He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm. King James Bible

Today saw me reaching a milestone and turning a corner. I have made a decision on a plan for the next year and I feel it is time for me to venture out of Zimbabwe again for an interlude. The fact that I have been able to rationally come to this decision and I have not succumbed to a wave of uncertainty and much indecisiveness speaks volumes and that I am ready to venture out again on my own shows I have come a long way. From working with my therapist I know that there are safety nets I need to put in place to help me not spiral out of control and preempt total emotional disintegration again hopefully.





Harare has been good for me in my convalescence with its familiarity and close knit community, however the lack of variation and a cosmopolitan, young society is beginning to suffocate me and I need to step out of it again for a while, explore new paths and hopefully meet new friends and reunite with some old ones up north.

Tonight I went to the Zim New Covenant Ministries International Equip and the message's title was prophetically "Breaking your ceiling". It feels like a confirmation that God is wanting me to move out of my comfort space and be challenged to stretch myself and go beyond where I have been. I feel liberated as I have been feeling like I've got stuck in a rut and life is passing me by with no clear direction of where I am going. I now have a goal to work towards and hope to be able to reach 30 and know I have taken ownership again of my decisions once more and am putting in a bit more effort in taking steps towards something. It is one of the things that makes me able to get up in the morning and have something to live and get out of bed for.

Nearly suicide month

It is nearly October and in this country due to the enervating heat that peaks during this hot and dusty month it is commonly referred to as suicide month. The start of these thirty-one days is marked by the anniversary of when a girl in my year at school committed suicide when we were in our first year of high school. It is always a poignant memory and having experienced depression subsequently and contemplated and attempted suicide myself it also always causes retrospection.

For many years I felt a sense of guilt and responsibility for my school friend's death. She had been under performing in school and at the end of the term prior to her death she had not given her parents her school report. Being the next person in the alphabet after her I had witnessed our class teacher giving her the report and was subsequently called upon to testify that she had indeed been given the report. It turned out my classmate had problems in her family life and I felt ashamed that I hadn't tried more to reach out to her and be a friend she probably desperately needed. I do now know though that once you become set on suicide there is not much others around you can do to help you come out of this thought line. You need professional help and even then this might not be enough. Once you enter into that downward slippery slope into utter hopelessness there is not much that can make you feel there is something worth living for.

My Christian faith has made me have my own inner war over my thoughts and how they align with what God's plan is. When at my wits end I have wondered why God can allow one to suffer and not allow an end. The age old dilemma of what happens to your soul if you commit suicide does even in my darkness pull me back though. Recently someone who has looked at many accounts of near death experiences mentioned that for suicide victims there is often no feeling of release when they neared death and the pain was still with them. This is a sobering thought. But is it enough to hold one back when one is at the bottom of what seems an insurmountable pit?

I have found that what has worked for me to some extent are methods of cognitive behavioural therapy, whereby when I start spiralling into negative thinking I try to stop the thought pattern and take pre-emptive measures to stop my descent into further depression. It does not necessarily become easier but it makes me more aware of my moods and I have learnt to become more recognitive of warning signs and have a greater awareness of my moods and underlying factors that are contributing to them. The key is then to have a basic action plan of what I should do to try elevate my mood or stop it from deteriorating further. This can include making myself get out of the house and see people, which is often the last thing I want to do. Simple things like being in the garden with my dogs can also help. At times it may not be depression but anger that has to be managed. An angry outburst due to pent up feelings can sometimes fuel the then downward decline in my optimistic outlook.

It has been a number of months now since I last had a serious contemplation of suicide. In my subconscious there lurks a fear though of returning to this state as it never feels like I have completely won and irradicated the possibility of feeling this way again. I have to try work on having things to look forward to in my life as a goal to strive towards and something to make me want to live until tomorrow for and see to its fruition. It is a work in progress.

Keeping busy

I find that I face the challenge of keeping myself occupied. There is always a fine balance between having enough to keep me busy and then overload where I take on too much. I tend to do better when there is structure to my day and I have a variety of things to turn my mind to. However I rebel against things becoming too routine, ordinary and boring and when life then seems to be awfully mundane I yearn for new adventures and new horizons to be explored.

At the moment I am restless, finding full time paid work in my field in Zimbabwe is a real challenge. I could take the professional route that many of my contempories have, which is teaching, but this is not what I aspire to be and I would like something that will be using my qualifications in environmental sciences and stimulate my grey matter to think.

I am starting to have the syndrome described in Nick Hornby's book "About a Boy" experienced by the book's character Will Freeman whereby I have units of time I need to fill. At times I have managed successfully to fill these but I now find what previously got me by just does not satisfy. It could be a sign that I have made a significant recovery and that I am ready to try take on a more challenging job. Just have to try find this job. Perhaps I am too choosey in my searches or perhaps I am still grappling with what it is that I really want to do. The fact that I am not being terribly successful with my quest for work here in Zim makes me have to consider looking elsewhere in the world. On the one hand this appeals in the prospect of something more exciting and the potential to meet new people and be in a society with a greater number of young people. It does however make me nervous to weigh up the fact that I will have to recreate a social network, adjust to a new culture and set myself up all over again.

Time where are you running to?

The year is rapidly vapourising into what will soon become just memories and with it the last of my twenties are flashing by before my eyes. Where has the time gone and what am I doing with my life? The approach of thirty trills and I think I am in denial. A lot has happened in this last decade of my life. Went from having a pretty set game plan to being thrown into a muddle of disillusion and depression. I am emerging now and having to reassess where I am going and try pick up the pieces with what I want to do. Life in Harare is starting to feel a bit mundane and I am getting itchy feet to travel. So far the work I have picked up here has been piecemeal. On the one hand it is liberating to not be tied down but on the other after a fair amount of effort to try break into the job market it is frustrating to have relatively little success to show for it. Having my friends scattered across the globe makes me yearn to be a part of their world. I get flashes of their lives on Facebook and although I know it is not always a true picture and is slightly rosey-hued it does make me envious. Decisions loom once more and I need to try overcome my indecisiveness and try reformulate what I am going to do ... will see where this leads.