Well This Sucks

I have to admit, when I heard that I had to book the week off work due to shingles, there was a part of me that thought it’d be fun. I remember having chicken pox when I was five and spending a week over summer sequestered with my best friend in his garden, playing with our Transformer toys in the golden sunlight, having a good scratch of our spots every time our mums weren’t looking.

This is not like that. The pain is like an incessant scalding of the nerve endings in my face, and has spread right around my eye and into the upper and lower lids, which is worrying me as to long-term complications, not to mention hurting like a mother-bitch. I’m taking as many painkillers as possible, and trying without much luck to distract myself. There are definitely worse things that could be happening, but right now it’s hard work thinking of them.

I watched the first episode of The Handmaid’s Tale on whatever 4oD is called these days -- good shout, Katie! -- which I thought was great, if a little reliant on voice-over narration to directly copy the strengths of the novel, rather than reforming it for a visual medium. It’s that eternal problem of adapting first-rate literature, that so much of the power is entwined within the way the book is written, rather than simply its plot, and a televised version can run the risk of illustrating the material without owning it, of telling rather than showing.

But then maybe I’m just too close to the novel, having studied it for A-Level and loved and reread it many times since. It’s hard not to notice the things that were left out, the subtleties that television isn’t good at picking up on. But certainly the performances are all excellent, the scenes with Janine and the Salvaging were very well done, and there is a drowning sense of oppression and claustrophobia, of how easily we can be turned against one another -- I’d say “more important than ever in this day and age”, but in what age is this not important? We are always vulnerable, always at risk. So far The Handmaid’s Tale does a good job of making that clear.

Another adaptation I’ve been enjoying recently is American Gods, streaming on Amazon Prime. This feels much more disassembled from its original book form and rebuilt into something new than The Handmaid’s Tale, although I confess to not having read the Neil Gaiman novel, so I can’t say for sure. Certainly, though, there are places where I hear Gaiman’s distinct voice, and the storytelling core is all him, but it’s visually intriguing in a way that I doubt came from the book, with great use of slow motion, fragmented narrative, match-cuts, and a whole host of filmic techniques to speak its meaning in a more visual language.

I know, I know -- I’m in too much pain right now to rewrite all that so it doesn’t sound insufferably pretentious. Whatever. Sue me.

I’m going to go try to shower now, although I splashed some water on my face before and it felt like the skin was melting off.

… And, OK, that was not the smartest of ideas. Water is NOT my friend. Also I look like Two-Face from Batman. Here is a picture:

I'm off to order pizza and watch a nice film to cheer myself up. Toodles x

I Have Shingles :(

If you’re thinking about getting shingles around your eye, I’ve got a tip for you: Don’t get shingles around your eye. It’s your call and everything, but I really wouldn’t recommend it.

A few days ago I got what I thought were a few spots, one on my forehead, and a cluster around my hairline. I’ve got terrible skin anyway, so this wasn’t a surprise. They hurt more than normal, but I thought that was just because of where they were on the face. When you get spots a lot you get used to the different varieties, the sore ones round the lips, the rosy red ones on the nose -- and on the forehead, where the skin is stretched tight, they can hurt like hell.

But then yesterday when I woke up the spots had become a rash across most of the top right side of my face, and it was clearly something else. It looked like a mild chemical burn, was more painful than before, and I assumed some kind of allergic reaction. I found a Boots that was open on bank holidays, and the pharmacist there gave me some strong antihistamines and told me to apply plenty of moisturiser, but he didn’t examine me closely, or seem much interested. Maybe that Guardian exposé was right. Or maybe he was just tired and distracted from working on Bank Holiday Monday. I know I hate it when I have to work bank holidays on the bar.

I dosed up and hunkered down. But then this morning the rash was worse again, what I’d thought were spots had now become welts, and another cluster had developed around my eye. And the pain, which had been awful yesterday, was now excruciating. It felt like the skin was being burned off my face.

I managed to book a same-day appointment with the nurse practitioner at my local surgery, and within minutes she had diagnosed me with shingles. I didn’t know much about it, other than that it was somehow related to chicken pox. But I picked up the antiviral drugs she prescribed me and came home and did a whole lot of Google research.

