I'm angry. And sad. And I wish I was neither of those things, but I seem to be unable to escape the general shittiness of the world we live in. And to make matters worse, the things that I am angry and sad about, other people don't seem to think are a problem.
I'm not going to get into the specifics of those things, and that's part of the problem. I don't feel like I can, because it's not just that other people don't seem to think that these things are an issue. It's that they are actively hostile to anyone who does see them for what they are. And I really don't want to get into arguments with people on this stuff, because I already feel incredibly alienated, isolated and lonely for a number of different reasons, but at the same time it feels like holding in all these frustrations is completely counter-productive. But I don't want to post those frustrations anywhere that might get back to the people I am upset and annoyed with, however indirectly.
You can hopefully see why I'm feeling a bit mixed-up and muddled over the whole situation. It absolutely blows to be living in a world where, day after day, you feel more and more like you're not welcome, like you're worthless, like there's nothing you can do to make the situation better. It blows even more to not really be able to express those feelings to anyone, for the reasons outlined above.
I was always afraid my life would end up like this. For as long as I can remember, I have been someone who is comfortable in his own company, even welcoming of some solitude in which to reflect and perhaps be creative. But, at the same time, I've always welcomed the opportunity to share the things I love with others, or simply to enjoy simple moments of connection, amusement and joy with other people that I have learned to trust.
I am fortunate to have my wife, who has always been incredibly understanding and tolerant of my many shortcomings as a human being — and, likewise, I have always been there to support her, even during difficult times. I am also fortunate to have my cats, who love me unconditionally, and always know when I really need them to be near me.
But there are times when that doesn't feel like enough. There are times when I feel more alone than I've ever been in my life, and times when I'm terrified that these feelings will only get worse as time marches onwards. And no-one seems to care. And then I feel bad for wanting people to care, because I worry that will make people think I'm self-absorbed, selfish and not considerate of others' feelings. Like I don't deserve anyone's attention or regard. And then I start feeling, well, why should anyone care about someone so clearly filled with utter self-loathing?
I'll be all right. I usually am. It's just one of those bad days; one of those days that medical professionals euphemistically refer to as "low mood", which I feel somewhat undersells the feelings of utter hopelessness and desperation that tend to accompany such episodes.
But for now, I'll just continue to be angry and sad. And hope that tomorrow is a better day.
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Something got me thinking earlier: when was the last time I felt really, actually, genuinely happy? I feel like living through the 2020s (so far) in particular has given me such a sense of malaise and misanthropy that it's honestly quite difficult to remember what it felt like to just… exist in a sense of contentment and satisfaction.
A lot of blame can probably be laid at the feet of what I saw someone the other day describe as "breathing Internet fumes all day" — and I love that, apologies to whoever I stole it from — but it's also clear that even if I wasn't plugged in to online culture, it would still be readily apparent that these are not happy times we live in.
I often consider closing down every last bit of my social media and going completely off-grid. I don't have much of it left any more — the only standalone social media I still have is Bluesky, and some people also count Discord and YouTube as social media, though to me those are both a little bit different — so it's not like it would be a big effort to do so. But is that what I really want? Even with those few remaining connections to the "outside" world, I still feel isolated, disconnected and incredibly lonely on a daily basis. Surely it makes no sense to cut off what, from some respects, can be looked on as a lifeline?
I dunno. There are people I like talking to on Bluesky and Discord, and YouTube is a valuable creative outlet for me, just as this blog and MoeGamer are. The thing I find myself asking, though, is if anyone would actually notice if I were just to disappear from one or all of those services one day. I suspect that they would not, at least not immediately. Someone might, a few months down the line, think "oh, I haven't heard from that Pete guy for a while" and discover a closed profile page, but would they, then, feel inclined to reach out to me via other means? Again, I suspect that they would not, given that these days, if you are not on social media or in a WhatsApp group chat, you seemingly do not exist. The only person who emails me on a semi-regular basis is my mother; the rest of my daily emails are promotional offers, order confirmations or blogs/newsletters I've subscribed to.
