Recovering From A Breakdown

Trigger warning, talks about mental ill-health, baby loss, separation and the struggles of motherhood.

Recently I saw an incredible piece of performance art by Bryony Kimmings; I’m a Phoenix, Bitch. It had me in tears almost from the first second I walked through the door (which admittedly was about fifteen minutes after the show had actually started). At one point my body wretched, so powerful were her words and actions, not just at transporting me back to the pain and suffering she experienced, but to points of my own pain.

There were too many words to remember even the best lines. The show bombarded my brain with insights, flashbacks and awakenings. A one woman extravaganza of motherhood, trauma and suffering. I wished I had a notebook to scribble the thoughts it ignited, but just managing to remain upright and not be pushed down by the power of the emotions surging from the stage was task enough.

Watching the performance of another woman’s pain, seeing her breaking and then rebuilding was surprisingly cathartic. These stories help us to make sense of our own, and they inspire us to break free.

When I came home, I wrote. I wish I could conjure up the whirling of my brain, open the top and let you witness what’s inside. I fear you’d run, the ugly monster unleashed, who’d want that on their plate. Instead, you have these words.

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Sometimes I mention, flippantly – joke almost – that I’ve had a nervous breakdown. No-one comments or questions. The tone doesn’t encourage it, perhaps? I daren’t say it definitively. I’m tentatively exploring their reactions, their ability to empathise. If truth be told, I’m not really sure what a nervous breakdown is, so how can I be sure I had one? Even Google doesn’t quite have the answer; it seems there’s no simple way to describe a breakdown in your brains ability to cope.

What if tears stream off your windswept face every day as you cycle across the city? Is that a breakdown? What if you regualarly hide in the toilets at work, crying silently? Is that a breakdown? What if you scream nightly, pummelling your fists into the high pile carpet you purchased so the baby could learn to crawl on something clean? Is that a breakdown? What if every.little.thing feels too much? Is that a breakdown? What if you swear loudly at those around you as they look and stare at you ignoring the screaming toddler in the buggy? Is that a breakdown? What if this happens concurrently? Is that a breakdown?

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Breaks are normally visible – a broken plate, a broken foot – it’s not hard to see. If your mind breaks people will notice. People will SAY something. Won’t they? It seems not. In all that struggle, in all that pain, few said anything. Did they know and want to avoid it? Did they know and fear they’d catch it? Did they know and not care?

For me, there was no single trauma that triggered it, just multiple repeated blows. It wasn’t the baby loss, the partner in repeated psychosis, or the separation. It crept up on me. The first sign I can really point at and say, “there, that was the start” was me, crouched in a door way in tears, my bump protruding over my knees, my husband watching on uninterested. A few weeks later, a similar scene. This time in the car park near the train station, kneeling in the gravel, begging with my every breath for the pain to stop. Still, he watched on. Weeks, months, of unanswered screams. How many watched on silently?

It’s been six years now; my one woman show, on a circular stage. Punches raining in on me from every direction. There is no shelter in which to hide. Smaller stages surround me; friends and family out there living their own lives. Intertwined. Occasionally passing by. Unlike the scenes on the other stages, the spotlight above me doesn’t emit light. It sucks in every light wave, leaving a darkness so desolate, it’s a wonder anything lives beneath.

Could I – should I – have shared the depths of my truth? How? It was too much for my own brain to process. Outbursts of emotion allowed the excess to overflow. Words could not have described what I’d seen or felt. No doubt some feel aggrieved I didn’t notice their stories unfold more diligently. But how? I could barely breathe.

The punches kept on coming, over and over and over. Yet still I was there with the baby, needing to survive so he could thrive. Feeding (crying), bathing (crying), changing (crying), carrying (crying). What damage has been done? To him? To me? To us?

The interceding years of gaslighting and hell saw the punches send my brain ricocheting side to side. Then finally, a short calm before the storm. The birth of my baby – wanted more than most, and most of all – triggered extreme anxiety. A sharp decline ensued. Barely sleeping, my mind whirling faster than a hamster wheel. Rummaging in the dead of night, desperately seeking that white noise device. Purchased for the baby; needed for the mum. Something, anything, to stop the busyness inside my head. Psychosis a genuine possibility; were the sounds of mice scratching the moses basket real or imagined? Six more months of paranoia and anxiety before things calmed down.

And here we are.

The perpetual presence of these punches – though gentler now – knock me with incessant surprise. The impact from a harder time still remains. Bruises layered upon bruises. Bones shattered under perfect skin. All invisible unless you care to look in.

I can’t quite move forward from the pain. I grapple to understand why. Struggling to accept the reality of broken bits not yet working right. Slowly learning that you cannot run away from pain before it’s ready to release you. Pain demands your full attention. We must sit with it first. Observe it’s every move, know it’s every vain, recognise its heartbeat and understand that – once unleashed – it can grow from the smallest of seeds.

And yet still,

that is not all.

We humans are social beasts, we live and die by the relationships we form. Our pain must be heard and felt not only by us alone, but by those who proclaim to love us. They must sit amongst our shattered remains if they are to have anything to do with us once we are risen. We cannot remember our past, understand our presence, or believe in our future without others showing us the way. For life means nothing without relationships. Isn’t this why mental health is the silentest of killers?

Rebuilding after the storm is hard to do. Constantly told to change things we don’t like, and like things we can’t change. Or is it, like things we don’t like, and change things we can’t? How do I tell the difference between a friend who’s busy and one that doesn’t care? I married a man who can’t remember his own son’s birthday – surely my judgement is impaired? Is it even possible to change the story when there’s no co-star? Life is hard admittedly, but hard and alone is something else.

I’ve shed so many skins, the original version is wearing thin. This season has seen the best and worst of everything: screams of joy for my first born boy, ones of despair for my broken marriage. Finally, I’m starting to see that whilst I’m not the women I was, neither am I the woman I will become; light will shine on this new skin of mine. As I type away, feeding my newest love and settle him cheek by jowl on my own pillow, I know the light has already broken through. Now, I must learn to cultivate it. It’s hard. The path to recovery is windy and littered with false starts. I fail more than I succeed. Though hope fills me with dread – the desperation of a life without it is too bleak to contemplate.

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If you liked this you might also like my pieces on reaching in – supporting a friend with depression; inside my mind and everyone hates me.

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