a very honest ✨ MJC-mail ✨

*braces self to click post*

Hey close ones 💜

I really did want to come back to you with a dose of pure energy and a splash of light to push through this very grey January… but the grey got to me as well this month and I don’t want to pretend it didn’t.

“Things seem to have deteriorated for you lately” said my therapist on our Monday afternoon phone call. I looked around my very nice flat that I can afford to heat, saw the sparkly dress hanging up that I wore to a popstar’s birthday party, reminded myself again of the privilege it takes to access therapy (on a Monday afternoon!!) and felt like an arsehole. The biggest arsehole.

How can things on the outside be so ok and yet my brain is still this swirling abyss of everything that’s wrong in the world?

I tried to be present for the family moments over Christmas but I was swimming in guilt about the consumerism and environmental impact of the holiday. Images of people stuck in snowstorms or sleeping rough or still out protesting oppressive regimes kept looping in my brain so I didn’t really feel like I was *there* at all. Then I felt like a weirdo because why can other people switch that all off and allow themselves to just… be, and I can’t?

I doubled down on saying my gratitude lists out loud before bed and took a conscious break from social media. My brain told me that I was the problem; there’s so much more I could be doing or figuring out so that I don’t keep burdening people around me with the sadness I should have solved by now.

After a time with my lot I went to visit my girlfriend’s beautiful family and tried to let myself rest a little. She tried her best to hold what I was feeling but I started to worry that I was going to infect her with my overthinking. Again, I didn’t understand how the people around me were allowing themselves to enjoy a film, have a lie-in, laugh with each other when all I could do was just question everything and feel like I was on another planet.

There were some days with sunshine, an article I wrote (and quite liked at the time), came out, I hugged the dog lots.

My brain felt unbearably loud and cruel almost the entire time.

Then the 10 holiday days came to an end and I’ve been trying to convince myself of the value of anything I do, write, create, talk about.

I called my doctor to discuss my medication options because this lowered dose of anti-depressant doesn’t seem to be doing the trick but I really wasn’t digging the side effects of the higher one.

I’m trying to be kind to myself about the things I haven’t managed to get done this week. I’m trying to see the good things that I know are there. I’m trying to believe that I deserve to be ok and that it isn’t my responsibility to figure out everything, everywhere.

I feel like I’m starting from scratch again. Or maybe it’s just the moon. Maybe I’ll post this and feel so much better in two days that I won’t recognise the version of me who wrote it.

I don’t know. I just know I had to be honest about it, even if I do sound like an arsehole.

Still, in all this, I am wishing you all the care and self-kindness that I’m not doing a very good job at giving myself. I hope you are ok. I hope this makes you feel less alone if you’re not.

I hope next month’s update can be light again.

Sending you much love,

M

💜