Dark places
I have been out of medication for a while. The tablets I am on, to quote my GP, take 2 weeks to start working again if you’ve had a gap. I have tablets again, but they won’t work for a while. Clinical depression is probably the part of me that is most buried, save for disproportionate disappointment in response to everyday events.
My hallucinations aren’t medicated because the tablets weren’t very good for me, neither are my panic attacks, anxiousness, and constantly assuming the worst about everything. They are parts of my life so often on display for all to see.
Depression is perhaps the one I find so self-destructive, and I’m sitting in a big thick fog of it right now. My other mental illnesses, I can live with. Events happen but life goes on. Depression brings me to a plodding halt. I can’t think. I can’t do anything. I can’t get out a full sentence without crying. I even forgot to eat for hours today.
And it’s all because some of the right chemicals aren’t swirling around the brain, so I have to take pills to make it happen artificially. It sounds so ridiculous.
For the first day or two that I don’t have meds, I find it quite freeing. “Oh, I don’t have to remember to take anything today” I can think as I take my last bite of toast. But the consequences set in before long. I feel so dark, so angry, so agitated and so flat all at once. I wish I had the motivation to do things but it’s just not there.
Part of me wants to scream at Will and ask him why he left it too long to collect my prescription, why he wanted me to feel this misery. The small, rational part left in the back of my brain tells me that actually, he works a lot and just forgot.
But there’s always that little voice whispering over it. The he doesn’t love you anyway and you make it even harder voice. The worst thing is that it’s my voice. It’s not a phantom or a critic. It’s me.
I don’t think people realise that about me, when they try to make things difficult or administer a social punishment. I already hate myself more than they could ever manage.
We argued today because I posted in response to a machete attack on a Jew, that I would move to Israel one day. He quite literally isn’t going to allow me to. I’m frustrated because he’s free to believe in nothing, and I should be free to believe in something without having my life threatened. My belief is not going to vanish because of the threat.
A French Jew has just been attacked in the street by someone wielding a machete, and in London just days ago, some Neo-Nazis were driving around shouting “Heil Hitler” and throwing gas canisters out of their windows at visually-obvious Jews. Small Jewish newspapers have to spring up and cover it because nobody else actually cares. Everyone told themselves “Never again” after the Holocaust and, as far as they’re concerned, they can relax now because they’ve said it.
But as we’ve learned with disabled people in England and with refugees, incitement costs lives. Letting people you know post racist or ableist memes without telling them off, leads to people dying in the street. Letting people spread and parrot unchecked nonsense, gets people killed.
Jews have been scapegoated time and again by such nonsense. It won’t go away, because the nonsense goes unchecked. Centuries and centuries of plain untruths. These farcical statements and false histories get written into children’s textbooks in many countries, prompting the next generation of anti-Semitism. This is serious.
In Sweden, holocaust survivors used to visit schools and give talks. But they stopped this because entire classrooms of children would stand up and walk out. Before you reach to blame Muslim immigrants, these were ordinary Swedish children we are talking about. Their parents had long been filling their heads with things about “those Jews.”
I wish people would watch this and realise how dangerous things are. They just don’t think about it. But I see it everywhere, from casual remarks to the way people’s gazes change when they see you wear a Star of David. I bet most of these people don’t even know why they feel so disgusted. Be it a falsehood about how rich Jews are (where is my Jew-money?), how no Jews went to work on 9/11 (people of all faiths and none, were killed in that terrorist attack), or a historical lie that would easily be abated if they would only check with someone without an agenda, I don’t wish to remain around such people long enough to find out what their problem actually is.
I may be in my 70s, or my 40s, or depending how things go, maybe even my 30s (assuming Ehlers-Danlos actually lets me live that long), before I go to Israel, but I feel that I will go. Something draws me there. Something, in the tiny drop of Mizrahi in my veins, has been pulling me back to Judaism my whole life, despite how anti-Israeli I was raised to be. If my conversion is successful, my children will be Jews automatically and they will also be in danger. Although I doubt that Nazis care very much for anyone’s conversion status. If I believe in Judaism, I am fair game.
So yes, I get it, Will wouldn’t want to uproot his life and move to what he called a “desert country.” I wouldn’t want him to be uprooted either. But I, and maybe our children, may well have no choice but to flee one day. He doesn’t have to, I just wish he’d understand how threatened I feel. And direct frustration instead to the people who would take a machete to me in the street because of the way I pray.
Today I feel more bleak about the whole thing than I ever have.
But now I need to write about some good things before my head explodes.
Will got me a new notebook today. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with it yet (I knew I needed a notebook, but not exactly why), but I have scribbled on the first page. We also ate nachos and ice cream because, as the small rational part of my brain points out, he does love me.
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| We have a new dog poo bin. |
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| I know that a bin isn’t much to get excited about, but it is pretty good. |
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| Freya in her Leuchtie. |
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| My camera can’t pick up how many stars you can see above this house. There’s not as much light pollution as you’d expect. |
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| Freya pulling the back door closed as she comes in. |
Even Freya seems bummed-out today. She just flopped on the sofa and didn’t get up to greet Will after he’d been out.
A dog cheering you up when you feel like this isn’t assistance work, but it is nice to have her for other things. I’d feel a lot worse if I had to contend with more physical things.
I hope this feeling goes away soon. My head is so dark. All the places in the house feel dark. I even had a dream about there not being enough daylight coming in. I’m so tired and so ready to burst with anger all at once. I feel everything and nothing at all. Mess in a house really gets to me mentally, but I haven’t the energy to sort out these boxes and solve the problem. I’m sleeping so much at the moment. I hate this.
