How I Cope
I read somewhere that it takes a rocket about 10 minutes to make the 62-mile journey from its launch to the boundary of Earth’s atmosphere and into orbit. That’s the fast part. If the rocket’s destination is the International Space Station (ISS), it’s also the easier part. The real difficulty is in trying to rendezvous with the ISS, which orbits Earth 250 miles above its atmosphere; it can take hours, sometimes days, to achieve. The science behind it all is too much for this politics graduate to decipher, so bear with me — the ISS is travelling at an insane speed, but, because of crazy space-physics, you can’t just fire your engines and go straight for it, otherwise you might fly out of range and into deep-space, which I believe you don’t just ‘come back from’. So getting it right requires intricate manoeuvring, a lot of button-pushing, patience and exceptional skill.
Forgive my flimsy space-analogy, but when I read that I couldn’t help but wonder if life is a bit like this? The first part of life, mine at least, I call The Surge. It was like a rocket launch. I raced through, had fewer issues to worry about and wasn’t expected to solve them myself whenever they surfaced. Along the way I was being prepped for the next stage — collecting the tools that should help me navigate it. I was happy with how I played everything. It all seemed to make sense. Fulfilment felt natural, almost deserved. Of course, there were bumps and jolts along the way, but they never interfered with the bigger picture. In fact, certain events brought it more into focus. But as I look back, at 31, at how it went when The Surge ended and the next stage began, I see someone struggling to work out how to stay on track. Of course, adulthood isn’t a club where, upon entry, you are handed tokens that you can deploy at any moment to solve any problem. Whoever you are, whatever and wherever you have come from, you want to find a way to make your life work. But whether we are making it work for ourselves, our partners, our children, the expectations are heavy. And it can be a real challenge.
Everyone has something on their plate. I remind myself of this — a lot. Maybe I do it to try and lessen my own worries when they’re staring directly at me. Whenever we see a tragic news story we are reminded of how awful things can be. They shock and sadden us and give us perspective. But a tragic event that happens elsewhere, to someone else, doesn’t mean you’re no longer entitled to be affected by your own issues. What affects you, affects you. In my life I have had my struggles and haven’t found it easy coming to terms with them. My mum died when I was 12 and I never had a relationship with my dad, who bailed before I was born and has never made any meaningful effort to be a part of my life. There have been all kinds of goings-on and plenty of good has come from the bad. The situation I describe isn’t extreme, either. But I have still found it tough to get away from that ‘sense of without’ that I have been left with.
At some point, around my mid-20s I’d say, I stopped feeling The Surge. Whatever had so purposefully carried me to that point decided to up and leave me. Like a plane, cruising along at top speed, suddenly losing power in its engines. I had felt in control — and proud. I’d gone from remembering, as a child, being ushered to the back of the house when the debt collector came knocking to being on first name terms with politicians I used to see on television and finding myself next to a Sir Whatever Who-Cares at a dinner and it being a completely normal situation. But now I was examining the whole project, from every angle, and something felt amiss. Those buried feelings, whose existence I had ignored, were catching up with me. I hadn’t questioned any of it before. For the first time I was wondering what the project, what I, was even about.
People love goals. Goals can make us do the improbable and sometimes the impossible. Lose weight, save money for a deposit on a house, make a change in your life so you can be a better partner, learn to speak Spanish, set a world record. We’ve watched The Last Dance and seen how Michael Jordan was able to hit unimaginable heights and reach his goals because he possessed a superhuman ability to motivate himself. Jordan would make it his goal to humiliate an opposing player because they’d had the audacity to score against him years earlier. But what do you do when you can’t even say what your goal is anymore? We can’t all be Michael Jordan. Is a ‘man’s man’ still a thing? I don’t know if it is. But I’m sure what one would say to others about facing their problems… Well, I’m not a man’s man. I’m just a man. ‘Manning up’ and confronting my problems became the hardest thing to do.
I don’t remember the exact moment it hit me for the first time. I would likely have been sat at work, in a near-unresponsive stupor, conversations around me going over my head, momentary interactions with colleagues going through me, my work going precisely nowhere. I stopped seeing the point. Not just sitting unhappily in an office — “is it Friday yet?” — but the point in even existing (I say ‘existing’ and not ‘living’ here for a reason). Seriously. The everyday all of a sudden became the pointless. Want to go out for a drink? I’m gonna stay in. Shall we plan something nice? Why? What’s wrong? Nothing, I’m fine. You’ve been like this for weeks. Stop going on about it. Maybe you should talk to someone. I don’t need to talk to anyone. Stop worrying. But I am worried. Just leave it.
