Diary Entry: Sunday 1st September

Owing to the interest in my first experimental diary entry earlier a while ago , I decided to continue with the diary of daily experiences. A lot of this post was written during the night, but uploaded later on in the day where I've been able to add a bit more clarity to my thought processes. As you'll appreciate, the majority of the posts that I have produced for 'A Mind Alley' have been objective, with some hints of my own personal experiences. Today, I've decided to make my sophomore diary entry. I'll admit from the very start that I'm still getting used to writing this diary. It's quite daunting to put your thoughts, feelings and experiences into a public domain. I do hope though, that this will help facilitate conversation on mental health and in turn, help others.

'So welcome to the breakdown, tired of playing games now, make it no mistake, I will prove you wrong' - Mike Shinoda (Prove You Wrong)

I'll start from the beginning of the day (i.e. Midnight) because that will help put the rest of this post into context. I've been feeling down for a few hours already. Everyone's asleep, which doesn't help in terms of simply talking this one out. It's clearly not an option. At the early stages of the downward spiral, I find myself on Twitter, recognising that I'm in for a rough few hours at least. I get a message from a former lecturer of mine, who sends his support and wants to touch base. We have a bit of a conversation and I put my laptop away, sit on my bed for a few minutes to take my antidepressants, before beginning to think.

One of my warning shots is then fired: I feel the throbbing/pulsing sensation in my ears. Then it hits me. It hits me. Really. Bloody. Hard. What has caught me off-guard with this one is the ridiculously short amount of time the entire episode took to manifest itself. I find myself, sat here in floods of tears in a matter of about 30 seconds - a minute, at most. Hours pass and the tears and negativity don't seem to be letting up. I struggle to breathe through my nose because of how congested I am, showing just how worked up I've become (attractive, right?). I'm met with this constant barrage of awful thoughts: I'm a disappointment, I'm never going to be loved, nobody is going to want to be around me whilst I'm like this, I'm never going to be happy, I miss being a happy child, and I hate the uncertainty of the future (amongst others). I think the latter is fuelled by the recent submission of my Masters dissertation and the conclusion of that chapter in my life. I'm very much a creature of habit and like the structure. There are some very dark thoughts which cross my mind too. Thankfully, I'm quick to shut those down. I've made promises not to act on them, and it's those very promises which refrain me from acting. I hate feeling like this; it's so frustrating because I was on a really good streak (by my own standards). It's days like today where, the best I can describe it is: I feel like I'm not 'living' life as such, I'm more just trying to 'exist'. I try to calm myself down by going downstairs to have a glass of water. But, I find myself sat at the kitchen table, still in floods of tears. Another hour passes: I think I've gotten to the point now where these thoughts are becoming less intense. However, it's not through any ability to control those thoughts, more the fact I'm absolutely exhausted.

I've started to write out this post whilst it's all fresh in my mind. Whilst I'm writing the majority of the body, I realise something: it's 3:00am. I have to be ready for football training in under 6 hours. I'm not looking forward to such a broken up and shallow night's sleep, before being put through my paces with the training drills in the morning. I know for sure that I'll be taking the day away from social media and any sporting events (with the exceptions of: announcing this post, and Formula 1, respectively), because I don't think I'll be able to deal with the anxiety in all honesty. I don't tend to enjoy the 'North London Derby' games, in fact, quite the opposite: they're stressful because there's so much on the line. By removing that, I'm hoping to at least salvage the latter half of the day to be productive, even if it means working on an academic article or working through papers for court matters.

As I've written in the past, it's strange phenomenon because, sometimes there is no trigger. That said, it is essentially what my personal experience can be quite often: the moment I stop doing something and take a breath, my mind takes over and any seed of negativity quickly becomes a rainforest. It has shown me that I can be anywhere, doing anything and I can succumb to those feelings. That is the most frustrating part of all of this. It's the unpredictability behind anxiety and depression; there's only so much one can do to curb it. I've previously written in my last diary post that I found a way out of negative thinking. But today, I didn't. Today I failed. My demons prevailed and it was merely about damage limitation. Whilst I've been able to cut out the more darker thoughts (and staying true to my word that I'll look for silver linings in everything) the fact I've spent best part of 2-3 hours of my life in a terrible place, is both frustrating and incredibly disappointing. It's part of a learning curve: perhaps avoiding going to bed so late where I'm then cut off may help limit the opportunity for such episodes to happen.

Luckily, football training was a really enjoyable experience today. It's made me feel so much better and I feel like I've been able to physically remove the stress from my body. That said, I feel so drained right now, so I'll definitely be taking a nap after the F1 so that I can recuperate.

Well, that's the next instalment of this experimental, diary-esque series done. I hope that it's been of help to you all, even if it's just normalising the processes that I go through and applying them to your own situations.

Remember: you are a beautiful human being. You are loved. You matter. You have so much good that you can offer this world.

Until next time,

J x