When Black Becomes a Rainbow

Gosh!  It has almost been a month since I wrote my first post.  How time flies! I promised on that first post that I would let everyone see the real me.  To be perfectly honest, it is getting a little harder trying to explain things that are going on in my life without holding back.  I don't want to upset people; no one is to blame for what I have been through, it was meant to happen.  I don't want anyone to feel that things could have been different - if they were meant to be different they would have been! When I shared this blog with my classmates from school, many expressed guilt at their lack of knowledge of what I had been through. All I could answer was that I had no idea either! The clinical depression really only came to a head in sixth form and because it deteriorated pretty quickly, it would have been difficult for anyone in school to have been able to help before it got so bad. When I look back, I remember very little from that year in school.  All I wanted

My post on Tuesday brought up two important topics.  The first being the well know saying 'don't judge a book by its cover' and the second being my desire to explain where I am with my struggles presently.  I'd like to deal with the latter point here. Putting it out there as it is: I struggle with food.   I struggle with body image. I struggle with weight.   None of these I find easy to talk about.  Over the years I have come to accept that I have had clinical depression.  But I never wanted to admit that I had an eating disorder.  Maybe because the idea behind an eating disorder; the want to be thin, is not actually something I ever valued.  When I was growing up there was no pressure to look like a supermodel. I never really thought that being thin was an important ideal.  But what I did find as my depression worsened was that not eating gave me a feeling of control.  Control over my mood.  I found that the longer I didn't eat for, the more I woul

I feel like a fraud. I have done for a long time. One of my biggest fears over the years was being 'found out'. People seeing the real me. As those who are closest to me can attest (namely my parents), one of my stronger qualities is acting. Showing myself to be fine on the outside, yet on the inside feeling so much pain. I would put all my energy into acting, purporting to be someone I was not. I felt so guilty for being two-faced. It got to a point that I didn't know what was me, and what was the 'pretend me'. It's something I am particularly struggling with now really. Well, maybe not to the extent I struggled 6 years back; but I feel I have built up a wall around me. A pretend Rivkah, who can be crazy, sarcastic and funny. Someone who doesn't think or worry. Someone irreligious who has rebelled without thought. Maybe I am just being my over-judgemental self, but I feel that I show myself to be this empty vessel and that saddens me. But that i

Hey! I hope you can forgive me for the sheepy post from last night.  For some odd reason, it gave me some relief to be able to share my insomnia with the world at large.  I only hope that tonight will be an improvement (both sleep-wise and in my post on here!).   I hate not being able to fall asleep, as do most people I assume!  It really makes you realise how little control you actually have over your life!  The most aggravating part is that  the thoughts that come up at night are the ones that you can't do anything about whilst lying in bed.  So why worry?  I guess if it were so easy we wouldn't have the condition called insomnia.  But it is so important to remind myself again and again that worrying doesn't get me anywhere, especially not when lying in a horizontal position wearing my [Care Bear] pyjamas under my [extremely warm and cosy] duvet. Okay so I realise my biggest worry at the moment is about what my future holds.  Not so big a deal then.  Well, mayb

Can't sleep. Count sheep? Has never helped me to be honest! But here is a cute little sheepy doing his calculations... An early reference to counting sheep as a means of attaining sleep can be found in Illustrations of Political Economy by Harriet Martineau, from 1832: "It was a sight of monotony to behold one sheep after another follow the adventurous one, each in turn placing its fore-feet on the breach in the fence, bringing up its hind legs after it, looking around for an instant from the summit, and then making the plunge into the dry ditch, tufted with locks of wool. The process might have been more composing if the field might have been another man's property, or if the flock had making its way out instead of in; but the recollection of the scene of transit served to send the landowner to sleep more than once, when occurring at the end of the train of anxious thoughts which had kept him awake."  There you go, you learn new t

The beginning of another week.  A good week for all I hope. Following on from Tuesday's post (ya know, the one on paperclips), I have decided that I am going to post on here twice a week.  Maybe once at the beginning of the week so I can talk about what I hope the week will bring and once at the end of the week when I can reflect on how the week has gone. I am currently struggling to write what is going on in my head; there seems to be an awful lot of activity in there at the moment!  I'll admit that I feel the perfectionism creeping in, telling me that whatever I write won't be good enough.  I am not going to fall for that again.  And posting this will be another step in the right direction.  This blog is not something that will disappear just because I don't feel good one day.  That is letting illness rule my life.  I want this blog to stay 'whatever the weather' and I want people to see me in whatever place I am.  A lot of people I sent this to r

