Monday 8th February 2016

Some disappointments are minor, work-related and, viewed from a suitable distance, probably not that significant. Failing in some way is hard to take, especially when that failure has a public element to it. That is to say, the hardest part of falling short can be telling other people you've fallen short. There's also controlling that urge to chuck teddies that inevitably comes out when you feel disappointed. Perhaps I should (chuck teddies), because I don't indulge angry feelings very often, and although they can be very difficult to see clearly through, they might focus me on what to do next. Rather than just being sad and mooching, a bit of being pissed off might help me with the energy I need to not just keep on doing the same thing. I would like to apologise to anyone who catches the wrong end of me being fecked off over the next week or fortnight, because it's almost certainly the case that you didn't deserve it. It will be difficult for me to maintain that enthusiasm that I might sometimes be able to channel, but those who suffer as a result won't be those who my dummy-spitting antics are designed to affect. I don't generally set out to upset anybody, and I'm not very good at doing it deliberately, so I can imagine that there might be collateral damage.
A kind, nurturing person - which is what I, too, try to be - might have one eye on the date, and recognise its significance to me. There are those who today ought to have had that thought and didn't, and there are those who will have had that thought and couldn't or wouldn't express it for whatever reason, which might well have been as much of a wrench for them as the day has been for me. I wonder if I will be able to ask... Three years ago today I finally broke down after a period of anxiety and depression, and was unable to return to work for a month or so. There is a certain cruelty, therefore, in the lining up of that anniversary with today's disappointment, particularly as the context for that was yet another devastating, life-shaking and heartbreaking event, the unexpected death of a colleague. Baggage is some way short of expressing the idea, but it is in the right direction. My experience of the past four years (yes, you read that right, because February of the year before brought its own overwhelming grief) has been that I cry a lot more than I used to, and sometimes that's okay, and sometimes I wish I didn't have to. Crying is such a useless process, because, frankly, there is no dignity in snot. But in letting myself be sad, I've learned that the utter despair that is depression, the feeling that there is no light that can brighten the darkness, that is different. Being sad is an appropriate response to grief, to frustration, to being close enough to touch but not able to move that last inch and connect. Depression robs you of the hope that it could be different. It is a long time since I could say that I was depressed, although my anxiety has flowed as well as ebbed over four years, sometimes driven by those griefs and cares I have mentioned (and others I have not!), sometimes seemingly entirely out-of-whack with actual events. I will say this, though, to those suffering with anxiety, depression, or sadness commensurate with the situation: there will be moments, in the future, that will be happy moments. They might be sitting in front of the TV watching some nonsense with the right person. They might be getting a yes (particularly when you expected a no), or doing something you didn't think you could. But they will happen. And I am saying that as much to myself as to anyone reading this.