I didn’t realise the side effects would be so severe. Sometimes I’m a bad reader of my body and state of mind, I can show a complete lack of self-awareness. I’m also inconsiderate towards myself and this can be projected onto others. I didn’t mean to stop my taking my anti-depressants, I just did. I should have done this gradually over a course of time so I had control and awareness of what was going on.
It started with the dizziness, heart palpitations and this constant feeling that I was getting the flu. I remember waiting for a train at Elephant & Castle station, it was around 10pm and I had several layers on, none of this could stop my body feeling like a block of ice. I was shaking and shivering even walking up and down the station platform didn’t get me warm. This was only magnified by seeing no one else as in much discomfort as I had felt.
My body ached and my feet felt like they didn’t exist.
I felt numb, totally dead inside.
Later that week, I started to angrier, pure rage! I hated everything and flew off the handle at the slightest inconvenience, this was personified whenever I got on public transport and I found myself shouting at innocent by-standers to get out of my way. The dizziness and heart palpitations persisted and I was convinced that I was getting the flu, my body felt in limbo. Sleep brought no solace as my dreams were so vivid and anxiety ridden that I was convinced they were real.
During this time I had completely forgotten about the anti depressants as I had dissociated from them as I hadn’t taken them for 5 days, it still hadn’t occurred to me that I was in the grips of anti depressants discontinuation syndrome. As the week continued I became angrier, more depressed and I had lost any sense of self, I became completely detached. I became an emotional void, I felt myself fading away. After 7 days the symptoms stated to ease but I had felt myself estranged from everyone. My boyfriend was aware that I was not quite myself. I had not been the easiest person to be around that week and it was only after making a passing comment to my boyfriend that I had stopped taking my medication that he realised what the problem was. After talking and much googling I recognised the symptoms that I had been suffering from. Why hadn’t I realised what was happening?
Was I in denial? I was astonished that I had been so careless with my mental health, so blasé!
I felt guilty and very stupid for causing a situation that could have been avoided. I was now dealing with the physical and mental implications of my decision.
It has been at least 3 weeks and the physical symptoms have worn off and it’s only now that I’m able to process what happened, why I chose to do what I did and why I didn’t choose to withdraw from the medication gradually and go to the doctors for advice. Despite this I feel good, I’m not feeling depressed or anxious at the moment and I don’t regret coming off the medication, just the manner that I did it. I’ve been thinking about starting therapy again but this time I would seek out a Black female therapist as they would have shared experience with me. I’ve been looking at The Black, African and Asian Therapy Network (BAATN) for a possible therapist.
I had no idea BAATN existed until 6 months ago when I listened to a Radio 4 documentary called Black Girls Don’t Cry, the journalist Marverine Cole spoke to two Black women about their struggles with mental health and the lack of support they’ve received a Black women when accessing NHS mental health services. Cole also spoke to a therapist at The Black, African and Asian Therapy Network (BAATN). This still blindsides me! Why wasn’t I aware of BAATN previously? Listening to this show was a revelation. At the time I had just started taking my medication again and was acclimatising to my physical and mental state.
I have listed to the show several times since and not only did it validate my experience but had also provided me with valuable information. Why aren’t NHS mental Health services in UK making ethnic minority patients aware of BAATN?
Why isn’t there more readily available information about BAATN, even from your local GP in UK?
However, I appreciate that the NHS is free and has experienced a decade of austerity which has eroded its capacity to really serve society. In saying that it’s still important that we are given choices to inform how we can treat our mental health and I believe that I had known about BAAT I would have been given an alternative instead of relying upon NHS. When my mum died in 2015, I waited a year on NHS Mental Health waiting list, before I was assigned a therapist for treatment. I was prescribed 13 weeks of talking therapy of Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) for grief, depression and anxiety. I was also taking anti depressants, as well as working full time and studying.
When I am with friends, I sometimes feel resentful, tired, angry and occasionally bored. This is not a nice feeling and not a nice thing to think of when I’m around people who only have their best intentions for me. This makes me very unreliable sometimes and this is not a characteristic that I would usually associate with myself. I have been feeling a bit of social anxiety, not enough to paralyse me but enough to find that I’m avoiding social events, dinner with friends and generally avoiding any opportunity to be in a room full of people. This lack of motivation also extends to my photography, which I’ve been feeling rather apathetic about, the thought of starting my hair series projects feels me with dread, I can’t face taking any self portraits which only aides my lack of discipline. I’ve been off my medication now for nearly two months, and I don’t miss taking my medication anymore and I don’t miss the fatigue and drowsiness that haunted me everyday.