Email used to be exciting. While my short-lived penpal relationship with a girl named Julia in my teens pretty much fizzled out when we finally met — at least partly my fault for being completely socially inept in person, for reasons I did not understand then but very much do now — I still have fond memories of the excitement I felt every time I received an email from her.
Going even further back, I actually still have a couple of hand-written penpal letters from a primary school friend that I was very close with, who subsequently moved away. I don't really know why I've kept those — I am unlikely to ever see or hear from her ever again, given the many years since we last had any contact whatsoever — but, I don't know. Something about the enthusiasm with which she asked me if I was still playing football (multiple times in one letter) and how I was getting on at Cub Scouts (which should give you an idea of how old I was when writing and receiving these letters) was… thoroughly pleasant. I felt like I mattered, like I had a place in someone's life, even if it was just as the recipient of an occasional letter.
The advice people normally give to this sort of situation is "get out there and meet people". And it's probably sound advice. Trouble is, with my general physical and mental state, I'm kind of… I guess "afraid" is the right way to put it. Honestly, at this point I don't really have anything to lose by trying it, but I'm still… afraid to lose whatever it is. Maybe if I'm able to work on some of my own problems first — and I am doing so — I might be able to tackle some of these broader issues. And, with any luck, I might actually feel happiness again by the time I'm 60.
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So I said yesterday I'd come on to my present situation and what got me thinking that starting this nonsense up again might be helpful. It might as well be today, as that acts as a good introduction to what will come afterwards, as well and perhaps a means for those of you who are stopping by for the first time to get a better idea of who I am, what I do and why I'm typing this at all.
As I type this, I am 43 years old and, for the most part, broadly satisfied with my life situation. I am happily married to a wonderful wife, I have two delightful cats and I am gainfully employed in a field I actually have some enthusiasm for. I'm not what I'd call especially "wealthy", but I make enough each month to both get by and to be able to indulge my interests. Nothing to really complain about as such.
And yet I can't honestly say that I'm happy. Part of this is down to the depression and anxiety I have been suffering… well, probably since always, in retrospect, but which I've definitely been actually conscious of since my 20s. Part of this is down to the current state of the world in general, which just seems to be inexorably sliding towards self-inflicted oblivion in more ways than one. And part of this is down to specific things that occur on a day-to-day basis, which can have a fairly major impact on the way I'm feeling.
Yesterday, during a conversation over dinner, one of our assembled group of friends posed the question "when was the last time you felt joy?" — and it proved to be a bit of a stumper for several of us. One of our number — the one who, and I mean this with no disrespect to him whatsoever, is probably the most "privileged" among us due to the combination of his upbringing, the hard work he put in to get to the position he is in now and said position that he is in now — is routinely fairly cheerful about most things, so he had no problem in pinning down some recent examples, but he also noted that there are plenty of stressors and difficulties in his own life, and there had even been occasions that had brought him to tears.
The rest of us didn't feel so positive, to varying degrees. A common thread of frustration and upset was how the world is today. Bombarded by advertisements, annoyed at the lies and misinformation routinely spread online, concerned about the yet-to-be-seen long-term consequences of innovations such as social media, we all found ourselves feeling somewhat despondent about certainly the near future, with the far future having some fairly severe question marks hovering above it.
And yes. There is a lot about today's world that I do not like. There is a lot about it that I do not like that I am not in a position to do anything about, either, which is doubly frustrating. But there are some things, closer to home, that I probably can do something about.
For starters, one of my biggest frustrations about "the world" in general is that it doesn't feel like it's built for me. This stems from a combination of factors, including the social anxiety I feel as a result of both my depression and anxiety and the underlying autism spectrum condition of Asperger's syndrome, and also physical factors such as my weight.
My weight is probably one of the things that upsets and annoys me the most, because I know it's entirely self-inflicted, but I also know that it's a symptom of other factors.
