So funny story.
I don't get on here very much these days but I deactivated all my socials yesterday as I'm having a 'bad spell' and try to limit interaction with the world as much as possible when I'm like this. Wondering how to fill in a little time over lunch at work I thought I'd have a quick nosey on the old Farkin. Start typing rotorbur into the address bar. Hit enter. Lo and behold off topic is where I end up with with a thread about mental health front and center.
So the joys of the anonymity of the internet I'll give you a small insight into the wonderful place that is my broken brain. I've never thought of myself as a depressed person but sometimes my brain has a proper malfunction. Said malfunctions have seen me end up in resus after a drug overdose. Nil signs of life for something like 7 minutes. On another occasion I did a stint in a high security psych ward after it was decided that I was a danger to myself. Spent many years bouldering rather than climbing because I can't have rope in the house. You get the idea, it's a shit show.
Anyway, the point of this is. I've always dealt with this by myself for various reasons, mostly because I'm not the most open person and largely don't feel that comfortable around people. I've been seeing this girl for a couple of months. We've known eachother for about a year so I gave her a heads up very early on that sometimes my brain goes AWOL. She's lovely so I thought I should give her a friendly heads up that I'm having 'one of those days' and my being MIA has nothing to do with her. She sends me a bunch of messages on Whatsapp which I just couldn't bring myself to read, refers back to limiting interaction with the outside world. I assumed it would be the usual, life ain't so bad (and it isn't, I'm actually living the fucking dream), cheer up, blah, blah. Instead I got this. Well, something like this because I don't feel like sharing her exact words.
"I know the feeling of wanting to retreat. I was always afraid that if I told anyone about how I felt they would try to pull me out of my dark place, cheer me up and try to fix it. All really wanted was someone to acknowledge how I felt, sit with me in the dark and just be with me so I didn't have to be alone. I don't need shelter from the storm, just someone to sit next to me with an umbrella."
It's one of the few times I've felt understood and it also opened up communication as I didn't feel like someone was trying to fix me or undermine the way I felt. It's the first time I've felt comfortable talking to someone about the shit that goes on in my head. If anyone is having difficultly talking about things or approching someone who needs a friendly ear I highly recommend this approach. No one likes feeling like this but not everyone wants to be 'fixed'. I've always been like this and likely always will. It's not about fixing things, just managing the shit.
www.buildabrotherhood.com
