I can feel myself slipping. Like I’m in a Banksy installation. “Un-fair”
I’m on the helter-skelter… only it’s slide is not very slippery so some moments I’m slipping slowly down and in others I’m grabbing the edge and bumping myself further down by force. Not only am I slowly heading down the spiral but the spiral ends in a dark pit of sticky clay so should I get to the bottom by feet will quickly be caked and I’ll be fighting to wade my way back out.
There’s a sombre inevitability about it. I’m on the ride and gravity suggests the easiest option is to keep on the ride.
But it’s a shit ride and I want to climb off.
But do I ride the spiral and try to get off at the bottom? I don’t like the claggy thick clay. It’s really tough to wade through and I’m not sure I have the physical strength to do it.
The other option is to stand up on the unslippery slide and walk back up the slope, like a teenager in a kids playground. Declare the ride ‘crap’ and come back down the steps into my Spring garden which I know is just the other side of the gate. Resplendent with tete-a-tete, daffodil, crocus, snowdrop, primrose and camellia all in full glorious bloom. I need to get back to my Monet.
At the moment I’m wedged a third of the way down this narrow slide and my too fat frame is friction-wedged against the rough metal. It’s a choice. Push down or pull up.
That . My, friends, is the beginning. I’ve been stuck in this bloody Un-fair for days and nights.
So I’m stuck in an unreal reality. My head is showing me a gloomy backdrop which is blocking the real view. Some bastard has messed with my mirrors. It’s another exhibit in my Banksy Un-Fair. All the mirrors create a body dismorphic reality. My face is a Jackson Pollok. It’s me but it’s not ME .
I know what I’m seeing and feeling is not reality, but that doesn’t make it any less REAL.
If you suffer from depression , anxiety or hormone related emotional imbalances (and many of you do, I know I’m far from unique) then perhaps you can relate to this.
I’m sad. I’m angry. I’m guilty. I’m frightened. Shall I ramble on? If I haven’t bored you to press the ‘back’ button yet the next chunk of self-indulgent morose rambling may just tip you over the edge.
So here I am in my rose-tinted world still yet, this week, I’m entangled in this heavy thick net from which I am desperately trying to extract myself but it’s becoming such a tangle I’m all tied up and tripping in the chaos of it.
I can see John out there trying to free me from it. I can hear him telling me to stop struggling as I’m making the tangle tighter. He’s trying to unknot me so I can squeeze out through a gap. I keep managing to get an arm out and he and friends are pulling and holding onto me to stop me getting more entangled.
For that I am simultaneously grateful for the wonderful people around me. Sad, at the worry I’m causing. Guilty about being so pathetically self-indulgent. Angry that this has happened, to varying degrees, since I was a teen and still the medical profession fail to recognise or deal with women’s hormonal cycles. Never has a doctor suggested, acknowledged or acted on the obvious fact that I clearly have both a monthly and a quarterly spiral. Never.
So. I am grateful to you all for being. I’m apologetic to you all for the lack of rosy-tint in these latest posts. And I am hopeful that the act of writing it (as grey and gloom filled as it is) will give my mind the strength it needs to lift itself up and drag my being back up the slope and so I can climb off this shitty ride.. .
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