It’s hard to write when you’re neck-deep in a depressive episode. Anything, really. Even a shitting shopping list, or a note.

Your brain feels like a constant attack of sharp and noises. Everything about your body feels off, and not in a way that makes much sense. Yesterday, I spent a chunk of my late shift at work with the uncomfortable sense that I had too many teeth. Sometimes I seem to phase out, losing seconds of time by just going too deep into my own head. My surroundings seem to melt around me, until I snap back with a start.

Sharp. Jagged, loud, at once both intimidatingly, vastly huge and so tight and small it almost chokes me. Tears come frequent and terrifyingly hard – accompanied almost always by a weird, sinking feeling in the pit of my belly.

It’s been a month since my last proper post but this depressive episode has been running for a good while longer. I’ve spent a lot of time beating myself up for not *doing anything creative*, like a break from writing or making things suddenly nixed those things from who I am. It doesn’t, though. Laura Jane Williams’s writing, especially her new book Ice Cream For Breakfast, was partially responsible for helping me see that, along with Ruby Tandoh and Leah Pritchard’s amazing zine on mental health.

Right now, I’m learning to preserve my energy, taking small steps and focussing on my day job, and taking care of my basic needs and wants. Day by day, I just see where I get and keep breathing. Forcing myself to write – for whatever non-essential reason my brain conjures up – makes me want to hate writing. I can’t stand the tortured creator myth because it seems so counter-productive to me to put your art at the front at the cost of something of yourself.

So I’m not.

I’m temporarily abandoning ship on writing fiction for submission. And I’m not going to force myself to live any experience for the sake of content on this blog (which is something I’ll tackle on another day, as this deserves a post of its own). It’s my way of taking care of that something of myself I feel like I’ve abandoned.

I’m burnt out.

Simple as that. There’s no point in me weighing my words or giving this post a funny little introduction. Because there ain’t nothing funny about this. Those three words can’t, to me, be spun into something they’re not.

It’s important for me to write it down as plainly as this. It’s important in times like this, when health both mental and physical are collaborating to create a giant and painful fog around me, that I write it down like this. It’s like sending myself a semaphore message though the fog – a Norman-from-Bake-Off-esque missive in written form, which I can come back to and read so I can remind myself that this is what’s going on.

It helps. Just like I use Spoon Theory to express how this feels to others, this is how I express myself to… well, ehm… myself. I am burnt out. And it’s okay to sit down and re-evaluate for a second. Take breaths. Relax shoulders. Rest and sit with self in some weird form of peace.

I’m writing this down now because in the last few days especially, I have been angry with myself for not “being more productive”. Full on, red-hot, how-dare-you-you-silly-shit rage. Which in itself is completely anti-productive as it sends you into this weird cycle of apologising to yourself for no reason as you go into overdrive trying to keep up with doing everything this anger is telling you you’re “meant” to be doing but aren’t doing. “Meant” to be doing is the key here – because your brain will start making shit up that really isn’t essential or time sensitive or something and then it’ll start shouting at you because this thing that isn’t of the essence/deadline-sensitive is something you should have already done. Twice.

I’m burnt out. Day job, tiring brain, tiring body, Weird Cycle of Shit I’m Supposedly Meant To Be Doing.

So, yeah.