I was standing in my father’s vegetable garden snacking on sour sorrel when I was told that to ‘loathe’ something is not the same as to love it, not at all. This discovery made quite an impression on me; it must have done, because I clearly remember not only the scene but also the blank confusion I felt when that word was tipped so brutally on its head.
I don’t remember in the same way when I learned that ‘convalescence’ is not a process of leaving life, but of preparing to re-join it. Convalescence; it’s a bit of an old-fashioned word, and somehow an old-fashioned concept. When we have flu we reach for the First Defence and the Lemsip and we plough on, more determined to show our commitment to another day in the office than worried about who we might sneeze over or how long it might take us to really recover. Getting better in our world isn’t really an accepted part of being ill – we’re either ill, or we’re well enough to carry on.
But I’ve been convalescing this year, in a way. I feel I have some claim to it in the traditional sense, having made the final decision to come back to the UK while filled with the pain and fear of that one particularly scary malarial trip. But I’ve been convalescing in other ways too.
I didn’t think I’d write anything more about my experience of depression. I wrote the first post on this blog in order to somehow process my experience, to take ownership of it, and to try to explain to people who knew me then what it was like. I had no intentions of revisiting the topic (or of making this blog quite so full of random unconnected topics). I am wary of holding this up as a part of my identity; I don’t want to be that person.
But so much came back to me through the process of sharing that first story; so much warmth and humanity and connectedness, and the overwhelmingly positive response that came from both friends and strangers (MIND published my story on their blog, hence reaching quite a few of the latter) meant as much to me as anything else I have ever achieved. And I realised, I know a lot about this particular subject. But not just about being ill: also about getting better. This getting better, I am still learning, is quite a process.
‘Getting better’– I just googled the term and thesaurus.com suggested a number of synonyms: ‘restore’, ‘rejuvenate’, ‘recover’. But before I was ill I hadn’t had time to figure out who the grown-up, independent, considered me was, and when I was ill I was all sorts of things at once. So, having emerged ten years later with little idea really who I was, or am, or could be, it’s not a case of restore or recover, because to what? The ten-year-old who snacked on sour sorrel in the garden?
So one of the things I've been trying to do is figure out what being me means. This year I’ve been removed from normal life and dropped into a peculiar world of nowhere-I-have-to-be, weekday morning lie-ins, endless laptops-in-coffee-shops, reading and thinking and writing for no purpose or benefit whatsoever except my own. I’ve also been reconnecting with normal life: old friends, family, chilly weekend walks, mid-afternoon nightfall, queuing in Sainsburys, buses and trains, cozy pubs and fresh salad. I’ve spent a lot of time on my own, and have for the most part enjoyed this company. I’ve been getting to know myself.
Today I sorted through old piles of paper, a preliminary move towards a real move, and I came across a folded index card with my name scribbled in the middle of it, just once. I stared at it, some meaning dancing just behind it. Then: I kept this card as a reminder that there is a difference between what’s real and what’s in my mind. Before I wrote that one word, my name on it I had closed my eyes, pen in hand, and visualised the actions of shaping each letter, felt the movement in my hand and traced the results in my mind. I then repeated the exercise with pen on paper, eyes still closed. I had clear memories of writing my name twice. But when I opened my eyes, I saw my name written there only once.
For years I worked on exercises like this, desperately trying to remember not to trust myself. As a result, in attempting to separate what I thought and felt from what was real, to negate the negative, I lost the ability to just ‘know’ things – what to believe, what to trust. Would Locke or Plato or modern day epistemologists have been able to help me out? Could they shed any light on the question of whose truth matters, or how to play your part in a world where you cannot rely on knowledge, assumptions, perceptions, intuition? Perhaps I should have read them.
When I was ill I 'knew' that I would never get better, not really. I would probably just survive. There Is No Cure, once you’ve suffered for years. This Is Your Life.
I now want to sing from the rooftops so all can hear: it's not true!
A friend recently asked me what adventures I’d had in the last year. I couldn’t think of any. Not one. No motorbike rides through the jungle, no breaking into ruined buildings at night, no unexpected occurrences of any kind. But thinking about it now, perhaps their absence has enabled my convalescence, getting better, getting to know myself, learning to trust myself. This has been an adventure of its own kind.
