Reflections from a difficult couple of weeks:

It’s been three times in my life now that my mental health and ability to function have fallen dramatically apart: when I was 19, when I was 31, and with Matthew’s death when I was 39. Each time I have clawed my way back to a standing position and started the climb to regain my life. Each time it has taken years of immense pain. The deepest scar to my psyche is that in summer 2019, just as I was celebrating near-full recovery from the second breakdown, Matthew died and I tumbled down again.

There’s been the primary pain of trauma, depression and grief, which has in itself all been quite enough. But on top of that I’ve also crippled myself with shame and a sense of failure, made worse by constant comparison – either to what my erstwhile peers are doing in their lives or, even more insidiously, to what I myself have been able to do in the past, and therefore hold as evidence for what I should be capable of now.

I’ve done some fairly serious mountaineering and skiing, and I hold myself to that standard. Ditto the casual 30-mile weekend runs, overly-packed social life, high heels, 100-hour work weeks, and glossy fast-moving career. I am a person who has done those things, my brain tells me, and I should be able to do them now, and I can’t, and so I’m failing, day after day after day.

That thought spiral has been tearing me apart.

But I’ve been taking enforced rest over the past few days, and I’ve been thinking, and out of that I’ve formed a new approach.

I’m discounting the sense of self that came with what I was doing with my life in 2011 pre-breakdown. I’m discounting the similar figurative and literal high-points of the first five months of 2019.

(Then I was in a deeply loving marriage to a wonderful man; I was Himalayan-climbing-fit and about to travel to India; and my ability to work full-time was finally solid again after years in the wilderness. None of those things is true now.)

Instead, I’m going to re-set the clock – to a place that acknowledges what I’ve gone through in the last few years. In terms of markers to measure myself against, nothing before summer 2019 and Matthew’s death counts anymore. It’s all irrelevant to the shape of my current life.

(There are skills I carry with me from the before-times, but the strength all went and I need to build it again bottom-up.)

I’m acknowledging that my life was reduced to a boulder field, and that I had to start again.

Here’s how I’m doing.

In February 2023 I may be struggling, but I’m much stronger than twelve months ago when I couldn’t work. 2022 was closer to functional than 2021 when I was fairly newly arrived in residential trauma treatment. And February 2020 is better not spoken of at all – I was completely broken, deceiving myself that I wasn’t, and about to have to face the pandemic, newly-widowed and on my own.

We all tread our paths. I’ve reached some very high points, and fallen to others which have been spirit-breakingly low. For the past three years I’ve been moving slowly upwards. That’s the only story I can tell. And I’m not just telling it because it looks pretty on the internet. I’m aiming to change the mental habits of a lifetime, ditch the unfair comparisons, and live it as well.

All of that said, though, here’s a race finish photo I don’t think I shared at the time. It’s from the 100km ultra I walked-because-I-wasn’t-running-fit in 2021 while in treatment. To their credit, the therapists, though surprised, understood it was important and supported me. To my credit, I went gently enough not to destroy myself in the process of proving a point.