I've always had a bit of a problem with my weight, but since the COVID lockdowns of 2020 or so, it's been particularly bad. I got bigger than I ever have been before, and I was already at a size where certain activities were completely inaccessible to me. Couple this with the fact that I have a hernia which the doctors won't treat until I lose some weight — which itself causes physical pain and discomfort on a fairly regular basis — and you can hopefully understand where I'm coming from when I say that I physically feel uncomfortable in a lot of situations in today's world.
My weight problems can be tied to my mental health, because I know that I often use food as "self-medication", to use the clinical term. I get depressed, upset or angry about something, and I reach for something tasty to "make me feel better". I recognise that this is a problem; I even recognise the behavioural patterns as being alarmingly similar to someone with a substance addiction — without going into details, I have some experience of helping someone who went through such a scenario and thankfully made it out of the other side, though not without leaving me with some lasting trauma that I suspect will never go away. But that doesn't always help me in doing something about it.
The old cliché is that the first step in solving a problem is acknowledging it exists, though, and I'm already a few steps along that road. As you can see above, I recognise the problem, and I've sought support for it — specifically in the form of Slimming World, an organisation with which I lost a lot of weight nearly 10 years ago. So far it has been going reasonably well — though I had a bit of a setback last week and am expecting another this week — but it's hard work.
The trouble is with the concept of "normal". In confronting personal problems like this, one of the biggest difficulties is in acknowledging that you are not "normal" by societal definitions, and that means you are going to have to do some things a little differently, perhaps for a long time or even permanently. On some days it is easier to make my peace with this than others. When I am in a position where I can mostly be in control of things and have some support standing by when I need it, I can generally muddle through without making too many mistakes.
But I do make mistakes, and confronting those, acknowledging them and dealing with the consequences is something I struggle with. If I deviate from a "plan" or even a "hope" that I have for myself, I beat myself up about it a lot. It upsets me and frustrates me and I become afraid. I'm not even sure what I'm afraid of — or perhaps it's not just one thing. Sometimes it might be being afraid to face those who are trying to help me, like I've let them down somehow. Sometimes it might be being afraid of my mistake having irreversible consequences. Sometimes it's just plain, simple fear, with no real source; it's just there.
All of the above doesn't just apply to attempting to bring my weight under control; it's something I struggle with in daily life. If I make a mistake at work, it can utterly ruin my day, even if no-one else thinks anything more of it after the initial acknowledgement of the issue. If I make a mistake in a social interaction with someone, I'll play it over and over in my head, wishing that I'd done something differently. If I make a mistake in something I'm supposed to be doing "long term" — like losing weight — I can easily feel a huge hit to my motivation and wondering why and if I should bother.
All this might sound a bit bleak and, I'm not going to lie, it is. Despite being in a life situation that is more than satisfactory, as noted above, I am still struggling right now. Every day is a battle against myself; some mornings I even feel afraid to get up. That's not something one should be feeling.
Perhaps talking about this stuff, even if it's just to myself, will help matters somewhat. That is at least part of the intention of resurrecting #oneaday. It's helped me before, so I suspect it may be able to help me again. And in the meantime, I'm thankful that I do have the support I do when I need it.
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
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I think one of the biggest sources of my anxiety these days is the growing feeling that I'm being "left behind" by the rest of the world thanks to the fact that everything changes so damn quickly these days… and moreover, if you don't keep up with it, you may well end up having difficulties.
As I type this, I'm occasionally stealing glances over to my dining room table, upon which sits an Atari 800XL and a CRT TV-monitor for which I'm currently awaiting a cable to allow the two to talk to one another. I'm excited to get the 800XL up and running not just because "woo, wow, retro", but because it formed such an integral part of my early life that it feels like a small piece of "stablity" in the turbulent waters of the modern age; a rock I can cling on to in order to avoid getting swept away.
This might sound like an odd thing to say with regard to a 30+ year old computer that I'm not entirely sure still works (I'm pretty sure it does), but since tracking it down I've become quite interested — excited, even — in the idea of using it for various purposes other than just games. Specifically, I'm perhaps most excited to use it as a "distraction-free" means of word processing; once I get it up and running, I fully intend to fire up the old copy of AtariWriter and actually do some ol' fashioned plain text composition. (My one nod to it actually being 2016 is the addition of an "SIO2PC" cable, which will allow me to transfer files from the Atari to a PC or Mac for safekeeping rather than relying on 30+ year old floppy disks.)