Drowsiness that would come in woozy waves which would end with a massive yawn, and which usually resulted in making my head spin. I’ve been thinking about things outside of my mental health, less on the state of my mind and more about my productivity as a photographer. Has my mental health been a help or hindrance? I am slightly ashamed of admitting this but I feel that my anxiety has been a key driving force in my achievements to date. These past few years I have been very productive and I found many of the ideas that I have been procrastinating on coming into fruition, finding that extra energy sometimes from my anxiety has left me feeling fraught and exhausted.
Especially after completing my MA, my brain went into overdrive and it took me a good year for my body and brain to work in sync again. The experience of my Mum dying and completing my MA altered my identity, it changed me. There’s no going back. I wouldn’t want to necessarily and I suppose I’ll never know how I would have been if my Mum hadn’t died so suddenly, I still would have done my MA and my brain would have altered due to that experience anyway. In some ways it has been a help, more so than I care to acknowledge, it’s slightly scary to think that I’m not capable of working without the added tension that my anxiety/depressions creates as sometimes I can’t relax and I get panicked if I’m not being ‘productive’ even on walks in my daily grind.
I feel the compulsion to bring my camera ‘just in case’.
Especially if you find yourself facilitating your anxiety/depression as a motivation. How to translate this energy in a way which is positive is I suppose a good thing but sometimes I feel I shouldn’t do this. It goes back to my previous point about using depression and anxiety as a motivation for my practice. Today I feel tired, mentally tired more than anything. Just breathe and take moment. Everything with be alright, and I must keep telling myself that the fog has lifted slightly further away than I anticipated. I’ve been pretty quiet for the past few days, no idea why but I’m finding solace in saying less and doing more. Sometimes speaking feels excessive, doing something no matter how menial feels more satisfying. It’s nothing personal. I’m just decompressing, processing and when I’m ready to speak I will.
A new way that I found myself ‘managing’ my anxiety is to be silent. Say nothing then you feel nothing but that’s usually the opposite and I find myself feeling too much and having no way to express myself. It usually lasts a day or two. It does feel like fog, not as bad a previous fogs that I’ve experienced and one that is tangible unlike the episode I had today. My lack of confidence has meant that I haven’t left the house in a couple of days. I enjoy the peace and sanctity of home as I am able to rest and not over think anything.
I distract myself with chores and recently re-organised my wardrobe in anticipation with autumn which is slowly encroaching. I remember this time last year my mental health started to nose dive and I found myself back on medication again, but I also met my boyfriend so it wasn’t all bad but the majority of it was pretty awful if I’m honest. I really need to be honest with myself if I’m going to try not to revert to back to what happened to me last year.
I’m sitting here and reflecting on what has come and with some awareness of the challenges ahead of me, as it’s been four years since my Mum died and it would have been her 60th birthday in October. This year has been tough mentally and physically but if I sit back and think to how I was this time last year, despite everything I am in a better space and I am progressing well. I suppose this makes me feel hopeful and I need to remember this more often which is hard when I’m within the grips of my anxiety which means that I lose perspective and I can’t see through the fog that evades any rationale thought. Autumn is now here but I can feel winter creeping up on me, and I’m feeling ok, tired but I’m always tired in some way but if I think back to last year then that’s a different matter. After a few months of growing anxiety and stress - unacknowledged I hit a point where I ended to start taking my medication again.
Winter is usually the roughest part of the year for me, and I do feel that I have a better understanding of my mental health and I all I can promise myself is that I will keep working to not let myself get overwhelmed by my mental health problems and when I do feel anxious that I need to seek help.
I have a good support network and I’m grateful for that.
Previously, I have had very bad experiences with doctors and with anti-depressants in the past. Mostly from doctors who didn’t listen, made me fill out a questionnaire where I had to record my feelings out of ten, pick a number, any number that’s what I used to do - but not too high as you don’t want them to actually think you’re mad and then you’ll get sectioned. Not high enough so that they would look at you was though you were something to be pitied and fixed - with medication. Not too high as I don’t want to feel the shame and how would I explain that to my Mum. I went to great lengths to conceal everything - not explaining how I feel, building up a resilience that still haunts me to this day and led me to having a panic attack on my mum’s birthday.
I didn’t want to seek help and I reluctantly dragged myself to the doctors, exhausted and completely zoned eyes. I can remember my eyes feeling dry and sore - from crying and the blurred vision that my anxiety attack gave me. My experience with my most recent doctor was helpful - she was nice and considerate and had plenty of help and information to hand. She even told me that she gets at least two patients a week coming to her with similar situation to mine. The medication worked for a while.
