Note: I wrote this post at the end of the 28th of August, but I got sleepy in the process of writing it and didn’t end up publishing the post on the day. Normally when that happens, I’ll just not publish the post I’d been writing at all, as I’ll conclude that whatever it was I’d been writing about couldn’t have been that important anyway. But I’ll publish this post now as I think it fills in the picture a little as to how things had been the previous week, and that feels necessary to me, before I write any new posts.
The concentration and depression have been worse this past week.
The place that I’d started going to to concentrate better at has been closed for refurbishment, but I don’t think that’s been a bad thing, as I think it’s been good for me to have a change, after I’d been going to that place every day for over a month. Also, this past week involved a lot of worrying about and making efforts towards the care of my dog Abu and my mum, that required my being at places other than at the place I’d started going to to concentrate. Worrying about and caring for Abu and mum didn’t take up all of the week’s time, but I think my concern for both of them is what caused the week to be emotionally exhausting.
Abu’s heart was found to have progressed to its next stage in mitral valve disease. He’ll now need medication every day. This past week I also had to hear my mum tell a dental hygienist that she has a heart condition, though she did not go into detail. I tried to do positive things for both Abu and mum this week, but I’ve been left feeling so mentally exhausted, when the worries I’ve been facing about my future have been enough for me to try to cope with, let alone these worries about Abu and mum.
To make things worse, lately I’ve not been good with self-discipline. I think that feeling so bad has led me to indulge in more treats, of the food and drink kind. Not good for money, nor health. It just feels like there’s so little energy left in me to try making more rational decisions.
And yet I had all this new found hope in recent weeks, creating those “LYNA MUSIC” harness labels for Abu, creating the business cards. I’m still intimidated at the prospect of returning to the hard drives containing my music projects after the issues I experienced with them failing last year. I’m still terrified of finding out that the data recovery place didn’t recover things properly. I feel overwhelmed by the system I devised some months ago, a system whose purpose was to ensure that all drives I work on from now on would be continually backed up. It’s not as simple as it sounds, as there are projects saved at various stages of their creation onto different drives due to the inconsistent manner in which I backed up projects in the years since my accident. I’ve created a colour-coded table for this new back up system I’ve devised, and labels to put on the drives, but my anxiety is making it hard for me to get back to the drives, and so, get back to the music. The most I have done is to open up the ‘Poland’ music video I made in July last year, and watch it again. I’m proud of it, it needs mixing is all, but before I can do that, I need to sort the hard drive system.
On many evenings this week I felt so low, as low I’ve felt during the worst of my depression in fact, so low that it’s been impossible for me to enjoy anything. And feeling trapped in my flat, in the evenings and nights, trapped with my own company, it’s been unbearable of late. It’s funny, when I used to love myself, I’d love my own company. These days, there always seems to be in me this need to escape myself, by getting out and about. It’s odd, it’s the opposite of how I spent the first half of these years of depression, as during the first half of the years, I couldn’t get out of the flat at all. Having said all this about the flat, I appreciate it. I appreciate the feeling of coming home to it, and I appreciate Abu being happy here, and I appreciate being away from the world, when it’s so easy for people to come up to me, when petting Abu, and say the wrong thing, and leave my head buzzing with discomfort from what they’ve said, despite them having had no bad intentions. This space is sacred to me. And yet these days I feel so suffocated in the evenings and nights, when I can’t go out, when I’m stuck with my thoughts, and the paralysis of my anxiety over my never shortening to-do list.
So many times, when I’ve been feeling that low, I’ve thought about coming here to write, as that’s helped me when nothing else has. But I think I’d just felt too overwhelmed to do so earlier in the week. Where would I start? Why should I write when there’s nothing to report of which any potential readers could feel proud of me for? Everything felt so pointless and hopeless that I couldn’t see the point in summoning the energy to write.
I thought about why it is that writing here has tended to help me. I wondered whether it might be that writing here is a way for me to spend time in my own company, and find that company okay. Time being with myself, not hiding from myself. I wonder if it’s that. Definitely one reason it helps, is that, writing it all out helps me think I have some kind of idea as to what is causing me to feel the way I am, and that therefore, there may be some hope in me figuring life out in general.
