NaNow That It's Over,

When NaNoWriMo finished, I raised a glass of prosecco alone in my flat celebrating the ending of it all. It was a really long month this year, and it was really hard for a lot of reasons, and some of those reasons I don't know. 

It has been over for a little less than a week, and whilst there isn't the constant stress that invades all of life, I've also only made myself sit and write twice this week and I miss the social elements of write-ins, because whilst chatting with people at work is nice, it's also not quite as sociable as I want to be. It's not talking to writers about their novels and then encouraging them to keep going. It's certainly not everyone being almost as invested in everyone else's project as the person writing it. 

Although we haven't had our Thank Goodness It's Over party, it feels like I have my weekends back. 

This year was my wordiest year so far, managing to write over 101k, and I will hopefully write something more on that later. I managed two 20k days, which was amazing, and I also kept it together through a month where I felt like my anxiety was pulling me in a million different directions. Despite the overwhelming urge to sleep all of the time, I got up every day, I did my job and I also worked on my novel. I was an ML, I supported my writers, I ran Twitter word sprints and supported other writers and I was all over the Facebook pages for advice, the moments when people forgot words and other general cheerleading. Somehow managed to avoid ever writing a blog post in that, which isn't like me during November. 

The upshot of it all is that it feels like only yesterday that NaNoWriMo started, but it seemed to take forever to come to an end, and as a team we needed it to end, but we also didn't want it to. I feel really conflicted about it, I feel disappointed that I haven't been writing as much as I was during November, but I am also so so glad that the amount of stress I was under has decreased, because I'm not sure how long I would have been able to keep going through that. 

Catch you later.

In This Dark Place,

I was watching a video that an old friend made, and she said she preferred making videos to writing, because to her it's a more natural form of communication. I thought I would give it a crack, what with the fact that writing hasn't been coming naturally recently, but then I don't know anywhere near enough about editing to be able to put subtitles on the whole of it, in case people are hard of hearing/deaf or edit out the bits where I say erm a lot and other stupid things, so the upshot was that I decided not to post it, and all of the things I wanted to communicate are still floating around like fluffy little clouds in my brain. Yay.

It's always been possible for writing to take me to dark places, but more often than not, it's the shovel with which I dig myself out of them, which is one of the big reasons I'm going to try and get back into it as best I can. 

One of the things that is adding to my current dark place is the fact I can hardly flipping run. 

Whilst in San Francisco last year, I fell over. I don't just mean tripped over my own feet, got a few bruises and went on with my life - I really did a number on myself. I tripped, went down a few stairs and landed really badly on my ankle; then had to wear stiletto heels for the evening so I didn't ruin my beautiful floor length dress. I knew that the half marathon was coming up and I wanted to be able to still do it, so I took a couple of weeks off to rest it and then started training again, but the problem ended up not being the super sprained ankle. I mean, that was pain, but the real problem was something entirely worse. 

I over-compensated for how bad the ankle was and damaged the soft tissue below my other knee and over stretched the tendon above it. Or over stressed. I wasn't very clear from what my physio said. The first physio I saw told me I would still be able to do the half marathon, and London Landmarks doesn't defer places, so I was doing it, come hell, high water or horrid injury. The second physio I saw had to remind herself that calling patients stupid is neither professional nor nice, but her face gave it away and I knew I was stupid for doing it, but I also knew it was the right thing to do, because it was the best I have felt since probably a bit before this time last year... 

The problem was that my knee wasn't happy from mile 2. For those who don't work in miles, a half marathon is 13.1. Mile 2 I had to stop running, mile 6 I started hobbling, approaching mile 7 I was in the medical bay whilst they bandaged me up and the rest of the way was done with painkillers, determination and that very Mancunian brand of Northern Grit. John Green wrote in TFIOS that pain demands to be felt, well that certainly did. I can manage a bit of running on it, but not even enough to do parkrun (3.1 miles/5km) let alone in a respectable time, so I've been volunteering most weeks and sitting around wishing I could go swimming - I've been getting home too late and I spent two weeks at my mum's - or running or something, other than the physio exercises and just resting it. Thankfully, I have been able to do a bit of stair running, but my God, that hurts. That's not even my knee - my lungs feel like they've evacuated the building when I'm done! 

I was never an athletically inclined person and it's something that I now regret. My parkrun times are longer than most TV shows these days, but I actually love it. Not always the actual doing of it, but the feeling of accomplishment and peace at the end are second to none. 

I'm probably going to try and write up about the run now and post it later, because otherwise, I might forget. 

Catch you later.

As She Sheepishly Enters the Fray,

It's been two months. Why has it been two months? Why is it that I've still not written about San Fransisco properly, or London Landmarks Half Marathon, or my new job, or the perils of going for said job. Why are there so many drafts on this thing, where I couldn't convince myself to press 'Publish'? One of the big reasons is because my anxiety is an arsehole.

