Language

I have been thinking a lot about the words we use. And writing on this can barely touch the surface so these are just a few thoughts about a much bigger picture.

We can never get it right with language. It is so complex and complicated and we can never really know the meaning of certain words to people that we are talking to. A simple word to one person can be a horrific trigger to another. One person may find a term they prefer to use to describe themselves, another may hate it and find it offensive. So, all we can do is be tentative and follow people’s lead on words that are and are not ok. We will almost certainly get it wrong at time, but how we repair the getting it wrong will be the thing that will lead someone to stay or to walk away.

So, three language things that have come up recently. The first is the use of the word resistant. There is a psychotherapist whose writing and teaching I am fond of and she used the word resistant to talk about clients who are finding counselling difficult because they are traumatised. And I have heard the word used, including about myself, and I hadn’t really thought anything of it. And then I saw someone online asking for the word not to be used because it is not a fair description. And I am so torn about this. Traumatised clients are often resistant, I am often resistant… but it’s not down to a negative connotation of the word. They are just doing whatever they can to protect themselves because they have been so hurt that letting someone in and someone to get close feels like it’s way too much. I was being resistant because I was protecting myself. And in counselling training and CPD I have heard the word resistant so often, I was no longer thinking about it, and it wasn’t until someone else said something about it that I even considered this. And then I was trying to think of other words that are used, such as being difficult. Of course traumatised people are being difficult, they are doing their best to keep going, keep surviving, keep protecting themselves. Sometimes even the word protection annoys me though. It leads me to a picture of myself with all these high walls around me letting no one in, because that’s what I have had to do for protection, but using that word doesn’t change what I am doing, and it doesn’t fully explain the resist part. Because, whether my walls are there or not, there are still a number of other reasons of why I haven’t engaged and why I am being resistant. The problem is, the more I have been thinking about it, the more I come to think it is the wrong word to describe the correct thing.

Another word I seem to have a problem with is the word disclosure. And I couldn’t tell you why, it just sits weird inside of me. And yet it is a word used so often to describe when someone has disclosed something about their life, because what other word do you use. I have heard the word story used many times in counselling contexts. And talking of someone’s story can bring out the wrong ideas. Stories are make-belief and made up, whereas we are talking about real life, real things that have happened to people. But I feel like I want to shudder every time I hear the word disclosure. But there is not a word that fits to me. People tell me their lives, they tell me the big things and the little things, they tell me what’s important to them, and they keep talking to keep me away from things. There is not one word that can be used to explain this, but we want to wrap it up neatly in a word to describe it, and it just feels like it’s not possible.

My final one for now is using the terms victim/survivor to talk about people, and this happens in my non-counselling job far more than anything else. Again, some people identify with the words, some identify with other words, and again in this case I would always say to go with whatever the person feels comfortable with. And people will change what they feel comfortable with depending on where they are on their journey. It is not this that I have the issue with. My issue is that it becomes the ones description word we use for that person. I feel like they use their person-ness and become nothing but a survivor. My experience of trauma is that is does take over your entire life, it does in many ways completely define who you are, you can’t ever escape from it, it becomes everything. But, at the same time, I don’t want it to be everything. I still want my life, I still want to be more than what happened to me. So constantly being defined as a survivor, it puts my back in the box that what happened to me is all that my life is. I am a survivor, but I am so much more than that even though most of the time it doesn’t feel like it. I am a person who has survived some horrible things, but I am more than those things.

Fraud

Sometimes I wonder what I am doing with my life and what I would like to do with it. The truth is, I don’t really know. I think I will always struggle to find a job that I will be happy in. There is always too much anxiety regarding whether I can ever be good enough. I like to think I am good at my day job, and I am told by people I work with I am, but all I can see are all the bits that I’m not good at, all the bits that I question myself over and can’t believe that I could ever do right. And if I did get it wrong, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, things could be put right, but the fact that someone would have to would be enough for all those voices to scream all the louder that I am just not good enough.

