Memories

As part of my therapy I've been tasked with writing memories that are painful and getting down in words things I've kept inside. My Mum is a hoarder of note but there are artifacts from her life she won't go through and in order to create space in our home I have gone through boxes and boxes of loose papers, old bills, teaching materials, magazines, abandonned projects and much more. The back bedroom which was a junk hole was filled with things associated with my Parents' marriage. My Mum doesn't know that I had to go through piles and piles of documents relating to my Parents' divorce - painful affidavits detailing the abuse, unpredictability and damage my Father did. I haven't ever told my Mum I had to plough through all of this. It brought back painful memories reading through some of the material but in a way burning it on a bonfire was cathartic.

Another thing I find painful at times is looking at family photographs, especially those of my early childhood when my Parent's marriage was first disintegrating. From the facial expressions of my Parents I can detect strain in their marriage and some of the photos bring back memories of some of the last times my Parents were together and how I had to try and pretend things were normal and look happy and smile for the camera. I remember the period after those photos were taken when my Mum and I moved out and stayed with various friends and my Dad would suddenly show up where we were staying and things would become extremely tense and my Dad's presence would feel menacing. I remember moving from friend's house to friend's house and then occassionally staying with my paternal Grandparents, never knowing when my Dad might show up and hoping he wouldn't.

All of this is there in my memory but I only sometimes allow myself to think about it an it is usually photos which trigger me to think back.

Cracking open

I haven't been on here for a while but today I went to see my therapist Rona after quite a long gap. My session started out with me on what I thought was an even keel but some cutting questions brought to light things that simmer and pain me underneath the surface. The root cause is the unhealthy relationship I have between my Mother and Sister. Prodding and poking my therapist hit on raw nerves and some of the causes of resentments I have towards my Sister. At times my irritation and frustrations stem way way back to my childhood and my coping mechanisms from during my Parents' hostile divorce. I opened up to things I realise I have never talked about to anyone and have kept bottled within, poisoning me and my relations with my family today.


As a little girl my Mum used to always say whenever I had a problem or felt upset that I must always remember other people had worse problems than I did. Although this was supposed to make me feel better, it invariably made me feel that my Mum did not take what I had just said to heart and was making my problem seem insignificant and not worth talking about. To this day I still find it hard to share on my problems to others and tend to still keep them internalised.

My Parent's prolonged separation and eventual divorce was seared with violence and abuse and I was often caught in the crossfire and split loyalties. My Sister, due to her being three and a half years younger does not remember as much as I do and unlike me was not forced to try be an adult in an adults' cat fight. This is where some of my resentment starts and where there are wounds which have never healed.

I will be working through some of my past in the next coming weeks but I feel fragile as things that have never been spoken of or I have kept hidden deep down in the dark come to light after years of tight storage.

Coming to terms with the past …

The 18^th of February is not only my younger Sister Beth’s birthday, but also now the anniversary of the day I had my nervous break down. Last year and the year before, the date was a painful reminder and I went back into a semi-decline. This year however I have made some significant bounds along the road to a healthier mental outlook. I did receive a reminder though in the form of a letter from the secretary for the laboratory which I worked in in Switzerland. I had completely forgotten that the day before I ended up in a mental hospital I was trying to organize to go and see my principal supervisor in Besançon in France. 

I had experienced depression before in my life and looking back in hindsight had been psychotic previously. In my teenage years it was at one point thought to be a case of M.E. or to be attributed to the events happening in my life with my Father’s erratic untreated manic phases. Our family doctor, an elderly Scot did not believe there to be anything seriously wrong with me, despite my at times debilitating mood swings. Depression was not afforded the fashion status it receives now and I honestly don’t think it ever occurred to my doctor that this is what was ailing me. Even if it had she was from the school of thought that one just had to pull one’s self together and snap out of it.

So that Friday when I went into the laboratory at EPFL in Switzerland and announced that I was quitting my PhD and entered into a nightmare of mental flailing was the culmination of a struggle I hadn’t really acknowledged I’d had for many years. The ensuing madness and destructive thought patterns had been insidiously encroaching into my mind and then sparked by a series of stressful incidents flamed into a fiery internal hell my mental inferno of self doubt, paranoia and malaise. The convoluted and distorted thinking that clouded my outlook and tortured my internal psyche rapidly unraveled and my grasp of reality disserted and tormented me.

This past Saturday at a dinner party I met an intern working at the local government hospital in the psychiatric ward. I didn’t initially divulge that I have bipolar. She described the type of patients she treats and I realized that some of them suffer from what I myself have experienced. I tried to sound like I was asking purely out of curiosity what the conditions were like and how these patients were treated. She mentioned that some of them had to have handcuffs and in my mind a Victorian asylum sprung to mind. I wonder whether this is the case. In my own experience in a private hospital here in Zimbabwe, I found that most of the nursing staff were uninformed when it came to mental illness and as there are no tangible physical ailments, many of the nurses I encountered could not fathom why I was there or see what was wrong with me. There is no direct translation of the word depression into Shona, the closest phrase being “to think too much” or Kufungisisa. 