Now, obviously, I don't mean an actual arsehole, even if it's primary function does appear to be spouting crap, but instead, it's the kind of arsehole that also is supposed to look like the white-hot center of the universe. (God, I love a 'Grey's Anatomy' reference!) 

Every time I think that I've just about got to the I'm back to okay stage, and I think I'm back to my normal self, something happens and I seem to slip back towards "relapse me". "Relapse me" is the person who sleeps all of the time, is constantly reactive and only watches TV outsidre of work. That might not seem like such a bad thing, but way back when I was feeling okay, feeling steady, I had hobbies that I loved that didn't involve drinking, running and vegging in front of the TV. Even my writing has fallen by the wayside. 

I think there is a certain amount of fake it until you make it involved in getting better, so I'm doing my best to try and remind myself to write, and do the other things I enjoy as well as running and keeping up with Game of Thrones. We'll see how that goes! 

Catch you later.  

It Gets Better, It Gets Worse,

Sometimes I like re-reading old blogs because it reminds me that things get better, even when I read about times I was feeling worse. If there was an uphill from there, there can be one from here, too. You may have read the one about the Mental Health First Aid awareness course, or you may not, or maybe you just don't remember it, but the upshot was it was a difficult day because I had to think about why someone committed suicide and how they did it, and how seven years later, it still hurts that they made that choice. It was a tough day, but it had nothing on the actual practitioner course for me. 

Let me start this by saying that I would never try to dissuade anyone from attending an MHFA practitioner course. There are a lot of people in crisis out there and there are not enough of us. We cannot fix everything, we cannot help everyone, but we can listen and at the moment it could feel like the very opposite of a brief shout into the void (like a small ear to a great cacophony of sound or something similar...) My personal experience of the course was a bit difficult, more than a little bit actually, but at the same time, there was a heck of a lot of value in it. 

So, firstly, I am well aware of the fact that I can be my own worst enemy. Talk about having Generalised Anxiety Disorder can be quite difficult for me sometimes, but I do it. Sometimes I do it because I want to encourage other people to be able to talk about it. Sometimes I do it so that other people can understand what it looks like, or feels like and such. Sometimes I do it because it is the only way that I can tell people what it is I need from them in order to be okay. 

When you're talking about Mental Health in that sort of capacity, people need to know what it looks like hands on. We were really lucky, in some ways, to have people with a few different conditions involved in the course. We all talked about our experiences, our demons, and everything and it helped. Those who don't have problems, or have only experienced short-lived problems in the past made sure we felt safe, and what we were saying was valuable. Well, most of them anyway. 

It's hard because sometimes people are told to get themselves onto one of these courses to try and deal with people better and actually, they then say something stupid that makes the course harder for other people on it. That's kind of what happened to me. 

When I'm upset, or rather my anxiety is running the show, I need to chew things. Mostly it's my nails, or it's gum, hard chocolate or crisps or nuts also works, but I need something tough. I have a clicky thing (like eternal bubble wrap) and I had purposely worn one of my big hoodies that I can just dive inside of, and it's like my own cocoon. I struggled to make anything work right then, but I grabbed as much as I could chew on during the lunch break and then headed back into the room when someone asked me what I wasn't going to eat today. 

Eating disorders are anxiety based. There are times I struggle with food. It can be a consistency issue, it can be a heat thing, a flavour thing and all sorts of other things. Sometimes I have to remind myself to eat. Sometimes I have to remind myself that forcing myself to eat can make me sick, and not eating can make me sick and I have to balance everything against each other and try my hardest to be okay. Sometimes I eat the only things that I know my stomach won't freak out at because anxiety hits my stomach and causes IBS symptoms. I went through a period where I was sick no matter what I ate because of how stressed and anxious I was. If you're wondering how I managed through that, I drank a lot of Lucozade and I struggled. Until I sat in that course, I didn't really talk about it, which was partly because I didn't want people to watch me - I didn't want people to comment on it. I control it pretty damn well; I don't need anyone else looking over me to make sure I'm eating enough and the right things. 

But then someone commented, it was meant to be a joke, about what was I not going to eat today. And suddenly, after just having to listen to someone talking about eating disorders and sitting there chewing my fingernails, feeling like I wasn't sure if I could get through the rest of the session, I was having to think about telling that person, and all of the people that they had said it in front of, that my eating habits were not to be the subject of jokes or discussions, but actually, yes, I struggle with it, and pointing it out only made that even harder. It made for the hardest couple of days I had had in a few months and it made me want to scream. 

I wrote yesterday that I was feeling content, and I was. I felt like today was a good day, and it was, but I have been carrying it around that the comment hurt since it happened and it's hard to shake something like that. I'm hoping that writing it down means I can try and let it go now, even if just a little bit.