude with the USA Thanksgiving day falling in this month and the year feeling like it is drawing to a close it seems an apt time to consider those things which cause us to feel joy, and delight and say thanks.

I have for a while been a long distance friend of a community in London known as New Unity. And during November they are cultivating gratitude with a great hashtag as a reminder...

#ThinkThanks.

Those catchy eleven letters encapsulate an attitude I want to grow myself.

The act of thinking of thanking for many things... small things, large things, things which comfort me, things which scare me and those which force me to change.

And so I've invited other people to share in writing my blog for the rest of the month.

• There are going to be posts for EVEN days only (so there is less pressure on myself!)
• Posters are going to be from my wide circle of RL (real life) and online friends.
• Some may post under their own names others may make anonymous contributions
• Everyone will be talking about thanks/gratitude
• And anything (within reason) goes...

I am incredibly grateful that some friends have already signed up but if you want to have a go yourself please get in touch.

That's all from me for now... I may post alongside others contributions as the month unfolds... As always I look forward to learning lots and having fun doing it!

Weddings, Love, Self

I got married a few weekends ago. August 23rd 2014 will forever be the date I signed the marriage register of my church along with my best friend ever, witnessed by our siblings.

The whole ceremony was framed beautifully by our friends and really was a true celebration of the most heartfelt love between myself and my now husband...  Back to love later... 

I was an unnaturally calm bride. I don't mean I was cool as a cucumber and everything was closely under control...  I mean I was calm with the help of additional chemicals. Namely the antidepressants I've been taking recently... I still enjoyed the wedding but the medication by it's very natural shrinks everything by at least a little.

I sang as I walked into the church and down the aisle... People who heard me were surprised... I must have nerves of steel. It's not true... It's the only way it wasn't going to be obvious that I was anxious... It gave me something to be anxious about... It wasn't a surprise to the assembled congregation if I didn't look up from my bouquet during the procession... That was just because I was singing. I used the same tricks when I was standing out the front... They were an audience I was a performer... Look up towards the back of the room and smile... No one will think you're not engaging. Other than that I kept my eyes firmly affixed to the beautiful face of my beloved. A few individuals received a glance and a smile.

I was shocked by the heartfelt response of our friends and family to our wedding. We had made it genuinely about us... As all wedding celebrations should be... We generally weren't swayed by tradition or the voices of people who said there was a way we should be doing things. And at the end, everyone who was involved said it was very us.

I struggle with being unique. I don't like to conform, but when my self esteem is crippling low and I just want to be "normal" I often find myself compromising my true wishes for the fleeting comfort which comes from something which seems unlike me, but will win me favour with someone else. In the end with my wedding I let a few of those things by...  I had my hair and nails and makeup done... People thought I looked beautiful...  In the photos I can hardly believe that it is indeed me. I would have been as happy if I had done my own hair and makeup, but it didn't seem like I was sacrificing anything if I let others do these things for me as a gift.

Sometimes though I wish I had the ability to choose for myself more... And be okay when others judge my decisions.

So I need to learn to love and value my own thoughts and feelings... When I suppress them it only serves to break my heart a little and when I am learning that I am so loved by others I would do well to accept that and love myself more.

Chocolate cake

As I begin writing this, I was just a few minutes ago licking melted dark chocolate from a wooden spoon and pondering.

In my oven just now is a cake... a cake neither of my grandmothers would recognise.

I have written about them both before in relation to other things (Babcia http://sodifferentstuff.blogspot.com/2014/01/imagine-this-re-imagine-this.html and Granny http://sodifferentstuff.blogspot.com/ )

But today I want to write about baking... The everyday kind.

I can not for certain tell you much about the baking of my Dad's mother.... She died the day before my first birthday, but from my father I have heard stories of yeasted doughnuts filled with apricot jam, and poppy seed cake fresh from the oven and still slightly warm with coffee. The thought of both of these things makes me want to book a flight straight to Krakow!

My Granny and I though, we shared an understanding about cookery. I was her helper... not that I was around that much and she didn't really need me to do anything. We both had our places in the kitchen, at some point my grandfather had extended part of the worktop to allow my grandmother a large rectangular surface where she had easy access to the sink and the stove top.
My spot was on a wooden stool at the "breakfast bar" in the corner where I would eat my, specially purchased for the visitation of grandchildren, chocolaty cereal each morning and where over the years to stared at a succession of toasters of different styles colours and levels of gadgetry. One of which I clearly remember the handle broke off and it had to be operated with half a wooden sprung peg.

Anyhow I was Granny's helper, it was unusual for her to have company in the kitchen. The kitchen to my grandfather, like many men of his generation was a strange foreign land from whence they would be shooed when they started to prevent the work of preparation and such taking place. My grandmother had not been a stay at home mother, in fact she worked as a teacher even after she had her children and when I was small she had been retired several years and actually seemed to quite enjoy having her own domain. She had a beautiful view of the garden from her work area, and a chest freezer full of... well everything possible... bread, stewed apples, cuts of meat.

