Im like an actor playing the part of my own life. Does anyone realy understand?

[Beryl]

Its a good day today, so im saying hello to everyone out there for the first time ever.

i am beryl, i have deep depression, anxiety, ptsd and an eating disorder. I have lots of other physical things wrong too. Ive been depressed for many years and i think it is my normal. Over the years it deepens and recedes in slow cycles. I just cant sort it out. Sometimes i think my life is not so bad, then other times it seems unbearable. My head is a big bowl of water and i balance it so well people dont see the tears as i never spill them with other people. There are no other people, there never has been. But now, after all this time there is all of you out there. Yes, im smiling at you. Maybe, just a tiny maybe, im not completely alone?  Its sad to think there is someone else in this half life. Could we help each other? Is there light at the end of the tunnel?    More importantly i dont think my tunnel has an end. Im so tired of plodding down it. So tired and for what? More of the same. Most of the time im numb, there is no enjoyment at all. I wonder if that realy exists. How does happy feel? What is it?  These days i hardly leave the house. I dont actually want to do anything- thats anything. My mind is so fuzzy i havnt been able to read a book for so many years now. Im like an actor playing the part of my own life. Does anyone realy understand? Or am i in this foggy bubble alone, so alone, for ever? Is there anyone out there?

[Wah]

Bery

Sorry I have been off line for a while-busy and not felling so good as I try more fiddling with drugs. 

I am sorry to hear you forgot your outing, but I know the slow brain thing makes it hard. I could not survive without a diary to put everything  down in and a calandar on the wall to keep track of my kids things. I also put an alarm in my phone to remind me. I am sure the people organising the bus would have given you a call the day before to remind you. 

I hope you are going OK. I loved reading about your garden. I enjoy mine very much. It soothes me and I can forget everything when I am out there. 

Wah

[Beryl]

Hi Wah, good to see your message. Thankyou for getting back. Sorry to hear things are tough and your not feeling well. I hope you can get settled with a medication that helps you. Lots of people say they can be extremely helpfull once you get through that trying them out to get the right one, or combination then get the amount tuned. I think you will feel a lot better soon. I would like to be helped with medication but im scared to take them because i have kidney damage and liver problems. Maybe one day.getting a gp that im happy with seems to be too hard at the moment. Thankyou for your suggestion about getting the bus people to give me a call, but im too embarrassed to call them after booking it and saying i was reliable and wouldnt let them down.                      I tried a diary but i kept losing it and then got another one and another one and they all had different things in them and i missed things because it was in one of the others. I seem to have trouble getting organised. Sometimes its easier not to go out because of the planning and the anxietysymptoms it brings on. But sometimes i get up courage and go out anyway!  My psycologist tried to get me using a diary but we gave that up and now i have a calendar with big squares and i wriite things in the squares. Sometimes i get the months muddled up but its mostly ok as long as i can get a grip on myself long enough to write the things on it. Quite often i double book because i forgot to write one on there. Thankyou for enjoying my garden. Im glad you have one too. At the moment i have a giant old camelia festooned in plump pink blooms, its a glory by the front door. Tell me about your garden. I think that you, me and white rose are a trio of green thumbs. Lets share our gardens here with each other to help cheer ourselves up and try and beat back our depression a bit. Today i wrote another poem. Its about winter. I think it is beautiful and well worth writing about. I will post it in poetry tomorrow. See if you like it. I dont think my one about violets went down well! Also i did some daft jokes to try and make people laugh. I want to help in a way i can. Today i went on a big adventure, it was good. Ive just about run out of space so i will tell you about it soon.big hugs, keep chatting. I willtell you more about my little garden soon. Bulbs are popping, the big prune is underway, cymbidiums have buds, wow!  Lots to tell. Love from beryl.

[Beryl]

Hi white rose, i want to write to you today but ive used up my quota. Chat soon, love you, from beryl.

[Bubblemum]

Hiya hiya Bubblefriend - I'm here in my bubble too 🙂

life in a bubble ain't all bad, just keep inhaling and exhaling (repeat often), what I like about my bubble (besides it being pink) is that it protects me when I'm so raw. 