Well, I am feeling better than yesterday - I can tell by the lack of road rage when in my KA! My pledge to keep sending this blog out more is getting more difficult. I really want to be able to publicise it more - not for myself, but for the awareness it can bring.  But there is still that very scared part of me.  Scared of this openness and the feeling of being exposed.  Anyone who has tried to open up to someone will have felt that little bit of regret afterwards wondering if maybe they had said too much.  But I don't want to look back and regret what I write.  There is no judgement on here so nothing I write is right or wrong. I appreciate it so much when people text me or message me in some way to let me know that they have connected to something I have written; it makes me realise I do have a purpose and that opening this blog was the right thing to do.  It does feel a little narcissistic though!  But the purpose was never just to be about me feeling better; it was to

Not the easiest of days.  A day when I question everything about my life.  Where am I going? What am I doing?  It is days like these that make me wonder whether I have in fact moved away from my dark place.  I know in my head that I most certainly have.  I am nothing like I was a while back.  This blog itself is testimony to how far I have come. Only I don't feel it today.  Once again, I need to remind myself that it's ok not to feel happy all of the time .  No one I know is happy 24/7.  Being sad is part of being human and it would therefore be inhumane to fight it all of the time.  The more I fight, the worse I feel, so not really worth it.  And I'm just a little bit too tired to fight tonight. I was going to end off with an apology for being a little bit pessimistic; but I think that would defeat the purpose of this being the place where I can explain how I am feeling without reserve.  I hope you can manage with a slightly sadder Rivkah... cos that is what I am

I didn't manage to post yesterday, but I have decided that obsessing over my blog is probably just as unhealthy as any other of my past and present obsessions! So some days I will post, and some days I won't.  And that's ok! On the topic of obsessions, someone reminded me the other day of how obsessions are good at disguising themselves - usually as good things.  Obsessions can paralyse a person with fear saying 'if you don't do this, you will make someone ill or cause an accident to happen'.  It's like a superstitious fear which is just that bit stronger.  The problem is when you are obsessive AND a perfectionist you can never get it right! F or those who I know with cleanliness OCD, however many times they washed their hands, they could never be clean enough. For me, I found that h owever many times I said a certain tefilla (hebrew prayer), I never said it clear enough or with enough feeling. This constant conflict in my head eventually took its t

It has been over a week since I opened up this blog, feels like a lot longer though!!! It is hard to describe how I am feeling at the moment. I think there is a part of me struggling with this 'new me'! I hear the question "who are you and what have you done with Rivkah?" coming from that part of me that is too scared to let go. There is a certain comfort in sticking with your depression. It is safe. A place to be away from the real world which can sometimes seem too scary. As a new week begins, I need to remind myself why I am doing this. The 'safety' that lures me to the depression is nothing but a dark, empty space. Nothing to do, no one to talk to and no purpose to being. Why would I want that? Self talk. What would we do without it? Reprogramming the mind is the hardest thing, but a lot of it reminds me of the saying in the talmud 'mitoch shelo lishma ba lishma' – which means literally “for out of not for its own sake c

Happy Chanukah one and all! Many people have asked me over the past week what it was that brought me to 'go public'. The thing it, it wasn't any one factor.  There were a number of events/happenings that came together to give me the strength to write 'live' to the public.  I don't think I will bore you into writing all the ins and outs of what, how and when.  But there have been a few  particular things that jump out at me. I would say that a very large part has been the tremendous professional help I have received this past year in starting to overcome my eating disorder.  As those who have suffered an eating disorder will know, it gets to a point that the eating disorder is the only 'friend' you can keep near and it attempts to stop you living life in any way, shape or form. My consultant, therapists and dietician have been phenomenal in getting me to see that I have much more to me than the illness and that once I have rid myself o

Hello there faithful followers. Got to be a quick one today; early Fridays and all that malarkey. Yesterdays post was rather lengthy and I apologise; I hope I didn't send too many of you into a stupor.  So just a small picture for today: Sometimes a cute little turtle can teach us humans a thing or two! Back tomorrow! Xx

So so true! I feel a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulder just from spilling out on here.  The amount that can go on in one head constantly amazes me!  Just one comment sets off an extremely long thought process, usually ending in debating the purpose of life (like I have all the answers!).  The thing is, you can't think your way out of depression as much as you can't think yourself out of a sprained finger.  Talking of sprained fingers, a cure of talking myself out of one would come in quite handy at the moment; my lack of co-ordination and hyper-mobility do not make a good pair when it comes to playing netball! So I walked into Accident & Emergency with my sprained finger this afternoon, and the nurse called me in to ask me more details of my injury.  She then asked me if I suffer with any medical conditions. My mind automatically wandered back to a couple of years back to this same room when I visited for an arm injury.  The nurse had asked me the

