go slow

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got” – Unknown.

Image: Flickr/Seattle Miles

I am a fool for doing the same thing and expecting different results. I do it so often you would think it was a hobby. I have two speeds: zero and 100mph, and I alternate wildly between them, giving myself metaphorical whiplash as I launch into things full speed ahead then quickly find I can’t sustain that level of energy, collapse (mentally, physically, or both), retreat to lick my wounds, then recover my energy and zest for life and start the whole thing all over again.

I did it with my trip to New York in 2007: got so excited I was finally going, stressed myself out with pre-holiday preparation and planning, tried to do too much, got really ill in the process, and now the main things I remember from that trip are a lot of foot pain and a whole load of cryin’.

I made the same mistake with journalism: deciding to launch into a full-time career, giving up all my disability benefits in the process (for complicated reasons I won’t go into here). If I’d been less 0-100 in my approach maybe I wouldn’t have had meltdowns every few months as I tried to cope with two long-term health problems at the same time as trying to support myself in a dwindling freelance economy.

During those horrifying 18 months, my head would race as I’d try to figure out some plan for sanity and survival: I was too ill to work outside the home, too ‘well’ for benefits, too depressed and tired from work to have anything approaching a life. I never found a solution, but about a year ago my face collapsed as fatigue took over my body and nerve paralysis (and later severe pain, from which I still suffer to some extent) took over my face. Then I couldn’t work at all.

During the struggling-to-do-journalism phase of my life, I took some time off to visit my Dad in Australia. This was a trip I had planned for over a year, dreaming of journalism work experience in the sun, fun day trips and time to myself exploring Western Australia. Hmmmmmm. Although it was great to see my Dad and we did have some fun day trips, I still had work to do so my bank manager didn’t call me in for an emergency meeting when I got home. And I still had M.E and felt like crap a lot of the time, living off a lot of Diet Coke and chocolate for energy.

0-100.

Struggling on when I should have said “Hey! I can’t do all this.”

Pattern. of. my. life.

And then there’s university.

I did it ten years ago: got really ill, took a year out, and never went back. I never went back because I thought I had to be feeling exactly the same as I was the first time I went there (or better, in fact). But I was wrong. I had options. I could have stayed at home for the moral support and transferred to my home university. I could have done a part-time course while I got back on my feet. I could have taken life in baby steps. Instead, I spiralled downwards and took a long time to pick myself up. All because I wanted things a certain way, the way I thought was the right way. All or nothing, accept no substitutions.

Which brings us to now. Incredibly, I made the same mistake all over again this year. I was delighted to be going back to university. I was even in the Times boasting about how optimistic I was about it. In reality, I was doing what I always do (having one rigid view of how things should be – the 0-100mph view – which completely overestimates my ability to cope) and I got what I always get when I do that: disaster. I thought I’d made some concessions to my situation (still physically ill, still experiencing depression, although in each case, less so than in the past): I was going back to uni, but in my home town. I was moving into my own place, but my mum was a fifteen minute drive away. I registered with disability support services at university. I thought I had things juuuust right.

From my first morning there, things started going wrong. There was a fire alarm while I was in the toilet, meaning I had to dash up a lot of stairs, then dash back down them twenty minutes later, late for my departmental ‘welcome’, lost and unable to understand the instructions for the lift which resembled the Bhagavad Gita in length. A wasp stole my lunch, I had to sit in a stuffy auditorium for an hour and twenty minutes, listening to speeches followed by a cringey amateur theatre interactive performance about stuff that can go wrong at uni (nobody mentioned students with disabilities). There were so many people on the tram home that I had to stand up and then barely made it off in time. Plus the walk from the tram stop to my flat wasn’t as short as I had anticipated (none of the distances I had walked that day had been). I got in, lay on my new bed and cried as I felt the muscle spasms (from all the tension I had been holding, no doubt) come in waves. When I finally got up to get some food, I was so stiff all over I could hardly move. Yet (thanks to paracetamol) I soldiered on.

The next day was registration and I had (I thought) arranged to meet one of the registry services staff in her office. Turns out, I was wrong (as a very rude – apparently temporary – member of staff informed me) and she was expecting me at the sports centre where registering was taking place: way, way beyond my walking distance and a location served by NO public transport (which was why I had requested different arrangements in the first place).

I called my mum and she rallied, leaving work early and braving some terrible teatime traffic to pick me up and drive me to the right location, where I sat, shaking, as one of the members of registry services staff laid into me about my self-expression on Twitter. Seriously. (But – seriously?) I said “I can’t believe you’re being so rude to me,” or words to that effect, and was ranted at for a further ten minutes. SERIOUSLY. (Yes, I later complained and no it didn’t help.) By this point I was two minutes away from leaving and never coming back, but finally another member of staff was drafted in and (politely, I have to say) registered me. So: I was on my course at last, but kinda wanted to drop out. And also? Die. (I was very wrung out.)