Float on Bubblefriend 🙂

[Beryl]

Thankyou for writing to me bubble mum. Its nice your bubble is pink. Mine is like the white of an uncooked egg that has been left in a rusty tin out the back for six months. Its a bit hard to see and hear through at times and sometimes its best not to look through it. Like you said, when your raw. It can get very stuffy in here so right now im trying to see if theres an old skylight in here i could prise open for a bit of fresh air or even day light. I'll keep looking and keep trying. Are you a gardener too bubble mum?  Were getting a bit of a therapeutic garden theme germinating here, do join us, maybe we can all blossom together xx beryl

[Beryl]

Hi white rose, how are you feeling today. I hope that angel i wished for you is still looking after you and polishing the sky each morning to make it look a little brighter. I also hope your last trip to your psycologist you mentioned was not too exhausting, sometimes you can come away from an appointment feeling like a tatty string vest thats been put through a mangle twice over.                                 This is where im up to.... Gp is in the too hard basket, trying not to think about it for a while. I finished the painting i was doing and the customer was blown away by it. Time for a good feeling, didnt get one but acknowledged the space to have it one day. Still there is bread on the table so life chuggs on. Since then ive made some nice bits and pieces and next im doing a great long poster for someone and imdoing some fiddly concreting in someones garden.                  I went into my garden today, it was cold, dark and wet. I like that, nice and bleak! Amongst themiriad of grass stalks polkadotted with big water droplets i spied a slender tender stem, only small but gracefull as a damsel it rose up and turned over like the neck of a swan. Looking down at the soggy ground were three perfect tiny white lampshades trimmed neatly with emerald green, each one housing yellow anthers crusted with pollen specks like a little bulb inside. The first snowflake. Thankyou up there for putting it in my garden just for me... But look, now i can share it with you.    Xx beryl

[White_Rose]

Dear Beryl

How are you going? Glad your customer was impressed with your painting. It would be great to be able to display paintings on BB in the same way we share poetry but the logistics do not work out.

I've been scrapbooking again. This time it's several pages of my parent's wedding. I only have three photos. One is a picture of my parents on the church steps, then there's a picture of the wedding party and last a picture of all the wedding guests. Somewhere I have a list of the people in the large group which I need to dig out.I also have a few extra mementos such as the florist's receipt for the bridal flowers. It's really interesting to have these things and I am going to incorporate them into the pages.

Today I took three of my grandchildren with my daughter, to the museum to see the dinosaur display. Huge monsters with moving heads and tails. The bodies also appeared to be breathing. All sizes and shapes from T Rex to tiny creatures who dug caves in the rock to hide. Absolutely fantastic.

A couple of days ago I took one of the younger girls to see Sleeping Beauty at the children's theatre. She loved it and was keen to tell me what was going to happen next as she knew the story. Children are so wonderful.

So this is why I have been a little slow in answering any posts on BB. Tired after the excursions but I would not miss them at all. You sound very busy and being engaged in activities you enjoy is so refreshing. I have a day off tomorrow, so to speak. No appointments, no activities except meditation in the evening, just lazing around. Looking forward to it. Did you get around to checking out the meditation web site?

Keep well and strong.

Mary

[Beryl]

Hi white rose, i love getting your messages. Sounds like the dinosaur trip with your daughter and the 3 grandchildren was amazing, i wish i could have turned into an invisible elf and tagged along with you all.    I always wanted a family to belong to but they didnt want me. I think i was an invisible child.        At school i was teased non stop till i was about 15. After that i traded my innocence for attention. I lived a secret life after that. They had no idea who their daughter was or the turmoil ripping my heart and mind apart.

i wanted to tell you i saw my psychologist today. He wants me to go on medication again very much and did everything bar handsprings to convince me.  i laughed for the first time in ages. He thinks im not doing well at all.    My father had mental illness most of his life and my mother did too for a time. I dont think they even noticed me.    I remember i used to wander alone in the grounds of a derilect hospital. It was wild and private. It was my secret wilderness. Very early on cold frosty winter mornings i would go there as the sun came up. All the heather and gorse bushes would be crusted in thick white frost. I would follow rabbit paths between the prickly shrubs, marvelling at the colours of the patches of moss and lichen growing between the stones beneath my feet. There was burgundy, copper, brightest green, bluey greys, golden yellow and bright white stones, a jewel box of colour hidden from the frost by the overhang of the plants and glowing in the cold morning light.curious toadstools and fungal blooms of brightest orsnge and milky white emerged alarmingly from rotting treestumps.I would run silently along, puffing out great white clouds of breath that stuck wetly on my face. Stopping I would pick a long long grass stalk and bend it into an arch, grip both ends and carefully slide the loop up behind a white frozen spiders web hanging in the gorse. I would gently lift the loop foreward and capture the fairy web, then hold it aloft out of the shade and  full into the morning sun. Soon the frost would melt and the tiny water droplets would join and form into perfect orbs of glittering crystal. The whole web would glisten and sparkle in the sun with such beauty, a fine gossamer lace bedecked with a million diamonds, fit only for a fairy queen.        