And so it was that I took to sitting often in silence watching my grandmother cook, I was fascinated by the mixer, the slicer, the pressure cooker. We would talk... topics of conversation I forget... but I learnt things about my grandmother's kitchen which came in useful when my mother and aunt were clearing the house after my grandfather's death. We also became quite close as I sat and watched her. I overheard her say to my mother a few times that she greatly enjoyed talking with me. I watched her bake coffee sponges, biscuits, brandy snaps, mince pies... And I'd fetch things from high up places she couldn't reach so well any more...  And make jam clangers with the left over pastry which she taught me to shape and roll.

The last proper conversation I remember us having, alone, was at my grandparents house as we were making preparations to move her to the residential and nursing home where my grandfather moved to after his stroke. They had been married for over 50 years and didn't really know what to do without the other close by. She hated being spoken about... Especially in hushed tone...  She and I were together in the dining room I'd been at the piano and had finished playing and moved over to where she say. Her social worker, my aunt and my mother were in the sitting room. She leant over to me and asked said...  "They're speaking about me again...  Instead of to me...  I wish they wouldn't do that....  I'm not completely unaware." I remember being struck by her tenacity, she was too polite to tell my mother directly that she'd like to be more involved in her own future and she did trust that her children were doing the best things by her, but I knew that the reason she shared how she felt with me was because she saw me as a friend, and she was unsure and frightened.

In the years after, in the home, after my grandfather died I missed us being alone...  We were never alone any more and there was no more baking. There was always someone else there...  In her room my brother, sister, uncle, aunt, father, mother. She became frailer and her command of language slipped from her grasp slowly. In fact her stubbornness meant she refused to speak if she couldn't find the right words.
I spent one last time alone with her before her death. I don't remember visiting again... It actually became to painful to hear my mother rabbit on at her in a one sided conversation. So when I visited the Wirral in 2010 I went both to the Frankly to see my grandfather's grave and to The Manor to visit granny. I had my mobile phone with me... And I have video on there of the choir I was in at the time... I played her a little and I remember how very wide her eyes were. She had no idea about the technological advances of the first part of the 21st century.  From here perspective standing in front of her was a young woman with a tiny television. She never lost her grip...  Not that I remember...  I would always kiss her cheeks as I left her and it would take her hand and squeeze it.  She would squeeze back, and I would lean over and whisper that loved her. If I did she her again before she died I don't remember it clearly enough to recall. I must have done, because she changed rooms in the home... And I remember taking the stairs up to her new room, but I remember nothing else of that visit.

She wouldn't have recognised the type of cake have made but my favourite thing to watch made was her apple pie.. It was large and deep and packed full of sliced apples sprinkled with nutmeg and cinnamon. She did teach me to make it but in the time since I have never have found the heart to try. I suppose I find myself thinking that if I make the pie I have closed a chapter we shared and started a new one of my own... I soon might... Maybe this autumn when there is a fresh crop of cooking apples in the farm shop I will stew them sliced and in layers like she did and when I am making the pie I'll take a spoon and taste the tart unsweetened juice and giggle to myself like we used to together.

I wrote this...

I wrote much of this in my head,  in a sort of internal dialogue while I was driving my car to the supermarket. I was as I say driving at the time,  and you may worry I was not concentrating on the road. So rest assured that I know for certain that I was concentrating very hard on driving because the part of the journey where I was doing this thinking is etched into my mind.

Also thinking about what I wanted to say in the following text gave me a headache, so naturally I carried on thinking about it all around the supermarket  as I ticked off things on my electronic list and scrabbled around for items to replace those the store didn't stock.

I was wondering how I came to enjoy writing. Directly to type, like this, because I know for certain that the advent of my ability to write is almost inextricably linked with the decision my family made in the mid to late 1990s to "get online".

I know this in part because I remember the hundreds of blank pages of my childhood exercise books/jotters and the red responses from my teachers that informed me of the occurrence of one or two regular events in my earlier/pre-teen school life:

A) That I had written almost nothing... I remember a lot of stories that started and never finished because try as I might my right hand was just not capable of going any faster. Or that I tailed off part way through an idea.

B) What I had written was illegible... Teachers often asked me if I was left handed so shockingly awful was my written presentation... Even worse than being leftist many of my teachers were also sexist and wanted to know why I wrote so much like a boy and in not beautifully formed text like the other 24 girls in my class (I'm excluding my sister from this...  She suffered the same presentation issues I did)

The other thing that would happen that my teacher never commented on since in the context of my writing, because they couldn't see it, was what happened in my head when I was asked to write. I did not, as some people say when asked why they have not done something,  have no ideas... I had the exact opposite...  I had too many ideas... The fact that there was nothing on the page or alternatively, everything looked like it had spilled out there as an incoherent scribble was that I was either trying so hard to wrestle one strand of thoughtful response to the stimuli from the screaming mêlée or I had given up trying to appear coherent and they were going to get everything I had whether it were relevant or not!

