Last Night, The Warcraft Community Did Great!

This morning, as I do every morning, I scrolled back in my Twitter timeline to where I'd left off reading yesterday. It was a bit of a mega scroll back as I'd gone to meet my fella from the train station and then didn't even glance at Twitter for the rest of the evening.

I'm glad I missed everything that happened though - it's a little too close to home for me to deal with in real time but this morning when I was reading 10 hour old tweets, it still hit home. In case you missed it, someone posted a picture of a pile of pills and a message that indicated something crazy was about to go down.

I moan about drama llamas on Twitter sometimes but this didn't seem like anything to joke about. The tweets in response were all immediately supportive, calling for the poster to respond please. There were so many, even in my own timeline and I don't follow the person who started it all but it was heartening to see so many jump in to try to help.

I don't know who it was in the end but someone managed to get real life details for the original poster and Twitter and Blizzard were contacted too to see if they could do anything. Luckily, the emergency services were called and made it in time to help. This morning, I'm glad to see a response from the original poster on Reddit and I'm also pleased to see so many heartfelt comments and replies and over 600 upvotes. The relief on my twitter feed is almost palpable!

It's at times like these that seeing this 'community' come together to help, reinforces my own belief that there is good in everyone - even the trolls and dickwads who inhabit the internet have a little decency left in them. A last minute, desperate plea for help was heard across the world in our small part of the internet and something good came out of it - a life was saved. That's pretty amazing to me.

I've had my own battles with depression and flirted with suicide as a teenager. Life wasn't so hard back then, I just didn't know how to deal with it at the time. Now life is throwing curveballs at a regular rate but from somewhere, I have found the strength to deal with them. Maybe it's maturity, having someone who understands exactly how depression works along side me or just experience but so far, I'm winning the current battles.

The trick I've found is baby steps - break everything down into manageable pieces. That may mean hanging on & just breathing for the next 10 minutes or it may be get through the morning at work. Once that baby step is achieved, it's onto the next baby step - breathe for another 10 minutes then repeat. At some point, you will look up and realise you've got through a whole day or a whole week and looking back, it wasn't that bad after all. That gives me the strength to keep taking those baby steps - in the famous words of Dory "just keep swimming". It works, it really does and when it doesn't work, give yourself permission to retreat to your bed or to cry for 5 minutes then restart taking those baby steps.


(500 Word Challenge - Day 15 word count 560)

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Farewell, Funny Man

Yesterday I cried - all day. I woke up fine, did my usual early morning stuff then opened Twitter on my PC and the first thing I saw was a RIP Robin Williams tweet. That on it's own made me tear up, I've always loved his movies, even the not-so-great ones, but then I saw the cause of death and that he'd been fighting depression and then, then it hit me - hard!

I have no idea why it hit me so hard - I wouldn't have called myself a big fan, I haven't even seen one of his movies in the last 5 years or more, but I felt like I'd lost a member of my family. I honestly howled & sobbed so hard I gave myself a headache and hiccups!

As I calmed down to more gentle weeping though, I realised it brought back the panicked trip to the hospital, following an ambulance and arriving 5 minutes too late. How I drove my husband & brother-in-law home that day, I don't know.

It brought back the day the police knocked on my door and asked if I knew my brother-in-law. The younger policeman had to dial the phone and hold it for me so I could tell my husband to come home.

It brought back all my teen years when I sat and stared at bottles of pills for hours, never quite having the courage or desperation to open those containers.

It brought back the fear - the fear that this monster black dog inside me might come back and sweep all my current happiness away. As if some wicked being somewhere is keeping score of how many days of happiness and sadness I've had and it will soon be time to head back into sorrow.

I want to scream that I've only just woken up again, I don't want to go back. I want to live in the sunshine, not the grey, noiseless, tasteless, emotionless void that I was in before.

Maybe I'm a bit silly but I've been reading a lot of the blog posts that people have been writing - I think of it as innoculation - read all I can about depression, get upset about it now so if & when it does happen to me again - and I'm pretty certain it will, one day - then perhaps I'll be better equipped to deal with it.



Attitudes to mental health are definitely changing - my time working for ecdp has made such a huge difference to my own attitude about all disabilities and they are working to continue pushing that change forward. For all the joy & laughter that Robin Williams brought to the world, I am grateful and I am so, so sad that he's gone but maybe now, he can find some peace and rest at last.

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E is for EDM! Dance The Blues Away

There were so many things on my list for today and many could be connected so I picked the one that has the most importance for me and links so many of the others. Yes, Electronic Dance Music (EDM) has finally seeped into my very consciousness, thanks to a certain DJ Soulshaker aka Cold of Cold's Gold Factory.

