this is how it sometimes is…………..

It’s been a long time since I wrote.

After the tooth fiasco, and weeks in pain, I managed to do three shows in three weekends, and then flopped for a week.

Then had some holiday time.

I only intended to take a week or so, but then the gloom decended.

Known also as The Black Dog famously by Winston Churchill, depression.

It’s been hard to write about this.  Invisible illness.  Not just the feeling totally flat, and just so miserable, but the heart racing, sweat pouring, short of breath panic attacks, vivid nightmares, hours of feeling wide awake during the night, and then feeling so tired you could cry.

This bout I think was added to by some medication, that the GP has now said I should stop taking, it’s a known side effect.  But how ever it was triggered, often there are no triggers, it just happens.

I’ve been doing the tried and tested things of hibinating and sleeping lots, paring down what I do and just be very gentle with myself, which years have told me that this will lessen the length and intensity of the bout.

Knowing I’ll feel fine eventually does help somewhat, and the complete panic of thinking you are going slowly mad which haunted me during my first bout years ago has gone as experience has told me it will pass.

But what have I got to be depressed about, lovely family, wonderful husband, comfortable home, dream job, but then depression doesn’t make sense.  It just hits, and any one, no matter who you are, or what you do, it just hits.

So that’s where I am.

Struggling and trying to get through days, and trying to carry on and do ordinary things, and some days are better than others.

I will be back and pots will flow, but just not for a little while.