When it comes to my counselling work, the voices have even more to grip on to. In my counselling work, I can’t help but wonder whether I am just a fraud. My world often feels all over the place. I often feel like I am not coping with anything. I fail to have the support systems I encourage my clients to try and have in place. I know all this theory, but my life is just all over the place. So how can I really sit there, opposite my clients, and help them walk through their lives, when I am stumbling so clumsily through mine.

I know I have clients that have reported on how much I have helped them, but inside my head I don’t really believe I have been any good. That maybe they would have gotten there anyway with a bit of time and that it had nothing to do with my help. Because how could I possibly do something that would really help someone else. That my belief that I am useless and bad, runs so deep that whatever had happened in their life must have had nothing to do with their conversations with me.

I wonder whether I should ever try and be a counsellor. Is it fair for me to sit opposite people when my head is such a mess and they sit there thinking I have it all together. I feel like a fraud, feel like I am pretending to be an ok human being while they show my all their broken parts. And I wonder what they would think if they could see all my broken parts, whether it would somehow make them feel better that everyone’s life is a bit broken, or would make them run a mile because it would break the illusion. The illusion being that somehow, as a counsellor, I have my life sorted. That I don’t battle every single day with all the intrusive thoughts in my head.

I think I somehow expect counsellors to be super human. To have no problems in life. And if that is my expectation, then it also has to be placed on myself. And the fact that I do have problems means that I must be a fraud.

Friendships and Loneliness

I find it really difficult to describe friendships at the moment. I find friendships really difficult. I am not sure if it is something that would have always been this way, or whether I would have had a very different life and had friends that hung around had I not had all the trauma in my life. I feel like trauma takes away so much, and being able to relate to people is one of the worst. I attach to people who get close, and then fall apart when they can’t keep up with my level of need.

Loneliness gets really intense. I sit and flick through the contacts on my phone and wonder about who I could call. And I get all the way through my address book, and not a single person stands out as someone I could pick the phone up to. Sometimes, I have days where I try and send out messaged to people to say hi and see if anyone wants to catch up, and some people reply, and many don’t. And, I understand that those that reply is something, but it’s interesting as I find this is usually the people I am least close to. Those that I thought I was closest to, I hear nothing from. And then I start to think, if I didn’t message anybody, who would ever actually get in contact with me.

There are things that I thought would be different. There are hopes I had. When I was studying, I had hoped that my classmates were people I could consider friends. I thought there would be people there that would stay in my life. But I also remember not falling into the “we will all be friends for life trap” and got told off when I called bull***t on it within a certain group. There were people in the group that I very much hoped I would stay in contact with, but there were also those in the group that I didn’t get on with and knew I didn’t want to stay in contact with. There is only one person who I am still in contact with. All of that “we will be friends for life” and not a single one of them has been in contact with me. I’ve tried to be on contact with some of them, but when I don’t get anything back, it makes me feel like I’ve got nothing left to give.

I work all the time, throw myself into it and work more hours than I should. I don’t do it because my job is so brilliant and I just want to put all my time into it. I do it out of boredom and loneliness. I do it because I have nothing else. That I would rather have my brain on work than have it on the fact that I don’t have anyone to do anything with all the time.

There is also no easy way to meet people as an adult. People tell me I need a hobby and need to go out there and meet new people. The idea of meeting new people just scares me. Because meeting new people is just meeting more people who can reject and leave me. There is also the question of how do I do that? There are things I enjoy, or used to enjoy, but I haven’t been able to do anything fun for a long time. It’s hard to explain what it is like to feel like you have zero self-confidence, to the point that it freezes you from doing anything. I love singing, and could join a choir, but the thought of not being able to sing well enough, and the shame of not always being able to sing the right note is too much. I used to love the theatre and being on stage, but now the thought of anyone looking at me makes me hope the ground would open and swallow me up. I know I need to work on my fitness, and could think about exercise classes, but the thought of anyone seeing my body attempting to exercise, or discovering how unfit I am, fills me with so much shame it seems unbearable. There are just always things that get in the way, that are always to do with being filled with shamed and embarrassment and not being able to stand people seeing me.

I think another part of the problem is that I don’t want new friends, I want the people I have been close to in the past. That losing them has caused so much pain and I just want them back. But I don’t know how to keep reaching out. What I would really love, is for someone to message me to find out how I am doing. I would like to know that someone cares about me.

