Monday 18 February 2013

Self Help 101

Sometimes, you just get in one of those moods. You know, the ones where it seems like everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. Negative feelings seem to multiply like a snowball of misery thundering downhill, picking up speed as well as plenty more negatives besides. Yes, you feel like a victim. Why me? Well, sometimes, buddy, it’s just not your day.

Now I know many of my male friends would put this down to the simple fact of ‘being a woman’. And I can’t deny, that hormones may well be behind many of my bad moods. But at the end of the day, so what? If blokes are telling me they never have a day like this, where they wake up in a black mood which turns out just to be a shade of grey in comparison to what’s to come, then I would be stunned.

So-called self-help ‘experts’ bleat endlessly about ‘breaking the cycle’ of negativity and all that baloney. Well okay, maybe it’s a legitimate point. But what happens when you’re a fan of science, a cynical anti-hippy such as myself who just cannot be doing with deep breathing, acupressure and god forbid, chanting positive mantras? Give me a break. Somebody give me a REAL solution to a day like today.

And don’t you dare tell me ‘it could be worse’. Please tell me I’m not alone in finding that the most annoying response to the blues ever invented. Of COURSE it could be worse. I’m not an idiot. I am quite aware that there are children starving in Africa, and I am very sad about that. And I am genuinely deeply grateful for the health and well-being of all of my family members and of myself. But these assurances are not enough - in this precise moment in time - to convince me this isn’t the WORST day in the history of EVER.

Let’s think of an example shall we. Let’s use, ooh, today. Seeing as I’m writing in precisely one of these moods. Or perhaps, the aftermath of it. We’ll see. I had spent the weekend watching the excellent Fantastic 4’s two day ball hockey tournament at Gateshead Leisure Centre, hosted by the North-East Dekstars club of which I am a member.

Why was I watching instead of playing? You might enquire. A good question! I’m expecting a baby, and having feigned a back injury to cover up the news until the 12 week scan gave me the all clear to tell the world last week, I hadn’t been in hockey-playing action since before Christmas. As the sprains, bruises, grazes and general batteredness of my hockey-playing peers can attest, it's not a sport for the faint-hearted, let alone the delicate of condition.

I really enjoyed the tournament and was proud to watch the 4 teams of Dekstars give it their all, all weekend long. I even went to the Shark Club in Newcastle afterwards for some food and (soft) drinks with the team. All very nice.

Yet I woke up Monday morning feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. The reality of what I’d missed out on being a part of solidified into a big, painful, real thing as I saw all the statuses on Facebook of my team-mates, sore, battered, bruised, proud, hungover, and happy. And it’s not just that. I’m missing out on a trip to Canada for the World Ball Hockey Championships as part of Team GB, having been selected in October 2012, one of the proudest moments of my life.

Many might question my decision to subsequently get pregnant and scupper my chance at international level competition in a sport I love with a passion (despite having only been involved with it since June 2012). I have reflected on the very same question myself and I can assure you, this is the one and only thing that would sideline me, aside from serious injury, from playing the sport I love. The desire to start a family is strong and inexplicable, and despite my apparent youth (!) I am in fact a stately 31 years old and heading swiftly for 32. Not over the hill just yet, but from a child-bearing point of view, worth getting a move on.

When it comes to once in a lifetime opportunities, I have sacrificed one, yes. But who knows, had I waited… if I may have sacrificed another. I wasn’t prepared to take that risk. That being said, I did not expect it to happen as quickly as it did – I thought I may even still be able to play in Canada, as if it didn’t happen straight away, I may as well have held on for a few more months. But that’s fate for you.

Yes, okay, I am a lover of science and a hater of all things pseudo and namby-pamby. So it may seem hypocritical for me to harp on about fate. But I do have a belief in things happening ‘for a reason’. Timing is clearly not my forte, in this case at least. But perhaps - maybe in a few months, maybe in a few years - I will look back on my less than fortuitous ‘planning’ if it can even be called that, with an element of stoicism, as I reflect – ‘it’s for the best because…’.