I don’t remember in the same way when I learned that ‘convalescence’ is not a process of leaving life, but of preparing to re-join it. Convalescence; it’s a bit of an old-fashioned word, and somehow an old-fashioned concept. When we have flu we reach for the First Defence and the Lemsip and we plough on, more determined to show our commitment to another day in the office than worried about who we might sneeze over or how long it might take us to really recover. Getting better in our world isn’t really an accepted part of being ill – we’re either ill, or we’re well enough to carry on.
But I’ve been convalescing this year, in a way. I feel I have some claim to it in the traditional sense, having made the final decision to come back to the UK while filled with the pain and fear of that one particularly scary malarial trip. But I’ve been convalescing in other ways too.
I didn’t think I’d write anything more about my experience of depression. I wrote the first post on this blog in order to somehow process my experience, to take ownership of it, and to try to explain to people who knew me then what it was like. I had no intentions of revisiting the topic (or of making this blog quite so full of random unconnected topics). I am wary of holding this up as a part of my identity; I don’t want to be that person.
But so much came back to me through the process of sharing that first story; so much warmth and humanity and connectedness, and the overwhelmingly positive response that came from both friends and strangers (MIND published my story on their blog, hence reaching quite a few of the latter) meant as much to me as anything else I have ever achieved. And I realised, I know a lot about this particular subject. But not just about being ill: also about getting better. This getting better, I am still learning, is quite a process.
‘Getting better’– I just googled the term and thesaurus.com suggested a number of synonyms: ‘restore’, ‘rejuvenate’, ‘recover’. But before I was ill I hadn’t had time to figure out who the grown-up, independent, considered me was, and when I was ill I was all sorts of things at once. So, having emerged ten years later with little idea really who I was, or am, or could be, it’s not a case of restore or recover, because to what? The ten-year-old who snacked on sour sorrel in the garden?
So one of the things I've been trying to do is figure out what being me means. This year I’ve been removed from normal life and dropped into a peculiar world of nowhere-I-have-to-be, weekday morning lie-ins, endless laptops-in-coffee-shops, reading and thinking and writing for no purpose or benefit whatsoever except my own. I’ve also been reconnecting with normal life: old friends, family, chilly weekend walks, mid-afternoon nightfall, queuing in Sainsburys, buses and trains, cozy pubs and fresh salad. I’ve spent a lot of time on my own, and have for the most part enjoyed this company. I’ve been getting to know myself.
Today I sorted through old piles of paper, a preliminary move towards a real move, and I came across a folded index card with my name scribbled in the middle of it, just once. I stared at it, some meaning dancing just behind it. Then: I kept this card as a reminder that there is a difference between what’s real and what’s in my mind. Before I wrote that one word, my name on it I had closed my eyes, pen in hand, and visualised the actions of shaping each letter, felt the movement in my hand and traced the results in my mind. I then repeated the exercise with pen on paper, eyes still closed. I had clear memories of writing my name twice. But when I opened my eyes, I saw my name written there only once.
For years I worked on exercises like this, desperately trying to remember not to trust myself. As a result, in attempting to separate what I thought and felt from what was real, to negate the negative, I lost the ability to just ‘know’ things – what to believe, what to trust. Would Locke or Plato or modern day epistemologists have been able to help me out? Could they shed any light on the question of whose truth matters, or how to play your part in a world where you cannot rely on knowledge, assumptions, perceptions, intuition? Perhaps I should have read them.
When I was ill I 'knew' that I would never get better, not really. I would probably just survive. There Is No Cure, once you’ve suffered for years. This Is Your Life.
I now want to sing from the rooftops so all can hear: it's not true!
A friend recently asked me what adventures I’d had in the last year. I couldn’t think of any. Not one. No motorbike rides through the jungle, no breaking into ruined buildings at night, no unexpected occurrences of any kind. But thinking about it now, perhaps their absence has enabled my convalescence, getting better, getting to know myself, learning to trust myself. This has been an adventure of its own kind.