This probably sounds like a lot of effort to go to, but I'm excited because it allows me to focus on one thing rather than constantly being bombarded by the distractions that life in 2016 — and computing in 2016 — offers. Multitasking is all very well and good, but when you're trying to get anything done and Google Chrome is right there willing you to go and, I don't know, hunt for rare Pepes or something, it's sometimes hard to resist. Boot up a word processor that you have to load from disk and can't do anything else while it's running, on the other hand, and you have a situation much more conducive to Getting Shit Done, because once you've spent a couple of minutes listening to the soothing (and occasionally terrifying) sound of that disk drive snarking and zurbiting its way to your chosen program, it feels like something of a waste to then just shut it all down without actually doing anything.
I've drifted off on a tangent a bit, but my point is fairly simple: I long for the simplicity and the single-mindedness of days gone by, and am feeling increasingly stressed out and anxious by the constant demands for attention we get from all angles these days in 2016. I've attempted to minimise my exposure to these distractions as much as possible — primarily through minimising my contact with social media, which is probably the biggest distraction of all for most people these days — but with each passing day, I feel more and more inclined to just want to shut myself in a dark room and have a bit of peace and quiet to myself.
This isn't to say I don't still feel fairly bad about everything in general, but I don't feel quite so bad today. I even found myself applying for some other jobs in a slightly different field to that which I've not been having much luck in so far, and the simple act of doing that — of finding a job listing that, while not offering particularly good wages, certainly seemed to say "hey, you could do that" — helped me feel marginally more positive.
Dealing with negativity is all a matter of perspective. The easiest thing to do when you're feeling negative is to look straight up and see everything falling down on your head as you're buried by it. And once you're buried by it, it's very difficult to get yourself out again; the cycle becomes self-perpetuating.
Once in a while, though, you have a moment where you have the opportunity to step back and look at things from somewhere other than directly underneath them as you bear down on them. I'm speaking purely metaphorically here, of course, but looking at something from the outside — perhaps floating high above it, or from the perspective of a being that is much bigger than you are — can make things seem not quite so daunting. That huge inky blackness that was closing in threatening to bury me can become just a pile of papers on a desk — papers that can be shuffled, dealt with one at a time, even thrown away.
I wouldn't say I'm through the worst of this particular bout of depression — these feelings of general uselessness and worthlessness aren't going to go away until I find some way I can meaningfully contribute to the world (and by that, I mean do a job I get paid a reasonable amount for on a regular basis) — but today… didn't feel quite so bad.
I can only hope these feelings improve. I'm going to try and get some sleep now. May tomorrow be a brighter day still.
The worst thing — well, one of the worst things, anyway — about being depressed and anxiety-wracked is the perpetual feeling that you are not getting your feelings across properly, and the companion fear that people around you are just thinking that you're "a bit down" or, at worst, being irrational and unreasonable rather than suffering from crippling bleakness and an impossible desire to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch.
I, at least, have this blog as a means of expression as well as words I say face-to-face to people, words I write in email messages or words I say down a phone. (The latter is particularly rare, since, as those of you who know me well will already know, I do not like speaking on the phone at all.)
So, feeling particularly bleak and hopeless as I am at nearly 4am on this stuffy, sweaty August evening, it behooves me to try and be as frank as possible within the confines of the medium.
I am not doing so great.
I've not been doing so great for quite a while now, partly as a result of my own meandering, directionless life and partly due to external factors I have no direct control of. But at the moment, I feel like I'm doing especially not great.
It's true, I wrote a while back that the new meds I've been taking have had a positive effect, and I stand by that, but I'm having one of those times where I feel like everything is getting on top of me, and that's causing a domino effect of everything else in my mind to collapse, leaving me a mostly useless mess for a considerable proportion of the time.
