Given that my loyal reader has to ensure endless whingeing about my mental health, I suppose it’s only right that when I am actually feeling a bit more human, then I write about that, too. And for reasons I don’t understand, my mental health isn’t too bad at the moment. My admission isn’t in keeping with the usual media order of things because the news people usually want is bad news, as Don Henley pointed out in his classic tune Dirty Laundry. Good news doesn’t sell newspapers in the same volumes as bad news. As Henley put it, “It’s interesting when people die.”
Obviously, anything I publish on this blog doesn’t generate any revenue at all, beyond the generosity of those kind souls who buy me a coffee (to whom I am very, very grateful), but when I am wallowing in a pool of self-pity/depression, the hits come in greater numbers. This offering will probably peak at around two, which will be my loyal reader and of course me. But that’s all right. Like the musician who performs to a handful of people in a large venue – and I once saw ELO play to a near empty Colston Hall in their early years – you still do your best, even though hardly anyone is watching.
Having been told to reduce my anti-depressants by 50% by a GP I have never met and then having it explained to me that there were “plenty of NHS resources for those with mental illness“, only to have it confirmed, yet again, that actually there aren’t came as a mild disappointment. What I didn’t expect was to find myself feeling a bit better or a bit less rubbish.
Therein lies the inherent absurdity of the wacky world of mental health. Sometimes, you go down and you know why and sometimes you go down and you don’t. And today, and on recent days, I have felt my mood improve to levels I haven’t really felt for a good while.
I’m pretty sure that my upcoming travels to the land of my father (Canada) and the land of my mother (The Netherlands) are having a positive effect on my brain, if not my ailing bank account and that following a long period of being a hermit I am finally getting out and about to meet friends both old and new.
I am even considering the possibility – and this bit is at a very early stage – of getting rid of antidepressants altogether, at least in the medium term, but first I shall need to know for sure whether the change in mood is, if not permanent, then more than a positive blip, if there is such a thing. Because antidepressants have played a massive role in me staying alive, particularly after my disastrous period of employment with the scumbags, bullies and abusers of the British Red Cross, who took me to the lowest place I have ever been to.
But, as Elton John put it in that curious faux American accent of his, “Ahm steel staindin‘” and so I am. Tomorrow might not be a better day and I probably won’t know why, either. But since tomorrow, like someday, never comes, I’d best enjoy today. And I’m going to do my best.
