Two Years

As I lie in bed trying to sleep, knowing I will be wakened in a few hours, I can't help my mind taking me back to another night two years ago today. I've kept busy all day but there's nothing between me and the memories now.

The hard mattress and yucky polyester sheets. The knowledge that I would be wakened in four hours, my lights turned on, my blood pressure, pulse, sats and temperature taken and my finger pricked. The terror of realising each and every time I regained consciousness that I was in this unknown place and I had to face the thing I was most scared of four times a day. Traumatic as the general hospital was, I had come to understand it and therefore feel some level of safety but now everything was new and overwhelming all over again. 

That morning as I stepped over the threshold with fear and hope, I had taken some of the most important steps towards my new life. Of course it's not actually clear cut like that, there is no line between old life and new life, I have not "arrived" anywhere and am very much just continuing to take steps every day, in varying directions.

But there are some things that were left at that door that I am endlessly grateful to be rid of. They had no place in my life and I never want them back. Others I have picked up to help me since, and many many more I still carry, for better or for worse.

It's always a difficult time of year for me: my brain works by making links and finding patterns, and so it is great at highlighting similarities and differences between experiences while it tries to organise and categorise everything in order to understand life and inform itself on what might happen next and how to deal with it.

And so it reminds me in my thoughts about events that happened on certain days (like today), and it reminds me in my body of experiences I sensed or emotions I felt (like the leaves turning orange and falling from the trees, or the cold morning air or a particular timbre of beeping). The two often become entangled or the one prompts the other as well. The trouble is, my poor old Brian can't decide whether to categorise these things as good or bad (they were of course a mixture) and how they should inform my future actions. I don't know what I feel about them and my brain is so intent on trying to make a logical map from them that they just keep swilling around because they can't be filed.

Life is very different now from how it was two years ago. I've been trying to write this post for two weeks - this is the end of about six weeks of annual date-specific memories - and could never find quite the right words. My life is better. I am more independent. I am happier. I have more freedom. I share more about my wellbeing with Mr Peggy. I have better support. I am much more able to ask for help when I need it. I have better coping strategies. I live a more authentic life. I have Baby Peggy. 

That time was probably the hardest in my life. I certainly had most of the most traumatic single moments of my life so far (and hopefully ever!) during that time. My stress levels were permanently so high that meltdowns were routine. But I also found hope. I met some of my closest friends. I reclaimed parts of my life I thought were lost. I found out a bit of who I am when I'm not trying to hide (because there was nowhere to hide). I let people in and I let people help. It hurt and it helped. And so I don't know how I feel about it and I don't know how to write about it. 

A therapist I saw recently helped me make a little sense when I explained that I wasn't even sure whether it was even trauma I was dealing with: because the events, experiences and feelings all happened in one time span and space that definitely had some traumatic events, it all gets lumped together by my brain, and so even parts that I wouldn't think should be traumatic still inspire some of those feelings. The emotional response is so complex because all of the different emotions are related to things that happened at that time, and so whenever I am reminded of any part of it, I just get a big ball of unidentified emotional mash. (She didn't quite phrase it like that!) I wonder if it can also work the other way - that because some wonderful things came from it I can feel mistakenly positive about the bad bits.

So I don't know how I feel about it. And still the memories swill. Hopefully one day they'll just trickle by harmlessly. 

Until then? Just keep swimming...

And be grateful for what I have right now, which is more than I would have dared to hope for through my tears on the hard mattress in the middle of the night.

How close to crazy?

Note to self: be less crazy.

I've developed a habit when distressed of repeating a short calming phrase to myself and Baby Peggy. It's quite effective but I think it makes me sound more crazy than I am. Or maybe I am just more crazy than I think I am.

Pacing around repeating "It's ok, we're gonna fix it, it's ok. It's ok, we're gonna fix it, it's ok" (or similar) is not normal behaviour. But it does help! The rhythm of the words, and the reassurance of telling myself that it will be OK even if it's not now can help to stop me escalating further. The sameness of the repetition can eventually smooth the seam of transition between distress actions and problem-solving, de-escalation or "moving-on" actions.

But it is disturbing for others to see (or rather, to hear), particularly if preceded or accompanied by an even more dysregulated presentation of crying, flapping, shaking, self harm, being a ball in a corner etc.

