Subjugated

“If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on!” – Sheryl Sandberg

Now I have explained a ‘high’, I can only really go into the low. I have already alluded to the low I had last time around. It was after my second intense psychosis come mania. My mania lasted about 6 months and as it goes the more I get these turns of mood the worse they get. The low I was hurtled into this time is something I could not even prepare for. It started off relatively the same, I didn’t want to listen to music, couldn’t be bothered to get ready, all I wanted to do was sleep.

But this time it just got worse, worse and worse. I was at my flat and I started to feel lonelier than ever. I was fine living alone, I always had something to do and made plans if I wanted to, having my sister not too far away was a life line. But, as the month progressed, I just couldn’t handle being on my own. I didn’t want to do anything at all, asides from lying on the sofa or the bed. I thought I had made a mistake by not putting a TV in my room because at least then I could just lie there. But as it got worse I didn’t want to make food, brush my teeth or do ANYTHING but lie down.

It was on my 37^th birthday it came to a head, I literally couldn’t spend more than 10 minutes alone and I couldn’t sit in chairs, I found them so uncomfortable. I just about went out for birthday as I wasn’t sure if I could handle people or even sit on the seat longer than 5 minutes. It wasn’t a bad night and I let loose a little. However, I wasn’t out as long as I would normally. Then the next day, there was an adjustment to my life, I went back to my parents’ house. I could no longer handle being alone, also making food had become a problem. I just needed to be in a place where I could sleep and do nothing more. This was the beginning of a long and arduous 12 months. I spent the next 12 months wondering how the hell I would ever be the same bubbly, outgoing person again. I love clothes and yet I had a uniform of the same 3 hoodies and joggers. I could have gone to my flat and brought many more clothes but I just didn’t want to, also going back to my flat would just give me anxiety. I hated the thought of being there. I had to go back once to get my sofa (which took months, into my flat) I didn’t care about my plants nothing, there was nothing in me that wanted to go back. I thought I never would, I was making plans for storage and just moving back home permanently.

I still had to work and that in itself was a whole situation, I couldn’t work without uncontrollably  shaking and crying. I was always feeling like an imposter, convinced I could never do my role again. I honestly don’t know how I got through it. This whole ordeal latest about 12 months, I was constantly pushed to go for a walk or even go up and down the stairs, these things could not be more far removed from what I wanted to do than you could fathom possible.

Things started changing in June 2023, it was the start of wedding season and even though I had dreaded it the year previous, I had no choice but to get on with it. I had a total of four weddings in England and they were close family, especially the ones in July and September, I managed to get out of my funk, I just went with it and (‘unfortunately’) with the help of alcohol I became the social butterfly I knew to be, something I did not think at all possible. I did have one niggling issue, there was a wedding in India of one of my close friends. For someone, who would always be travelling I couldn’t even consider this possibility. But something inside me said ‘just book the tickets’ which I did, way after everyone else and the next thing I knew I was vacuum packing my lengha’s for the wedding in India. Low and behold, I had one of the best times of my life, flying into Delhi, meeting one of my best friends and then celebrating my birthday. Then travelling to Jaipur before the wedding, I spent time by the pool and I got burnt!! The next 3 days were the wedding and I had to slather myself in aloe vera cream and just make sure my burnt skin wasn’t on show. It was a incredible wedding. Something I will never forget. And then I was home and about a week after the wedding I went back to my flat, with the notion I would be back to my parents often when in fact I wasn’t. And the rest well I explained in my last post, was the stepping stones to a high. However, for me being low is much harder to manage then an high. Everyone leaves you to your own devices more than when you are high. And imagining the life you had before the low is so painful to consider, I couldn’t even deal with putting make up on which takes me a whole 10 minutes to do, putting on clothes is harder and getting up is even harder. You wish your days away because they are so painfully bleak and you really wonder how you are going to do the next 60 feeling this way because in all honesty, you just don’t see a way out. For both the high and low I do really consider that if I didn’t have the support I do, I would be on the streets and that’s something that’s hard to swallow.