This week I’ve tried to find some other places at which to concentrate, alongside the efforts I made for Abu and my mum. But I couldn’t find anywhere that worked for me, everywhere was too noisy, or crowded. I feel sure that, the place I’d been going to to concentrate better, the place that is undergoing refurbishment, will be busier after its refurbishment, and that therefore, I won’t be able to go there again either. From what I understand they’re completely redesigning the place to allow for more people in the same space. I’m glad I got to make use of that place before it’ll be changed into a much busier spot, at which I don’t expect I could ever be able to concentrate again. I suppose that spot was also nice for letting me meet Anista, and the brothers I mentioned in previous posts, all of whom work there. I appreciated their encouraging energies.
Last week, I admit, I began to feel as though Anista, the brothers, and others at the place I’d been going to to concentrate, judge me. That they don’t see me for the efforts I make. I started to wonder whether they see me as someone who just wastes a lot of time, someone who isn’t working hard. That hurt to consider, when I am working hard, even if it’s just on my personal life projects at the moment, and only in a way that is manageable alongside my depression and anxiety. But I don’t think any less of these people, they’re outstanding humans. I just wish they saw me for who I really am, someone who is trying SO much. I don’t know, increasingly it’s bugged me, when I’ve read into what people say to me and perceive in it an assumption that I have a lot of free time. I wish they understood that I don’t. That I am trying so hard to pull my life together. I wish they understood how much effort puling my life together takes given the issues I suffer from.
I don’t feel great about how I’ve been handling all these new worries. The previously mentioned over-indulgence in particular. I just want comfort so much. I don’t know.
I’ve started spending a few minutes each day reading a book on ‘Integral Theory’ by Ken Wilber, and whilst I feel like a lot of what he writes about is nonsense, there’s something that calms me when he describes the stages of spiritual development he believes there to be. It makes me think of the person I’d been before my accident, the person I these days so easily forget, the person who I think had progressed so high up in these stages of spiritual development.
I know I’ve significantly regressed in spiritual development terms since the accident. But I only bring Wilber’s book up here because he says that at higher stages of spiritual development, a person loses their fear, because they no longer see the world as “I” and “them”, but instead see themselves as part of the world, and so feel sure they will be protected by the world they feel so much a part of. That would be the only good reason I could ever hope give for this strange numbness I feel about my life situation. If only this was the reason, that in spite of how much I’ve spiritually regressed since my accident, that I may have progressed in at least this one area, to now believe that I’m so much a part of this world, that this world will protect me. Perhaps this is why I seem to keep thinking, I’ll bump into people who will help me. But then I must remember, that the world sits back and watches tragedies all the time. And that the world has been sitting back and watching my life fall apart for a very long time now. And it’s more likely this belief that the world will protect me comes from my having had my existence supported during the years since my accident. Maybe it’s just hard to accept that that support has stopped.
My mum keeps telling me that no one will help me, but at the same time, she believes I will “make it” in music.
Whilst they’ve found that Abu’s heart has progressed to its next stage in valve disease, they still do not believe his heart to be the cause of his cough, meaning that other tests have been recommended involving general anaesthesia. I am terrified. The way my luck is going, how could I expect that to go well? I feel sick to my stomach at the prospect of something going wrong during any such tests. But I feel like I have to go ahead. I don’t know. I’m terrified.
My mum’s feet are so swollen. I found out about a place in London that can tailor-make shoes for swollen feet but the process takes months and too expensive for me to afford. I wish I could do more for my mum. I feel sad when I think about how badly her shoes fit her. In many ways my mum is still helping me far more than I am helping her. When will I get things the other way around?
If I “made it” I’d get her those shoes, I’d have her stay in the nearby hotel often, so we could spend more time together, or better still, I would send her to this weight loss (by diet) clinic in America I’ve been wanting to send her to for years.
It’s scary, because I need to “make it”. And yet, even the basics of life are hard, let alone trying to get to a situation where I have more than enough for my needs.
I am wondering whether I should try to concentrate more at home, instead of always give in to this feeling of needing to escape. I wonder if I could manage it. During lockdown I did so well concentrating at home. I’d been improving so much with my concentration and my music making before I met the drummer in mid-2021, when I seemed to stop caring about anything much else apart from the drummer till my dad died. I’m also wondering about the possibility of taking Abu with me to a library, as an assistant dog. Perhaps this would work well as people couldn’t come up to me and start making conversation, the way they tend to do these days, so I could focus better. People never seem to come up to ask about the harness labels, incidentally. I’ve only given one business card out so far, and that was to the artist I mentioned in a previous post, who was the only one to ask about the labels, apart from Anista. I think I will try these two ideas out. Of trying to concentrate at home and at a library. I hope it is not too late, for one, or a combination of those ideas to help me achieve more, and to “make it”.
LYNA GALLIARA 