Remembering

I think everyone has a trigger, some tiny little thing that can bring back a powerful memory and set everything off. It could be a song, or a film, or anything really. For me, on this occasion, it was a photo of a face. An Instagram photo of a completely unchanged face, which was so startlingly relaxed and healthy, that it seemed almost wrong that it could send me spiralling into deep depression. Unlike a memory - which is subject to interference and decay and all the mechanisms we use to give ourselves a fighting chance of survival - it was clear. Every colour and line was as it was. Then the panic set in: I don't do endings, or change, or goodbyes. I especially don't think too hard. I'd collapse under the weight of it all. Easier to just stop feeling, right? No it isn't. Not with a mood disorder - you don't get a choice.

At the time, long before my diagnosis, I could protect myself very effectively. I think it was shock, or maybe denial, that put me into a state of mind whereby I was outside of myself and therefore the situation - that's the only way I can think of to describe it. Like being asleep yet fully conscious at the same time. The interesting thing about this (at least I think it's interesting), is that sometimes it's nice to go back to that. To dig something out that triggers the memories and go back, crying and wailing in despair, to where I was. In retrospect it was clear I'd gone perfectly mad but it was a wholly different breed of madness to the one I'm battling now. It may have hurt more but it was a simpler time.

You can never win.