Shingles is herpes zoster, the reoccurrence of the chicken pox virus. After recovering from chicken pox the virus is not eradicated from your body, but rather lies dormant in the roots of your nerves. The virus can then reawaken in later life, especially if your immune system is lowered or you suffer from anxiety or stress -- which, like, *waves* -- at which point you develop shingles.

Anyway, the rash is supposed to blister and then scab and then heal, which with the help of the meds should last a week or two, and the pain, because it is nerve based, will likely last a while longer. I have to be careful with it being around and so close to my eye, because damage to the eye itself can cause permanent scarring and vision loss, which is scary, but hopefully the meds will lessen the risk of that as well.

You can’t give shingles to anyone else, but you can give chicken pox to someone who has not had chicken pox before, and because of this I have to sign myself off work until the blisters scab. Which really sucks for work, although my manager has been lovely about it, and kind of sucks for me, because I don’t fancy being house-bound for up to two weeks.

But I’ve been letting the blog slide of recent, not through depression but simply having other things to do, so perhaps it will be good to have some time with which to focus on writing again. I shouldn’t really go out, I’ve already ploughed through most of the Netflix library I can be bothered with, and the fiery pains up all the nerves of my face makes it hard to concentrate on anything too active.

So I’ll come here and let you know how I’m getting along, I’ll write whatever I have in me to write, and it’ll hopefully distract me in between doses of Zovirax and paracetamol and ibuprofen, of which I’ll be taking a whole shit-ton.

I hope you wonderful people are all good, anyway. Peace. 

Would You Just... Talk About It? Part Four

I've been struggling with depression again recently. It has been creeping back in over the months since restarting the antidepressants, creeping back through any cracks it can find. The medication holds it mostly at bay, but here and there it still trickles back in.

Getting up, getting moving, going to work are all more effort than they should be. I'm more tired at the end of even the easiest days. And days off when I have nothing I am forced to do it is all too easy to simply do nothing. Sticking with the writing is proving especially tough -- I'm finding I just don't care enough about it, or enough about anything.

Depression wears away at your ability to care, at your desires, your hopes, your passions, it blunts your essential life-force, whatever that is, whatever that means. At the milder end of the spectrum this life-force is only dulled round its edges, reigned in, but the more severe the depression, the more your spirit crumbles, right down to the complete collapse of a breakdown, and to the dark places beyond.

I am somewhere nearer the easier end at the moment, for sure, but I still feel it daily, am still plodding rather than skipping through my life. My spirit is still weak.

The antidepressants help, for me, but they are not a cure. As the writer Andrew Solomon puts it in The Noonday Demon, his superlative book on the subject, if depression is a vine entwining and strangling a healthy tree, then medication can push back the vine, but the tree beneath may still be withered and fragile, and pills alone will do little to help fresh shoots to grow.

This is an excellent analogy, but I am not sure if even this is completely true, if there even is a universal truth to depression to ever fully be understood. It is too nebulous a thing, too idiosyncratic, too intimately connected to who each of us is as a complete, living being. Unlike the vine and the tree, in reality there is no obvious dichotomy between what is the depression and what is the person underneath. Depression cannot simply be zapped away, like a patch of infected skin, because it infects everything, is a part of everything -- it is a curling at the edges of existence itself.

Nowhere is this more apparent than when it comes to treatment. Katie Hopkins recently Tweeted that "People with depression do not need a doctor and a bottle of something that rattles. They need a pair of running shoes and fresh air." This comment is clearly intended to be incendiary, to keep the spotlight on desperate, wretched Hopkins, and of course it is stupid and wrong, but I understand why it might have made sense in her head.

There are a million ways to maintain and refresh mental health -- exercise, yes, fresh air, yes, and eating well, getting early nights, getting up early in the mornings, having plenty of hobbies, meeting friends and socialising, discussing rather than bottling up problems, doing maths puzzles, reading, especially fiction and poetry, involving yourself in some kind of creative pursuit, limiting your time on social media, meditating, doing the morning pages, practising gratitude -- all of these things can either prevent or overcome depression.

The problem, however, is that they are all the things that are the hardest to do when you are depressed. Depression, in fact, basically is the inability to do these things.