I quit a job I had a while back that had the possibility to be if not particularly well-paid, then certainly reasonably secure and possibly even enjoyable. I did so because I was extremely worried about my wife, who was suffering especially ill health at the time. I was a little hesitant to do so, because I was afraid that I would end up in the exact situation I am now — seemingly unable to get another job — but ultimately I knew that it was the right thing to do, and I stand by my decision.
However, my wife, while not fully recovered as yet — still waiting on the NHS to do various bits and pieces, which will hopefully get into motion in earnest next month — is now back at work, seemingly getting on just fine with her new job, while I am reliant on erratic freelance income and sending out swathes of job applications every week that are probably never even looked at by cynical HR departments. While I know I'm not being completely useless, as I am getting work and getting it done to a good standard, there's always this feeling at the back of my mind: why?
The question that comes after "why" varies from moment to moment. Sometimes it's asking why I didn't stick with teaching. (Because the stress of teaching in two particularly "challenging" schools was a strong contributory factor to the depression and anxiety I've been suffering since 2010.) Sometimes it's asking why I didn't fight for my USgamer job when I was unceremoniously told one morning that I didn't have it any more, sorry. Sometimes it's asking why that job had to end at all — and this one is usually accompanied by furious anger and resentment towards several people involved in the situation, whom I believe were responsible for me being shown the door. Sometimes it's asking why I couldn't just have knuckled down at SSE and been a good little corporate drone, nodding and smiling at their primary school-level Health and Safety "exercises" that they foisted on even the office staff at every opportunity. And sometimes it's asking why I made choices back at the beginning of the Millennium that now feel like massive mistakes altogether: studying English and Music, pursuing the PGCE, going into teaching.
There aren't answers to many of those questions, and they tend to lead on to bleaker thoughts. The question about my time at SSE in particular is almost always accompanied by an exaggerated combination of flashback and imagination where I recall my traumatic last day at the company, dragged over the hot coals by an unsupportive management who just wanted to get me out of the door and wouldn't listen to anything I had to say. In reality, I yelled "fuck you" at them, stormed out and slammed the door, wishing to God I had the courage to say or do something more coherent to make my frustration known. In my imagination, I do everything from throw the phone on the table of the meeting room at my "opponents" to flipping the table, ripping the door off its hinges or smashing every computer I walk past on the way to collect my things. Each time I have this flashback-dream, it gets more intense and unpleasant, and it leaves me short of breath, panicking, begging for sleep to claim me, because it's always when I'm trying to get to sleep that my mind sees fit to dredge it up once again.
And the bleakness these endless questions leave me with make me more vulnerable to all sorts of other things. A simple request to play some online games with friends becomes an unimaginably frustrating and infuriating slight when I can't pin anyone down due to their (rationally speaking, perfectly reasonable) commitments to family or suchlike. I have difficulty focusing on anything, feeling like I "should" be doing something, anything other than what it is I am doing at the time, and this often leads me into a cycle of just doing nothing at all.
One of the most frustrating things is that I've fallen back into old habits with food. We stopped going to Slimming World when my wife was particularly unwell, as I was finding the weekly weigh-ins and Syn-counting an unnecessary stress on top of all the other things I was thinking about. Consequently, with little to no control over what I eat each day — plus a predisposition towards eating as a means of "self-medicating" anything from boredom to depression — I've put a bunch of weight back on again, so much so that I'm terrified of stepping on a set of scales, going back to the same Slimming World group I once attended or even trying on certain pairs of trousers.
All kinds of adjectives float around inside my head when I reflect on myself and how I might be able to get out of the situation I'm in. Hopeless. Worthless. Useless. Failure. I know none of them are true, but when you get this far into the darkness it's hard to see the light of hope. I vacillate between burning hatred for the people who have directly or indirectly contributed to the position in which I find myself, despair that makes me want to curl up and cry for the rest of time, and guilt at all the people I feel like I've let down with my inability to have made anything worthwhile of my life by this age.