So what were the other possible E words for todays post? Well, eclectic is one I've used to describe myself in the past and my music taste is definitely eclectic. My collection has everything from Barbra Streisand to Meatloaf, Led Zeppelin to Buddy Holly and nowadays, Kaskade, Tiesto and Zedd, just to name a few of my favorite DJ's.

Entertainment, Energy, Enthusiasm and Ecstasy all crossed my mind for todays topic and having watched hours of the livestream of the Ultra Musical Festival in Miami last weekend, three of those were very much in evidence. Thousands of EDM fans descended on Miami for 3 days & nights of energetic dancing and entertainment whilst over one hundred thousand watched via livestream, undoubtedly with the volume up high and dancing around their computer desks! I know I was although I must have looked funny because I was 'tethered' by my headphones!

Ecstasy of course, is an illegal drug, often associated with raves and therefore EDM but having danced the night and the blues away on many an occasion myself, without any illegal help, the music itself brings a kind of euphoria I've not found with other genres. A few glasses of wine or a couple of martinis does help me though, put the music on and I can drift away into my own little world. When stuff is getting me down, it really helps to focus on the music and just lose myself in it.

I wrote about depression yesterday and it was just about the time I was recovering from my last major episode when Cold introduced me to EDM. I had been listening to Breaking Benjamin, which I really enjoyed, knew all the words to and could sing along to for hours. It was only recently when I revisited some of their songs that I realised just how damn depressing their lyrics were. I could almost feel myself sinking as I listened to the first few tracks, it was uncanny enough that I switched it off and deleted them from my hard drive.

There are multiple genres within the broad category of EDM too and I'm not musical at all so I do find them rather confusing. I do know what I like though and following Youtube suggestions when I listen to a track I know, helps me find others I like. I like Deep House, Vocal Trance and Chillout style for background when I'm doing yoga or pilates. Truth be told, there's not much I don't like although Dubstep and Drum & Bass spring to mind for the least favourite category!

I even have some playlists on Youtube so if you want to have a listen to stuff I like, check out my Sweet playlist or perhaps my Gotta Dance one. I like to leave them playing in the background when I'm doing other stuff although the Youtube adverts do get annoying after a while!

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D is for Depression

Depression sucks! It sucks the joy and colour out of everything around you, makes you feel grey yourself and as if you're wrapped in grey, heavy cotton wool blanket of stiflingness. It makes your head stuffy, your legs turn to lead when it comes time to get out of bed and everything tastes bland.

I found my old notebook from my schooldays last week when I was going through boxes of junk, preparing piles of stuff to send to charity shops or to the dump to make space. I've been here 18 months now & there are boxes I have yet to open, let alone actually unpack. Part of that has been physical - after both operations, I had to take it easy with lifting and stretching but part has been mental too - they contain my old life and all it's memories and I just didn't feel strong enough to clear them.

I'm not sure I'm strong enough now but I have to make a start - clearing out the old to make way for all the new stuff I have planned. Not only that, if my hopes & dreams become reality, I won't be able to take most of it with me anyway, with shipping being so expensive!

I cleared a huge space in my wardrobe too - clothes I'll never be able to wear again either because the cut is wrong or because I just don't like the way they look now. I need to go shopping for a whole new wardrobe and try to find a new style that suits my new body shape. That was harder than I expected it to be - I thought I'd pretty much written those old clothes off  but it seems a small part of me still wants to be shapely.


Anyway, back to the notebook - it held scraps of paper & mementos of my teen years including poems I wrote, full of the usual teenage angst. Some of them however, still hit a chord with me now. Could I have been suffering with depression even that far back?

Loneliness

Alone, all on her own

sad, moody and bored.

She stands on a littered kerb,

hearing nothing but emptiness.

She's cold and unwilling,

she sees only the uninhabited houses.

A bedraggled cat scampers across the still scene.

But the girl notices nothing,

she is alone, all on her own.

This was me, aged 12. The others are much in the same vein although I obviously discovered boys & they became more love lost type poems then. Could I really have had such a bleak outlook even then? It's hard to remember now but I do remember having cuddles with my Dad, crying because I didn't fit anywhere.

I've talked about depression before - I don't know if it's the long, lonely winter, stress from being so far from my love or just hormones on the fritz but the Black Dog is sniffing around my door. Luckily, sunshine is one of my cures and we are heading into Spring. I'm going to fight this sucker, I am not going to let it drag me down again. I've got way too much to do!

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Five Podcasts and a New Computer!

Oops! I knew the last few weeks had been busy and slightly weird but I didn't realise it was so long since I posted here! I got to chat with the Godmother when Marcus & I invited her to guest on the show and that turned out to be a really interesting show for all of us I think. That was the last of my days off too so I spent the Sunday getting my shit together to head back to work.