Although the one of the symptoms - dizziness was very hard to shake off, so was the lethargic energy that seemed a permanent feature despite how much sleep I got. Every time I yawned I could feel my head spinning and seeing small spots in my vision - which blurred and slowed down to a pace that made me feel sick. I don’t miss having those symptoms and it has been 8 months since I came off my medication - feel things and I don’t mind but I have also learnt to not allow myself to get immersed in my depression and anxiety this can work for me sometimes.
It’s almost been a year since I came off my medication, my hair has grown back after my irrational (with hindsight) decision to shave it all off, at the time I was convinced that this act could signify a positive change, a renewal of myself but it actually made me feel more self conscious and irritated that I had to go through a whole process of waiting for my hair to grow back. I would like to break this habit regarding my hair and my anxiety. The act of cutting my hair (I have never had any urges to physically harm my body) can bring a temporary sense of relief and renewal and provides a focus for me to fixate on which can distract me from my anxiety/depression but it’s a temporary measure which eventually makes me feel worse as I begin critiquing myself and finding ways to undermine my self worth.
My anxiety has always been performed through my hair, when I find myself afflicted with the nervous energy that is associated with my hair I can forgot it momentarily whilst I play with my hair. Twisting, pulling, plaiting, cutting, combing my fingers through my hair, finally - my anxiety has an outlet and I feel that I’m performing a meaningful task. The ritual of playing with my hair gives me structure and I’m able to centre myself in my current context. I always find my anxiety exacerbates my introversion. I enjoy the act of repeating the ritual of playing with my hair, I think that’s why I like having my hair in braids, which I usually do myself. I usually take 7 to 9 hours, just me and the constant pulling and braiding of my hair, I feel a sense of achievement - the excessive nervous energy of my anxiety has served a purpose.
The cycle of cutting my hair started when I was younger, maybe after my Dad died. However, when my Mum passed away the habit became more ingrained and detrimental. I would convince myself that it’s ok to change my look every so often but really it was a way for me to exercise control, and it was also very expensive habit to maintain.
It’s been whole year since I came off my anti-depressants.
At this point I’m reflecting back on what I was and what I am now, to say that my anxiety/depression has gone would be a lie but I do feel mentally in a better place, the pressure has been relived slightly and if I compare myself to the person I was last year then I it would be fair to say that I have changed, become more aware of myself and my habitual ways of thinking and acting. I’ve made a commitment to try to be kinder to myself and find solace in small things in life.
As spring approaches, I’m feeling like I’m settling into the year and my creativity is coming back, in burst of energy and I’m engaging with these moment as and when as I can. By not putting excessive amounts of pressure on myself, my mindset is realigning itself to new ways of thinking, old habits remain but new ones are coming through which feels like progress.
Progress. For now anyway.
Progress is great if other exterior factors do not impede on your progress, so far the anxiety/depression was ok until a week ago when this Covid-19 virus started to ravish every sector of UK, the spread from Asia, through to Europe and the rest of the world.
This episode has provided society with a stark reminder of how precarious our lives are.
The new normal is social distancing, social isolation and working from home. People are stockpiling and even the most mundane things such as pasta, rice and toilet roll have become sought after commodities that I usually took for granted. Initially I wasn’t anxious, not complacent but I suppose I took the situation for granted but as the virus became more apparent in my life. Going to the supermarket and seeing empty shelfs which would usually be stocked full of the basic essentials to people slowly disappearing from my daily commute as people started to self isolate or work from home, the enormity of the situation overwhelmed me yesterday and I had a panic attack. Not a big one but enough to send my head spinning into a downward spiral of disappear. After an hour I was ok but my concentration had disappeared and my spirit felt crushed.
Panic and feeling lost and highly anxious have been at the forefront of my mind for the past three days; stuck at home working at a desk which is usually reserved as a safe space for my boyfriend has now become my work space, my creative energies have pretty much deserted me as I go into work mode. I have no headspace to think about my projects, ideas for exhibition or funding applications. All of these pursuits don’t seem to matter anymore. In fact I’m seriously rethinking what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. Things need to change but in the meantime, I need to try and walk the tightrope of life until things calm down and I can think rationally and not reactively.
So many thoughts and most of them are in an incoherent state at the moment and I’m trying to apply logic when I can. But spring is here and that’s a good thing at least! I can see it creeping from beyond my bedroom window. The sun sprinkles on the ground allowing nature to reclaim the environment after being dormant since autumn. I feel as though I shouldn’t enjoy it, that I’m not allowed to claim agency over the outdoors - going outside now implies danger and everyone you come across is a potential threat to your health.