I don't know what to do. I feel like I've exhausted all my options, tried all the things I'm supposed to try, and I don't know what's left. I'm sure in life it's pretty difficult to back yourself into a completely unwinnable situation, but I was designed in the '80s, after all; to continue the analogy, I feel like I'm in an early Sierra game and I'm finding each and every single place it's possible for King Graham to fall off something, trip over something, get crushed by something or get eaten by something. Eventually I might find the right path without tripping over Manaan's cat (yes, I know that was Gwydion, not Graham) or falling off a cliff, but right now I can't see it. And, sadly, life has no GameFAQs.
I should probably go to bed. Reflecting on this further isn't particularly helping me, but looking back over these 1,400 words I am a little glad I put pen to paper to express these things ticking over in my mind. Perhaps someone will read them and understand me just a little better. Perhaps I'll look back on them one day and wonder what I was worrying about. Or perhaps I really am a useless waste of space with no future whatsoever? Who knows.
Either way, bed beckons. If you read all this, thanks.
Early last year, shortly after I lost my job at raging shithole SSE for reasons at least partly linked to my depression and anxiety, I decided enough was enough and went to the doctor to seek some chemical help with my mental health issues. I was prescribed a drug called Sertraline, which I dutifully took for well over a year.
I can't quite tell whether or not Sertraline had any effect; I think on the whole, it did improve my mental health somewhat — although this may well be a placebo effect — though it didn't "cure" it. There is no such thing as a magic bullet that will "cure" depression and anxiety, unfortunately; if there were, whichever drug company was able to churn it out by the ton first would doubtless become the first "megacorporation" with all the proceeds, and we'd officially be living in even more of a futuristic dystopia than we do already.
One thing I found while on Sertraline though, and I don't know if this was the drug causing the problem or my own overactively anxious imagination, was that I had great difficulty sleeping. I'd lie awake until 3, 4 in the morning most nights, unable to get to sleep until my body was so exhausted it simply shut down. Prior to that, my brain would be rapidly darting back and forth between all manner of different thoughts — some worries, some desires, some recollections, some pure fantasies — and be far too "alert" to allow me to properly switch myself off and get some much-needed rest.
I persevered with this for probably far longer than I should have, but eventually, once again, I decided that enough was enough, and I wanted to try something new. I'd seen some positive effects on someone (who shall remain nameless for the moment) who had exhibited similar symptoms to me at times when switching from Sertraline to another drug called Mirtazapine, so I went to my doctor armed with this knowledge and asked to switch to see how I got on.
Like the other person, the difference was night and day. While Mirtazapine is also no "magic bullet" to completely alleviate depression and anxiety, one of the things that was bothering me the most — the inability to sleep, and the anxiety this caused — is "fixed". I can go to bed at a reasonable hour now and actually get to sleep when I choose to put my head down. Rather than constantly worrying that I don't know "how" to get to sleep — which is something that continually bothered me while I was on Sertraline, and possibly beforehand, too — I can just, you know, sleep without thinking about it, like a normal human being.
This has made quite a difference to my overall outlook on life. Getting a decent night's sleep is important, and as soon as you start getting it again having endured a period where you haven't had it, you really appreciate it.
Plus Mirtazapine gave me about a week of feeling perpetually stoned and having some incredibly vivid, crazy dreams, too, so if nothing else it was worth it for that experience.
I've had a horrible, fuzzy head today. I don't mean physically — although after getting my hair cut yesterday, my head is a bit fuzzy — but rather a not terribly pleasant feeling of "detachment"; of being slightly "out of phase" with the rest of the world. And a slight headache.
I've felt this before, and it's usually a symptom of depression and anxiety. In this instance, the fact I haven't been sleeping well for the past few nights and am feeling especially worried about my future have been contributing particularly to the way I'm feeling. It's not nice, so after writing this I'm going to go and sit in bed and relax with a bit of Ys: Memories of Celceta, then try and actually get off to sleep at a reasonable time if at all possible.
