Reclaiming Autumn

Over the years I have often written about how being outside and spending time with nature helps my mental health, reduces my stress levels and keeps me better regulated. Closely observing the changes and small wonders of autumn, winter and spring has got me through some of the most difficult times I have had.

The only trouble is, because the things I was experiencing were so intense and the solace I found outside so important, the two became thoroughly entangled. Last year autumn no longer helped me but brought memories and emotions back that were overwhelming and distressing. I avoided spending optional time out and about this spring for the same reason. I am still only posting pictures from this year even though I have more beautiful ones from before. 

As summer once again turns to autumn my mind is spending a lot of time in the past, as I've come to expect. But I think that this time the emotions are a bit less overwhelming, and although the thoughts still intrude when I may not want them I am more able to think about things rather than just feeling overwhelmed and wanting to get away. 

Sure, it's still causing problems, but I decided to take little steps to reclaiming autumn. Change comes along naturally when there's a baby in the family so it seemed a good opportunity to jump on the bandwagon and try to get back some of the benefits I lost when my source of respite got tied up with the thing I needed respite from. The longer I left it the harder it would get.

So last week I took Baby Peggy for a walk to collect some autumn for him to play with. Doing things with a purpose and for his benefit helps to motivate me and to help me focus on now rather than then. There were and are memories and emotions and thoughts drawing me to the past, but there is also joy in what is happening now, and positive anticipation for his future and autumns to come, rather than just my brain's story about what autumn should be.

Switched up the
toys on his play mat

I jazzed up his
mobile with leav

Bringing some autumn into the house where I can't avoid it helps to disentangle the associations and make new connections. I can't delete things from the story and it probably wouldn't be wise to, but I can add to it and make some choices about how the new and old plot lines interact. 

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.

Still Remembering

I need to write something, but I don't know what.

I feel funny at the moment. I think I feel sad. As well as overwhelmed and excited and discombobulated by all the change in life right now, of course.

I have spoken before about memories and how reminders of situations and events from the last couple of years can cause me difficulty. While I was in hospital and for about the first six months afterwards these memories would often come suddenly and bring incredibly intense emotions that I found difficult to cope with and that lingered with me throughout the day. 

Over the last six months I have felt they have relented a little in their frequency and intensity. I am less often triggered beyond my ability to concentrate on the present moment. The intense effects of a memory last less long. I can talk about some things that I couldn't talk about before without becoming completely overwhelmed. 

And yet. 

They haunt me still. The barely-staved-off panic attacks when I have to go to the general hospital. The lingering emotion all day reminding me of the dream I had last night. It's an emotion I still can't place a year on, and the dream hangover ignites further thoughts and memories to make it worse. The same emotion hits me like a wall when things are too similar to previous days, trapping me in my house because I'm too scared of the feelings I'll have if I go outside in the spring sunshine. The colder dull weather this week has been a relief. My camera reel was full of spring photos and blooming life last year but this year there are three. 

The tears I push away and avoid spring up on me less often, but they are all the more vicious because I've hidden from them.

It doesn't go away, and it doesn't become less confusing. There are times when the triggers are further apart, or avoidable or I can box things up and squash them away while I do what I need to do. But this stuff seems to be with me to stay and I don't even know what it is. I think if I'm going to have any luck in managing it I need to understand it, and I need some help with that because I clearly haven't got far on my own in a year! I need someone to help me unpack the boxes, look at the confusing things and work out what to do with them. And maybe I'm ready for that now, which I wasn't a year ago.