For Good

I'm back!

Sorry to take a 3 month blogging break after only a handful of posts but I've been on an insane journey and it simply wasn't safe to post from where I was. I have a handful of drafts from the start to post, and I will with time, but I want to tell you first about my hiatus: I took an acting class.

Here's a little fact I didn't know about actors: they feel things. I'm not saying I ever thought actors had no feelings as people but the ones that you believe as people? That's cause they believe it too. When you see Philip Seymour Hoffman up there on the screen being a badass, then he was bad to the bone, embodying the tiniest details such as how his character would open the sugar sachet.. That was my first big problem. How could I address the inner turmoil of someone else when I couldn't survive my own?

It took a lot of seemingly needless drama, utter confusion and simply crying but I got there. I dug deep and found a way to feel really intense feelings! Unfortunately, just like cleaning and pretty much anything worth a damn, it got a lot worse before it got better. I started to get very low about three weeks in. My body couldn't function 9-5 (did I mention I'm a freelance theatre technician?!) and I couldn't handle actually feeling. I wanted to die but my rationality knew I'd be screwing a lot of really great clients over if I just vanished. I called up my boyfriend one night and told him it should be over. I bluntly said it was too much for anyone to lose a partner but an ex was okay. He needed to let me go so I could disappear. He talked me down but the thoughts continued. I would stand on the bridge of the Liffey in the blistering wind smoking my lungs out instead of catching a bus. I would sit on the beach in the darkness just to feel like life was near me. I would read plays all night just to ignore my own mess... And I would tell him everything until we ebbed into nothing.

I stopped trusting him, he stopped coming over, the sex got so awful til it stopped altogether. I was so confused and afraid, not so much of losing him but knowing when he let go I would leave. One Saturday we finally talked it all out and decided to be friends. Within a day I was in Beaumont Hospital with a drip in my arm, my mother believing she was watching me die. Two days later I was being told if I'd really hit rock bottom I should be putting my foot down and deciding it gets better from here on in.

Then an old friend from college killed himself. It shook the ground I stood on. Seeing every post to him on Facebook after he had died destroyed me more than I can tell you. I quit Facebook, took sponsorship to stay off of it for a year (and continue to do so if you would like to sponsor me), and threw myself at work. Before long I could see beauty in myself.

To summarise, in the last 3 months I've done a 13 week acting course, made 15 incredible friends, lost 1 amazing actor, worked 7 spectacular shows, made out with 4 phenomenal people, 1 break up, 2 hook ups and 1 suicide attempt. I can proudly say after that near-fatal journey, I'M BACK BITCHES.

Strength in numbers,
depressivedetails@gmail.com