And then I have to question, how much of this is me talking, and how much of this is my trauma. Trauma tells me that I am bad, that I could never be ok and no one could ever care for me. So people who don’t message me just reinforce the message. And I do understand everyone has busy lives and nothing is that simple, but everything in me screams out that it is my fault and I am doing something wrong and that of course people don’t want to be in touch with me because why would anyone want to be in touch with me. And it hurts, but I don’t really know how to get past it at the moment.

It’s been almost a year

It’s been almost a year since my last post. I always have all these great ideas and thoughts of being able to write, and then I never sit down and manage to do it. There are probably many reasons for this, but the biggest is almost certainly that I do not want to spend time with my thoughts. Being in my head feels unbearable and intolerable, and I don’t know how to get things out with words without ending up down some rabbit hole.

I want to make a new commitment to writing, but will probably end up as unlikely. I want to put myself out there a bit more, that is even more unlikely.

Being a counsellor with the mental health battles that I find myself in makes me feel like a complete fraud. Why would anyone want to talk to me if they knew I could barely keep myself alive. I feel unable to care for myself, I feel unable to keep going. Yet I have clients who seem to hold me up as having it all sorted, and sometimes I feel like screaming that I really don’t. My life feels like a mess, and I struggle to see my way through it… but I can still sit with another and help walk with them it their mess. And maybe that is just the thing to recognise, no one actually has it all together, we are all just muddling through, and I don’t have to pretend that I have the perfect life, I just need to know that I can sit with someone else, while still needing to sit with me.

I wish I could be more positive, I wish my life was better than it is, but it still feels overwhelming. I look at my classmates from my course, a year since qualifying and it feels like they are all out there, being therapists and doing really well. And I feel left behind, like I’m still lost in a battle that I can’t get out of, and I can’t move forward with my life and career until I am out of it. That my fear of not being good enough and of being way too messed up is always going to hold me back, and mean that I am never really going to get anywhere. And maybe one day I will find a way through that, but maybe I won’t and maybe it will always be a battle in my mind.

There is so much more I could say, but I am still not finding the words. I have a few posts in my mind that I could write at the moment, so maybe I should make more of an effort to write them.

The five love languages

The five love languages can be really interesting to look at when we start to struggle. We can really start to think about which of the languages we like to give and which we like to receive. It’s more than liking to receive though, it’s about meeting a much deeper need, and when it’s missing it can be really felt.

The book was written by Gary Chapman in 1992. It is not a new thing, but I am starting to see more and more how it is something I should come back to. The five love languages are acts of service, physical touch, receiving gifts, quality time and words of affirmation. You can find several simple questionnaires online to find out which of them you might value, such as the one here: https://www.5lovelanguages.com/ As with all online quizzes, we do have to take it with a bit of a pinch of salt, but it can highlight to us where things are important.

For me, while I haven’t really touched much on this recently, it has come up. On a particularly difficult day, on a phonecall with a very good friend, she asked me what my love languages were. My head was a blur and I couldn’t remember what all of them were. As soon as she said them, my gut gave me the answer. Quality time, followed by physical touch. They are both things that I have very little of in my life. That maybe, just maybe, some of the struggle could be down to simply not receiving what I need.

I am at a stage in life where most of my friends are married, and a majority have children. Their lives, rightly so, are tied up to their partners and their families. I understand this, but what it means is they don’t have time. Because what I would like, is time with them, not them and their family. And this is usually not an easy, as it’s not just around family, but jobs and everything else life throws in. I need time, and what most people don’t have to offer is time. I take days off work and get excited to see people, only to find I have been squished in between two other things, and I feel like I am just something else to fit in to a schedule. And it’s not that it’s not important to others, it’s that life is full and complicated. But it really hurts when I want to scream that all I need is a few hours, and no one has it.