The issue with presentation and getting started didn't go away once I reached secondary school (from 11yo onwards) for the most part it got worse, there were more subjects and homework to manage,  and I lived the furthest away from my school it was possible to live and therefore I had to wait for my dad or mum to get out of work and collect me from the library where I waited after the bus journey.  I'd finally get through our front door at around 5.30... Then dinner, then homework.... I did lot of my work in the school library just before lessons or on the bus on my knee on the way into school! Initially my teachers were pretty hard on my lack of diligence and due care to my work but as I got older I learnt to get by with enough input to get through my classes and I was ubiquitous enough to get away with the occasional late, or sometimes entirely absent, submission.

Examinations were a physical challenge to be practised for... I didn't need to revise, in the main I could scroll back mentally to the actual time we had studied a topic in class and work from there. So unusually my study time was often devoted to handwriting practise where I filled page after page of patterns and letters which helped my fluency and devouring other people's texts in the form of novels so I had used up the extra in imagination that may get in the way of my thinking.

So the thing with my writing is that I only recently realised I can write. I have a voice. It's such a strange realisation to make,  and I think it's probably something akin to the child who learns to walk not actually being all that sure how it happens. I love the Internet,  I have since I first heard Joanna Lumley bid me "Welcome to AOL." I just guess I never saw online chat as writing.

I talk. A lot. I am in almost constant dialogue with someone else if I am around people,  and if I am alone or appear silent I am probably saying something in my own head to remember for later or rerunning something that already happened. Even in my sleep I dream with conversations. So my writing voice developed as a natural extension of my interaction with what I would now call digital media... But back then I called simply IT. I used chatrooms to make friends and develop relationships with others... I was at an age and inclination that I just accepted this new form of communication as entirely natural. In fact in many ways it was preferable to the awkward social interactions I had to perform with my peers... I was an "awkward" teenager... I know everyone says that in their lifetime... As if what a terrible time you had as a teen has some sort of resale value in later life,  but for me it truly was painful... I hated being in between the carefree existence of childhood and the responsibility of being an adult. My outlook and interactions were reasonably mature for my age and this singled me out for some pretty rubbish experiences. I was not interested in doing anything remotely irresponsible and I certainly had exactly zero interest in dating anyone! Combine that with the remoteness of my home to those of my school friends and naturally I became an early adopter of many social networking tools, MSN, forums, chatrooms, later MySpace, Second Life,  Facebook and Twitter.

Over time, to me, every word I typed on the page became a word I spoke verbally out aloud in my own head, the same way someone would voice the characters of a book. And it became my voice, a way to have clarity...  I realised I was good at writing about myself in glowing prose when I completed job applications, but that the young woman who attended the interviews was not initially who the recipient's of the forms thought they would be getting... I had come alive in text form at the same time as realising that the adult I had naturally returned to become was more introverted and reserved than I  had been as a child. I have said before that there is something about being a twin that makes you ubiquitous... It is almost impossible to be a shy pair of identical twins... I honestly don't know of any... Even those where there is a natural inclination in one or both of the couple, there is something so fascinating to most other people, about the similarities of speech and posture and gesture that is so often expressed in stereo, that one becomes available to speak with others about this unique perspective pretty much whenever called upon. I realise with hindsight that the best company I often have is my own and I felt a deep contentment in solitude.

That said what people are always surprised about when I speak about my experience with online communities and communication is how honest I am. Everyone fakes a little...  It's a natural inclination... If we don't feel well but need to work anyway or if we are nervous about something. However the media for a long time portrayed online communities as frequented by hundreds of people who basically lied about every detail of their lives. Now those people do exist, but they really are in the minority. Just as they exist in a bar when a married person pretends to be single to flirt with someone. Or when someone knocks a few years off their real age to give a more flattering image of themselves.

I have always made sure I am me.... I don't doubt that over time who I am has been to a greater or lesser extent shaped by my online interactions, but the same again is true of face to face encounters. I don't give out my details to everyone I meet, but I do offer them genuine connection, and find I get back in return generosity and encouragement that spurs me onward in tough times.

Writing this blog started because of something someone said about making those sort of genuine connections... I realised that although my long held pseudonym had become an inextricable part of my own identity, that my name and general location were really powerful things to share with the world, if I believe that in working together we achieve more, more than the sum of the parts, more than any one can alone.

I wrote this and shared it here because I can, and because in part I am compelled to write, and share and debate and discuss, because my belief in connection via the Internet is so strong and important to my own identity. I have written of myself and in the writing I have seen my own strength and endurance and that perspective has helped... It's work but it's in the main enjoyable and I'm glad you are reading. 

Thank you for connecting, I am deeply grateful. 

Whoever you are.

Wherever you are.

I wrote this... For you.