I awaken this morning to an email from the Open University. My results have come for my law course I completed this year.  I got a 2:2 My head fills with overwhelming anger.  How could I have allowed myself to fail?  A 2:2 makes me average, maybe even below average.  And average is just not good enough for my perfect standards. I almost buried myself back under my covers, ready to sleep through those bad feelings.  Ready to ignore my body's need for breakfast - why would I deserve to eat?  Maybe if I can't succeed in my academic studies I can try perfect other parts of my life.  It is amazing how quickly an eating disorder jumps to the 'rescue', wanting to trick you into a false sense of happiness.  And it is false I assure you.  There is no real happiness that comes from losing weight, or an empty stomach.  There is possibly a 5 minute break from the darkness, but if anything this break leads to an even lower sense of self-worth and a deeper pit to

My pledge to put this on Facebook has been placed on hold for the moment.  For now I am just going to send it to at least one person every day.  Slowly but surely I will conquer the world! Seriously it is getting easier though.  I haven's lost anyone as of yet.  If anything it has drawn me closer to the people I know.  And for that I am thankful.  Not just for that, but for all I have gone through in my life. Nothing happens without reason.  I may not have seen that 2 years ago, or even 6 months ago, but with hindsight I can see and appreciate the path my life has taken.  I often wonder what my life would have been without depression.  Where would I be now?  Would I be married? Would I have children? Would I have my career as a top lawyer set out for me?  I used to compare myself to the world around me and see how far behind I was.  Everyone seemed to be moving on and I was stuck in a little hole.  The problem is, the more you think in that way, the more you believe

It's Monday morning AGAIN?!!! Having hardly slept last night, I woke up this morning a little grumpy.  I sometimes wonder when I will be 'normal' again.  Kind of a weird question when I have claimed that I am not any less normal than anyone else.  Well, maybe I was wrong?  Nah.  I think we are all a little abnormal in our own way.  We have weaknesses in different areas - we are human beings!  Agreed?!? My biggest fear is that I will be left with these bruises for life.  When I say bruises, I mean the agonising thoughts about the purpose of life, the insomnia that desperately tries to keep me up at a time when no one else in the world is around and the anger that I feel every time I eat the 'wrong' thing.  It frustrates me that I have no control over these feelings.  But I do.  Maybe not the initial feelings I have, but the way in which I respond to them is well within my control. I saw this saying  the other day and it encapsulates so much: "My

Sending this out last night was possibly the scariest thing I have done.  Ever.   Opening up my secrets to those around me felt like peeling off a layer of myself,  exposing my worst parts.  But I am so glad.  I woke up this morning afraid that I had lost all those around me.  Maybe I had driven people away.  But no.  My friends are still there, and  I think I may have conquered my biggest fear; the fear of being 'found out'.  I do hope that this means that others can do it too. I haven't yet managed to post this to Facebook.  Maybe I need to give myself time.  What I am realising again and again is that my fear of being judged is in reality just my fear of myself.  It is a crafty mechanism to stop me engaging with those around me.  Depression tells you that you don't deserve to be with people.  You are not worthy of having fun.  Happiness and friendship is for good people, not for you Rivkah. But who defines good?  Are we not all made up of many different 

Wow. I never knew how good it would feel to be open.  I am also a little shaky at the thought that I have opened up my life to a lot more people than I have probably opened up to in my entire 23 years! Illnesses such as depression and eating disorders are extremely lonely ones to live with.  Every part of you wants to be alone, away from the world that just seems so dark and hopeless.  In some ways it has been harder for those around me like family and friends as they have struggled to help me find the happiness that they can see in life.  What I realised over time and meeting more and more people who have suffered these debilitating conditions, was that I wasn't any less normal than the girls in my class or the neighbours on my street. I was suffering a very real and harsh illness.  It used to annoy me when I was told 'Depression should be treated no differently to a broken toe'.  I could not come to terms with that.  But it is true.  Perfectly true. I am

It's all a bit cliché I guess. But maybe it is cliché - and that doesn't matter.  I want this to be my experiences and I don't want to hold back from anything.  This is the real me, the me I tried so hard to hide for so long.  The parts that I could never accept. I have learnt over time that I am a lot more expressive in writing than talking.  I hope that this blog will enable me to express what I have been through both to myself and to those around me.  I want people to know me, I really do.  And who knows, maybe this will help others to open up too.  As much as this helps me, I want my experiences to help others who are going through similar experiences. No-one can fight mental illness alone. And even if I only manage to help one person overcome depression, anxiety or any other form of psychological illness, I will feel I have made a difference. Publishing this blog to Facebook will probably be my biggest step to change!  I feel that anyone who I am friends with des