2017. . . the year I finally learned I’m NOT broken
ILOST my house in January. I gave up my car. I lost my pony, my old dog Sam, a cat, a man, and I’ve sold everything I own. The day a man arrived to collect my 40-year collection of British Vogue was a dark one. I lost my identity, too. Being dynamic and successful, living in a Georgian house, driving a nice car and wearing expensive clothes was who I was. I became no one when I was declared bankrupt in May 2017. I now have a personal grooming allowance of £20 a month. Let’s just say I’m not looking good, but how am I feeling?
Upstairs in the wardrobe is a small white box. It contains the antidepressant Citalopram, prescribed when I could no longer breathe. But despite the losses (and unlike a record number of people in the UK: we take more pills than almost anyone else in the world), I haven’t burst a single blister. I’ve gazed at the box from time to time. Ironically, I was too anxious to take the anti-anxiety medication, so I resisted, and thank the Lord I did. I understand people need a crutch but if you can resist imbibing something that alters the chemistry of your brain, you should. I made it through the worst year I could have imagined. And this is how.
I’ve been lucky enough to have therapy (see Page 44 of today’s You magazine): just being in a room with someone on your side helps. I’ve compartmentalised: just deal with today. I know this sounds crazy, but I’ve got into astronomy: it helps to know you’re a tiny speck on a small blue dot. I make sure I’m physically tired, though I do love a Deep Sleep Pillow Spray (expensive unguent habits die hard). I no longer allow anyone negative near me: depression is catching. And the best prescription of all: the knowledge that even bad feelings can be helpful, and appropriate. When I lost my dog, how disrespectful would it have been to his memory to have dulled the agony? I was supposed to feel bad. I’m supposed to grieve for my old life, too. But that emotion, painful though it is, motivates me.
THERE was no place for a drug in what happened to me. The night before a scary meeting with HMRC, I coped with a hot bath, a glass of Cremant and Frasier. The best piece of advice I got all year was to make my bed every day: easy but effective. I don’t over-moan: if you say it out loud, you believe it. I’m trying to eat (nobody’s perfect. That reminds me: Some Like It Hot is crucial!). As a recovering anorexic, inhabiting a new life where I struggle to afford food has been a revelation. What was I thinking, turning my nose up at free canapes? I’ve gobbled self-help books by the dozen: Johann Hari’s Lost Connections is brilliant. He started taking antidepressants aged 18, but they didn’t help. In Vietnam, he was poisoned by an apple covered in pesticides. He went to the hospital, and begged for something to alleviate the nausea. ‘You need your nausea,’ the doctor told him. ‘It’s a message.’ Depression and anxiety are a symptom. ‘You aren’t a machine with broken parts,’ writes Hari. ‘You’re an animal whose needs are not being met.’
Bingo. Maybe it’s not me who’s broken after all. It’s the world.