I finally went back to work on the Monday after New Year, after being deemed fit to work (post-op) by my Doctor so that was pretty good actually. It sounds great to have a month off over Xmas but when it's recuperation time and it feels like everyone else is out partying, it's kinda tough on your mental state, you know? It was especially tough as it was also my first holiday season alone, ever!

My boss was great though - she even let me finish at 3pm every day so I could come home and have a nap. I still managed to get a load of catching up done so that was a good week but busy! But the best bit was on the Saturday morning - I finally got a chance to chat to Leeta as she interviewed me for her Behind The Avatar podcast. That was great fun and I'm sure it won't be the last time Leeta & I talk for a couple of hours!

The following week was my birthday week and between baking cakes and cookies for work and being taken out to celebrate by my parents and then standing in at the last minute for Rez on EGP, I didn't get much chance to log into WoW. I could have logged in Friday evening I guess but I just sat there and kind of spaced out in front of the PC. I'm honestly not sure what I did that evening at all!

Another great Saturday morning - recording the show with Marcus Ty and that was about all I could manage that day! Sunday dawned grey and cold but it was another busy day - lunch with Mum (and getting laundry done!), afternoon chats with Cold then another first - recording Girls Gone WoW with Sil and Raven. That was great fun too & it turned out we all had a lot more in common than I expected. I've been invited back at a future date so I am looking forward to that already!

So in just about 2 weeks, I've done 3 guest spots and recorded 2 shows with Marcus, gone back to work, caught up there and had a birthday week so I guess it's not surprising that I've been a little slow posting here!

This last week has been strange too - I'm back to my regular full hours at work but I've been a bit out of it all to be honest. My Doc gave me some new medication which seems to be doing its' job but I think it's making me spacy - I actually caught myself reading Twitter the other evening and I had to remind myself to scroll! However that could also be an effect of the previous 2 weeks and lack of sleep in general, hopefully these meds will help all round and I'll be back to normal soon.

I need to be - I've done nothing productive again today and I have a huge list of things to do before I fly back to the States in a few weeks! That's given me something to look forward to as well so I'm staying as positive as I can in between sleeping at random times! I'm also expecting delivery of my new PC tomorrow - I really am struggling to wait patiently for that - my current set-up is kind of old and I'm only running 2Gb of RAM as well. Roll on tomorrow and WoW on high settings for the first time ever!

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That Sinking Feeling

The thing about being a survivor of depression - is that I've become hyper-aware of myself, my moods & bits of my body. Being female, I can write off some of my mood swings to hormones but when the silliest little thing can spoil a whole day and hormones can't be blamed, then I start trying to analyse the last few weeks. Have I been like this a lot? Is this the start of a downward trend? Was that little bump there before?

Yes, I've had a pretty shitty & stressful week but actually I think I've coped quite well with that - it's all purely practical & physical stuff - cars breakdown, companies send the wrong parts etc. No, this is different - this is moods & emotions going awry - getting upset over stupid, inconsequential things like conversations that just stop, messages that never get a response, withdrawing from previously enjoyed activities because I just don't want to join in right now.

It's strange though because yesterday was a fab day - I got so much done & it felt great. This morning I wake up & even though the sun is shining, it's a dark, bleak day. Just waiting, always just waiting until it's time to go back to bed. I've done all the usual stuff to distract myself but my brain seems set on moping around today - I guess it's just one of those days & I just gotta get through it but I hate these days.

It's days like these that I beat myself up the most - I know I'm being silly, I know people don't mean anything by not responding to that last comment - something came up or the convo is finished in their eyes or they just didn't see the message until way later. I know my few friends would love a phone call for a chat but it's been so long, I don't know how to even begin a general chit chat type call. I know all this in my head but my brain is set in its' rut today & I can't seem to get it to jump the tracks!

Learning how to live alone is tough. There's no-one around for a quick hug or a simple good night or good morning. I alone am responsible for my happiness & today, I suck at it. I haven't had a decent hug in 2 months & it looks like another 2 months before I can feel those arms around me again. Long distance sucks too. I sure as hell didn't chose an easy path this time round did I?

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Fighting the Black Dog of Depression

Just 18 months ago, in the Autumn of 2011, I was waking up from my latest bout of depression. A summer of misunderstandings, emotional rollercoasters & a slowly dawning realisation that something was wrong had made me reach out to a guildie. Not my family or my husband but a guildie. Yeah, that didn't turn out so well either but we managed to get back to being friends later.

In my darkest depths that Autumn, I also mentioned depression on Twitter & that was possibly the best thing I did that whole year! That single random tweet resulted in a bunch of supportive DM's including one from a most surprising source, a relative stranger to me although we inhabited much the same world. That support gave me the lift I needed to climb out of the pit and start changing my life. When I was hit with breast cancer last summer, that support from my blog & twitter friends was still there & helped me through another troubled time. Through it all, that stranger (no longer unknown of course) has been holding my hand extra tight & I'm almost certain I'd be a quivering wreck now if it weren't for him.