Reflecting back on my thoughts and my interpretation of the events that happened I realize that I had partly lost my mind or my mind had over analysed and misinterpreted what was happening around me. The disintegration of my sanity culminated from a number of things. I returned to Switzerland in January 2010 after what should have been a vacation but which had actually been a stressful time of completing end of year assignments and studying for exams. I therefore was not rested and returned to a pressurized work schedule. I consequently went down sick soon after returning and fell behind in my work. Thinking that I had just had a holiday my supervisor was not impressed. Unguided in my research I was starting to get stuck in a quagmire of details that were not actually that pertinent to my main questions. I realize now I was manic, not settling to anything and my thoughts being all over the place. Outwardly I seemed precocious, highly sociable and rather noisy and brash, to all intents more out going than normal and the life of the party. Inwardly though I was feeling ostracized, isolated and alone and frustrated with my lack of progress on my project. I also felt ultra sensitive to any reproaches from my supervisor or others.

Running circles in my mind

With my therapist today I looked at how my decision making seems to take me around in a circle. I start out wanting to be in the working world and doing development/environmental work but I come back to the ever pressing question of whether I should try tackle a PhD again. There still is a fear that lurks in the corner of failing again and not coping.
I have had a good run for quite a while now, without any major blips. My current cocktail of medication seems to be keeping me on an even keel and I have managed to not have to go on lithium which I am very thankful for. Slight mood swings do scare me slightly I won't lie. There is the fear of losing it again and sinking into another hellish emotional war zone. I wonder how much I over analyse elevations in my moods and fear them to be the first cruscendoes towards a manic pitch or how I am unnerved by dips and wonder how long and how deep they will go. In a way I can no longer take life's natural ups and downs as just that, instead of scrutinizing where they will lead me to. I need to try learn how to master these and not be cowered by them.

Another challenge from today's therapy session was to look at how I can fill up my days more so that I can try to cope with a full day's work and the stresses that go with it. At the moment I am doing bits and pieces and trying to keep myself occupied and employed. Tutoring biology and maths, trying to write a paper on collaborative mapping for indigenous community conservation initiatives, procrastinating on a report on the economic value of Mana Pools and in between doing some work on the Millennium Development Goals, my day is still unstructured and unfulfilled. This takes me back full circle though to my employment connundrum and the indecision regarding braving a PhD once more.

Taking stock ...

Well I am mindful that it is almost three years exactly to the day when I had my breakdown and went into hospital with severe clinical depression in Switzerland and it makes me look at where I am and where I have come from. I am so much better and have had a good run recently with no major dips. I am taking ownership of where I am going and considering more options for work and life in general. For the moment I am happy to be where I am in Zim but I am considering options to try obtain better paying work and a bit more fulfillment and stimulation mentally.

I joined a writing group at the beginning of this year after I returned from Cape Town and it is definitely the highlight of my week. The deal is we each have to write something to share with the group each week and this makes me sit and pen something for each week's session. It is proving to be very cathartic and I have realised I really do enjoy writing. This may even be a path I could pursue and which excites me. I would like to ultimately write about my experience in Switzerland where I was hospitalised and at some point describe my rather warped sense of reality. I still cannot determine from that time how much was fact and how much I had over-reacted to and imagined.

So for the moment life is good and I am definitely in a spacious place where possibilities exist and I don't feel boxed in and trapped by limited choices. I haven't decided yet if I will stay in Zimbabwe but I will see it that I could always go explore elsewhere but leave open the option of returning. The one instability in my life is what will happen when we have elections in a few months time. In many ways I would like to be here rather than outside looking in and bombarded by overhyped media reports in another part of the world. Will cross that bridge when it comes though.

Toing and froing

Looking back I have come a long way from where I was. Life has become "normal-ish" with the risk of becoming mundane and I am starting to consider different options, which a year ago I would not have been able to do. I still shy away however from trying to do a PhD again. The expression "once bitten twice shy" springs to mind. My confidence took a huge knock when I gave up on my previous attempt and the thought of having a repeat of the mental break down I had scares me. At the same time my brain is starting to crave mental stimulation and my feet are getting itchy to go exploring again. I am cautious though and do have to think practically in terms of having a support network wherever I go. On the one hand I am wanting to go explore again but then on the other I am in some ways content where I am. I am faced with the question of what I am wanting out of life and what I am really wanting to strive after.

Well life has been quite tumultuous of late. The re-entry of a friend from varsity days has made things more exciting, but at the same time pushed me almost to the brink of a manic phase. It will be shortlived as their entry is to be swiftly followed by an exit, and I am very aware that my interest in them is not reciprocated. However it has been a pleasant soujourn from the usual mundane happenings.

I did a very stupid thing this past week, in that I failed to check the water in our car engine. The disastrous consequences have been a fair blow and may have tipped my emotional balance decidedly downwards. Will mean having to probably dip into my savings and throws into question whether I will be able to afford the plans I had started to formulate for next year of travelling and attending friends' weddings.

The life I lead in Zim feels very precarious ...