Louisa Simmonds

I’ve been having a lot of those ‘what’s it all about?’ moments recently.

I changed my medication recently so it could be that, or simply a residual post-sickness tiredness that has sapped me of the energy to exercise, socialise and get out of my yoga pants.

Then again it’s probably the hormones, the tail end of winter, the move or a million other fucking things that I can’t put my finger on, but that make me feel as anxious as fuck.

I’m okay, but I’m kind of not. An unsettled feeling.

One of my good friends thinks it’s our age, that we all feel a bit out of kilter at this stage of our lives, when we’re beyond the disappointment and acceptance of ‘this is it’ that we went through in our forties, but ahead of the ‘fuck it’ financial gloriousness of retirement and our twilight years.

I just feel overwhelmingly tired most of the time, which might be because the old man keeps waking me up rudely in the middle of the night because I’ve begun to snore and then I can’t go back to sleep, but not even wine and Netflix can seem to restore my Tigger bounce.

A woman, probably in her sixties, walked in front of my car on the pedestrian crossing today with a huge grin plastered on her face and I said to the old man ‘that’s how I want to look all the time.’

‘Probably not going to happen with me,’ he replied dolefully, because even though I feel that we’re on a rare plane of closeness at the moment, we exacerbate each other’s anxiety and the impending move has begun to play on our minds.

I feel a sense of sadness deep down in my marrow that I can’t explain. Even Bridget Jones barely raised a smile.

Thank God for friends.

I know I have no right to be sad when there are refugees fighting for their lives and acceptance and inspiring stories such as the one I read this week about the two kids with Cystic Fibrosis who married each other even though they knew that to be together would ultimately kill them. I never realized before that people with the condition can’t mix with each other because of the low immune system caused by CF, and the ability for bacteria to grow easily on their lungs. But it doesn’t work like that.

How lonely AF must it be if you can’t even moan to your closest friends about how much life fucking sucks sometimes?

#depression #happiness #Anxiety #middleage #Life #MentalHealth