Me and Matt and Loads of Other People

Yesterday, my brother presented me with a copy of Matt Haig’s Reasons to Stay Alive. In handing it over, he gave a brief description of its general theme (the author suffered with his mental health) and then caveat-ed his verbal blurb with a dismissal: “But I’m not saying that you do.”

I have now read the first few beautifully succinct chapters of the book, and already, I know I am going to love it. Matt Haig discusses the taboo surrounding poorly minds in his opening chapters, and it’s fascinating to me that in giving me this book, my brother felt he needed to kind of apologise, in case he offended me. There definitely is a stigma attached – a damaging one. It’s totally understandable, but bad news for humankind nevertheless.

My mind has always been a law unto itself. From a very early age I suffered with a vivid imagination that gave me pregnancy, AIDs and cancer all before I was out of my teens. I empathised so deeply with the chap in that running film, Chariots of Fire, that I spent twelve months obsessing about the hundred metre race at the following year’s school sports day. The angst associated with these mad scenarios occupied my every waking moment.
But I coped. I talked about my “worries”, as I called them, even when they were excruciatingly embarrassing, and involved much naivety and a very poor knowledge of the processes behind human reproduction. I went outside. I grew stuff. I read books.

Exams were good for me. They gave my mind a focus. Dreading those is normal, after all, and considered healthy. Nobody will think you are bonkers if you are conscientiously academic. In due course, the anticipation of results fills the gap that the end of exams creates. So there is no freedom, no let-up, no worry-free summer. Hedonistic joy (even well-earned) seems forbidden to brains like mine. Contentment feels complacent, like counting your chickens and then inviting the fox in. It was as if my mind needed something to worry about. It could not be idle. But worrying gets the job done, it drives us on. It equals a conscience, I suppose. And on a certain level, worrying can be healthy and useful.

In Matt Haig’s book, it is uncanny just how much I can relate to already. The circumstances (some might call them “reasons”) behind our wobbles are no doubt very different in the main, but I guess we are both blessed and cursed with that infinitely complex mind that can destroy itself if it has time to let its metaphorical fingers twiddle. So many people have these tendencies. Detrimental thoughts can manifest themselves if you’re busy, or if you’re not. If you’re lucky, or if you’re not. Whatever you look like and wherever you come from, if you ponder on damaging brainworms for a bit too long, they can start to control you.

Brain complexity can’t be a new thing. But I definitely think it is a problem that is getting worse. When early humans were fighting to stay warm in a cave, to escape the jaws of the sabre-toothed cat, or avoid death by a mammoth stampede, I wonder if they ever felt low..? Terrified? Yes. Cold, definitely. Hungry? I’m sure. But depressed..? I really wonder. I am guessing that, in their lives, there was simply no time to stop. Anxiety can be crippling, and we all know what probably happened to cave people who couldn’t keep up…

Today, our world is filled with new things to contemplate. We no longer have to worry only about the smilodon lurking behind the next boulder and where best to store the berries. We have a much larger to-do list, that has arisen out of the privilege of living in this beautiful, busy, confusing, joyful and tragic world that exists in 2023. And sometimes, the cumulative effects of this can tip us over the edge.

So far, I have learned that at his lowest point, Matt Haig was living in a location akin to paradise, with people around him that loved him, and still, he felt like going off the nearest cliff.
I consider myself very fortunate, but even so, after a series of quite drastic life changes, I succumbed to my brain’s complexity and felt low. I cycled down, until I needed help to raise myself up.

Once upon a time, I might have been on the other side of that stigma of mental health. I never understood suicide. Couldn’t fathom why a nice life didn’t equal contentment. I was aware of the trickery of the human mind, yet still, I am embarrassed to admit, I didn’t consider that a misfiring brain could wreak such havoc for its owner without some sort of blame lying at said owner’s feet.
Ignorance in the extreme.

Of course, we can help ourselves. Help is available. This we MUST seek if we are in possession of a naughty brain, to save ourselves. But realising it, and doing so in time, is the tricky part. Putting the effort in, admitting there is a problem, overriding the circuits that have formed, all requires hard work. Putting one step in front of the other. Getting up and getting on. Anxiety and depression are exhausting. Feeling well requires energy.

I am OK now. I daren’t say I am totally fine. Who ever is? Two year-olds, perhaps..? I am scared of feeling low again, but I feel more equipped now. I have strategies. I am as terrified of the future as ever, but I have a new modus operandi and that is not to think too much about it. I’m trying to obey the old cliche Oh Captain My Captain whispered eerily into those preppy boys’ ears, and carpe the diem. (Poor Old Robin Williams – a devastating case in point.)

I am embarrassed. Not of feeling low necessarily, but of some of the crazy things that Low Me did. I was walking around in a fearful, anxious state, convinced that the path out of it was to run and hide. I wasn’t well.
Just like Matt Haig.

I am really looking forward to reading the rest of his book, and even before I started it, the title got me thinking of all the reasons I have to stay alive:

Little Seymour Number One, AKA Morticia in the University play
Little Seymour Number Two, soon to audition for Paulette in Legally Blonde at school
Boy Seymour, currently taming budgies successfully in his spare time
Mini Seymour, smashing her year group’s merit point league table
Big Seymour, a very tolerant man
Family, of course
Amigos
The menagerie I seem to be creating
I’m a Celeb
Truffle pesto
Truffle Marmite
My funny house
Guinea pigs
Jilly Cooper’s new novel
Warm socks
Cake Club
Sausages

The list is endless actually. But the fact that I can even start to write it, and without too much trepidation, is reason in itself.

#feelingbetter
#thankf@ckforthat