I went outside yesterday and it was incredibly stressful, there are less people about now that restrictions have been pit in place by the government - 2 metre distance between each other and no meeting of groups of three or more. When someone crosses my path I immediately find ways to avoid them, I even crossed the road once when I saw a young girl having a coughing fit.
Daily outside activities are kept to a minimum and you’re encouraged to stay inside so that you don’t affect people with your germs. Nothing is open, society has stopped. The wheels of capitalism have ground to a halt and all of the usual rules don’t seems to apply anymore. Now I’m bombarded on social media and in the mainstream media with messages to stay active. This is no time to waste you must be creative - or it’s slow down take time, read a book do all of the chores you’ve been putting off as you’ve got nothing else to do. No! This is the time to find yourself and start something new, make that side hustle your main hustle, write that book or start a diary documenting the cocoon of your home.
Meanwhile …. people are losing their lives, losing their jobs, and losing their sanity.
A Black women who resided in Peckham died last weekend from COVID-19. She was 36, she was married and had three children. She had no underlying conditions but when she went to hospital to seek treatment she was told that her symptoms were not severe enough and was sent home.
A few days later she died at home.
Hearing about her story, a women who lived in the same neighbourhood as me, was a profound shock to me. She was healthy, she was young, she was a mother. And yet her life was not deemed important by medical health professional. Another Black woman has died as her life was not seen as being important. Her pain was not acknowledged because she was never seen as person.
So now going outside presents too much of a risk, I wake up everyday anxious if I start coughing or feeling a bit like I’m getting a cold. It’s probably hay fever, I get it every spring and autumn but now every symptom that indicates that it could be COVID-19 fills me with anxiety and dread. I dread going outside, I dread doing anything that involves human contact and I dread the thought that more people will die. Sounds crazy to say it but I hope I’m not one of them. My left ear is burning and my tear ducts feel moist but I can’t cry.
I feel heavy and lethargic, I feel rage and I feel overwhelmed by everything that’s happening. I feel like this everyday and everyday day feels the same. I’m not in the mood to talk and engaging with others feels like a chore. Awkward, it felt inappropriate to celebrate my birthday at a time when everything is feeling the strain of the lockdown. I went for a walk which was nice as I had not left the house for 7 days, I was being to get agoraphobic so going outside was nice.
The streets where quiet and when I cam across someone we automatically distanced ourselves from each other, this is the new normal - seeing others as a potential threat to your health. I spent most of my walk diverting between the back roads, looking at the pretty flowers, the colour and the warmth of the sun on my back was nice - reassuring and created a distinction from the interior space that I have been inhabiting.
I collected a bunch of discarded Camilla flowers from my walk, they felt velvety and smooth to touch and I wanted a memento from the day. The pink glow was vivid and I liked the endless layers of petals which made the flowers look dense. They felt substantial in my hand and I wonder what they will look like this time next year. Once back inside I felt tired, doing small things like going outside is now exhausting. The day ended with a nice dinner, wine and a Zoom chat with friends in London and Berlin.
I spend do much time in front of the screen now, I’ve almost forgotten what’s its like to have conversation in person with someone other than my boyfriend. A few days later the anxiety and tension that had been building up crushed me, I ended crying, a lot. More so then I anticipated. Ugly crying, snot and sadness seeping out of me, I felt weak and tired. Recently I had been feeling tense, sleeping erratically and have an underlying sense of ennui had been determining my state of mind. After the weeping, I felt a sense a relief, a lifting of the tension and an acknowledge of that my anxiety and gotten the best of me despite my best efforts. It has been several months since pandemic began, exhausted and fed up some days, angry and disillusioned the next. People have died, many people have suffered and the Black community in UK have suffered disproportionately due to COVID-19.
Institutional racism meant that Black women are dying at a higher rate of COVID-19 than their white counterparts, reading about the deaths of new mothers and pregnant Black women has been particularly poignant for me. I can see the trauma that racism creates continuing, as the persistent toxicity of racism permeates a new generation. I am left feeling sad and worried about these children who have been left motherless. I wonder if my mother would have survived COVID-19 if she had contacted it, luckily no one in my family has died but I always think about Belly Mujinga. Belly Mujinga was spat at by a man who had tested positive for COVID-19 and had knowingly affected her with the disease. Belly had an underlying health condition and was inadequately supported by her employers as she had no Personal Protective Equipment whilst at work which involved being in contact with general public. The Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) could have saved her life if she has been wearing it at the time of her attack. Seeing images of her grief stricken husband wearing a t-shirt with her face on it at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in June brought me to tears. His strength and his determination shined through but so did his pain and grief. I kept sending letters to my MP, London Transport and Mayor of London to get answers, this brought no solace or answers.
