This is another guest post from Dorothy Donald.
I won’t be coming out tonight
I’m sorry for the late notice. It’s not that I don’t want to see you – I just don’t want to see anyone at the moment. My anxiety keeps waking me up at 3am telling me to kill myself and then not letting me go back to sleep, so I’m tired. It’s hard for me to string one thought to the next at the moment because of the fog in my head, so my conversation isn’t up to much. And being around other people just gets me thinking about how normal and OK I don’t feel. I want to go home. I’ll probably lie on my bed and just stare at the wall for a while and feel too heavy to get up. You see, I’ve been struggling with depression recently. No, don’t worry: I’m feeling sad today, which is actually a very encouraging improvement on how things have been over the past few weeks. No, there’s nothing you can do – except maybe understand that I’m not well. No, I’m not up to going to the pub. I am very unlikely to feel better once I get there. Today is just a bad day. Thank you for asking me though. Maybe next time.
(A lie is easier.)
No. No. No, you did not say anything wrong. You did not do anything wrong. Someone else accidentally led me to an expectation that didn't pan out, and the bench I'm on rocked, pushing over the beer bottles on it, so now my world is falling to pieces. It's not a sensible reaction in any way, but it is the one I have to fight through. I'll be back again in a minute or three.
ReplyDeleteAnd in no way are you to blame.
Yes - I can recognise this! Amazing how much effort we (need to?) put into reassuring whoever it is that it's not their fault we're in a bad way...
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