settledownbessye

[settledownbessye]

Kilimanjaro.

As a child I called it “my mountain”. I was born in its foothills. I spent the first three years of my life growing up in its shadow, and called it my mountain.

I am a child of East Africa. I was born in Machame, lived in Gulu, and spent my childhood in Naivasha. Three different countries that shaped who I am today. When I’m asked where I’m from, I say East Africa. I may be American by birth, but my heart lives in Africa.

I am a child of sun and warmth. Of towering mountains and escarpments, and the vast wide Rift Valley. Of monsoon rains, and long hot dry seasons. Of savannah grasses that transform from parched yellow and brown to vibrant green under grey clouds that release their burdens in violent, torrential downpours. Of acacia trees with their deadly thorns, of the brilliant riotous colours of hibiscus and bougainvillea and jacaranda. The wild scream of African fish eagles swooping down over the surface of Lake Naivasha, and the deceptive calm of lumbering hippos who congregate in the shallows.

There is another side of Africa. It’s the darker side, of poverty and violence, brutal wars and political unrest, children begging in the streets and corruption that allows a small few to become wealthy while their country suffers from famine and sickness. And this too is a part of me. One does not spend their childhood surrounded by these things, and not be affected by them.

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Ted Hughes, Being Christlike

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1938. Langston Hughes wrote this in 1938. And nearly a hundred years later it’s still true. We haven’t done a fucking thing to change it.

The rich and privileged sit contentedly behind the security that their money has bought, and the rest of us die while they offer empty platitudes.

Nothing will change until WE force it. Another hundred years will pass and someone else will be quoting Langston Hughes because we couldn’t get our shit together enough to force change. And in the meantime tens of thousands of young people will die, whether by gun violence or the war machine that controls our government. Rich men start wars, and poor men die in them. Rich men refuse to make laws, and poor men die from their inaction.

It is past time for change. I do not want my grandchildren to be reading these words and seeing the truth of them in their present.

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I am bipolar, with the additional diagnoses of c-PTSD and ADHD. Lately it’s been a major battle to just be functional. I’m completely overwhelmed by everything and struggling. I had an appointment with my psych this morning and we’re tweaking meds again. I’m not suicidal. I’m struggling with the urge to just fucking run away from life because shit is just overwhelming me.

I guess I don’t know the exact purpose of this, other than just needing some support. I have partner who tries his best but struggles with how to help me the best - it doesn’t help that he lives an hour away and our time together is limited. A year and a half ago I was hospitalised for suicidal ideation with a defined plan and I need to avoid that if at all possible. I truly can’t afford to go without pay and it’s stressing me out even more. I’m trying to avoid triggers like the news but it’s hard. I suppose turning off my social media would help but even that feels hard.

I spent so much time mostly stable and now this is hitting me. I’ve forgotten how to deal with depression because it’s been so long that I’ve had to manage it and that’s not helping.

I guess… I don’t so much need advice. Logically I know all the coping skills but I’m having trouble implementing all the things that I’m supposed to because all I want to do is check out and just sleep.

I hate this. I hate that it’s going to affect my kids. I’m battling through trying to keep things as normal as possible for them but it’s basically taking every thing in me to hold shut together.

[settledownbessye]

Dreams.

Falling through space. Wake up with a jump.

Drift back to sleep. Back into the dream.

Toss and turn. Moan.

This is not where I want to be.

Falling again. Wake with a jump.

Back to the dream again - I can’t escape.

Images scrolling as though across a screen.

I’m in there, and I can’t get out.

Endless pictures flashing by me.

Memories intertwined with fantasy.

All of it terrifying.

My past comes out to play at night.

Guard is down and I can’t control my mind.

Falling. Falling. Falling.

Wake with a jump.

Never enough to escape.

First morning light peeks through the window.

Relief. Finally.

Awake.

Exhausted.

Dreams.

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Lovely Easter with family and an egg hunt.

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Spring is here. And with it my mood lifts. There is something about the renewal of life, the rebirth of the earth, that brings me to joy and hope.

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Trauma.

Recovery.

Triggers me in ways I wasn’t expecting.

Maybe I should put it back, lock it away in its box.

Safer that way.

Lock it away.

Bury it again.

The triggers come, flashback torture.

I don’t know if I can now.

Pandora’s box has been opened.

Is it even possible to put it all back again?

Trauma.

Recovery.

Sit on the bathroom floor and cry uncontrollably.

Fight it.

Push through because what other choice is there?

Trauma.

Recovery.

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Today I find myself living in the past.

Not the traumatic past. But the nostalgic past. The past where I was young and carefree, before I became tentative and controlled. My gypsy girl past.

It's hard sometimes to remember what it was like then. Hard to believe that I went on impromptu safaris and spent my nights in a tent under the stars. That I didn't need to know the entire plan, only that we were doing *something*.

