Spring was blossoming, but I was withering
Our lives have their seasons. Perhaps it’s worth learning to settle into the wintry ones?
I’ve been fairly lucky with my mental health, overall. But six years ago, as cherry blossom flowered in London’s streets and parks, mine took a tumble. At first, I assumed it was one of those customary blips most of us get from time to time, and that soon I’d find my way back to centre. Not least as the apparent trigger was small-scale: the recent loss of a couple of yoga classes and a small architecture project.
But, as London became sunnier, my mood did not. So I doubled up on self-care. Which, as a cancer survivor, I was already pretty good at. But even with some therapy, my flat mood continued, and all the things that used to bring me joy, such as meeting up with my friends for brunch, or going out on a date with my husband, no longer hit the spot.
After a few months, I decided to try medication. I’d never taken it before, and was confident it’d be the magic bullet. Except it wasn’t. While the pills took the edge off the flatness and its newer companion, a burgeoning anxiety, I still felt pretty rubbish. (Despite, of course, giving the meds the time they need to kick in, and despite my doctor changing them round when he realised they weren’t doing what they needed to.) In time, my sleep went haywire, too. Instead of drifting off the minute my head hit the pillow, it started to take me hours. I’d finally fall asleep, only to wake up an hour or two later, and have to go through the same cycle again.
I want to pause here, and say this is, in no way, a post about how medication doesn’t work. For many, it’s a lifesaver, and it’s something I’m totally open to trying again, should the need ever arise. And if you’re struggling with your mental health, please look into getting help, and know it’s never a sign of weakness to do so. I should also add this wasn’t severe depression (which the NHS defines as ‘makes it almost impossible to get through daily life’), for which it’s essential to seek help. While I wasn’t in a great place, I was still functioning. It just felt like I was wading through sticky heavy mud.
Looking back, it’s clear losing some work, and the ensuing mild damage to my ego and wallet, wasn’t the real problem. The most pervasive feeling I had was of being stuck. And it was from that bedrock the weeds of low mood, anxiety and insomnia grew.
For the past four years, I’d been trying to conceive. I was tired of being trapped in a limbo pit, where I was neither a mother, nor someone who’d made an active choice to finally stop trying to become one. And while I wasn’t quite ready to let go of trying, the monthly cycle of hope crushed by disappointment, along with various medical investigations and treatments, had worn me down. As had, to a lesser extent, the weekly cycle of running around London teaching lots of yoga classes. When I started, it was thrilling and liberating to no longer only be working from a desk. But almost a decade on, the repetitive beat of having to be in exactly the same place at exactly the same time every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and so on, sometimes felt like a ball and chain.
I longed for change. But you can’t just magic a baby into existence. And, especially in my state of mind, I didn’t possess the foresight or creativity to know how to reconfigure my work life.
I’ll never be certain why medication didn’t sort me out. And I’ve no doubt there are others in a similar place for whom it’s worked well. But my experience has led me to question whether we might sometimes be too quick to pathologize our struggles, rather than accept them as part of life’s ebb and flow? I wanted out of my discomfort as fast as possible, which meant I threw everything I could at it – from journaling to meditation to medication – in order to try and uproot it.
Which, in some ways, sounds admirable, and like ‘good’ self-care. But there was a harshness to my approach and, I now realise, an unwillingness to be in the mud for a while and accept that while it might not be pleasant, it’s sometimes a necessary part of the cycle. As John O’ Donohue beautifully reminds us, this is the place where, The old is not old enough to have died away; The new is still too young to be born.
Perhaps I’d have suffered less had I used self-care less as a tool to try and banish the discomfort, and more to help me sit through it. To accept I might be there for a while and to hold myself with as much kindness and tenderness as possible, while seeking out the little things – be it a conversation with a wise friend, or a walk in my favourite park – which could offer chinks of light, but without putting undue pressure on them to be game-changers.
I think I’d have also suffered less if I’d accepted I didn’t have to be the shiniest most upbeat version of myself for others to still love me; and my husband and my friends weren’t going to run away just because I was going through a tricky patch.
Of course, it’s easier to realise all this with the benefit of hindsight. And, of course, there are no easy answers, and it can be hard to know when our mental state does need more active intervention.
Eventually, I started to feel better. I’ve no doubt having a last round of IVF on the horizon was part of the reason, because however it unfolded, I’d finally be moving out of the limbo of trying to conceive.
It so happened that as the cherry blossom returned to London’s streets and parks, I discovered I was pregnant. And with change on the horizon, the final residues of my stuck, flat mood melted away. Since then, it’s made only its usual transitory appearances.
One day, it may well show up for a longer visit again. And if it does, I’m going to explore being kinder and more patient towards it. Because, perhaps, it’s the liminal space we sometimes need to settle into for a while, where we wait for the old to fade away and the new to emerge.
Love,
Annabel
THINGS I LOVE RIGHT NOW
TO READ
This poem, Blessing for the interim time by John O’ Donoghue, from which I included a couple of lines, above, is like a healing balm for me. In fact, I highly recommend To Bless The Space Between Us, the collection from which it comes.
We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman is a bittersweet novel about two best friends, one of whom is in a hospice dying of cancer. It’s heart-breaking, of course, but also funny and life-affirming. If I’m honest, I found all the characters a bit too nice, but that probably says more about me! Nonetheless, I thought it was an excellent book.
TO WATCH
For the past year, I’ve tried to take myself on an Artist’s Date once a month. I usually end up at the movies and last week I saw What’s Love Got To Do With It, a delightful British romcom about arranged marriages, set in London and Lahore.
TO EAT
I’ve fallen in love with this Anna Jones quick Chickpea Lemon Stew. It’s delicious and nourishing and I love the balance of creamy coconut milk with tangy lemon and all the crisp fresh herbs you add at the end.
This is so beautiful, Annabel. Thank you for posting about John O'Donohue's poems too, they are often a great comfort and I hadn't read the ones you mentioned. Time To Be Slow was one I turned to in the pandemic, as I saw it as a Poem on the Underground and now have a poster of it.
I love the rawness of your honesty and gentleness of your wisdom Annabel. I've come across 2 similar reflections in the last few days, both pointing to the transformational power of embracing even despair as an ally. One from David Whyte's beautiful book Consolations where he writes "Despair is a necessary and seasonal state of repair... the time in which we both endure and heal, even when we have not yet found the new form of hope." And the other from Amanda Knox speaking of her epiphany after 2 years in prison waiting for her trial, only to be convicted for another 26 years for the infamous crime that she didn't commit: "I’d thought I was in limbo, awkwardly positioned between my life (the life that I should have been living), and someone else’s life (the life of a murderer); I wasn’t. I never had been. The conviction, the sentence, the prison—this was my life. There was no other life I should have been living. There was only my life, this life, unfolding before me." Here we all are, with this, here, now.