But why do I bring all this old history up now? Well, the subject of depression has been raised on my Twitter feed a bit lately and I wanted to share a little bit of light from this side of that long dark tunnel. I know of at least 8-10 fellow bloggers/tweeters who have suffered & if some tweets are honest, I reckon there's a lot more of you out there!

Outside looking in

I've been fighting some form of depression since my early teens - initially triggered by a family relocation from a very quiet, rural backwater to a streetwise, suburban nightmare. I was the original country mouse dropped into a life I wasn't ready to deal with. My accent was totally different to the new local kids & being physically mature at 11 whilst my few friends were still 'little girls' began my own fight with body image too. Feelings of being an outsider, not fitting in, they all hate me were common cries in my teenage angst & fair play to my parents, they did their best to reassure me although none of us recognised the beginnings of depression.

I spent a fair bit of my 20's & early 30's on various anti-depressant medications - not all the time, just extended periods waiting for them to work, waiting for the sun to come out again, for life to not suck for once. It wasn't all bad though - I met a lovely stable man, we got married, travelled the world when we could, had friends, bought a house, settled down and lastly, found WoW but lost each other.

I found WoW about 5 months after quitting my last job. I'd woken up one morning & basically had a meltdown. I just couldn't face going back into that place again so I quit. WoW was good for me initially - I lucked out and found a very social & active guild. Skype chats all day and late into the night weren't uncommon & helped me to start feeling normal again. The problem with social guilds is that eventually, there will be drama and I managed to get right in the middle of it! That's the problem with sitting on the fence & trying to help both sides - you make a perfect target too.

That's the point at which I started gold making - it needed focus & concentration, I could hide on a new, unknown alt & to be honest, I found it fascinating! It also started my drift back down into the pit though. This time I was so pre-occupied with blogging & goldmaking, I didn't spot the signs. Playing so much time solo, I let friendships drift, in game & out until one day I woke up wondering where everyone was. Some of you will read this & realise that's where I disappeared to that summer - I was drowning again & didn't notice. I'm sorry. But that's when I reached out on Twitter & found so much support. Just people taking time to send a DM means the world when you feel totally alone even with people around you. A cyber hug, a twitter good morning - it's contact, it says you are alive even if you feel dead inside.

I still have bad days but they are fewer & much less severe than they were. I found this poem way back when & hunted for it for hours this morning. It says so much that so many of us will recognise (and not just depression sufferers - everyone has insecurities after all) and I think as dark as it is, it still has inspiration for us too. I'm one of the luckier ones though - my depression doesn't endanger me, I just close down, become a self hating, feeling worthless hermit.

When I started this blog, the 'She Rides Dragons' was inspired by the Dragon Riders of Pern series & by WoW but I've comes to realise that if I ride my dragon & soar into the sky - whether just in my mind or dreams or metaphorically in real life, then that Black Dog of depression is going to have a hard time catching me next time.

I've beaten it before, I've beaten cancer (for now anyways) & I'm flying solo for the first time in my adult life - it's all up to me now. I may have a strong hand to hold on to as well but that is now my desire to hold onto, no longer a necessity. I'm beginning to learn about myself too - from the inside, not just the distorted mirror view I've had for so long. Serious stuff like cancer helps you focus on the important things in life & I no longer care if other people think my ass looks fat or my hair doesn't suit me etc!

I guess I'm trying to say hold on, there is life after depression or even with depression, you just have to take that next breath, take that next baby step & keep on doing that. Next time you look up, you'll be amazed how far those baby steps have brought you & if it's still too scary out there, look down again & focus on those baby steps. I still carry my paintbrush but I don't need it quite so much these days.

I wish you Peace my friends

Paint brush (Anon)

I keep my paint brush with me
wherever I may go,
in case I need to cover up,
so the real me doesn’t show.

I’m so afraid to show you me,
afraid of what you’ll do,
that you may laugh or say mean things,
I’m afraid I might lose you.

I’d like to remove all my paint coats
to show you the real, true me,
But I want you to try and understand,
I need you to accept what you see.

So if you’ll be patient and close your eyes,
I’ll strip off all my coats real slow.
Please understand how much it hurts
to let the real me show.

Now my coats are all stripped off,
I feel naked, bare and cold.
And if you still love me with all that you see,
you are my friend, pure as gold.

I need to save my paint brush, though,
and hold it in my hand.
I want to keep it handy
in case somebody doesn’t understand.

So please protect me, my dear friend
and thanks for loving me true.
But please let me keep my paint brush with me
Until I love me, too.

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