I actually have a job interview tomorrow. As usual when this happens, I'm being struck with anxiety over whether or not I'm actually suitable for the job and whether or not I'm going to make an idiot of myself in the interview. (Mind you, last time I thought I made an idiot of myself in the interview I ended up getting the job. Of course, that turned out to be the worst job I'd ever had, but that's perhaps beside the point.) The thing I've been telling myself — and Andie said the same earlier — is that if I looked completely unqualified and unsuitable for this job, the company wouldn't have got in touch and offered me an interview in the first place. This isn't any guarantee that I'll actually get the position, of course — given the geographical location, I'm not sure I'd want it, anyway, as it would mean a bit of a commute each day — but we'll see.
All in all, I haven't had a particularly good day. Not for any particular reason — nothing actually bad has happened, I just feel shitty.
Such is the way of things when your own mind likes to do its best to sabotage your life and happiness, though.
Oh well. All I can do, I guess, is take tomorrow as it comes and see how it goes. It's not as if the interview I have tomorrow is the only iron I have in the fire at the moment, so it doesn't really matter one way or the other as to whether I get it. But, you know, getting back into a routine and actually having an income would be nice.
I like sleeping. It is pleasant. Sometimes I like it a bit too much and do it for too long.
I also find sleeping one of the most frustrating things in the world, particularly as it's something you have to do.
Why do I find something so pleasant and relaxing so frustrating, though? Well, it's because I don't really know how to do it.
I'm serious! To be honest, I doubt anyone really knows how they fall asleep; it's a biological function so it just sort of happens. And yet, paradoxically, it's the awareness that I don't know how to make myself actually fall asleep that often keeps me awake at night.
The main trouble I have is anxiety-related. When I'm in a situation where there are no other sources of stimulation (sound, light, pictures, conversation) my brain doesn't think "ooh, nice, a bit of quiet, let's shut down for a bit rather than processing all this multi-sensory information". No; instead, my brain — and indeed, I imagine, the brain of anyone who suffers with anxiety — decides that yes, now would be a really good time to think about each and every one of the things that have upset you, made you sad, made you angry, frustrated you or that are worrying you.
Sometimes these thoughts come one at a time, one leading into another through a twisted chain of logic that doesn't make any sort of rational sense — but then anxiety is irrational for the most part, anyway.
Sometimes they come all at once and collapse in a big heap, worries and anxieties from disparate sources all intermingling into one horrible mess that quickens the breathing, sets the pulse to racing and makes the body feel for all intents and purposes that now might be a good time to run away.
From what, though? Sadly, you can't outrun your own brain, so quite where the physiological reaction comes from I can't be sure, but it's certainly unpleasant. More to the point, this then feeds into the growing anxiety I have that I want to get to sleep and shut all these unwelcome thoughts out, but I can't. And then the cycle begins anew until I either finally fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion or decide to get up and do something until I can't keep my eyes open any longer, as happened last night, when for reasons beyond my ken I was unable to get even close to sleep before 6am, which is not particularly conducive to a productive and/or healthy lifestyle.
I have certain thoughts that I always come back to when I'm feeling anxious, and I can't avoid them. These tend to be experiences that I found traumatic or unpleasant. Objectively speaking, they weren't necessarily actually traumatic in the sense of, say, injury or bereavement, but they're experiences that I had to go through that I didn't want to go through.
By far the most common is a twisted memory of the day I got forced out of my (admittedly horrible and shit, albeit quite well-paid) job at energy company SSE last February. I had endured a considerable period of workplace bullying from my immediate team leader and overall line manager, and they eventually managed to shove me out of the door after a complete mockery of a meeting in which I was invited to plead my case futilely while no-one paid any attention whatsoever. The meeting concluded with me shouting "Fuck you!" in the face of the line manager who had given me the most grief, followed by me storming out, more angry than I think I've ever been in my life.
The memory is twisted, though; when I flash back to it in the depths of anxiety-induced insomnia, that's not what happens. I don't stop with releasing the tension by shouting. Sometimes I throw the phone on the table at someone. Sometimes I fling my chair across the room. Sometimes I pick up the table and throw it at the people sitting across from me with stern yet smug expressions on their faces. Sometimes I slam the door so hard when I leave the cramped meeting room that it falls off its hinges. And sometimes I deliberately vandalise the rest of the offices on the way out in an attempt to somehow release the rage that has been boiling inside me; to give it physical form; to get it out of me.