Time changes us. Trauma buries the carefree child and leaves behind a shell of that person. I experienced trauma as a child; my earliest memories are, at a minimum, mildly traumatic. But at 18 - it didn't seem to phase me. I was young and healthy and carefree and careless, and I was happy. I suppose maybe I didn't fully accept my trauma, or that it was so securely locked away that I wasn't conscious of it. Whatever the reason, I was a different person then.

I talk to him, my first love. He reminds me of who I once was. He reminds me that maybe somewhere buried deep inside under the hurt and the knowledge of the world's cruelty is that carefree careless child of 18. I talk to him because for all that I have now, he understands me in a way so many others don't. We are friends now, separated by 9000 miles, but we have that shared childhood experience of life in Kenya in the 1980s and 1990s, when everything seemed wide open to us and the possibilities were endless.

Perhaps gypsy girls (and boys) don't actually disappear. Perhaps they are always there, straining to break the bonds that life has placed on them. Yearning for freedom.

Perhaps one day I can find her again.

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EMDR. The trips back in my mind to those times I have locked away for so long.

Today it was the rape when I was 16.

I couldn’t cry there in my therapy room. A safe space. But I couldn’t cry, even though the tears were there, just below the surface.

I ended up alone on my bathroom floor. Sobbing hysterically until I was almost sick.

And then I got up and took a klonopin. And pretended everything was fine for everyone else.

This is what I do. Put on that face. Pretend all is well to the public, even to those that I should be able to be vulnerable with. Shove the pain, the tears, the memories, into a locked box because it’s safer that way.

I know that I need to let go. To be vulnerable. To let myself feel and process and put it all away when I’ve taken away its power.

But to do that is to lose control. And sometimes it feels like that tight control is all I have left. That it’s all that holds me together.

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From torrential downpour to this stunning double rainbow. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a double rainbow this clear and brilliant before.

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I wrote just now, about the coming of spring, about my awakening. And as I was going through my pictures I found this, taken as I drove to exchange my children for spring break. Winter’s last hurrah, this March snowstorm.

I am, as always, amazed at the resiliency of Nature. Those first blooms, those delicate little buds that come as the first signs of spring - they somehow survive these last wintery days, where the ice and the snow coat everything in a frigid blanket.

It is these moments, these tiny buds, that give me hope that I can survive the winters, be they physical or emotional. The strength in these tiny signs of life, that they can survive even the coldest of days, and thrive after, bursting into full life, this is what I cling to when I am at my lowest. If they can live, if they can not only survive but bloom, then so too can I.

I am not battling the depression now. That is past; as always it disappears as the days grow longer and the sun shines warmer and brighter. No. It is the nightmares now, after a months long hiatus, that have me awake at 1 am. They are back, those small little demons, who gain an outsized control of my mind while I sleep. They twist my thoughts. They bring with them the fear of sleep, because while I can lock them away when I am awake I lose my control in slumber. Anxiety comes too, the racing intrusive thoughts that require so much attention to diffuse.

But I will be fine. I will find my way back to the light, to the sun, to my peace. Those small moments of peace and hope that I cling to - they, like the delicate buds of early spring, they will explode one day as the light feeds them, in the same way that the sun feeds the tree until it blooms into a riot of life. If they can survive an ice storm, then I too can survive those small demons.

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Spring is here, and with it the lifting of my mood. I am emerging from my winter hibernation again, as the skies turn from dreary grey to sunny blue and the world wakes up. And as the world comes alive so do I, the child of the sun and warmth that I am.

With the changing of the season I feel the change in myself. The hope of a new beginning stirs. Optimism replaces the ineffable sadness that permeates me during the seeming endlessness of winter’s grey cold. And I come to being again, to contentment and joy, awake, alive.

I am coming to myself again. The warming of my world warms my soul, and I come to life with the world around me. Pink blooms, tiny green buds, daffodils and crocus pushing their way towards the sun - these are what give me comfort. Winter is behind me, and summer is coming.

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In a funk I can’t shake, driven by the intrusive thoughts that I can’t control. Thoughts that show up at my most vulnerable. Thoughts that come seemingly out of nowhere.

I’ve found myself dissociating more and more. Doom scrolling through social media. Turning on the tv and two hours later I have no idea what I’ve watched. Driving and getting to my destination with no recollection of how I got there.

The voices in my head won’t silenced. Sometimes it’s a dreamy voice, the imaginative one that drives me forward. But all too often it’s negative these days, a product of my depression and anxiety.

It’s been 18 months since this happened before. I’m better than I was then. I can see the signs. Recognise the spiral. I can be proactive. I only hope it is enough.

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Driving over the mountain tonight was an entire mood. It snowed earlier today and it was an overcast dusk. It was as though, for a moment, Mother Nature read my mood.