Depression, grief and lonely little people

I started writing about my mental health when I was about fifteen, around the same time I started experiencing problems with it. As I have always done, I used writing as a coping mechanism, a safe space away from my thoughts to purge and gain some control over my emotions. To carefully carve out sentences and paragraphs that could summarise my feelings, I suppose in an attempt to understand them. Much like my writing style, my mental health has evolved and changed over the years. Writing however has remained a safe space for me, a comfortable place to return to and spill my thoughts onto the page. There was a time in my late teens that I became paranoid of oversharing online, of speaking too freely about my mental health in blog posts and mainly of people who knew me in real life judging me. Whilst the feeling of my writing being perceived is still unsettling, what brought me comfort was people messaging me, commenting and telling me that my posts were helping them. I've been thinking lately of what depression really means to me, as its taken up such a large chunk of my life. We hope, as adults that our coping mechanisms will become stronger, that we'll become better at adapting and overcoming, dealing with problems head on and ultimately as we age, we will be more stable. I at least admit to wishing for this as a very unstable and unhappy teenager, it's easy to look forward and wish for things to get easier, without really considering the realities that healing and progress are not linear, rather they exist on a messy timeline that ebbs and flows. I clung to the fantasy that my mental health would one day be fixed and that I could go back to feeling normal. What adulthood has really taught me is that I'm never going to be fine. Whilst that sounds like a really deliberately sorrow headline to draw attention, it's ultimately true. Because happiness is not something that is fixed and constant, it fluctuates and can vanish as quickly as it can appear. Happiness therefore is not the goal with which to measure your life, it is not the thing to be running towards. 2021 was on the whole a really happy year for me, I met the love of my life and moved to Brighton. I have countless happy memories of the year and I'll forever be grateful to it but the happiness whilst weighty and meaningful was just as present as the sadness, the grief and the anxiety. The year was a kaleidoscope of emotion, a slow cooked stew of feelings and to pretend otherwise would be false. The highs were high and the lows were low and as I'm sitting at the beginning of the year I feel guilty in saying that I've been depressed again. I've gotten to the point in my journey with depression that I can pinpoint exactly what has triggered this depressive episode and I'm working on solid steps to improve it which is positive growth. But the reality is that every so often, it will return back to the front of my brain. 

Similarly, grief is a nasty thing that swims in and out of your brain at the best and worst of times. We can rely on the consistency of grief about as solidly as the competency of government. There are some days where I feel as if my grieving window has expired and that I should force myself out of these feelings by factory resetting my brain. The reality is that grief is messy and much like 'recovery' from depression, there is no simple answer or smooth timeline in which healing is possible. It's ok if some days I feel the grief more substantially than others, some days there are triggers or reminders that push the memories and the grief to the front of your brain and you're overwhelmed with the reminder that this person is gone. It never gets easier, but life and love grow from the roots of grief. Life continues, new people make you laugh and remind you of the ones you've lost. But some days, the space they left feels smaller. And grieving isn't something we only do for the dead, we mourn lost friends and lost family members as closely as we feel various absences from our life. People leave, people move away or cut ties and to adapt to the emptiness of somebody that you loved no longer being there is still an exceptional burden to carry. As for adulthood, there's a certain type of loneliness that comes from living apart from your friends and loved ones. I'm so lucky to know confidently that I have so many people all around the world who love me, really dearly love me. But it's a sadness to not have them here with me, to not feel the warmth of their hands or the tightness of a hug. The pandemic especially has taught people how to love from a distance, how to put emotion and love and feeling out into the world, with the hope that it reaches people far away. Whilst modern technology allows us to do this and connect with people in new and exciting ways, psychologically and physically we are still unable to enjoy the contact that as human beings we so dearly need. A like or a virtual hug absorbs into our skin meekly and fades very fast as opposed to the real deal. I've been lonely, my friends live all over the country, my boyfriend and I are long distance at the moment, my parents are back home and I live alone. I work from home and I have very few friends in this new city. Announcing that you're feeling lonely isn't a cry for help nor an advert for new friendships, but it's merely an honest statement. Speaking freely and honestly about mental health is ugly, it doesn't look or feel nice to say these things out loud. But it's important to do so because human beings feel everything. We feel so strongly, we empathise and grieve and yearn and lick our wounds and the reality is that so many people will be feeling these exact things alongside myself. Loneliness is a growing problem in the UK, ''In total , 45% of adults feel occasionally, sometimes or often lonely in England. This equates to twenty five million people.'' So for all of those people currently feeling even a slice of what I am, I'm standing right beside you. Much like I felt when I was fifteen, sharing helps, talking helps, being open and honest about the ways you're feeling, sharing the uglier sides of your mind irregardless of what people may think or say, it all helps. We should all try harder to be honest, despite standards and pressures on social media to maintain neat and easily digestible lives, we all feel messy and horrible things sometimes. And we all get lonely. 

Be kind and reach out to people, start conversations and have difficult discussions. Talk more! 

There are only 24 hours in the day so use yours wisely, support nice organisations like this: 

https://www.campaigntoendloneliness.org/support-us/ 

#EndLoneliness 

Look after each other, 

Molly 

xx