Thanksgivukkah

As my posts have been quite negative the last couple of weeks and since today is both Thanksgiving and the start of Hanukkah I thought I would just add the things I am grateful for. I am blessed to have caring people around me and good friends, a great therapist and a concerned and caring doctor and psychologist. I am lucky to be in a position to afford to receive care and treatment for my depression and have people who would stand in the gap for me if I needed it. I have a roof over my head, dogs that love me and who I love, a brain, connections and different options.

I came across this cartoon today - see this link Here’s A Shocking Truth If You Think You’ve Wasted Your Life
I guess I have many options and need to remain open to new challenges and opportunities. That's what life is about.

To those who read this blog and who give me support, thank you :)

The Past that haunts me

In many ways mine was not the happiest of childhoods. I had the session today with my Mum at my therapist's. Although we looked at where I was currently and some of the things I need to address now, much of my hurt and inner pain goes back to when I was little and the real person who should be sitting there is my Dad who is the root of much of it. Memories of my Dad's erratic, irrational and quite often violent behavior and the rejection he projected towards me cuts deep and is something I have to work through. My Mum remembers his self-medicating with an alarmingly large and unidentified cocktail of drugs and various pills. Some my mood swings are similar to his which scares me. My Dad to date remains untreated for bipolar depression though and refused to accept help.

My Mum said I should try to look at the good qualities I inherited from my Dad. His inquiring scientific mind, his artistic temperament and his sensitivity. With that though comes the curse of my illness and he passed on his own unhappy childhood to me. Even now I think there lingers a fear of my Father and what he could possibly do next. I don't know how I would react if he suddenly walked through the door and back into my life.

The last time I saw my Father was when I was fourteen and was at the High Court where he had just been issued a restraining order which effectively blocked him out of my life. My Sister and I had had to go into the court and see the judge privately to testify against my Dad. Somehow we crossed paths with my Dad on the way out and he started shouting down the corridor he had a right to see his own children. We were quickly ushered into another room and my Dad was dragged away. He has not tried to make contact with me since that day, although he has communicated with my Sister.

In many ways this is a relief but it leaves an awful lot unsaid and unhealed. I don't know that I would get the satisfactory response I desire though were I to sit face to face with my Father and hash it all out. He was able to intimidate me when I was small and his anger terrified me. I think I would feel a great anger towards him for all he did and wasn't though should I see him and I would almost blame him for my disease and unhappiness. I guess this would not all be entirely fair and what I really need to do is somehow find it in me to forgive.

Mood Swings

Been up and down the last few days. Was doing well and then yesterday I hit a bump and it left me feeling zapped of energy and motivation. I just didn't feel up to meeting with people and retreated, backing out of a meeting I was supposed to have. Today I woke up late but in a better humour and brighter outlook. How much of this was tied up with PMT and hormones and how much was just otherwise I don't know. I can go from feeling exhilarated though to being unable to face the world and feeling inept and helpless.

I wish I could master my moods and not let them master me.

Letting Go ...

On Thursday I will be having a therapy session with both my Mum and my therapist. My therapist has been trying to get my Mum to come for quite a while as there is stuff I need to have out with and my therapist feels it's important as my Mum's my primary care giver in many ways and my support. Undoubtedly it's going to involve digging up a lot of the past though and in some ways I'm dreading it as it will stir up things that are buried at the back of my mind. A lot of it has to do with my Dad but it affects my relationship with my Mum and my Sister. I don't really ever talk about these things but they at times can eat away at me and issues I have with my Sister are often anger that is diverted from my Mum and stems way way back to my childhood.

I guess the person who I really need to have it out with is my Dad. He hurt me in many different ways and inflicted wounds that go deep into my psyche and outlook. My Dad was bipolar but never went for treatment. As a child I took his moods personally and he made me be an adult when he was not. I had to be the eldest and handle his mercurial mood changes and temper. I had to be loyal to both my warring parents and try as a five year old to make sense of the mess that made up my family and being. This forced me to grow up at an age when I was not ready to.

I don't know what will come up on Thursday or how my Mum is going to respond. She has read this blog and when she did didn't react quite as I thought she would. We don't normally talk of the past to each other and I don't voice much of what's inside. I guess it is important to get it out but it's not going to be easy.

Thinking back ...

The topic for writing group this week is memories and funnily enough I have been thinking back to what I remember of times when I was decidedly psychotic. The earliest point when I would say I was definitely a bit off the rails mentally was in Form 3. I had taken on too much at school, had a nasty episode at the dentist and my Dad had been charged for attempted murder. All of this compounded and pushed me over the edge. I became extremely paranoid, aggressive, defensive and ultra sensitive. I also had panic attacks and became an insomniac. It eventually worked itself out but I was off school for well over a month and life was hell for not only me but also my family who had to live with me.