When you are depressed you withdraw from life, your spirit withdraws, and so of course examples of a life lived to the full, which is what that list is, are the opposite of that. Not the antidote, but simply its opposite. Telling someone who is unable to get up and live their life that they would feel better if they got up and lived their life is tantamount to telling a diabetic that they should just produce more insulin.

Medication can, I think, cut away much of the pain of depression, and the various forms of therapy involve handing over your withdrawn spirit to a trained professional who can teach you routines and habits of thinking that will benefit that spirit -- but truly reigniting a dulled or extinguished life-force is a far more complex and involved undertaking than any health service can be reasonably expected to survive. There are no simple solutions.

Another analogy I like to use, although again, of course, it is only useful up to a point, is one of flower beds. If a depressed mind is like a flower bed where only sad and choking weeds grow, then medication is like the weed-killer that, sprayed every day, will continually push back the tangles, while therapy is like paying an experienced gardener to come down every week to teach you how to pull out the weeds by their roots and cultivate the rough soil and encourage more beautiful plants to grow.

But what I have found from my own experience, and this I believe corresponds to the data, is that once those sessions with the gardener are over, it is all too easy to start slipping back to your old ways, over perhaps years, and for more and more weeds to begin sprouting once again. It takes such an enormous strength of will to prevent this from happening, when the old ways are so ingrained. And strength of will is precisely what depression attacks first. Perhaps someone close to you comments that your garden is starting to look a little ragged again, that maybe you need to spend more time out there with the trowel, and you know this is true, of course you know, but you find you don't care enough to do it, you simply do not by yourself have the drive to work that soil, to grow those plants, to live your life.

And yet. People do recover from depression. They overcome it completely, or, more likely, they find a way to accept it, to structure their lives in a way to get the gardening done despite often not feeling like it, they create a reality that contains the fact of having a weaker spirit without being ruled by that fact.

Yes, an element to their garden will perhaps forever be darker, shrouded, they might always have to work harder to achieve less, and that danger of the weeds one day overcoming them and reclaiming all will never utterly be banished -- but they will have a garden, still, one for which they have battled hard, and the parts of it that blossom will appear to them, in comparison to the decay, more vital and glorious than anything they would ever otherwise have known.

So my depression is still here. I guess I wanted the medication and the work on this blog to have eradicated it, and that has not been the case. I don't think that ever will be the case. But that is all right. I get to be here, on this insane fabulous world, having this sometimes wonderful sometimes terrible adventure. If you are struggling as well, I am there with you, I understand. I'm not sure if it is the stronger, but as well as depression there also exists love. Whether you are in a position to feel it, there is also love. Hold onto that truth.

Would You Just... Stop Taking Life So Seriously?

Oh boy, I am tired from work last night. It wasn't even tough, I'm just getting too old for these late nights. I didn't go out afterwards, however, and I didn't drink. So that's grand.

I'm not going to be around this weekend because it is Jake's birthday, and he has the same ideas on size and duration of birthday celebrations as Bilbo Baggins. My next three days are booked solid. I just hope to be the mysterious Gandalf regaling youngsters with stories and fireworks, rather than the cantankerous old hobbit yelling that it's ProudFEET -- although as long as I don't spend the weekend passed out on pipeweed I'll take it as a win.

Anyway, before I put on my wizard's hat and disappear into Middle Earth, aka Jake's flat, I want to write a bit here so I can then go and party guilt-free.

I was thinking about existence a bit over my morning cereal, which I tend to do, so I guess I'll try to scribble out my thoughts now, for wont of anything more organised to say.

It's weird, existence, isn't it? I mean, none of it matters. None of it. There are seven billion of us, all thinking we're the important one, that it's our promotion or degree or car insurance or battles with personal demons that matter. But we're wrong. We're all just going to die. And everyone we've ever met or connected with or given birth to will also die, and every thought about bank accounts or dandruff or office sales leagues will crumble like ephemera torn apart on the breeze.

I, uhh, realise that sounds a little pessimistic. But I don't think it has to.

