This Week. [3 min read]

This week someone asked me to read over a funeral tribute and give my feedback. Did it flow? Was it too churchy? Did it seem cold? Was it hopeful enough?

Funerals are difficult. Suicides more so.

This week I’ve been told “You seem ok. Aren’t depressed people unable to get out of bed. Unable to manage the basics like having a shower? You’re not like that. You seem ok.”

“Yeah.” I said.

That’s true, I thought, part of me genuinely agreeing.

This week I filled the tub with the hottest water I could bear and lay there, drunkenly sobbing and fighting back the thought, or perhaps it was more of a feeling, that maybe it would have been better if all those years ago I had just done it.

Maybe then part of my brain says, but not now.

Now is not the time for someone to be copy checking my eulogy. I know that.

So I get out of bed in the morning.

Which means I’m ok.

• • •

Sometimes I tell friends about my mental health track record. Usually after a period of feeling well for a while. Sharing in the past tense is easier. Cleaner, less complicated.

Then I feel guilty when inevitably I find myself less than perfect months later. Like it’s some sort of betrayal to the “but I’m fine now” narrative I sold. Like it was a lie, or an elaborate attention seeking ploy.

Guilt.

But that’s the way it goes.

I’ve been fine. And then not. And I’ll be fine again.

• • •

Sometimes I wonder when someone is really considered “drunk”.

Where are lines drawn?

Sober…

"Just tipsy”….

Drunk.

Is it after three drinks or four? When they start talking more, getting louder and rambling ?

Was that a stumble?

“Naah I’m not drunk” said every drunk person ever.

I know there’s a science behind it, or at least science and law intersect and set Blood Alcohol Levels past which one is considered “legally drunk”.

But at the party, when everyone’s chatting and another bottle of wine is popped open it’s more subjective really.

Like happiness.

Or sadness.

Depression or anxiety.

There’s no life breathalyzer for this stuff.

There’s just people talking more.

Or less, as thoughts get louder and start rambling.

Was that a stumble?

• • •

Last month.

Last month two people that I didn’t know died.

Last month parents lost a child.

A young outgoing talented kid cruelly taken by a freak accident. The void left behind for the people who knew him is palpable and the pain his family must be experiencing seems unbearable. Unimaginable.

Last month a child lost their mother. A professional, caring, compassionate and loved woman. Lost to her own darkness.

I didn’t know either if them, but still I felt sad.

Sad and guilty and afraid.

A child pushing food around their plate told to think of the starving children.

A mother terrified of crystal balls and fortune tellers.

• • •

Tonight.

Tonight is just the end of another day.

I got out of bed. I did the things that needed to be done. I fixed other people’s problems. I kept calm through tantrums and laughed with tickles and kisses and hugs.

I tried to eat “healthy”.

I went outside, because that helps.

I wrote.

I didn’t meditate or exercise or make that call because those things are too hard for today.

Maybe tomorrow.

There’s always tomorrow.