And then touch, well, that got almost completely wiped out by coronavirus. I didn’t always get a lot, again, by not being around people who would naturally offer it, or who receive it within their family relationships and don’t think about the fact that a single person might need or want it and that they wouldn’t be receiving it. A simple hug can make the world of difference, and I think the use and impact of them are vastly under-estimated. And then coronavirus came along, and suddenly being able to touch another human was scary. It was discouraged. And again, for those with their families and living in the same house, there were still people to hug and have contact with. And for those of us who are single, we suddenly went weeks, turning into months, without a single touch from another. And now, I crave it. And the odd hug I do get feels like it barely touches the surface of the need, because it’s built up now over so many months, that it is going to take very many hugs to remove the huge hole that has been left. Now it is like there is a huge deficit that has to be made up, before I can start to get the benefit of a hug again.

I don’t think we always recognise what is missing for people. That sometimes people, especially those sitting across from us in a counselling room, might be sat there with a huge hole of need that is not being met. And it’s not through anyone’s fault, it’s just the situation we find ourselves in. And that we need to give some time to exploring how and where these needs can be met. The hole it leaves creeps out in pain and loneliness. And maybe sometimes, although we have to work with words, words aren’t actually going to reach into the depth of their need and we have to help them explore where that can be met.

Let’s All Meet Up

A counselling course can bring you together with your course mates in a way that perhaps other courses don’t. You tend to end up opening up more than you probably would usually. You talk about deep stuff because other people “get it”. More is allowed perhaps, than in other circumstances. It can feel like a bond and a closeness that is special. But, I’m not really sure it lasts much after the day you finish your last class. Don’t get me wrong, there will be the few that you feel closest with who you will stay in touch with and who you may still keep talking to, but the closeness as a whole group dissipates the moment the classes stop. Despite the talk of needing to be friends forever, the very same people don’t send a single message.

And then it happens, the group meet up. And, don’t get me wrong, it’s happening and I’m looking forward to it, but it brings up so many other things. It has only been 4 months since the last meet up. I’m not sure what to expect and how it is going to be with people. In some ways many things have shifted. And for me, in many things, things have not changed at all. And I’m not sure I really know these people anymore, or that they really know me. So many challenging things have happened since we last met that most of them do not know about. I just haven’t felt like telling them. And in many ways, I have no doubt that many things will have happened in their lives that I have no clue about. And I have to wonder, do I care? For people who I haven’t heard from since the last meet up, who there hasn’t been a single message exchanged, what do I want to know now.

Except I know the nosiness and almost competitive nature that comes out. The questions about what happens now, what has been happening since qualifying. The discussions on setting up private practice, getting clients, getting a job, making an online presence, getting yourself out there as a fully qualified therapist. And, it doesn’t feel like it’s friendly or nice, it just feels competitive. Like, what is everyone else doing and am I doing enough and who is doing something that I should be doing. And why haven’t I done more? Why am I still just content with volunteering and not moving on when I should be doing what everyone else is doing? What happens when I get left behind from everyone else?

I’m not sure I want the conversations and the questions. These are people that I used to be ok being open with… but 2 years on and I feel like I should be better than this by now. I don’t want to admit that things are still difficult and messy. I don’t want to have to say that everything still feels too screwed up to really know what is happening next. That all I can do at the moment is focus on me and surviving each day. I have had panic attacks about meeting up because these people that I am meant to be close to and trust and be friends with, now just feel judgemental and in a weird way, hostile. And it’s not that anyone has really said or done anything, it’s just the simple knowledge that others are moving forward and I’m not able to do that yet. And I know it’s sensible to take my time. I need to get things in my life more stable again and my anxiety spends its time in overdrive, all the time. The others in side me still have stories to tell and pain to process and they need the time and space to do so, and I need to honour them and give them that.

Comparing myself to what others are doing isn’t helpful, and I know that. And yet my brain is not listening. And I want to look forward to seeing people that I once felt so much more for, but that now just bring panic. And I can hope that all the anxiety is lying and it will be fine when I get there, and yet I can’t help but think that the panic will set in as soon as the talk of private practice starts and I will freeze up. And it will be for a few hours, and then it will be over and I will regret not enjoying myself more.

Medication and Feelings

I have been on and off anti-depressants for 18 years. I am a little bit of a nightmare with medication and I don’t deny that. I am terrible at remembering to take it, even though I was taking it regularly for a long time. I constantly decide I have had enough of taking it amd take myself off it. It has now been 7-8 months since I last took myself off it. This time I did so with the doctor knowing what I was doing, that is unusual for me.