The thing is, it's so easy to die. OK, yes, that doesn't sound better, but bear with me. It is so easy to die, to stop existing. We're suffocating every instant, and we take a breath to save ourselves only long enough to begin suffocating again in the next instant. We're teetering on the precipice of destruction. It takes so much energy to keep ourselves from falling.

But there's no necessity. It's much more sensible, when you think about it, to not exist. It's the default setting. It's what we'll all be doing soon anyway. It's what we were doing for all of eternity before we were born. I don't remember it being so bad.

We have the biological urge to survive, for sure, but this is only an accident of evolution. Organisms mutated into existence, and some of these organisms mutated in ways that kept them existing, and these passed on their code, and the others were lost. Over millennia this has been hardened through insane amounts of repetition into the will to live, but it's still only an accident. Not a commandment from some God. Not a moralistic duty. Just an accident that we pass on.

So if we don't want to live, it's no big deal. It's hard work, after all, breathing, pumping blood, repairing wounds, remembering PIN numbers, thinking of new and exciting meals to cook every night. And it's hard work that in the end comes to naught.

We're not going anywhere. We're not reaching anything. The point of life isn't to procreate, it's just that procreation keeps life happening. Otherwise it'd be rather like saying the point of watching an episode of a TV show is to get to the next episode.

This is it, then. We bumble about for a few years -- three? fifty? -- and then it's over.

But, Christ, this isn't a bad thing. What it really means is: no pressure. If life is unimportant and meaningless and ending soon, then so are all our worries. If existence itself is not precious, then neither is your university degree that you might fail, or your car that has just broken down, or the fact your friend always looks so sexy in her slinky dresses while you look so misshapen and gross, or the lads in your office saying cruel things about you, or having to stay together for the kids, or having to break up for the kids, or confusion, or illness, or despair. If we're insignificant and temporary, then so is everything that troubles us.

And don't get me wrong, there will still be troubles. Your car will still break down, as will your body, and that will suck. But discomfort and strife are intimately tied to existence. There can be no pleasure, after all, without pain. No up without down. No beauty without Piers Morgan. It's all just part of the experience, the glorious, mysterious, terrifying ride.

You can get off whenever you want. Otherwise just enjoy it.

Or don't. It honestly is up to you.

Would You Just... Reframe That Narrative?

After work, walk home from the bus stop beneath a shushing canopy of leaves, the late sun turning the green of the leaves gold. Tiny purple flowers on the bushes. Telephone wires intersecting far off vapour trails to form complex patterns in the sky. The air hazy and warm. Buzzing of insects. Dry pollen tumbling on the breeze. Two children cycle past on miniature bikes, calling to one another, and I walk on, my footsteps swallowed in magnificence as, all around me, England lets out one vast sighing breath.

I always feel better after admitting to struggling. It always helps the storm to dissipate. Much of it, I think, is working to reframe my narrative. So, instead of thinking of myself as someone who tries to break free of depression and yet is always pulled back, can never escape, to instead try to join the dots to tell the story of a man coming to terms with his mental illness, with having days when the clouds are thick, sure, but many days when they are not, and learning each time the wind picks up and the hailstones fall to batten down the hatches and put away the delicate china, and to ride the weather out.

I feel low sometimes. I felt low yesterday. I'll feel low again soon. That is OK. There's no perfect world to get to, no end to struggles, at least in this lifetime. To paraphrase the Zen saying, "Before enlightenment: battle with days when you can't get up. After enlightenment: battle with days when you can't get up." I think perhaps happiness isn't about how great we can make our lives, but how great we can feel about our lives right now, in their, as Jon Kabat-Zinn quotes it, "full catastrophe".

I know these posts probably seem like a broken record at the moment, the same realisations, the same failures, the same realisations again. But I'm having to forget how I've lived life for probably two decades now, and learn again from scratch, and that takes a fair amount of repetition.

So bear with me. It's not easy, but, at least in retrospect, it'll all have been a lot of fun.

See you tomorrow x

Would You Just... Do What You Can?

Eeesh, another rubbish day today. And for no discernible reason, either. Things are going very well for me. I had a weekend better than any in recent memory, although I don't want to write about why just yet. Work is good. And this blog is giving me a sense of purpose that I have not had in years. I woke up this morning with a full day off ahead with which to catch up on washing, potter about, concentrate on writing.

