Yesterday was an emotional day. Overall good, but definitely emotional.
It actually began, the emotion, not the day, when an article about depression was posted on Facebook. I know that everyone who has to deal with, live with, struggle with, get past, over, through mental issues have their own particular circumstances.
And I am no different.
My particular tactic, and one that has worked, mostly, since I established where my head was at when I was 16, is, or was, to compartmentalise, package, stack and store.
Back to yesterday, and a visit to my step-mother, in a nursing home and seemingly mostly content. But today is not clear, vocabulary sometimes just won’t come. and memories are separated, reshuffled and returned to a whole new sequence.
There is some frustration, some annoyance with things that seem no longer to make sense. but mainly okay. Which is okay.
And so to see a one-man show about the relationship between a man and his bipolar mother, written and performed by him, with the help of his mother.
It was honest, and brave, and funny, and at times almost too hard.
Because, even though not in any particular way the same as my story, echoes and shadows nudged me to somewhere I spend most of my time avoiding.
This is not a complaint, in any way. In fact, it is probably a thank you.
With a few exceptions, I have managed to avoid being swallowed by the vacuum at the bottom of holes that have appeared over the years. Those times when I didn’t, were thankfully resolved by the memory of the value in my life, or by a timely intervention.
The thank you wasn’t for a solution. Because there isn’t one.
It was for a nudge to accept what is, to acknowledge what can be done to minimise the descents, and the fact that whether I place it myself or its held by someone else, there will be a ladder to climb back up.
Sometimes not all the rungs are there, but hey, who said life was supposed to be easy.
I suppose the main reason for the thanks is that realisation has finally dawned, or at least reached the frontal lobes. I can cope, just as I have for the past far too many years.
And there are good reasons to cope, which weren’t always clear before. They were there, just not as clear as they should have been. And that was my fault, and I apologise if there were gaps in my involvement.
So, thanks to articles on Facebook, my step-mother, an extraordinary performance, and those that have added real meaning, and depth, to a vacillating existence.
It has taken me 63 years to understand the value of the intangible and tangible at the centre of my life. But they all hold the ladder.
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