I don't know where the balance lies between helping myself and not being a nuisance. Sometimes it feels as though I can do little about it even if I wanted to and that these are ways to stop anything worse from happening. I have had to accept that being inconspicuous as I would like to be is just not always realistic.

I don't know whether it was the repetitive phrases or the general presentation or the fact I had a baby with me but I obviously went one step too crazy this time. 

It had already been a difficult day on a backdrop of raised stress levels. Meltdown 1 had been surfaced from after two and a half hours of recovery, and Meltdown 2a had avoided escalation by furiously (manically? desperately? absently?) continuing with my previous plan of action. I should have known (and probably did know) that Meltdown 2b was pretty much inevitable if anything even slightly untoward were to greet me.

Which of course it did in the car park of Aldi, in the form of a lady unloading a trolley in the back of the space I was reversing into.

The car was half in and half out of the space, waiting didn't fix it and instead the lady started to gesture to me (I was too stressed out from earlier to process that her signals meant she needed me to move out of the way so she could get the trolley out of my way), the baby started to cry, and I was expecting an important phone call at any moment.

Executive function swanned off entirely so I just could not work out what to prioritise or in what order things needed to happen. Or even what things needed to happen! Luckily having a baby makes it simpler in some ways as they trump all else on a fundamental level that can usually penetrate even the depths of my problems. Start with the baby and hope the rest follows. 

Of course, starting with the baby meant getting out of the car, which meant the problem that involved another person put itself all over me while my brain was still offline and in basic "comfort the baby" mode. It could only do one job at that moment - language was pretty much absent other than repeating a comforting phrase. Responsive language, problem solving and social interaction were way down my brain's priority pathways and out of reach. So I was largely ignoring the other lady in order to do the thing I needed to do first.

I would have got through, and indeed did get through, all the other jobs eventually, it just took longer than for other people and I looked more unusual whilst doing it.

And so I worked through the backlog of tasks and got onto the supermarket shop about fifteen minutes later. (The lady solved the problem that involved both of us in the meantime, which took a job off my list!) Order restored after a really difficult afternoon.

And then the bit that made me realise once again that I'm actually a crazy person. A couple of police officers wandering up the aisle opposite. Not hugely unusual in the town where I live so I carried on as normal. But it turned out it was me they wanted. The lady had been worried enough that she had sent the police to check on me. 

They were very calm and as discreet as they could be and we just had a little chat and they left me to it (although they did wait outside the shop and check on me again when I got to my car!) but it was a new experience for me and not entirely comfortable. I know I can be unusual and do become distressed at times, but generally I find my way through things and don't tend to cause others a problem. When this happened I felt even more conspicuous. I felt embarrassed being talked to by officers in public. And I felt acutely aware that I needed to present myself in a very "normal" manner or it would be so easy to suddenly find myself on the wrong side of crazy, popped into a van and detained for assessment. It's the second time I've had a possible close shave with the mental health act and it makes you feel suddenly very vulnerable.

I suppose I am grateful that somebody cared enough to make sure I was OK (I had assured her that I was, but clearly hadn't convinced her), but the whole thing left me unsettled. I realised when I went out the next day that I was really quite anxious. Anxious I would have another meltdown - they are not fun and because of the high distress of that day as well as the pre-existing background stress factors I am now feeling much more like I did eighteen months ago than how I've been feeling recently - and additionally anxious that if I did, someone would report it and I'd end up on the wrong side of crazy, with people saying I can't look after my baby or sectioning me. Until yesterday I felt less anxious in public than before having a baby: I know how to act with a baby, I know the conversations off by heart, I know how to behave with a baby, I have a purpose so am not occupied by trying not to be weird etc.  But now I feel more anxious instead, because of other people's responses to me doing what I need to do. And I also start to question the confidence I had in being able to look after a baby. If I can get that distressed around him then am I really fit? I hope I am, but it has shaken me and knocked my confidence. It has made me a little paranoid in public and much more likely to mask, which is widely recognised as being detrimental to wellbeing (also borne out by my personal experience).

So I guess I have to once more examine the balance of how much "me" is acceptable, and how close to crazy is too close.

But for the minute I'll just snuggle down with Baby Peggy, go for walks away from the people, and try to let my brain get back to "now" me instead of year-and-a-half-ago me.

Some "rest the brain" activities