And then I couldn't get out of bed. I read longform journalism on my phone, which initially felt like a worthwhile start to the day. Then I progressed/regressed to scrolling Facebook. Then my phone battery died and I lay back down and napped a little, which turned into a full sleep. Then when I finally woke up the day was ruined, and I spent the remaining hours shlubbing around, dazed, watching garbage on Youtube, feeling an invisible weight on my chest, wanting to write but unable to, filled with anger and frustration and self-hatred.

So apologies if this post isn't polished or perspicacious, but this is all I can get out right now, and I do think it's important to get something out.

I'm just so tired of my old way of looking at the world. It is so boring, it is so unhealthy. So let's just say I've had a tough day -- no idea why, when things are good, maybe anxiety about losing it all, about when the inevitable crash will come, maybe the old ego sensing threat and trying to reassert itself, who knows? -- but now I've become mindful of the storm I can do my best to hunker down and let it pass in its own time.

Depression kills complicated thoughts, saps mental energy, so I can't write anything big. But I can write these few simple lines, I can focus on the positives, I can accept that I might feel like this but it really doesn't matter, it's not worth getting stressed about. What matters is whether others are OK, what I can do to help. In this moment the best I can probably do is to stay calm and let the storm pass.

I've washed up, I've cooked a small tea, had a mug of Earl Grey.

Now I'm going to watch an episode of an easy show, because mental illness is like any illness, and when you're suffering you need to go easy on yourself.

And then I'm going to get an early night, because rest is important.

Working till five tomorrow, so I'll come home in the evening and write something then. See you soon x

Would You Just... Clean Out The Vegetable Drawer?

The light is gently draining out of the world, leaving a cool, calm May evening. I'm in my room listening to Tame Impala, trying to get this written before making a tea consisting of all the vegetables.

I felt low earlier today. Mild hangover after drinks for the leaving do of one of my closest friends from work, which there was no way I was missing, but I was about as sensible as I could be, drinking slowly, missing rounds and having water, going home at half one instead of like five in the morning. But still, I felt sleepy and depressed when I woke up -- when you drink constantly your dopamine and serotonin levels adjust to the increased release provided by alcohol, requiring more to activate, so drinking less or staying sober for a long time makes you feel bored, boring, shit, but that's just the reality you have to push through if you want to change your habits -- and but so I mooched in bed all morning, watched Jessica Jones on Netflix, napped, rolled around glum and misery-brained.

Finally I dragged myself up and through the shower, and into town. All bus journey I was bombarded with negative thoughts, doubts, anxieties. I tried to be mindful, distance myself by saying "I am aware that I am having the thought that... [whatever]", but the next moment I would just find myself caught up in more negativity, wrenched downwards into dark ruminations. I tried saying, "OK, that is OK, I am here having dark ruminations, feeling sick, stressed, mind racing, being disgusted with myself, with the gauche adverts outside, the decrepit passengers, the sprawling wretched mass of life globbing by, and that is OK, whatever is happening is OK" -- but it was tough. Felt like lies I was saying to myself, when everything was objectively obviously so bloody awful.

But gradually as I shopped the negativity dissipated. I bought new shoes -- because there's a point where you stop being someone attempting not to care about material possessions and flitter money away into the gaping maw of consumerism, and become just a man with holes in his shoes. And once that was done I bought some new tees and a zip-up hoody to replace the one I gave away to a homeless woman when I was drunk once like the gormless SJW I am -- but by the way, re that whole SJW thing, if you're going to be a warrior for something, then "social justice" is not something to be embarrassed about, and a far better cause than, like, "keeping feminism out of nerd hobbies" or "proving your superiority to everyone over the internet" or whatever the hell Milo Yiannopoulos and those pathetic Gamergate boys actually stand for. I mean, take a look at yourself. You're doing the propaganda work of the actual evil Empire, while mocking the Rebel Alliance for caring about something. You completely suck.

-- But, yeah, anyway. I did more bits and bobs in town, did some food shopping, got a coffee, read some of Oblivion on my phone (which stories are about the only DFW things I have left to finish) and I began to feel better.