Psychosis made another visit before I started Lower Six and after not sleeping for 3 consecutive nights I spent the day at my Godmother's. To try make me sleep I was given a sleeping tablet but instead of inducing sleep I instead experienced hallucinations and came up with a confused theory in my head involving my Godmother and ended swearing at her and saying I never wished to see her ever again. It took a long time to try repair the damage I did with my utterances.

I was fine for the next couple of years until the rocky period leading up to and during the 2008 Zim elections. Being based in Cape Town I was not home and only got the international news of home where my family still was. It ended up that I was to fly to Switzerland a few days before the election and I had gone to the doctor as I was very uptight and couldn't sleep. She said perhaps I had depression but as I was flying to Switzerland there was not much that could be done. She advised I take rescue remedy with me as she couldn't put me on medication without being able to monitor me. Therefore armed with a bottle of rescue remedy I boarded the plane and flew thousands of miles away from home. This probably was not the best idea and I'm afraid my mental state deteriorated over the following week. I became aggressively patriotic and loud with the group of international students I was with and felt everything needed to be centered on Zimbabwe, as my thoughts were. I probably was very disruptive and hard to deal with. At one point I felt persecuted and paranoid and felt the others were all against me. As usual with these episodes, my old enemy of sleepless nights visited and made it worse.

Probably one of the worst cases I've had though was on my return to Zim from Switzerland. I had a cataclysmic psychotic episode whilst doing my PhD in Lausanne which made me quit my studies and where I felt I had let everyone down and brought me close to the brink of suicide. This made me get institutionalized for around two months, with a brief discharge followed by a re-admission. Ultimately deciding to return to Zimbabwe I had a horrific flight home where my deluded mind had me believing I was wanted internationally for having wasted my university's funds by quitting and that I was going to be arrested. I was extremely agitated and the journey was hellish. Getting home did nothing to relieve this and I felt judged and condemned by everyone. We only managed to see my doctor two days after returning and again I felt she was judging me and disapproving. When I was put in hospital in Harare I thought I was being convicted for my "crime" and that I was going to be interrogated. I also thought my Mum was going to be tortured and I got greatly caught up in thinking it was all political. When my Mum had to leave me I went into a panic thinking she would never come back and I ran out the hospital room and nearly had to be sedated and tied to my bed. That night I had the worst hallucinations I've ever had and tried to jump out the second floor window. Some of this was brought on by not having had any more of the medication I had been put on in Switzerland and the chemicals in my brain went ballistic.

I am indebted to my doctor and psychologist in Zim who has helped sort out my medication to avoid any further psychotic episodes to date and who has helped me come back to "normality". It has been a long journey and at times there are still distances to go. I just pray I never go back to some of the purgatory I've experienced in the past and I wouldn't wish it on even my worst enemy.

Striving onwards

"I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me"

The last couple of weeks have been challenging ones in many different ways. I lost the job that is my main source of income and then due to a conflict of personal interests and my not being happy from a moral perspective, I gave up another job which would have given me some finances. The work I am passionate about is there, but doesn't pay and is completely voluntary. In amongst this I have still been grappling with what it is that I truly want to do. All jobs seem to require you to be really good at something and you have to throw yourself into them with loads of self-confidence. I guess I lack the confidence to market myself and I would rather just work in the background.

Photo-journalism is something that appeals but I feel like I would have to be really really good to make it and that scares me. With more scientific things I feel I am not clever enough and that someone else would do a much better job. There is also huge competition in that for funding and you are constantly having to search for this. In many ways I wish I didn't have to work full time and have to have a job working for someone else. My ideal life would be to write when I feel like it, dabble in painting for enjoyment, be outdoors and maybe fit in a spot of gardening with my dogs by my side. 

So my quest continues and I still don't know exactly what it is that I really really want to do. The quote below really challenges me. It sort of goes back to the topic from the book "The Artist's Way", about living life in abundance and having faith to go after what you really want and not see things as out of your reach and too much to ask for.

Just coping

The last couple of weeks I've been feeling snowed under with work and commitments. I have been feeling depressed and at times slightly suicidal again. Two of my bosses are very demanding and just expect me to be at their beck and call at a moment's notice. The work I really enjoy doing is voluntary and so I have been having to do the other jobs first but have constantly been aware I have a number of things that need to get done pronto. Getting up in the morning has become harder and I've been struggling trying to see the point of it all.

