I’ve been struggling the last few weeks with my mental health. This isn’t a cry for help or a call for sympathy but rather just putting it out there in case others are feeling the same. This lockdown has been hard, the worst of the three (in my opinion). Which is odd in a way given the signs of hope on the horizon with a proposed date for a return to ‘normality’ and increasing numbers of people getting vaccinated. But I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. Maybe it’s the weather, a wet windy winter with little light is enough to put you in a foul place, even without a global pandemic. Maybe it’s just simply an accumulation of the last year. Either way, I’m pretty much done.
I’ve been reading a book I got for Christmas called ‘The Wild Remedy’ by Emma Mitchell. It is a beautiful book but whenever I describe it, I can’t do it justice! She suffers with depression and the book is about how reconnecting with nature may offer some relief (although she herself also takes medication and acknowledges that walks in nature alone are not going to be enough for a lot of people). A lot of what she’s written resonates with me though. She describes the battle in her mind between wanting to stay at home, on the sofa but knowing somewhere deep in her mind that getting out will help ease her symptoms. This is how I’ve felt the last 6 weeks or so, not just about being in nature but also seeing friends and family. Obviously, seeing people at the moment is fairly limited but the scope is there. But the push and pull in my head is pretty much 50/50 right now and it takes a lot of effort for the going out and seeing people side of my head to win when given the choice!
It doesn’t help that I’ve suffered a calf injury and at the moment running is halted. It’s only been 10 days since I last ran properly but it feels like a lifetime! Luckily, I was reminded that a friend of ours is a Sports Physio and he’s been amazing at helping me with rehab whilst also encouraging me that of course, I will be running again before too long. (I was starting to adopt a fairly dramatic – this-is-the-end-of-my-running-journey – attitude that was not particularly helpful!) Dan also deserves a shout out here for being incredibly supportive and understanding even when the way I’m feeling is like a dark shadow descending on the entire house and (I worry) affecting all of us in it.
Anyway, not really much else to say but just absolute solidarity for anyone else feeling this way right now. If everything feels a bit too much, if getting out of bed in the mornings is a struggle, if managing your workload (be that kids, study, housework, paid employment, care work) feels like an unscalable mountain, if everything just feels a bit grey, if you’re anxious about everything, if you feel stuck in a mire without any indication for the way out, if the thought of seeing your favourite people makes you feel weary. You’re not alone, you can get through this. Talk to people, tell them how you’re feeling. I’ll leave you with a picture from a run before I hurt my leg because another thing many people I’ve spoken to recently have said is that as soon as the sun started to shine a few weeks ago, we all felt just a little bit better. The return of the light is so significant to me this year, I’ve been tracking sunrise and sunset times and each few minutes of light we gain back are a representation for me of better times ahead and a dose of serotonin to quell the anxiety and dark moods.
the starlings gather here 