I can't quite tell if these thoughts are things I wish I'd done on that horrible day or things that I worry I might have done if I'd taken the safeties off a bit more. I suppose it doesn't really matter either way; you can't go back and do things differently, however much you might like to, so the brain takes solace in fantasy. In its own way, the traumatic images are cathartic, but at the same time they induce such a state of heightened tension and anxiety in my whole body that, if I allow my thought process to get into that meeting room at all, I know that I'm not going to be able to calm down for a good few hours unless I have something — anything — to quickly and immediately distract me from it. In other words, if I allow my anxious thoughts to run away with me and end up, as they inevitably do if I leave them unchecked, in that horrible situation, I know I'm not going to be getting any sleep.
Because even if I successfully banish the most unpleasant of the thoughts, my brain is still keenly aware that I don't know how to shut it down properly. Oh for an "off" switch.
My good friend Dan wrote this excellent post on depression the other day, initially as an email-based TinyLetter, and subsequently as a blog post to be more widely shared.
It struck a chord with me. My experiences over the years haven't been anything near as traumatic as what Dan has dealt with, but a lot of the things he describes in his piece are very familiar indeed.
Here is the major issue with depression… it’s a dirty fucking liar. When I’m laid out on my bed (not in it, that requires movement) the black dog learns to speak. It doesn’t even do so with a pleasant cartoon voice, it’s one laced with bile and venom; a deep booming voice that rattles my core. Living with that constant voice is miserable. The black dog tells me that I’m no good at anything; that I’m a terrible parent; that nobody loves or appreciates me. It’s no use arguing with him at these times because his droning is relentless.
What makes it worse is that in every positive message I see around me, I’m left with a residue of self hatred. A friend of mine lands a great freelance writing position, that’s great… the black dog chews my ankle and says “you could have done that, but you didn’t because you’re useless. To be honest, you probably wouldn’t have even got the chance. Waste of space.”
Hoo, do I ever know this feeling. Part of it is a sense of impostor syndrome: the feeling that you'll never be quite as good at a thing you actually should be quite confident in as other people. The rest of it is simply a crippling sense of self-doubt and a lack of general self-confidence.
Unemployment really doesn't help with this. The worst thing about unemployment isn't the lack of money, though that certainly doesn't help and leads to a lot of worries and stress that can be otherwise avoided. No, the worst thing about unemployment is how it gradually eats away at your confidence, convincing you more and more each day that you're a worthless human being, that no-one will ever want you, that your skills are useless.
This is about where I am at the moment. I've been spamming out job applications for the past week or so, forgoing my usual approach of taking hours over a single application and then getting upset and depressed when it comes back as a rejection. While I know it's pretty much a crapshoot and random chance plays as much of a role as your actual talent for a position, it's still extremely demoralising the longer it goes on for. As I browse through lists of available jobs, I find myself wondering if I'm able to do them, even entry-level menial jobs. Even with jobs I know that I could do, like anything involving IT, I find myself hesitating over them because I don't feel confident that I'd be able to get my skills and enthusiasm across. Not having any particularly relevant qualifications or experience for the fields I'm interested in is a problem, too: my qualifications all relate to teaching, which theoretically could transfer to some sort of training position, but for stuff like IT the only thing I have to offer is my innate knowledge. That knowledge is solid, secure and fairly comprehensive, but not having a piece of paper to prove I have any of that knowledge leads to a constant sense of anxiety and inadequacy.
I hate this feeling. And I know all I have to do is keep plugging away in the hope that something good happens, and I'll almost certainly feel better once I have some regular money rolling in again. In the meantime, though, it's hard not to feel like a worthless, useless waste of space — even though I know that I'm not. That ol' Black Dog just keeps telling me that I am, and every day it gets harder and harder to reject his evaluation.
