The previous blog was an exercise in self-pity - not too pretty. I am a reasonably well off, middle class woman with a nice life and a nice family. I appreciate that there are more good things in my life than bad.
But deep down I am basically a misery guts - that is my nature I think and I imagine that no amount of drugs or therapy will make me less prone to introspection and unhappiness. I like to think that I could cope with it all a bit better with some sort of therapeutic input, but as I have said my local health authority is currently operating a 2 year waiting list for its psychology groups. As a friend pointed out - by the time the names of depressives come up they could well be dead at their own hand. I am not suicidal - I have only once been so miserable that I thought about dying. More often I fantasise about simply leaving everything and everybody behind and starting a new life. Ironic really when you consider that I am rubbish at starting a new life ( see foregoing article). But the problem with being a bit obsessive and fairly intelligent is that as soon as I consider it I realise that the practicalities of leaving and starting again are tremendous - how can you sign on for benefits or get a job without a national insurance number and without proof of identity, without an address. How do you rent a home without proof of identity and lots of dosh.. blah blah.
So I don't leave. I stay and worry.
I read a bit of the Guardian today that immediately made me feel rubbish for whinging. Guardian articles are good at inspiring guilt I find. So my New Years resolution is to stop whining and attempt to do something about the place I find myself in. 43 is perhaps a good age - not so old that you are rigid and unbending in your views, beginning to be infirm and not too wedded to the situation that you find yourself in to change: not so young that you care about lifes inconsequentials - face, figure, fortune.
I will go and present myself at the Job Centre and see what they have to offer.
Guardian articles have a mandate for inspiring guilt - it istracts readers from their typos.
With "that is my nature I think and I imagine that no amount of drugs or therapy..."
I can truly say Amen! I think that their is a depressive tendency - whether through early learning or events or through neurology, I was lucky in finding some pratical help in 4 years classical analysis but the time it took and the money would never be in my reach now. Meds I am in favour off rather than energy depletion and apathy and raging impotently against the depeletion/apathy.
(I loathe the sainted few who attempt the guilt tripping of people who, by all indications, require meds. "May they know everlasting darkness." I say since a new age holistic 'natural remedies' freak talked a seriously depressed person into ditching their whole supply - but was absent when the demons awakened.
Good Luck and a clear head be yours this year.
And I hope something turns up at the job centre.
Kim