Apologies for my failure to contribute to this literary masterpiece yesterday. The truth is, I was distracted by the fact I had to go back to work this morning, after my week off. This is never a pleasant experience for anybody, of course. But it's worse when you work in retail and it's nearly Christmas, and it's worse - dare I say it - when you suffer from anxiety and depression.
I'm well aware that, in any given year, a quarter of people experience mental health difficulties. I know a number of people who have or have had such problems, for a variety of reasons, most of which are - in my opinion - more valid than mine. But, as the past 24 hours have demonstrated to me, the validity of the reasons for your symptoms don't necessarily always correlate with the the severity of your symptoms.
Since I've created this forum for myself, I thought it might help me to use it to express my troubles. I want to be clear about the fact that I'm writing this for my own benefit, but I'm doing it on here because, in general, I think it's useful to have an audience in mind (however intangible) when I'm writing. The following may well appear self-indulgent or cringeworthy, but I think it will be pointless if I shy away from that possibility. This is absolutely not a cry for help or sympathy. I'm just seeing if I can help myself by writing it. So please only read on if none of that bothers you. I won't mind if nobody reads it, but I hope that anyone who does at least finds it a bit interesting.
As a manager in retail this time of year, building up to Christmas, is always stressful for me, as the workload for my team and I increases exponentially. There is a lot more of everything to do and, as someone who puts great stock in my ability to stay in control of my workload by foreseeing things that might increase it, this inevitably worries me. So, periodically (maybe a few times a year), but especially in November and December, I develop a growing sense of anxiety.
When this anxiety grows to a certain point, it makes me lose all sense of perspective. 'It's only a shop,' I'll tell myself, or 'It's only a series of feasible tasks; take them one at a time.' Often, I'll end up losing sleep; lying awake at night worrying about things I can do nothing about until morning, and this inability to do anything just makes the worrying worse. Or sometimes I'll lose my sense of priority and end up literally running around, trying to do everything at once, in the hope of getting to the end of infinity so I can stop. But, of course that end point will always elude me, so my anxiety grows even more. Usually, though, much needed interventions from friends, family and colleagues, and mantras like those above will eventually help me to see sense and calm down.
But sometimes I reach a dangerous tipping point before I can calm down. This morning, as my to-do list grew faster than I could make any dent in it, I tried desperately to delegate my way out of the trouble I could feel coming. But I'm not very good at delegating, which is part of my problem. All the while, I felt increasingly short of breath, nauseous and, worst of all, detached. It's as if my mind goes into a state of denial about the problems I perceive, and refuses to let me think about them. But at the same time, another part of my mind is aware of the desperate need to think about the problems, which only increases my sense of panic about my inability to deal with it all. In the end I'm left with no choice but to write off tasks I know I shouldn't write off. But I feel like I'll go under if I don't relieve some of the pressure.
Somehow today (mostly because of the support and hard work of my colleagues), I got through the day. I got home from work and was genuinely delighted to see my family. They are, after all, the good in my life; the people whose wellbeing motivates me to go through all this. I made a point of cherishing every moment with my children until they were in bed - even refusing to look at Facebook during dinner! But, as their bedtime drew near, I was increasingly aware that it was taking some effort to keep smiling at them; enjoying and engaging with their thoughts and actions. I was overwhelmed by a sustained feeling of needing to cry. It didn't feel like it had any specific, tangible cause, but I think it was to do with the list of incomplete jobs from earlier, lurking in the back of my mind, waiting to be joined by tomorrow's impossible workload.
I busied myself with chores to try to distract myself. I tried, as is natural for anybody feeling low, to think of reasons to be cheerful. But, despite the obvious abundance of such reasons I have available to me - my beautiful, wonderful family, our comfortable home, the food in the fridge, the quite good book I've just started reading - none of them made me feel any better. Some sort of indefinable, physiological response to these prompts just wasn't there. I couldn't bring myself to look forward to anything.
And this was when I realised that my anxiety is very close to spilling over into depression. I can't be sure at the moment whether it already has. Hopefully writing this will have helped me cling to the edge of the cliff, rather than falling off. But I've got a nasty feeling I'm not going to sleep tonight. And being awake all night when you feel like this is a cruel torture. It's like somebody stamping on your fingers for hours when you're clinging on to the edge of a cliff. It leads to despair, dread and helplessness, no matter how disproportionate.
I know that so many people have experienced this and much, much worse, and I'm not comfortable with self-pity. What can I say? I'm indulging myself. I suppose I could justify it by claiming that I'm doing my bit to break the painful taboo around discussing mental illness, but that would be to claim credit I don't really deserve. I've fallen off the cliff a few times before and eventually made my way back up. Hopefully, the fact that I'm still self-aware enough to be slightly embarrassed about all this - the fact that I know, on some level, that I'm being irrational - proves that I'm still clinging on. I just wish I was better at staying away from the edge.
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