My head was going crazy today. I've had depression and anxiety for a long time, controlled to a large extent by medication, but there's been a fair bit of stress lately (when is there a rest from stress in life? Ever?). Today was a bad day, and that's a dangerous thing with this illness.
Luckily I found a good local support group who are immensely supportive. I 'phoned an understanding friend, who did some breathing exercises with me down the 'phone. She sent me her love, and told me to pray.
I had a bath, made some nourishing food. I praised myself for that, and prayed, and prayed.
When my first marriage broke up, it was a bike that saved me. It was an escape, and I found I did my best praying on the bike.
Between the tears, and the faffing, and the procrastinating, and the screaming for help to whoever would listen, it was another five hours before I got the Tourer out the back yard. Damn, but that's a comfortable bike. A shiny new drivetrain and front brake, too. But deathly slow.
Fighting down the road, with the chattering monkey in my head doing its best to hold me back, draining my energy, sabotaging me, my weapons were prayers for help and that bike. Trying to concentrate on the sensations in my body, my stiff legs, the pain in my feet, to bring me into the present. Then feeling the air on my bare arms, the warmth of it, this was Now, and I was escaping from the Monkey and the pain.
Dimly aware that the sun was shining on the fields around me, the voice of nagging misery in my head went on, and on, trying to wipe out the sensory input around me, drowning out the sounds and the smells of an English summer evening. But I could feel my feet on the pedals, and my hands on the bars, and I negotiated a junction, and that was real.
I have no memory of the next village. The only thing impacting me was the voice of fear and anxiety, dragging me down, and the rest was autopilot. Sucking the energy from my mind and body. Slow, slow, but still moving, revisiting roads I discovered years ago, and I was grieving and hurt then, too, and it was a different bike, and a younger body, and a different heartbreak, but the same weapons and the same fight. Please take this away. Please let me rest from this.
My son's birthday is soon. I miss my son. I miss him. You terrible mother, you loveless cow, you failed him, you failed, he needed you and you failed him. Help me, help me. And it rained, the taste of the salty sweat washed into my mouth, the water splashed on my arms, and my feet hurt, and I fought over the hill. Fighting the drag of the heavy bike, the steep hill, the heavy mind. A van, a man looking at me, shit, what if he follows me, I can hear it, he's following me, oh god, he's overtaken. He's gone. Shit.
I'll go into the shop in the next town and buy my boy a wonderful birthday card, there's time for it to get there on time. I can do that. I can remember his birthday. But the shop's shut, is it really that late? What time did I set off? Really? Why was it so late?
The rain was heavier now. I put on my bright waterproof, felt a little safer being more visible, but still jumpy at the sound of wet tyres behind me. Laughing with a drinker in the street, a little human contact, so normal from the outside, desperation and fear inside.
Slow, slow up the hill, rain on my face, rain in my dirty hair, shall I visit friends? Shall I seek their love and comfort? It would be offered generously, I knew, but the fear was winning, and I fought on, the Monkey chanting failure and loss and lies and death, but the drivetrain was so smooth, and the road was smooth, and then there was sun between the trees, and the smell of wet grass.
It was quiet. I stopped. The sun shone on the wet road for a moment and everything looked different.
Past Judy Bear's to Yarm 010 by
Ruth Turner, on Flickr
Thank you for my life. Thank you for the health and strength of my body. Thank you for the warm air on my skin. Thank you for the sky, and the wren flying, and the raindrops in the puddles, and my children, and my friends. And that was real. The monkey was silenced, and I was thankful, and I rode home blessed.
