In short, what she instructed me to do the next time fearful thoughts and feelings came up, was simply to:
1. Face (don’t run away)
2. Accept (don’t fight against)
3. Float (don’t freeze)
4. Let time pass (let go of your impatience).
As tends to happen when my brain is in learning mode, I read that sentence and then went straight for the acronym F.A.F.L. I was going to FAFL my way through this!
But, where to start? Perhaps, anticipated Dr Weekes, I could try something simple, like going for a walk. It would give me a chance to practise my FAFL, a chance to remind myself to just breathe. As I read this, a new determination rose in me. Damned if I was going to stay inside all day, slowly going mad. I had a recovery to make! And with that, I went looking for my walking shoes.
It wasn’t a cold day, but I was still shivering, so I put on two layers, told Mum I was going for a walk—no idea where—and I’d be back soon. Just around the block, I supposed. I headed out the front door, and hit my limit at the end of the street. Exhausting. But at least I’d made a start. I spent the rest of the day lying on the couch, eating soup, and rereading the words of the woman I had started to call The Weekes.
The next morning, I did the same thing, this time venturing a little further. I just walked and walked and walked, up and down streets close to home, picking sweet-smelling flowers and crushing them in my hands. Lavender and rose geranium were my favourites. They lifted my spirits. I walked from bush to bush. Many young flowers were sacrificed in the pursuit of my recovery, and I did feel a little guilty about that, but what I also felt was deep relief. Finally, I was making some progress.
Only a week before, I had still thought my life was over. Now, I had hope. In taking The Weekes’s advice to stay occupied, I had returned to an old hobby of mine: crafting, making beaded necklaces, drawing, knitting, sewing, anything really just to stay occupied.
And this, friends, is the week I mark in my mind as the beginning of my recovery from what—thanks to Dr Claire Weekes—would turn out to be my one and only genuine authentic nervous breakdown.
My gratitude was beyond words.
I still had a long road ahead of me, but this was my turning point.
I started watching television again after that. Just a little. I was still too fragile for things like The News. All I was up for at that stage was gentle stuff, which is how—close to Christmas—I came to watch a little movie starring James Stewart called It’s a Wonderful Life. I’m not the first person in the world to feel that, somehow, this story came to me at just the right time. If you haven’t seen it, I won’t spoil it for you except to say, if you’re ever at a low point and wondering whether it’s worth going on, you might find something hopeful in this movie, as I did.
One night that week after re-reading Self Help for Your Nerves, and again feeling grateful for the gift of it, I made myself a crazy promise—one that would inspire me for many years to come.
The promise I made was this: that one day, when I was well and I had something hopeful to offer, I would take the baton—the hopeful feeling that movies like It’s a Wonderful Life and books like Self Help for Your Nerves had given to me—and I would pass it along to someone else who needed it. I had no idea who that person was, or how I’d find them—all I knew was that, if and when I came out of this, I was going to write a book. I was going to share this whole story—the bad bits, and the good bits—so that whoever was reading it would know that they were not alone, and that recovery was possible.
I felt so inspired, making that promise. It felt huge, and for a moment, that was exciting. But before the hour was over, my fear had returned, as had my habit of self-doubt, and with it stories like: Don’t get ahead of yourself. As if you’ll ever be well enough to write a book? Anyway, who the fuck would want to read your book? Who do you think you are, the Queen of Sheba? You really want people to know this about you—that you’re nuts? Have you really thought that through?
Maybe it was a stupid idea? It really did scare me, I’ll give you that much. And, yet, it also made me feel hopeful. A tiny bit excited, even. For whatever reason, this promise felt important, more important than the stigma I risked attracting if I ever did fulfil it, and more important than listening to the voice of all that fear. This promise felt like a link to a future where maybe my life would, after all, mean something. It felt like a bridge, actually: one that I could step onto and walk along every time I wanted to remember the way I felt as I first read The Weekes’s books—that I must never ever give up, because recovery is possible, even for someone like me.
So, in an attempt to shut down the cycle of rumination and self-doubt, I added a concession. I said that, yes, I would one day write this book, but I wouldn’t make myself do it until all this was behind me, way behind me. I wouldn’t do it until I was really old. Say, forty.
And it helped me, that night, to just leapfrog ahead like that, to imagine myself at that age, at forty. To imagine, just for a second, that things had worked out. That I had lived. That maybe I
