Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals

The media says that October 10th was Mental Health Day. Did your socials buzz?

It’s October 2024, the time is now, the era of globalisation in a way I never imagined we would be at when I first really considered the concept 20 years ago. (Bear in mind I’m not an economist, nor socialist, nor anthropologist or whichever ist clever people are). We live in a world where we know each others business like we’re all neighbours and not merely staring at a tiny little television clutched in our hands of an image from 10 000 kilometres, 2 oceans and 12 time zones away; images of wars and famine, of success and wealth and sport events, of beauty and pristine perfection, of rapture and joy, raw pain and despair, of glorious travel or overbooked trains and planes, selfies and posed poise and group photos laughing at the person on the other side of the camera and admissions of manifesting happiness and also how it’s okay to have a bad day and take time for ourselves, for our mental health. Essays bandied around describe how social media has impacted society in ways we never imagined, though I don’t imagine much further thought was spent on the impact of globalisation when Europe chose to unify the continent, or perhaps the Victorian monarchy chose to send their governors and armies to the supposed darker reaches of the world and colonise land they had no right to.

All that to say that, in this time of shared lives and experiences, we now have a Mental Health Day on our calendar. Valentines Day. International Women’s Day. Blue Monday. Solstices and Equinoxes. MidSummers (but never MidWinter for some unknown reason) Day. It’s a day that didn’t feature there 10 years ago, and I imagine it’s unlikely to be a feature if it wasn’t for globalisation. Mental health has always been a topic spoken about in whispers and had such a bad stigma attached to it that it remained a rather taboo subject. Until now. Nowadays we get to acknowledge that we’ve had a bad day. Nowadays its a badge of honour to say we’re meeting our therapists.

I have my own story, a journey that I took cognisance of last week, and scribbled down some notes. It’s not a big deal in the bigger picture, and merely becomes a place-keeper of a point in my life.

21 years ago, a twenty-something year old, I was living in Johannesburg, having moved to the city following a 2 year stint in London. It was a very, very dark time in my life, although I can’t pinpoint what transpired to get me there.
Is my general nature one that tends towards anxiety and depression, or was I merely a fish out of water in that big brassy city? I was lonely and certainly could only count my good friends on one hand. I had also experienced some sort of other life in London and I realised too late that trading life in one city for another is easier said than done. I definitely couldn’t count on my work colleagues for 2 full years and realised too late that I had been on the other end of some passive-aggressive bullying.
If I look back to those years following London, I was a mess. Every time I spoke to my mom on the phone I know she would hang up and worry about me. At one point 6 months in, she suggested I pack it in and move back home. Having just bought a new car that needed to be paid for, that wasn’t an option: I would have given anything to go home and be cared for by my parents, but I knew that wouldn’t have repaired the underlying problem.
Eventually I found a therapist who I spent 18 months with. The decision to finally agree to this came from 2 points: My parents agreed to pay for the sessions (I’m not sure I could afford it on my own salary, even at the age of 25) but that also came after I received a call from a younger friend who admitted to me that he himself had battled mental health for years and had finally taken himself to a therapist. I wasn’t shocked at that- I’ve always tried to put myself in other peoples shoe’s- but when he reminded me that there was no stigma in admitting to seeing a therapist, that in the long run it would be better for me, and probably my family, that I agreed to look into it.
I’ll never know if my therapist Jacky got to the root of my issues, or if life’s little coincidences just happened when I changed jobs and became re-acquainted with my soon-to-be husband, but in 2005, at the age of 28, I finally told Jacky that I was ready to stop our sessions. Perhaps for 6 months she had been a mere safety net, and I had somehow managed to figure out the tools with how to cope.

