Four Years On, Four Years of Frustration

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Today marks four years of being signed off sick with an anxiety disorder. Each time this date comes around it feels like déjà vu. Every year I hope that it’ll be the last time I’m talking about being ill, the last time I’m commenting on the previous year in terms of struggles and symptoms and that I’ll finally be able to talk about these disorders in the past tense rather than the present. Each year, it comes around again and I feel more despondent, more panicked about my future. Every year I debate with myself internally about whether I want to write a post, whether I want to acknowledge the date, the time, the feelings that surround this. I started writing anniversary posts for my reviewing but I gave up after the first one and will soon hit my third year of reviewing and I’m not sure I’ll mark it in any way. I often feel like my words are drying up. I’m never quite sure what to say anymore, the confidence I had before has deserted me and my world seems to have shrunk ever smaller. I don’t like writing very much anymore, not because I don’t enjoy it but because I feel that I’ve become very negative and pessimistic and I don’t reckon most of you want to read that stuff, I certainly don’t like thinking it, feeling it or expressing it. I know it’s not healthy to keep it all inside which is why I sometimes do express this stuff on my blog but the frequency of my posts is much less now. I think about blogging most days but the ideas and words just don’t come. There are so many things I want to talk about, to raise awareness of, to explain, and yet most of the time I don’t even open up my laptop or pick a topic before my inner critic decides there’s no point and I give up before I’ve even started.

Four years is a long time. Four years of being ill is even longer. I can hardly believe that I was 23 when these conditions took over my life. I find it even harder to believe that I’m now 27 and still ill with what I expected to last a couple of weeks, tops! I’m glad I didn’t know this was where I would end up, I’m glad I had hope throughout that it would be a short period of time, that the right treatment was around the corner, the next prescription, after the next diagnosis. Waiting for those things was extremely frustrating but it did at least give me something to help pass the time and to work towards and to hope for. I still stay hopeful now though it’s based on far more abstract ideas and has absolutely no concrete basis to it anymore. I do believe that I’ll get better one day but I have no idea how, when, or to what extent that might be. I no longer feel that I’ll ever be free of this, that I’ll ever be able to be carefree or brave. I’m sure I’ll always be described as over-cautious, careful and restricted. But I do believe that somehow, someday, I’ll be able to work again, to not feel scared every time I think about leaving the flat or making a phonecall. When you have no idea how to achieve that though it’s not exactly a very hopeful thing to have in your life, it doesn’t help keep you going or give you something to work towards because although I believe it will be true, I don’t have the first clue how to get there or the steps to take and so I feel very lost and confused and stuck. I’ve described this period before as feeling like my life is on pause and it really does. Everyone else’s lives seem to keep moving forwards, constantly changing. And yet mine mostly seems to stay still. The anxiety wavers, it changes from one trigger to another, it doesn’t settle, but my life, my achievements, my goals, none of them have changed, none of them have been improved upon. For someone who’s as goal-focused and driven as me, this is a real difficulty and something that often leads me to have feelings of failure. As I mentioned in previous posts, I’ve had to all but give up reviewing for the last 3 months because I have no confidence and no ability to focus or concentrate. This has been a huge loss because I miss doing it, I miss having a purpose and a community to be part of and for reasons unbeknownst to me, I’ve really distanced myself from that and no longer post or comment on anything. I hardly message anybody unless I need to because I just don’t know what to say anymore. I don’t have any news, I can’t answer normal questions with anything other than truthful but sadly negative answers and I don’t want to be that person so I very much keep myself to myself at the moment. I keep trying to get back into the reviewing and at various points I’ve managed to do a bit of colouring or sort out writing a review and yet still I can’t face publishing anything. I don’t even know what I’m scared of. I can’t imagine people’s expectations of me are particularly high anymore after such a long break. Readership of my blog has plummeted so it’s not like my posts would be read by huge numbers of people. I just seem to spend all my time thinking and feeling like I’m not good enough, like no matter what I do or try, it won’t be good enough and so I give up. This is extremely uncharacteristic of me. I’ve never been like this in my life and have always been extremely judgemental of those who were like it. To me, there was nothing worse than someone who didn’t try, failing was significantly more preferable to those who wouldn’t even try and yet here I am, not trying, giving up before I’ve even begun. Yet again I’ve become a hypocrite and an embodiment of all that I dislike most. How did that happen?!