I think medication has kept me alive for a lot of my life. It has taken the edge off just enough to help me keep going. It has helped to balance things out in my brain just enough to allow me to function. It allowed me to go to counselling and talk about my past and to be able to just about survive it.

So, now… now for the first time I am having counselling and I am not on medication. I am delving into all the pain and hurt and I don’t have the medication helping to numb everything. I literally feel like I am feeling more. There is all this stuff that comes up in waves, that physically hurts, that makes it feel like I’m drowning, that takes me somewhere into the depths but not to a point where I would do anything. All these things swirl round my head and feel like they are never going to stop and never going to end. I used to be able to go to counselling and switch it back off again in between sessions. Now it doesn’t leave me, it stays there all week between sessions. It feels like I need more counselling, that what I do have just isn’t enough because it all feels too intense. I have gone deeper in counselling before and it didn’t feel like this. I have talked about events that have been far more painful than anything that has come up recently, and yet not had this response. And all that is different is the medication. And it’s a really jard one, because in a weird way, I now feel like I need to feel these things. That I will only really be able to face everything when I can do so while feelings and not being numb. That if I numb it with medication it would somehow stop it being fully processed.

But this has also got me thinking about clients and what we ask of them. I have all this understanding about counselling, about what to expect, about the process… and yet in between each session I find myself struggling to survive with what is coming up. What is that really like for people who are just told that talking will help but don’t have the understanding. Do we just expect them to be OK and get on with life all the time? Do we truly take into account the effects of any medication they are taking? I do always know what medication my clients are on, it is part of the initial assessment questions that get asked. I look up those that I don’t know to try and make sure I have an understanding of them. But again, do clients also need to be able to feel? Is it healing to be able to really feel?

I’m not sure I really know what the right way is or what the answers might be. I know it certainly feels right that I am feeling more, but is this just a way to torture and punish myself or is it something that will really help in the long run? And I certainly don’t expect anyone else to come to the same conclusion that this needs to be done. But can we really get over all those things that we want to avoid of medication is just another way to avoid them?

Qualifying

It’s funny how when you qualify it’s like something should change but it really doesn’t seem to. I have now been qualified for a couple of months. I haven’t really allowed myself to celebrate and I’m not sure it feels real. Still. I still think that someone is going to tell me that an assignment was marked wrong or that I haven’t met the criteria somewhere. I think something is wrong somewhere, it must be. I can’t really believe that someone would let me qualify.

I know this partly goes back to my previous course that I didn’t finish. I left that course believing that I was terrible. That because my mental health wasn’t good that I was never going to be able to be a counsellor because my own issues would always get in the way. The messages were confusing. The lectures encouraged you to be open and honest with them and then used it against you. I wanted to be honest with where I was… a lot had been going on and I hadn’t been coping with it and I had been saying so for a long time. And then I found a way through it, and just as I did they told me I wasn’t ok and that something needed to be done. I was left feeling like I could never find a way through that would mean I would be able to be a counsellor. I was always going to be left with all the tainted bits of me that would get in the way.

This course meant I had to be really careful. I wanted to be able to be open and honest with people but I knew I couldn’t let them in too much. I was always on guard. A lot of the time things would spill out as I would be frozen in fear, but there were some things I kept in. Some things that had to be kept away from most. My parts always caused the biggest fear. What if people find out about them? Can I be trusted to always be an adult and not let anyone else come out? Do I have the ability to stay as me and know that the other person with me was safe? And the stupid thing about that question is I had spent years in the classroom with 30 kids under my care and never once questioned whether I could stay as adult. Suddenly, years of being able to do it was in doubt.

I hid my parts from all but one person. I showed a lot of emotion, it constantly slipped out. But the others stayed shut away. I thought if people found out then I would be judged and told that I couldn’t continue. But it is now the reason in my head that I can beat myself up with of why I shouldn’t be qualified. I am qualified, but if they knew, I wouldn’t have got there.