My mum took me to Pizza Hut, where I sat with tears rolling down my cheeks, saying I was never going back. (To university, not to Pizza Hut. I may suffer from mental illness but I’m not crazy.) That night, I packed up my PJs and went home to my mum’s. My hard-won independence had lasted… ooh, a day and a half.

Again, I soldiered on, and went back to my flat the next day, where I Skyped with my Dad, who told me not to let the bastards get me down. I showered, had more muscle spasms, andwent back on Thursday, where I had a tutor group meeting I was terrified about, but which turned out to be OK. Friday I met with a disability advisor for about an hour, and then I went home and rested. And that was my Fresher’s Week.

Before I had started uni, I’d been sent this booklet of Fresher’s Week activities. “Ooh, maybe I’ll try archery!” I thought. And “Chocolate tasting, I have to go to that.” In reality, doing the bare minimum expected of me was as much (or maybe more) than I could manage. I didn’t make a friend, go to the pub, tour the library or student union, or have what might technically be referred to as any “fun”.

But people told me (and I told myself, loudest of all) that I was just adjusting. That things would get easier, and soon. Turns out I was kidding myself. Because I’d gone from 0-100, and things were only going to get worse.

I made it to all of my lectures, but got out of breath walking to all of them (even though I’d got a tram as close to them as possible and I only had to walk up a tiny hill each time, it was just too much day after day). I got out of bed each morning (yes, I had to go in every morning) with a feeling of deep dread and a lot of muscle pain. I wasn’t sleeping because I felt too anxious about the next day. I only had nine “contact” hours a week, but a lot of reading and seminar tasks, and moving around between buildings and going up and down endless stairs thanks to fire alarms plus life stuff, like cooking (forget about washing up…) The funny thing about this was that two years previously I had decided in no uncertain terms that I wanted to take up the opportunity to study abroad in America in my second year. Because I’d definitely be well enough by then. Haaaaaaaaah. I wasn’t even well enough to go to the MEETING about studying abroad. Talk about self-delusion.

Worst of all, I missed three seminars through sheer idiocy: misreading emails and turning up to the wrong room, when it was the seminar before/after mine whose location had been changed. Freud wasn’t wrong when he said there are no accidents: I was over-anxious about being in seminars three times a week, every week. That might not seem like much, but I can’t emphasise enough how hard it is to go from not being expected to be anywhere or talk to anyone (0mph) to having to do so multiple times, almost every week of the year (100mph). I started to dread seminars, became run down with a cough that wouldn’t quit and even (I know this is awful) wished to be ill so I could get a damn break. All I had time and energy to do was work, sleep and eat and within three and a half weeks, life was a drudge I couldn’t escape from and chocolate and Diet Coke were my best friends again. This was not what I had wanted. But it was not unfamiliar. I had done what I had always do. I got what I always get. Again.

Predictably, the collapse came, in the form of a virus. My cough escalated into bronchitis and with it came fatigue so severe I was sleeping close to twenty hours a day. The hours I was awake, I coughed and cried, feeling like the world’s biggest failure (not just any failure, I had to be the world’s biggest).

My kind (private) GP (I have a group of unkind ones at my NHS practice) gave me a sick note, I got a week’s extension on my first university assignment and in between sleeping, staring at the television and scribbling the odd thought about the UA Fanthorpe poem I was attempting to analyse [sidenote: I love UA Fanthorpe, don’t you?] I tried to come up with a plan. I didn’t feel like I’d ever be able to face a seminar again, but I had to face the fact that the timetable which I had thought would be manageable was really too much. I had gone from 0mph to 100mph and had to find a way to get to around 40 or 50. Within my limits.

But facing up to my limits doesn’t feel like the positive step it ostensibly is, doesn’t feel like NOT doing what I’d always done. It feels like failure. I guess if I get a different result, I’ll know that’s not the case. (I’d settle for having time and energy for a social life, some therapy, a little writing and my washing up, for starters. But only for starters.)

I feel I’m losing everything by not fulfilling my ambitious dream, even though that dream is unattainable for me right now. I have to keep reminding myself that if I can study at all, and enjoy a little of my life, instead of being collapsed in bed, sleeping and weeping, then I’m doing well. I need to stop expecting so much from myself and realise that only doing a little, if that is all you can do, is still better than doing nothing. Still meaningful. Doesn’t make you the world’s biggest loser.

I don’t really believe that yet. I tend to think I should be able to do everything I want, or just give up as life has no point. But I’m trying to give myself space and time to recover from this setback, and thinking about how to get back on track, even if it has to be a different track. I need a slower pace.

In other words, I’m in search of the middle ground at long last, in the hope that by doing the opposite of what I’ve always done, I’ll get the opposite of what I’ve always got.