I keep trying to work out a new project for myself, another goal to have, something to work towards that keeps me busy and hopefully allows me to help others even in just a small way. As usual, I’ve drawn a blank. Having little to no confidence it turns out really kills ideas and the ability to participate in things. Every time I have an idea my brain shoots it down and decides it’s ridiculous because I’ll fail or I’m not qualified or no one will be interested. Whenever interviewers used to ask me why I should be hired for the job I never used to know what to say because much as I’m a competitive and driven person, that’s never been at the expense of others and in my adult-life I’ve never had much self-confidence to be able to sell myself and would have to rely on my passion to shine through rather than being able to give specific reasons why they needed to hire me and not anyone else. Now I feel like that about doing anything. I hate “putting myself out there”, even on my own blog and social media channels, places where people have chosen to follow me because they crazily seem to want to know what I’ve got to say. I’m so worried about all of my followers changing their minds or thinking my new reviews are bad that I just can’t face posting stuff. I keep racking my brains trying to think up new things to do even just to try and get myself back in the swing of using social media again but I just can’t face it, everything seems so attention seeking and I can’t bear being focused on at the moment, I like just fading into the background and keeping my dark thoughts to myself. The only thing I’ve been able to focus on is my crochet and I’m being beyond unadventurous with that because I’m now working on the third blanket I’ve made using the same pattern which is super basic. I’m trying to be kind to myself and just be pleased that I’m doing something, that I’m being creative (ish) and actually making something that I can physically see and touch and eventually use. But it’s not working my brain at all and as someone with a very active brain I really need a different goal to focus on. I keep hoping that my desire to review and to colour will reappear, that I’ll suddenly feel motivated again and get working through the huge pile of stuff I’m meant to have reviewed months ago. It would be so nice to stop feeling so much guilt and such strong feelings of failure. I’ve never been someone to give up on anything so I really have no idea how to deal with this situation at all, it’s completely new to me.

I got my boyfriend to read this last night because my thought process had come to an abrupt end and I had no idea where to go with it or how to end the post. We both drew a bit of a blank but agreed that it shouldn’t end on such a depressing note. He doesn’t often read my blogs anymore, partly because he’s really busy with work and also because he finds it really hard to read how bad things are and see all of this in black and white. Much as I have been really poorly for the last few months and my capability has plummeted, talking to him about this post did remind me of my innate abilities to cope, to push through and to make the best of things in whatever way I can. I’m not an optimist, but I’m not a pessimist either, I try to be realistic about the challenges, the deteriorations and the difficulties but I also focus as hard as I can on the little things and those were what Joe suggested I focused on while I wrapped up this post. I find trying new things extremely challenging and get very worried about things not working out but despite this, in the past week we’ve made macarons and homemade pizza from scratch and while I struggled throughout both and nearly caused an accident because I was so jumpy, both were pretty successful and definitely things that we’ll try again. We’ve also got lots of cleaning done in the flat, something I’ve been putting off for ages and I can strongly recommend Harpic Power Plus for toilets and Cillit Bang Limescale and Grime as wonder products for getting things that were more dirty than I care to admit, cleaner than I thought was possible so that was a hugely successful and satisfying experience. I also managed to make a good impression on my boyfriend’s Grandad who is apparently notoriously hard to impress and that has just made my month as being liked and accepted by others, especially someone as important as my boyfriend’s Grandad, is hugely important to me. So, those are the things that I will try to focus on today. Anniversaries like this are always hard, especially when you have to acknowledge what you’ve lost and what you’ve missed out on and I’m looking forward to the day being over and behind me. In many ways, it’s just another day, no better or worse than any of the others but reflecting over the previous 4 years is painful and difficult and something that I usually try my hardest not to do. It’s why I normally try to stay so busy and why these past few months have been so hard now I’ve lost a lot of my ability to be and stay busy. As usual, I won’t be finishing with a hope for the year because I’ve learnt from experience that it serves no purpose and hurts if it’s not achieved. My only hope currently is that I’ll find more of a purpose for myself, more of a goal and a project to work on so that my mind can be busier and I can get back to helping people, I’m at my very best when I’m helping others.

 

***Finally, for those who were following the escapades of my cervix, I finally got my smear test results back and all is normal and fine and I don’t have to go for another test until 2021 when I shall be 30 and capable and properly adult (probably). It turns out that all of my symptoms miraculously stopped almost straight after having the test and that my body (and brain) are indeed extremely good at tricking me into thinking I’m dying of something awful when in fact there is LITERALLY NOTHING WRONG. I even had bleeding thrown in for good measure, just to make sure I truly freaked out. I’m slightly glad it all happened because it meant that I finally got my two year overdue smear test done and now know for sure that my ladybits are fine but good grief, if my brain were a person I’d have throttled it by now for being such a hypochondriac and making such an awful fuss over nothing. With a brain this powerful I could conquer the world if only I could calm it down long enough to get out my front door a bit more often! Anxious love to you all!***