It’s just another manic… October.

I wish it was December.

Cos then I might remember……

that everything isn’t terrible and life isn’t actually awful, after all.

Lalala.

October is never a good month for me.

It gets dark on the inside as well as the outside.

Right now everything feels insurmountable, and terrifying, and difficult, and HEAVY.

It all sits on my chest and I can’t breathe properly, and it stoops my shoulders until my back hurts, rolls in my stomach so I can’t eat, and fills my head until I can’t sleep, and I can’t think, and I most certainly can’t DO.

I wake up and doom floods in before I’ve had a conscious thought; I go to bed and yawning unspecified desolation is waiting at its dimming edges.

When the world gets too big for me to navigate it, I do the only thing I can.

I go small.

I shrink everything down to the very basics. My kids. My house. The work I need to do to keep my kids IN a house. And then I do the next thing directly in front of me that needs doing – because it’s all I can look at and all I can hold in my head and all I can cope with, and I can’t risk looking any further in case I fall from the tightrope.

They say don’t look down.

But the thing is – the real trick is – don’t look UP.

You will lose your footing.

You will lose yourself in the swirling denseness of everything and vastness of nothing all at once, filling the sky and roaring to your edges and through them until you don’t exist, any more.

So don’t look up.

Look down.

Go small.

Stay low.

Shield your eyes and your mind.

Draw your edges around you like a cloak and hold on tight.

The fog on the ground may choke you but it is also HIDING you.

And that’s where I am right now, in hiding. A hedgehog in a ball, a snail in a shell, trying to feel safe, protecting the squishy bits. Clinging to the floor.

I’ve written about mental health on here many times. And looking back, I write about it a lot in October. Because this is apparently part of my cycle – this is what I DO in October. But it has still come as something of a surprise… like the monthly amnesia of PMT, but less frequent, and less likely to be fixed by ice cream.

I’ve done SO WELL in the pandemic so far. I’ve managed. I’ve coped. I’ve been resilient. I’ve learnt a lot about dealing with trauma in the last few years, and in many ways divorce was a training ground for this – for isolation, devastation, fear and uncertainty.

But no matter how much I think I know, how well I think I’m doing, how far I think I’ve come, it still gets me, sometimes. The darkness. It sneaks in, just at the corners at first, and then it engulfs me, all at once.

And when that happens – when it gets bad – I go small.

It is a way of regaining control when I am hurtling out of it. It is about making your environment micro enough that you can get a hold of it again, in manageable, bite-sized chunks. You do one insurmountable, gigantuan, impossible thing at a time, and you don’t look up.

Get out of bed. Shower. Get the kids up. Make the breakfast. Don’t look up. Pack the lunchboxes. Do the hair. Get in the car. Don’t look up. Talk to the mums. Smile behind the mask. Respond. Don’t look up. Turn the computer on. Check the emails. Write the articles. Fill in the timesheet. Don’t look up. Pick the kids up. Make the tea. Do the homework. Wash the clothes. Read the story. Don’t look up. Clean the mess. Put the clothes away. Move. Go to bed. Sleep. Don’t look up.

It is not a list, because a list is too big. There is too much future, too much flow. It is the next thing that needs doing, or else bad things will happen, followed by the next thing, and then the next. Staccato. Deliberate. Finite. Controlled. Don’t. Look. Up.

When I feel like this, going small is actually one of my healthier coping strategies. Because in the past I’ve exercised control in ways that were… less healthy.

In the past I have made bargains, and created routines, and gone through rituals that can’t be interrupted, that repeat until I’m exhausted enough, until I’ve paid a debt I don’t understand. I’ve created impossible, obsessive to-do lists of imaginary necessities so I can be all-consumed by them. I’ve cleaned until my hands are raw from bleach and I won’t let anyone else touch anything in case they contaminate it. I’ve stopped eating, or over-exercised, to feel the pain of hunger or muscle strain and been glad that the outside hurts like the inside because I can make that stop and go as I want it to. I’ve picked holes in myself so I can press the wounds when I need to feel something.

So if I don’t respond to your text message, I’m not being rude. If I make awkward, disjointed conversation and don’t meet your eyes, I’m not being snooty, or evasive, or weird. If I can’t finish a thread, a task or a thought, I am not being difficult, or lazy. I have shut down because I can’t do anything else right now.

And I am not the only one.

Health experts are warning of a tsunami of mental ill-health swelling in the wake of Covid as we all struggle with so much everything, with bereavements, and redundancies, and financial worries, and paying the bills, and what about Christmas, and fears for the future, for our health, for our families, and isolation and dark, cold nights, separation from our loved ones, relationship issues, and the tyranny of both never-ending routine and ongoing uncertainty.

This World Mental Health Day on 10 October is a chance for all of us to check in with ourselves, and the people around us. 500,000 more people are predicted to need mental health support as a result of the pandemic.

In many ways, I’m lucky, because I HAVE been here before. I have had other manic Octobers, other dark seasons. I know what to look for, what the danger signs are. When to go small. When my need for control goes too far. When to ask for help. And I know about the Other Side – the one you can’t see because you just can’t look far enough ahead. The one that you can’t imagine existing.

I know the bleak and gray and desperate will be over, eventually. That there will not just be an ending, but a next that comes after it. Not everyone knows that, or can remember it, or can hold it in their heads when things go bad.

And if you can’t do that, if you don’t believe in the Other Side, it makes carrying on the ultimate leap of faith. Only it’s not a leap, it’s one heavy step at a time.

And I want you to know that I know every single one of them is an act of sheer bloody heroism.

And sometimes, sometimes heroes need help.

So they can look up, again, and FLY.

xxx

Samaritans 116 123 jo@samaritans.org.

Mind 0300 123 3393Mind.org.uk

Shout Crisis Text LineText “SHOUT” to 85258 or “YM” if you’re under 19