when a month is a wipe out

This has been a month of protracted sadness, more where the see-saw has been doing its up and down daily work as usual but it has been harder to bounce back out of the down parts. Hard slog and wrestling.

It is fast approaching those two months of the year when the journey to and from work will be in darkness, encompassing each end the light in between while I work the hours at the job which may or may not run into next year.

In the middle years of life I have greater self awareness than ever to know when the sad times are taking over and more self-help tools and other people walking the same walk than ever to deal with them.

I know this month was situational triggered, a small insignificant thing looking at it, which underneath has created currents pulling me helplessly this and that way. I have much to look forward to with the imminent arrival of a grandchild. Right now I fear I will not feel the joy when this happens.

I know I will rise again eventually, life-savers keep hauling me towards the surface. Singing  is restorative in a way that nothing else is (even when as this week others are bantering over the top their preferences on the finesse of presentation.) There was a glorious rainbow end refracting against broody skies last Monday, just a brief vertical show on the day six years after Mum died. Enough to remind me that I am remembered.

I have been quieter on Social Media and more under the radar in life for a while but like a lot of others (either on Social Media or in life) it mostly goes unnoticed unless I say something. Which is mainly awkward (for others when I say something and me when I don't.)

So for those of you who are complicated, quieter and more under the radar than usual...

Yeh darkness is doing its darndest to snuff out the light, but it is always light somewhere else and I am hopeful that sooner or later it will come back again.

sunday blues

Earlier I re-posted Katharine Welby's interview with Cole Moreton in the Telegraph today on both Twitter and Facebook. It is a well written article and good to see someone with a fairly high media profile willing to speak publicly with no added agenda about depression.

It is one way I use to hint indirectly to people that I am depression-prone every now and again. It feels safer than telling most people face to face. 

Silence has been quite noisy.

Watching some of Hugh Laurie's Perspectives on the Blues seemed like a good way to end the day. 

No more words ...

these three stick around

Today I told my dad for the first time that I have had episodes of depression on and off for about 25 years. 

I don’t yet know whether the admission to him will be significant or not. It's a fairly big deal, there is a lot of history and entanglement, plus the absence of healthy adult communication.

But it's done now.

Spending time with dad is depression trigger itself. And from my own experiences, the sort where it takes one to know one, I do think he is mildly depressed himself - a combination of good old foibles and not having been able to grieve healthily after mum died 4½ years ago. But he is yet to see that himself.

If you pray, I would value your prayers.

That Love will keep reaching down, where it needs to.

I feel a little fragile, but my God is not.

He is faithful and His strength of hope resides within.