Feeling low.

The weather has changed here – for the last few weeks we’ve had endless sunshine, blue skies and it’s been warm too. Today it’s overcast and cold. Maybe it’s the weather that’s causing me to feel low, or maybe it’s my biorhythms or something like that – not that I know anything about biorhythms.

Ups and downs are a natural part of life – the usual ebb and flow of our emotional state together with the ever changing state of ones day to day existence. Of course without the lows one can never truly experience the highs. That said the emptiness brought on by the lows is just depressing. A certain neediness begins to express itself in most of us – whether that’s in the form of eating more, drinking more, going shopping or crying down the telephone to your friends. But even doing those things doesn’t really fill the aching void that sits there within you.

For me now is a good time to sit and write – particularly the Novel – it relies so much upon the central character having extreme emotions that to attempt to write the passages when she is depressed is considerably harder when I’m in a good mood. I suppose that whether I like it or not I tend to write in a manner similar to that of a Method Actor – it’s necessary to experience the feelings for oneself in order to give a true representation of them. And sometimes that can be great fun – just removing the inhibitions of common sense and allowing my imagination to roam freely amongst the wilder areas that tend to see little of the light of day. Other times it can be almost cathartic to put down on (virtual) paper all that I feel in very brutal statements – getting all the bile out and away from me. Sometimes, like now, it just all makes me feel tired and I have a huge desire to just go to sleep, pull the duvet over my head and close out the world until I feel stronger.

I know that the low feeling will pass – they always do because nothing lasts forever, but just now I’m flat. I read somewhere, or maybe heard on a Radio 4 programme, that when you feel down – although thinking about it I believe the programme was referring specifically to proper depression, not just being a bit pissed off, but anyway….What they suggested was that you should ‘enjoy’ that time – see it as a time for withdrawing from your life and recuperating – taking time out for yourself, pampering yourself and not trying to be or do anymore than you are. That sounds just like I live my life anyway….

Generally my advice to others when they’re down is to count your blessings – yes I know it’s a cliché, but it’s true that there is always someone worse off, and we take so much for granted in our society that it’s too easy to forget how fortunate we are to have a roof over our heads, food, fresh water, all of those things that are just there. At the moment however, I can’t take my own advice. Nothing really to feel majorly miserable about, but as someone just put it to me, Life is a bit shite at the moment.
And funnily enough that made me smile, thanks Nick.