No one will be prosecuted for her death, no repercussions will be felt by the man who spat at her so violently that he transmitted a disease that killed another person. What is her life worth in the eyes of the institutions that govern us? Nothing. What is her life worth in the eyes of her family and friends?
Everything. Black Lives Matters. Always.
But for how long with the gaze of whiteness be on Black people? How much will they be able to take before they turn away and look elsewhere? Some people see this moment, the death of George Floyd, Belly Mujinga, Breonna Taylor amongst the many ways Black lives taken away as a wake up call. I see you on Instagram performing your allyship rather than listening and reflecting. To actually make moves to change systematics structures that have oppressed Black people for centuries. I see my timeline blackout for one day to then resume back once lockdown restrictions have been lifted and everyones flocking to the beach or to the pub or back to the shops again.
Although, I have seen a resurgence of sharing of information, ideas, concepts and opinions being shared about abolition of the police, how we can redistribute resources if we defunded the police, Black Feminism, Black Power, Black Mental Health Services, how to create self sustainable communities and an increased awareness about Black Transgender lives. Amongst all of this, I have taken strength and solace but I’m still at home, feeling anxious and aware that if I catch COVID-19 I am very likely to suffer quite badly or even die from it. As a Black woman my life has never felt so precarious. My life has fundamentally changed since the pandemic started, and I don’t want to go back to how life was before, before was no better I want my future to be better.
I want Black Lives to Matter.
Growing up with two Black parents who had experienced violence at the hand of the police and from institutions from schools to employment, I was made aware that my life would be difficult and different to my white peers. I went to Saturday school in Brixton to further my education and understanding of my Black identity, this also developed an academic rigour that installed to this very day, I thank my parents for this education and for taking time to install a sense of worth within myself.
I am Black, but I am also a light skinned Black woman and I have noted that over the years that I’m seen as being less threatening and often more palatable then darker skinned Black women. This is a privilege, it provides me with a closer proximity to whiteness. I remember having a white friend school in the first year of secondary school, she lived with her Mum and two younger brothers in Streatham.
After school we would hang out doing nothing in particular, she would regularly try to get adults to buy her cigarettes, sometimes she was lucky. On on occasion, I went back to her house after school and I met her mum for the first time. She was working class white woman, probably around the same age as my parents. We were all sat in the kitchen round the table, before I knew it she had asked me,
‘Are you half-caste?
I said, ‘No, I’m Black’.
She said ‘but you’re so light you look like you have some of us in you, are you sure you’re not half-caste?’
At that point my friend had burst into a rage and started shouting at her Mum, ‘you can’t say that, that’s racist, you’re a racist bitch.’ They continued to argue amongst themselves, her two younger brothers just staring at me; occasionally her Mum would look over just to double check, as though she didn’t believe me. I sat there silently. I was 11 years old and had no idea what colourism was and that was my first experience. This moment has been solidified in my mind as a momentous experience, an experience that made me aware of how racism, colourism and misogynoir are all intertwined to undermined and oppresses Black people even further.
I still feel uneasy with the lockdown restrictions being relaxed, although it changes all the time so it’s hare to know what’s going on. This government seems to deliberately create confusion, gaslighting everyone into thinking that spikes in virus is their fault. Apparently people like me are not taking social distancing measures seriously. This is not based on any factual evidence but when has right wing been interested in facts when it comes to manipulating a situation to suit their rhetoric.
Dominic Cummings and least we not forgot that he broke the fundamental rules of lockdown at the high of the pandemic and he still has a job, a position to influence policy and infrastructures of UK society. He is also a white middle class cis male, so of course he gets away with it. I am wondering if London is not helping with my state of mind? I wonder if moving is a viable option, maybe somewhere abroad? Whenever I think about my future I do not see it in London or UK. I feel suffocated by COVID-19, Brexit and the rhetoric of right wing government. But I realise that it might not be possible to find solace anywhere else so I come back to square one. My anxieties have become more low level, they still remain and, despite everything I feel I have been on a huge learning curve over the past few months.
As we head towards the end of a tumultuous year, I am feeling weirdly optimistic, I say weirdly as I have never attributed optimism to my outlook. However, here I am despite the ailments that make my life arduous I would like to take this moment to reflect on what will become of me next.
I am not sure in all honesty but I am hopeful and this means that I am no longer ruled by fear which is a good thing, I am hoping to be bolder, embrace everything and to not question my capacity as a women and as a creative women. I accept that I wont be consistent, that I will make mistake and that my anxiety and depression can come hurtling back to debilitate me, if does happen it happens but essentially I know that deep down that I will be ok.