Then I went home and washed up and cleaned out the vegetable drawers in the fridge, because there were sloppy liquefying Objects in the back there beginning to be less discrete items and more just a unified gelatinised mass of manifested shame -- so I binned the lot and scrubbed out the drawers and year-zeroed the new stuff promising to be more conscientious with eating vegetables while they're still in date and not wasting half of everything I buy, which promise I make about every two weeks.

Then I tidied my bedroom and hung up my new clothes and recycled the bags and shoe box and scrunched up tissue paper they push to the toes of new shoes to fill them out, and I took the bins out, especially the bag dripping vegetable waste, and put in new bin bags. Then I did some press-ups and bicep-curls -- I bought some weights one time in the hopes they might help assuage my deep sense of self-loathing, turns out though it's still remarkably easy to hate yourself while lifting heavy objects, but whatever, it's still fun sometimes -- and now I'm in my room listening to Tame Impala, trying to get this written before making a tea consisting of all the vegetables.

Which looping back to the words of my opening paragraph, except with those words now carrying additional meaning because of the context of cleaning out my fridge, is known as a circular narrative, similar to the kind employed in for example Inside Llewyn Davis or Pulp Fiction, and so if you think this post is bad then you're pretty much saying you hate both those films as well, which, fair enough, if you want to be that guy/girl, but common consensus and the weight of history is not on your side.

And now it really is tea time. Though it's quite late now, I might just have pizza instead.

Ta ra.

Would You Just... Ride It?

Aaand breathe. Snooker is finally over, it is my first day off in eight days, and boy do I need a rest.

Snooker was tough. It wasn't the busiest I've ever done, and the hours weren't as horrendous as in the old pub (don't miss those 3am closes), but still, well... let's just say I needed this day off.

Keeping up with the blog while working full time and dealing with the busiest two weeks of the year wore me down, and I let the writing slide towards the end, and I coped through it all by drinking too much, again, and it all turned into exactly the kind of cycle I've been trying so hard to struggle out of in recent months.

It's easy to see what I should have done. When finishing at 10pm, say, I should have gone straight to the late Sainsbury's to pick up healthy soup or something, gone home, cooked, eaten, written a short post while food settled, been asleep by 1am, refreshed as much as possible for the next day's struggle.

Instead however I'd limp off the bar with the other mid-shifters, order a delicious beer, stagger to booth where the earlier finishers had set up camp, we'd drink beer, order more beer, drink that -- I'd stumble home at 2am, too late for food, too tired for writing, put a film on Netflix, lie in pooling glow of screen not awake and not asleep, watching figures moving, voices gabbling, finally realising I was more asleep than awake, then realising I'd been dreaming, then dreaming again, then waking, then dreaming -- finally with sun coming up waking enough to turn off my PlayStation, rolling over and sleeping until midday -- then a dazed shower and sniff of a shirt hung over my chair, yep, that'll do, spray of deodorant, rifling through cupboards for food with which to take antidepressant --  raisins and last few walnut pieces from bag? Fine, whatever -- then comb beard, brush tee-- Shit, the time, stumble out of door fiddling with keys, back in for wallet, back out again, one arm in jacket, one clutching headphones, trip down drive and hustle down road and onto bus to be driven back into the belly of the beast with the rush and the clamour and anyone able to stay mindful and keep head clear in that maelstrom a better by far person than I.

But it's easy to judge. Easy to castigate. In fact that self-flagellation is simply more of the old mindset I've been trying to move away from. Better, I think, to recognise how much progress I've made of late, that the pressures of Snooker were more than I was ready in my still-fragile state to face while simultaneously battling negative habits of a decade, but that that is OK. That what three months ago was my daily existence now feels like a bad place to slip back towards, and that this slipping is the exception, rather than the rule.

When a toddler has first unsteadily found its feet and is starting to stay upright is not the time for that toddler to run a marathon. And my nascent sense of positive purpose is definitely still a toddler. And the past two weeks were definitely a marathon.

Making progress in anything, I think, involves accepting plenty of failure -- and this goes double for overcoming negativity and low mental health.

Onwards and upwards then, and downwards, and upwards, and upwards, and downwards, and upwards. As a wise man once said: Life is a rollercoaster, just gotta ride it.