At times like this I feel like I'm swimming under a layer of thick treacle and I'm struggling for each breath and the will to keep swimming. Just the simplest of things seem overwhelming and each day seems to just bring more worries and things I've got to deal with. A contributor to this is the uncertainty of what I will do once my one current job ends in December. Life seems precarious and I fret about it. I know I should just trust and try not to worry, but I do.

With these moods I don't really feel like seeing people at times and want to just pull away and sleep my life away. Dreams become vivid and at times I find it then hard to separate what is reality from what I have been dreaming. What I dream becomes entangled with my thoughts and worries and so it is hard to differentiate as it seems my brain doesn't stop working and it is just a continuum.

The one big comfort is spending time with my animals. Their unwavering affection and nonjudgmental love is always healing and time with them always leaves me feeling less stressed and anxious.

People have said that where I'm at lends itself to open opportunities and a new beginning. I have to just keep trusting and believing and looking at a variety of options of what I can do next.

My personal capital

Today was another session with my therapist and I talked about the latest happenings in my life and my stress levels. She said it is normal to feel anxious about becoming unemployed. One of the things that has been bothering me is if something were to happen to my Mum I really don't know how I would cope both emotionally and financially. She made me sit back and look at it objectively and see what my personal capital is. The first is that I have a degree and a brain. My big challenge is finding paying work though here in Zim for what I'm qualified for. This is an ongoing struggle. I guess it is a challenge for a lot of young people though as work is scarce. I have to be creative and be able to do a variety of things. The person interviewing me for possible teaching positions at a local school commented last Friday that I've had a checkered career. I don't know that this has been out of choice but more as a result of the Zimbabwean economic climate.

Another thing my therapist told me to focus on to quell my fears of being left destitute should my Mum pass away was my social network. I don't think I would want to ask people for help though. I find this very difficult. With my recent anxieties my therapist made me think about how I should tackle these. One of the key things was to tell someone. I don't do this readily and try to just go on even if I'm not coping. Part of it is that people will offer advice and this is not always helpful.

With my job search I keep questioning what it is that I really want to do and struggle to find jobs that will give me fulfillment. I came across this article titled

20-Year-Old Hunter S. Thompson’s Superb Advice on How to Find Your Purpose and Live a Meaningful Life

by Maria Popovawhich sums it up pretty much in what I constantly am grappling with. The things I'd love to do just don't pay. Finding purpose and doing what I'm truly passionate about are a big factor in ultimately making me happy and giving me something to get up in the morning for.

Travel bug

Besides a trip to Cape Town and then a day crossing to Chobe in Botswana I haven't ventured out of Zim this year. I have fitted in a fair bit of travel around Zim so for that I'm grateful. Am feeling in need of another adventure though and would love to hop on a plane and go off to somewhere new. Perhaps not on my own and possibly I'm not brave enough to go where I don't know a single other soul. All the same, to see somewhere new and to hopefully meet new, interesting people is a desire.


In a way, going just for a holiday seems like an expensive luxury. I would rather go for a reason and possibly to do something with it. Would then feel my savings were being maximized. The UK has an allure as there are many school friends there, some of whom I have not seen in some time now and also some family. But further afield than that also appeals ... to go off to Canada, the Antarctic (to see emperor penguins), South America, Australia ... I need a fat bank balance and some courage to do this, but it is a dream nonetheless.

Harare can feel comfortingly small and cosy and then stifling and claustrophobic at the same time. I miss Cape Town and living next to the ocean. I would give anything to have a beach readily on hand and be able to go and dig my feet in silky sea sand and watch the magnitude of the waves pummeling the shore. I also miss having mountains making up my skyline not to mention some of my friends that I had. There were lonely moments in Cape Town too though. I have got a big circle of friends now in Harare, although looking at it objectively not a large proportion of male friends (at least the one's I do have are practically all in relationships). As someone put it, we need to import eligible males into Harare from somewhere.

I guess I'm at a cross roads again on where I want to be. This is not made easy by the fact that as of yet I don't have a proper job for next year. I had an interview to teach this morning, but there aren't any immediate vacancies. I have put feelers out for other conservation/environmental work and have offered to volunteer for a project recycling things to generate incomes for HIV destitute women. I have also come up with a project with a friend to make a documentary on Harare's water crisis and wetlands. This will all keep me busy but not necessarily paid. Harare is an expensive place to live and there is no social benefit if you're unemployed.

Guess I just have to trust and keep exploring different options and be adaptable. As the interviewer this morning said, I've had a very varied career path to date. I supposed I'm looking for the main pathway now and need to cut my main career path.