And then, then there’s what happens when people ask about your course. You say that you have finished and qualified and people’s next question is generally about setting up private practice. As if it is the only answer and what you should do straight away. That it is the only step to follow once qualified. It makes me want to scream. I don’t even know if that is what I want to do. I certainly don’t have the confidence to do it at the moment.

Here’s the thing… I know I have done all the work. I know I have proved that I can be a counsellor. But that nagging voice in my head still tells me I shouldn’t be. I can only just believe that I am allowed to work in an agency where there are others around all the time. The thought of being on my own becomes overwhelming because of the constant battle of knowing I can do this and have got the qualification, mixed with the belief that I am too messed up and if only people knew all of me then I would be forced to stop. So being qualified is just this whole mix of confusing stuff, while having no real idea of what I am doing. It is all even more confused by the fact I don’t know where in the country I want to live, so the thought of setting up private practice can’t even come into it until I have decided where it is that I might be living and working. It is all so complicated in my head.

So, I am left, qualified but feeling like I shouldn’t be. With people asking me about what happens now when I have no real idea. Actually, right now, qualified means having some time and space to take a breath or two while I figure out so much else in my life. And the constant nagging pressure of always being asked what next, and knowing that others on my course are setting themselves up in private practice and the pressure that I put on myself from that. It’s weird, because so often I wish I wasn’t qualified because it brings up so many complications in my head.

Into the depths

There is something that so many people find so scary about suicide. And I think a lot of the time it is lack of control, lack of being able to help, the distress of knowing another is in that much distress that they see death as the only answer. The fact that we would like to think that if they had just reached out or hinted their intentions, that we would be the person that could stop it and change their minds. As if, we all hold the power within us to keep someone else going when they can see no possible way to keep going.

I battle with this one a lot. I do believe that there is always hope. That sometimes we are required to hold on to that hope for someone else because try as they might to grip on to in with their fingertips, it is just so slightly out of their reach. I also think that when it has slipped away, when it is at the point of just being out of reach, there are times when their is no other path or option in sight. It sneaks in and causes people to do things no one can ever imagine and quite often, although there may have been a niggling thought somewhere in our minds, something we never think someone we know can do.

And counselling brings these people to your doorstep, as they look to you to end the pain and suffering they are in, in the quickest way possible. And more often and not, the road out of that is not quick, but a long slow look into the depths of what hurts the most. And it’s helping another see that we can bear to be with them, even in those depths.

But I also come at this from another angle, as someone who frequently walks in the depths of those thoughts. I never consider myself a risk, I do not feel like I will act on the thoughts, but that doesn’t make the thoughts any less scary, or distressing, or lonely. For one thing, I know that a lot of the time my thoughts go there it is just in the regular cycle of life, one a month, for 2-3 days, just before my period, I want the world to end. I want the pain to stop and it’s been there for so long I can only see one way out. And so for those 2-3 days, I survive in a haze, longing for something that I won’t do, because for the rest of the time I know I don’t want that.

It doesn’t stop the thoughts, the wanting, the urge to just go that one step too far or swallow that handful of pills. As if somehow everything would ease if I could just do that. And the understandable fear of speaking those words out loud, of the chain reaction it might spark, as you are labelled a risk and people think they need to jump into action to save you. But maybe in my healing I need to be allowed to go and sit and take a walk around in those depths, to be allowed to feel whatever it is I need to feel without comment or rescuing or judgement. To acknowledge that at times there feels like there is no other way out or too escape. Sometimes the thought of the end is exactly what keeps me going. I can keep going if I know I have a choice. I can chose to live in pain if I know that I could get out of it if I really wanted to.  

There are no easy answers for anyone else or anyone around me. And I know it takes a lot of trust to allow me to go there and still know I will be here tomorrow. And I struggle with the idea that someone would want to take that choice away from me because it is better if I am alive. I would like to think that I get to make that choice, but I know that I do not. And it raises so many questions for me about what choices others are allowed to make. I understand I have to act in a professional capacity as and when the situations call for it, and it that sense, I don’t question it. But in another sense, the knowledge of autonomy and never wanting to force someone into something they don’t want, means there is a part of me that does battle.