                       I would like to share this beautiful memory.  The only time i was at peace was when i was being hugged by mother earth.    Love from beryl xxx

[White_Rose]

Dear Beryl

I love your word pictures describing the beautiful colours of nature. It's great that you have such lovely memories.

You mentioned seeing your psych yesterday and he wants you to start taking medication again. Are you going to do so? If the psych is concerned about you it makes sense to do as he suggests. I am also concerned about you.  You seem to lead such a lonely life and while hermits are happy to do this, in general humans are not built for this.

We need the company of others. Good to know that you laughed yesterday. Usually we need others to laugh and share our happiness. Talking to to someone like the psych is a positive activity, which I imagine does not happen often. I know you dislike being seen in public, although I do not know the reason for this. It's OK to keep this information to yourself. I am concerned that it keeps you from the potential of sharing laughter and the human contact we all need.

I gather you have contact with people from 'the outside world' as they offer you painting commissions. Do you make friends with any of these people? Perhaps be part of an art circle in your area? Or perhaps be part of some other small group? I enjoy being part of my book club where an average of six people meet monthly.

I read in an earlier post a comment you made about stirring up the muddy sediment of depression when talking to a psychologist. Well of course that's true and often painful. But as that sediment gets stirred the particles become finer, stay floating at the top of the pool and eventually drift away. The alternative is that the sediment stayed at the bottom of the pool and becomes hardened into rock, solidifying anyone or anything that is trapped in the sediment.

It takes an archeologist years to dig out the bones of the creature that was once alive and enjoying life. (You can see my trip to the museum was not in vain.) Well we will all die one day but let's not die inside before we have lived our life as fully as possible. Please don't let yourself become trapped in the sediment of your life and become a skeleton of what you once were.

We are all facing our hurts, insecurities and sadnesses.  So dig around in the mud and let the bits float away. Tell me about your psych and when you will see him next.

Mary

[Beryl]

Hi white rose, thankyou for your reply. I can write back when my mind is connected to the world which seems to be less and less these days. I stay in more and more unless i have to go out. I used to hate it and want to get out there but i dont care anymore. I dont feel i belong amongst the people out there. Ive always been a square peg in a round hole but now i have no energy to try any more. I will live behind a mask when i go out. I am  full of so much ANGER  which i have suppressedso much for so long that i cant feel it any more. I did look up the meditation website but i couldnt understand it. To get medication again i need that gp. I did phone up again but the contact i was given was obsolete when i tried it. This one was further afield. I will have to go back to the one i dont like for some things but i dont trust themto give me medication for this.  Isee my psycologist 12 times a year. He wants me to go more and we talked about the options but i just dont have the money.    He is nice and ive visited him for many years but inside i know im just a number. I think he would be sad to know that but i cant help it. I will continue to go. I will find a gp somehow. I would like to try medication again but im not sure if its going to happen. I dont think i will ever be normal again, i cant remember what it is. All that mud. There are so many layers upon layers over years upon years and im like a little seashell at the bottom of it. I used to fight, and fight so hard but its all gone. My mind is closing up like a box, bit by bit the lights are going out. Im tired of running up hill balancing 400 heavy rocks on my back. I have to blot it out the thought of it gives me anxiety symptoms. Too much damage has happened to fix. I dont belong to this world, i never did. I will hide till i dissapear. Im already invisible to the others in this house, im just the domestic support unit.       A lady came to me with a broken string of their late grandmothers pearls, today i made them into a beautiful bracelet and she is thrilled.           I am empty, so empty, but it really doesnt matter any more. You are right, i am lonely, but i think its because ive never fitted in. I remember at school hiding in the corner of the playground with my hands over my head and face, begging the clock to go faster so i could go back inside where the teacher was between them all and me. Its always been like that. I belong to another place, not here.  Hafta go now  thankyu 4 helping, beryl x