That explanation took longer than I meant it to and has become something of a reflective reasoning exercise for me. All that to say – I woke up this morning and the gravity of the situation hit me, all at once. The thing that is ‘mine’ – hockey – is gone. Not forever, but for the foreseeable future, and despite the lovely friends I have made at the North East Dekstars, not being able to be a part of something like the Fantastic 4’s tournament cannot help but make you feel like an outsider. Especially when you can’t even partake in a few drinks afterwards to toast your friends’ efforts.
I felt sorry for myself, plain and simple. But not just a bit mopey. Massive, crushing, utterly desolate misery. This, as I look back upon it and my subsequent reactions throughout this fateful day, was quite probably exacerbated by the dreaded pregnancy hormones, which, despite full knowledge of their existence, do not stop you feeling like your world is caving in around you for several sad hours at a time.

I came into work amid a swathe of colleagues leaving, or about to leave, having accepted the voluntary severance hastily offered by our short-sighted institution, leaving us not just short-staffed but missing valuable colleagues, and friends, my husband included. Suddenly my lunch hours are free – instead of wandering into town or down to the Quayside with him, I am now at a loose end. On any other day I could perhaps reflect positively on this development – I could use the time to write more? Get some exercise? Nope, not in this mood. It’s just a bitter cherry on top of a very sour pie.

And then the torrent of little sprinkles to go on top of that pie – shards of irritation, annoyance and disappointment all around me blown up beyond all sensible proportions into huge injustices. The one Watford FC away game I could attend, in Hull on Easter Monday, postponed until the Tuesday evening because of VILE Sky TV. The hoodie I had bought for my husband’s birthday arriving but not in the colour I had ordered – stupid website misrepresenting the product. Jake Bugg on the radio – his nasal voice an irritant to my poor ears; I nearly punched the radio in frustration. And another set-back in the complicated organisation of my best friend’s hen do – just a small one but in the grand scheme of my small-world view this horrible morning, it could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I sat at my desk fighting with my own morosity, struggling to keep on top of it all – ‘it’s just Monday blues, it’s just hormonal’. But literally everything felt as though it was going against me and when you feel that way, it’s impossible to break out of the funk. I desperately wanted to go home and curl up in bed, possibly never to return.

So. I’m still here, still at my desk (yes, I should be working. No, I don’t care – I partially blame this place for my horrendous day). And I feel a bit calmer. ‘Finally, the hormones have subsided,’ cry the men, more in hope than relief. That as may be. It turns out that as much as the small things get you down on days like today, it’s the small things you cling to that can help you claw your way free of the mire. A walk in the sun at lunchtime, a nice evening meal at home to look forward to, and half an hour or so away from the daily grind to put it all down on paper and realise that things really aren’t that bad.

I’m not going to say I made a big deal over nothing. The delayed reaction gutted-ness to the cruel amputation of hockey from my life was a very real feeling that I think would have hit me hard after a weekend like this one regardless of hormonal influences. But what it triggered possibly could have been avoided if I’d engaged in this therapeutic writing exercise at the beginning of the day instead of leaving it until now. If I’d lightened the mood in the office by engaging with colleagues instead of hunching my shoulders and resisting human interaction under the false cloud of belief that it would just make me feel worse.

There’s no hard and fast rule for ‘breaking the cycle of negativity’ and I sure as hell am not going to try heavy breathing or whatever the hell the namby-pamby arty-farty self-help lot tell you to do. But I am going to leave this clip here, as a reminder that however bad I am feeling, I am woman enough to admit that the hormones DO make it worse. I admit this through the medium of a clip of a tree frog that, when I was feeling at my lowest point, made me smile. Then laugh. And then burst uncontrollably into tears again. I’m not even kidding. Aaaah, what are you going to do?!
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