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Friday 26 October 2018

Day 181: Filling up

Home from a day with the Van-Shallows, playing videogames with Jake, nattering with Missy, getting my hand and jumper and zip and bag straps gnawed by Hagrid. The pup is splitting his time between chewing everything in sight and weeing on the floor at the moment; Jake and Missy looked tired.

We drank cups of tea, hung out in the front room around their drawings and baubles and trinkets, watched old episodes of Friends on Netflix.

We didn’t have anything exciting to say. Anything new to do. We sat and spent time. Missy went out to her GP appointment, came back, went to her play rehearsal, came back. Jake and I ate pizza and looked for a co-op game to play together on the Switch.

It was a nice day. I’m really struggling to stay on top of my mental health at the moment, but stay on top of it I think I am. It’s a beast that’s thrashing beneath me, inside me, and I’m trying to give it the room to thrash while not letting it take control. (I have a different analogy for mental health every day. That’s because it shifts forms every day. And because it’s a great shrouded thing that has to be approached from many angles to get even a loose idea of its shape, its heft.)

I had moments today when I felt like everything was empty of joy and worth. When I thought about how I’ve got so little vibrancy inside me to write with, to interact with friends with; that there’s nothing in my heart or in the wider world but habit, routine, and ash.

But those are only thoughts. Scary thoughts, but only thoughts. Not reality, but judgements about reality. Sometimes I think they’re true, and then later I see that they were nothing but shadowy spectres, dissolving in the light of awareness.

I’ve seen that before. So I allowed that that was a possibility today. "I feel that everything is broken, but that doesn’t mean that that is so."

And other moments, more moments, I played with the dog on the sofa, shot Rabbids on the Switch with Jake, laughed with Missy about Joey’s antics on Friends.

We drank more tea. The night swept in. Another day passed on Earth. Not the best day. Not the worst. But another that my negative thoughts did not win.

The brighter column is filling up.

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