BLOOD ON THE MATTRESS AGAIN

 

She is in pieces again. She lost the friendships she had built during her first year at university, and with them her first band and newfound happiness and has sunk maybe even lower than at the beginning of this nightmare.
Experts say the first step to help a person with depression and social anxiety is to make sure they want to be helped. She doesn't.

A friend has suggested for her to make a list of the things that could potentially help her love life again. I texted her this morning...

REACH OUT

 

Illustration by ERSIN KISACIK 

 

 "I didn't know how to reach out" she says.

Don't wait if you know somebody like her, offer help, often.

DOWNS

  

 

Just like that, without warning, she goes quiet.
She won't read her messages nor answer them.
She won't go to uni, she won't leave her bed.
She puts herself to sleep, like my computer,
and I shiver—

 

UPS

 After a few bad weeks, she had a brilliant day yesterday. 

It is magic to see how she can bounce back now. 

One day at a time...

I'll be picking her up shortly to bring her back home—holiday time! not because she is down this time.

SMILE

 

She's got parties.

She's got friends.

She's got a  Fender.

She's got a Mac. 

And I? I got my baby's smile back!

Creating Monsters

"I've learned a great deal about you in the past quarter of an hour, he said. 'You're afraid. Less because of any actual concrete threats than because you have thoughts which make you horribly afraid. For as long as you do that, you can't feel anything else. And then because you've lost that ability to feel, you lurch into a depression, this makes you more afraid, and most of all you're afraid of fear itself. Unfortunately, when you're in this frame of mind, every one of your thoughts grows to monstrous size, so you make the mistake of imagining that there's some substance to what you're thinking and that's to blame for your condition. So you try to get rid of them at the level of substance, and you end up doing entirely the opposite. They only look like monsters, but the more seriously you take them, the bigger and stronger they grow." 

 By Franck Schatzing "LIMIT" 

 PS/ saw this and thought of her 

PSS/ she made it to uni! unsure if this is good or bad. She seems to enjoy independence and loves her new town, but her sudden silence makes me think she is getting overwhelmed.

DISCONNECT

We taught our children everything, from the evils of trigonometry to the shocking habits of ancient Rome, and yet we forgot to teach them the only thing that mattered: how to be happy.