Twenty years later, I can assure you I am not the joyful optimistic happy-go-lucky person that I wish I could be. Instead I wallow in anxiety at any opportunity. And I write about it in almost Plathian extremes. Despite that, I love a good laugh, I love company, I love to be on my own too. I can exist in both ways.
And my months spent talking to a therapist always come back to me. I know there isn’t any actual trigger for the sad and anxious times. My childhood was gentle and carefree, my parents did everything they could do, and the years spent at boarding school simply a preparation for a part of life. I floated between various chameleon personalities for 6 years after school, absorbing everything I could from people around me. There were great days, good days, and dark days.
Nowadays I still find myself tumbling down rabbit holes, but I can see it coming. I allow myself to exist in it for a short while- to remind myself that we can exist in the occasional dark day because the sun will come up and if I want to, I can take the opportunity to start fresh tomorrow.

Which leads me on to these little words I scribbled in the form of a poem

The Ebb and Flow of Life.

Life.
You’d think for a moment that it will wait with you.
Wait for you.
Just wait.
And for a moment it does.
It holds you for a little while.
You can rest with it for a little while.

But eventually the parts of it regain their momentum and they begin to consume the parts that need to exist.
For a while, you get left behind, until it catches up with you.
While you rage in your own little storm, each other entity of life endures their own storm,
or a flood
or even just a rain cloud.
Perhaps even a breathless warm day in a meadow.

And somehow we find the strength to stand together in the face of adversity and challenges: while battles faced are never equal, the goal of peace remains singular in expectation.

GdP October 2024

As this year progresses, I take the time to reflect on the journey I have been on: a year ago my head was heavy with thoughts of how toxic my work space was, and that I needed to find a way to work through it. That is very much in the past now, and it’s almost laughable that that was at the forefront of my days. Instead I am asked often how I’m coping with everything on my plate now. It often comes after a friend has explained some kind of issue that that person has to deal with (toxic neighbours, sleepless nights, parents with dementia, loss of work), and once their story is spoken, they find they have explain that their hassles are nothing compared to what I’m going through, and they apologise for drawing comparisons. I so often wish my friends wouldn’t apologise for very lived, very real feelings. The truth is each have something on our plate, and their mental health is no different to mine: I am forever grateful to my Village, for every single check-in, text message, walk around forests and cobbled streets, coffee, glass of wine, no matter what. I wish I could pay each of you back in kind, and hopefully one day I will.

There is no quick and easy fix for when we’re against the odds of mental health. Certainly the ability to speak about it, and normalise it in this era is a good thing.

I am not an expert, and would never ever pretend to coach anyone who finds themselves in the thick of a traumatic space. For the most part, my emotions are often up and down like a see-saw, but I find an acknowledgment of the cycle to be a good starting point. By simply acknowledging it, we realise we’re not alone; that there are many souls out in the world who have full plates. That perhaps what we have our own plate is something manageable; that perhaps down the line it could be worse and so to focus on the good before feeding on the negative energy will be a good win for today.

I burrowed down on Google for information about Mental Health Day which was on October 10th. It appears to be driven by the workplace, where, annoyingly, most of our toxic health seems to start from. If we spend up to 10 hours a day with our job as a focus, its unsurprising. There is no real solution to being able to earn an income without some level of stress for many of us, so I’m glad to see that companies are taking stock of the impact of the workplace on our mental health. This year’s theme was ‘Move for Mental Health’, something that is hardly rocket science, and yet still remains an unattainable goal for some, which is a depressing thought and not where I should be going as I’m trying to wrap this up.

There is absolutely no sticky bandage that covers all parts of this conversation. The truth is, we’re all moulded differently, we deal with life in many different ways.

If you’re reading this and questioning who am I to write a piece on mental health with zero psychology experience, I would probably just nod my head and agree with you because I have imposter syndrome and because it’s a more relevant truth than the lies I tell myself often (for example: weight gain is acceptable as you approach peri-menopause. I actually don’t think I’m close to menopause yet. The real truth is that I’m just not active enough and I love food too much.)

I have written this piece, however, to serve the social media engine, but also as a reminder to myself of my experiences, and lastly to say thank you to my friends for their friendship and space you give me.

As I draw to the end of the month I get to celebrate my birthday. It’s always a good time to embrace the wisdom that comes with this period. I’m hoping to gather troops for a party, but under the circumstances, perhaps its not THAT era right now. I’ll see.