I could think my way through anything. I went to school the day after my mum died because “I can deal with it, I’m fine”. Whatever the issue, I would smother and stamp on anything that resembled an emotion. Switched off, completely. The rest was an act. That’s how you handle everything. Events don’t get more traumatic than a child losing a parent, but they didn’t need to be for me to follow that course. I was beyond convinced that my way of managing worked and, as the fable about the king’s son and the painted lion tells us, I didn’t see the damage I was doing by not confronting my feelings head-on. But when that time came, thinking of everything I had done to get to where I was in my life didn’t assuage or even satisfy me anymore. Whatever it was that sat inside me, untouched and unacknowledged for so long, but biding its time, was now getting in the way of me feeling happy and fulfilled. Life started to feel like a kind of dictatorial setup, where I couldn’t see what I did have without an oppressive reminder of what I was without.
Depression begins its assault by holding you back. If you don’t fight back it pins you down. Then it starts to suffocate you. Eventually you are paralysed by it. So often I would wake in an ultra-low mood and immediately write days off. I stopped showing any interest in all parts of my life. My moods were affecting the relationship I was in. I was called away for ‘quick chats’ at work on a few occasions. My grandmother, ever the mindreader, knew. I was going through it all quite aimlessly and was unconcerned about the impact. The signs were soon inescapable. I had to realise I’d spent so long burying my emotions that it simply wasn’t doable anymore. A plane with no working engines has to hit land at some point.
The doctor’s surgery was about a hundred yards from my flat in Battersea, but for all the will I had, I may as well have been tasked with taking on Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, right after escaping from a pit of quicksand. It immobilises you, day after day. My get-up-and-go, well, it got-up-and-fucked-right-off. But when I did make it into a doctor’s room and talk about how I was feeling, he heard me out and reassured me. I was referred to six weekly sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy. The doctor didn’t over-promise that it would completely solve my problems, but suggested I should at least start there. I was placed in a small group with others who were at varying stages of their own struggles. At first I would sit and listen somewhat diffidently, but was encouraged gradually to join in by the two girls running the group. The sessions taught me how I could manage negative thoughts and turn around a low mood. I kept showing up and, as the old adage goes, got out of it as much as I put in.
For the first time in a long time, I felt satisfaction and, dare I say it, a measure of pride and happiness. But it was obvious that going to Tooting on a Friday morning would not be enough. What was clear to me, and probably to the doctor I talked to, was that I needed to finally understand my issues, to go back to that bit of land where I’d been burying all my unwanted goods for years, and dig them up. This meant arranging one-to-one sessions with a therapist. Sadly, the wait in Wandsworth for NHS services was long — this left me with the option of doing it privately. I was fortunate that the work life I was so disengaged from still enabled me to fund what I will not deny is, at a few hundred pounds a month, a costly exercise. Most couldn’t manage it, and it is a shame so many miss out on first-rate help.
I had the first session with my therapist in February 2019. We agreed to meet once a week. I did not know what to expect beforehand. I kept thinking of The Sopranos, and Tony Soprano’s sit-downs with Dr Melfi. Every week Tony would sit there and go off about a particular gripe, usually ‘business-related’, and now and again would reluctantly talk about deeper personal issues. I couldn’t channel an Italian-American mobster if one held a gun to my head, but those scenes did resonate. I knew from the get-go that I wasn’t looking to be cured (whatever that looks like), but that I had an opportunity to explore this unchartered territory with a ‘co-pilot’. I put everything I had into these conversations, for that’s what they were. Along the way I learned to sit with my feelings, good and bad. All those thoughts and worries that felt heavy and unbearable for so long soon started to feel light and manageable — that’s the best way I can put it.
Where has therapy taken me? I’m not going to talk about other people in my life, but sitting down on a weekly basis to dive into my issues taught me to understand and manage and get past them. Whatever has happened in my life, not this existence I was born into, I see it for what it is, and know that none of it can stop me from enjoying the pursuit of happiness and fulfilment. I have an amazing and supportive girlfriend, a solid circle of friends, I’ve taken a much-needed career break and I have a blissful, more complete relationship with my family. I’m where I want to be.
I suppose you are wondering what is the point in me even writing and then sharing this? Thankfully, attitudes towards mental health are far more enlightened than they used to be. And I don’t think I have a unique message. I just like writing, sometimes I’m lifted by it. Getting my feelings on the screen and off my chest means I have to grapple with them in their purest form. I’ve found something that helps me. As good as I now feel about life, I know this journey isn’t one where one day I will be ‘healed’ or ‘cured’. That’s not the point. I’m on top of my world, not being held back by it. And that’s how I cope.
I opened with space, so let’s close with it. Some experts have said that instead of trying to chase after the ISS as it circles Earth at five miles per second, it is better to get in front of it and have everything in place for when it comes your way. Maybe there’s something in this analogy, after all.
