Depression is very misunderstood.

Note to readers (my lovely Baggees): For the avoidance of any doubt - every character in this blog is me!!! No Baggy was harmed in its writing.

Baggy's daily state!
Depression (Black = really bad/Grey = not great/Blue = okay/Yellow = sunny day): Black.
Anxiety (From 1 = barely any to 10 = gibbering wreck standard): 4.
Tears: No.
Overall day: 👾

Funny how one can lull oneself into a false sense of security. Baggy was feeling pretty optimistic that Hormonal Hannah had taken a back seat in the gang. Why? Because the black cloud hasn't really managed to gather any momentum recently, despite all the dramas going on in Baggy's life. Well frankly Clever Bird should have had words with Baggy. Although she hasn't recognised it until last year, Baggy has suffered from depression since she was a very small child, so sadly it's not very likely to suddenly vanish, never to return. The menopause, Lawrence-the-durmoid-cyst and the deaths of Baggy's dad and stepmother managed to push Baggy into a downward spiral that meant it was no longer possible to ignore the fact that she was actually mentally poorly, not just a bit down. But the counselling, the happy pills and getting on with things has made a massive difference. Recently Freda Fretter had begun to think that the whole, "Baggy has depression" was one big mistake - that Baggy was just feeling sorry for herself. Clever Bird was even considering taking Baggy off the happy pills as she regularly forgets to take them until late in the day anyway. But she should have recognised the signs: constantly tired, aching all over, sleeping really late, not wanting to go out, getting anxious and a bit snappy, feeling over emotional and teary, not feeling confident enough to blog, eating "bad" things all the time. Yep, Baggy's been doing the lot. To the point where her self-destruct button means that she has put over one-and-a-half stones back on. Hopeless.

The black cloud arrived today. Baggy finally woke up enough to get up at 11.00am, but didn't really want to get out of bed. If Furry Mama didn't have four furries to sort out, Baggy would probably have crawled back under the duvet and stayed there for most of the day. Even though her depression is far from the "serious" variety, it's still pretty debilitating. And although she tries to hide it from Calum most of the time, because it must be a proper pain to live with someone who's depressed and illogically anxious, occasionally she knows it's so bad that she needs to say something so that he doesn't think that she's in a strop with him. Today was one of those days. "Sorry Cal, I'm in a bad place today".
"Well you know what to think. There's always someone worse off than you".
Now Baggy knows that he means well, and she understands totally why he said it, but true as that statement undoubtedly is, it is totally and utterly irrelevant when someone is feeling depressed. In fact it's enough to make them feel worse. But bizarrely today it worked for Baggy. She knows the statement is very true, and she's sick of the black cloud turning up when she thought it had left, so she "made" herself try to ignore it. Much easier said than done, but she got Furry Mama to take Mint for a walk, then took Calum into town for a little change of scenery. Actually Clever Bird thought there was a "Garden Market" on - there wasn't!

When she got home, Baggy took Gloria Gardener up to the top of the bank where a friend had poisoned some nettles for them, and started to pull them all up. An hour later Baggy felt a lot better! This evening Creative Clara switched on her laptop to discover two more bookings for the holiday cottage, both in August and an enquiry from Illinois about purchasing one of the most expensive items in her Etsy shop Realuv. Thank you universe, buzz off cloud...............