If we tell someone it is better that they are alive, better for who? The concept of holding on to hope for someone is one thing, picking it up and forcing it down their throat is another. The balance is in there but it is a fine line. And the difficulty and bravery of being able to tell someone face to face these feelings is a whole other concept. It’s all very well, sitting behind a screen and writing about it, but truly acknowledging it in real time takes courage. And I feel like the way we react wipes that away. Keep people safe, but allow them to walk around those depths and feel whatever it is they need to feel. More often than not, it’s overwhelming because it has been discounted and disallowed. Sometimes, only by allowing them to take a walk in those places can they process and make sense of what is in their head and start to put some of the pieces back together again, start to see that the light is still shining, even if it is the tiniest speck in a pit of darkness.

People need to be able to talk about this more, and it feels like there is still so much taboo around it, and that it shouldn’t somehow be spoken about. And yet, it feels like in these times more than ever, people need safe spaces.

Time, essays, lockdown, loneliness, illness, exhaustion

It is probably a mistake to think that starting a blog in the second year of a post-graduate diploma was a good idea. That I would somehow have time to write for fun in the middle of the stress and pressure of having to write essays and survive everything else that was going on in the world. I wonder how much anyone is ever really going to know the far-reaching impact of the pandemic. That there are hundreds of thousands of students, who should be with others in lecture theatres, sat at home staring at computer screens. And we are all somehow pretending that this is ok because that is what everyone is having to do. But, being a student is hard, and being a student, stuck in your own room, without the fun side, is harder.

So, for me, classes have now finished. I can’t say I’m not happy because I am. I’m so glad it is over. But I’m angry as well, because of all that has been missed and lost. I needed the contact more than anything, but lost it. And was just meant to get on with it, and my brain could never quite get there. And it got me wondering, whether this was really all so bad just because of that, or whether I would have struggled in any situation anyway. The pandemic was a nice excuse, but really, I think it has always been so much more than that. I don’t think I would have ever really been ok. I think my insecurities creep in and take over, and on screen just meant that I was stuck in my room, on my own with them, and they were there, screaming louder than ever. I also won’t feel like anything is real in terms of finishing until I know I have passed everything.

And this is where the insecurity gets to run riot on its own. Because I don’t think I have passed everything, because I don’t believe I should. And I am constantly guessing and second guessing myself. I handed in an essay that I wasn’t happy with. Did I do so because I think it would fail to prove to myself that I’m not good enough? Or did I do so because it keeps me as a student and not quite qualified. Because if I am somehow qualified then that says someone might think I am good enough and I can’t believe that. Or maybe a part of my brain that does think I can do this did make that essay just good enough to pass and see me through, but I’m not sure that part of my brain is strong enough. And so the battle goes on and on, and will so, until results day.

The battles and noise inside my head, the fact that it’s there all the time and if it’s not one thing it’s another, means I’m exhausted. All the time. I try to just keep pushing through it, because I think and hope one day that the battles won’t be so noisy and that it will feel better than it does at the moment. And, in one way, I know that one day it will be better than this. Because this is better than things were a while ago. And I know I am not alone in wanting things done now and not wanting to have patience and sit through the journey. And sometimes, that is the exhaustion. Just a little cry of, “please let this be finished now”, because I’m not sure I have the energy to keep on going. And then someone coughs or sneezes within 100 metres of me and suddenly I’m knocked out with a virus (not the virus), far more so than I ever should be. But my body has nothing left to fight anything off. But, then there is something in being knocked out that brings rest, and a little more energy to keep on fighting everything else.

There is also something to be said in this, in the intense loneliness that creeps in and is overwhelming. That the isolation of working from home, having classes online, having the world made very small, means I’m stuck with my head far too much. The noise, the way things hurt so much of the time, the insecurity, all just tells me that I should be alone and not with anyone. And yet I have a childish need to be with others. But, life like this means that other people are also just surviving and it’s hard to get by, so it’s hard to meet the needs of a needy person. And I find myself wishing there were people around me that could see how much I need time, but also that I don’t believe I am worth their time so I can’t ask for it. So, the loneliness remains, and I don’t know where to take it. But, there will be a way through this, I just haven’t quite managed to find it yet, and I’m not able to see it. But it will be there.