Saturday 14th July

On Saturday I had what I believe can only be described as some kind of breakdown. 


The past 6 months of getting on with stuff, and putting a brave face on and making jokes about my situation came out in one rather spectacular show of emotion.


At the end I sat down and wrote everything that I was feeling.


I have ummed and aahed about whether to post this because I know there are some stronger people than me who will dismiss it as self-pitying nonsense but I've decided that I will post it. This blog is supposed to be about me and it would be a gross omission to leave out something as significant as this.


I apologise in advance. It's a lengthy one and I'll give you a medal if you made it to the end.


To those who will roll their eyes after reading it - sorry. But you couldn't make me feel worse about myself than I already do so don't worry.


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In hindsight it had probably been coming on all week, like an unseasonal change in the weather.

All week I wasn’t quite right. I wasn’t on form and my usual lists weren’t doing the trick at keeping me on track. I said that I was going easy on myself  for a week after a knockout couple of weeks on the job searching front but the truth was that I wasn’t capable of doing anything other than give myself time off. I wasn’t actively not looking for work, I was just unable to muster up the energy to do anything at all.

Tuesday was a bad day. I cried over stupid things which isn’t like me at all. I get mad and frustrated at stupid things but not cry. They were so insignificant that I couldn’t work it out at all. At one point I cried because I couldn’t find where I’d put my book. I got upset about something someone said on Twitter – normally it would bounce off but it really got under my skin. After 2 weeks of almost incessant running and 30 Day Shredding and eating healthily I had put on weight yet again.  Only a couple of lbs in a couple of weeks but a nonsensical gain which made me well up.

But I carried on because that’s what you do. Told myself I was entitled to have some crappy days, after all, I’m in a crappy situation at the moment.

I got upset on Friday after being rejected from a job I didn’t want anyway – but the reason behind not getting the job highlighted all the things that I feel are wrong with the current system of dealing with unemployment and I was so incredibly frustrated that I couldn’t find any other way to express the emotion other than through my eyes.

Saturday started off totally normally. The Person was taking part in the UK Corporate Games and was Dragon Boat Racing on the Docks right by our flat. I went down to watch the first race and cheered him on and came back to the flat to hang out for a bit before going down to watch some more races.

I don’t even know when it hit me which seems bizarre given the reaction it had. You would have thought there would have been some significant moment that indicated the point when I slid into oblivion, but instead I just found myself in there.

I’ve spoken before about The Pit. But my god that pit was a niggly pothole. This baby was a yawning chasm which had opened up out of nowhere.

I went from fine to very much not fine in the blink of an eye. The Person came home to find a completely different person in his flat to the one he’d seen a couple of hours before. A snarling, unpleasant, awful person who was a really not nice human being.

I didn’t go down to watch him race again. Want to know why? I hated that he was having fun. I hated that he was winning at something and doing really well at it. I hated that whilst he got to have fun with his friends I had to sit in the flat alone because I have no friends here. An oversight had meant that he didn’t have his keys with him, meaning I was forced to stay indoors to wait for him. No big deal normally but it absolutely enraged me because this is exactly what I do 5 days a week – sit in the flat alone.

I knew that I was being unreasonable and ridiculous and when he text to say they were in the Final of the Dragon Boat Racing I dragged myself down to watch and cheer. And I did. But I don’t know when I’ve ever had to try so hard at something.

I knew that I was being unreasonable and ridiculous and when he text to say they were in the Final of the Dragon Boat Racing I dragged myself down to watch and cheer. And I did. But I don’t know when I’ve ever had to try so hard at something.

In the end I snapped. And I hated myself for snapping but I think it had to happen. It’s funny because in the past I would have called is self-pity but this wasn’t it. I wasn’t sitting there going “Poor me, my life is so bad” or going “Good god woman, get a hold of yourself, people have it so much worse than you.” It was self-loathing. This was a feeling which, quite frankly, dicked all over self pity. I hated myself.

I hated myself for what I’d become. I hated that I’d suddenly turned into a person that actually resented someone else for going out and having fun. I was some kind of pondlife with, quite literally, no worth. I hadn’t been able to prove myself sufficiently to be able to avoid being made redundant, I hadn’t been able to prove myself worthy of employment to anyone else, I wasn’t even capable of obeying science, which states that if you’re burning off more calories than you take in, you will lose weight. I couldn’t even stop my sunflowers being attacked by aphids. A restyle project I was undertaking wasn’t going to work, despite my best efforts, leaving me with a ruined piece of furniture. I’m a person seems apparently incapable of keeping friends. I can’t even run without getting injured. I was not only burdening The Person with myself financially, I was now burdening him with a complete wreck of a human being.

And I thought I was never going to stop crying. I have never ever cried like that. Not at births, marriages, funerals, break-ups, not even ET. I literally could not stop myself. I wanted to scream. I wanted to just not be here anymore. I’m not making any grand “I wanted to kill myself” statements, I just wanted to not exist anymore because there was literally no point to me.

I had no worth as a human being. Nothing I did went right. I had nothing to offer anyone except misery – I’m some kind of vacuum which just sucks in people’s souls and doesn’t emit anything out.

I had nothing left to give. I knew I couldn’t answer another well-meaning text asking me how the job hunt was going.

And believe me I know my problems are few. I’m not dying. I have family. I had someone to go to when I lost my job, some people don’t. I know all these things and I loathe myself for it.  Not pity, loathe. Actively hate myself for not even being capable of dealing with a minor bump in the road. I’m supposed to be a capable person. But no, I’m so worthless that I wouldn’t even be capable of dealing with a major life event like death, I’m so worthless I’ve crumpled at the first hurdle.

I should have been tired. I should have been completely drained of energy. I had cried and cried (and I mean gulping, heaving, lung-shaking sobs) for well over an hour and I literally could not stop myself. I kept willing the tears to stop but they refused. I think The Person thought I was getting hysterical and said “That’s enough. You have to stop.” And to be fair it calmed down, but I still wasn’t tired.

And so I got up and came and wrote the words you’ve just read (if you’ve got this far).

I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. I would have thought that after all the crying and now the outpouring of emotions on to page I would feel as if a weight had been lifted. I know that sometimes you need a good cry just to get it out of your system. But this wasn’t a normal cry, this was something which almost had a life of its own.

And now I don’t really feel anything. Which is such a cliché I have hesitated to write it and tried to find a clever way of saying it without using the word “numb”. But it’s true. I don’t feel relieved but nor do I feel any pressure on me. I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other.

It’s funny really because just the other night we were talking about how different we are when it comes to emotions. To plot a graph of The Person’s feelings during a day you would be presented with a more or less horizontal line, with maybe some increases or decreases to indicate changes in emotions (most likely around feeding times). My graph would be like a print out from a seismograph featuring massive, almost impossible peaks and troughs in a 24 hour period. What can I say, I have big reactions, I’m either ecstatically happy or unreasonably outraged or incredibly sad. Now I think I have achieved my horizontal line; there is no turbulence

Maybe this is a good way to be. Maybe this is surrendering myself to the fates. Maybe if I was Godly I would be saying “Ok. Let’s do it, you’re doing this for a reason so let’s keep going until I’m out of the other side.” Perhaps, when you get to this point where there is nothing left to give and no more fight and no more cheery platitudes to offer up, this means you’re out the other side. Is this what they mean when the say that when you’ve hit rock bottom you can go no further? 

I guess I just sit and wait.