bumps, bikes, and bad brains
content warning: discussions of suicidal thoughts, depression, so I wouldn't recommend reading if you're currently in a bad headspace
I have a brain that’s broken. It leans towards the negative option, even if it has little bearing in reality. It decides there’s immense danger where there is little. Or it creates nonspecific feelings of badness and doom. It’s not that anything’s going to go wrong, or that I’m scared of anything, but my brain will decide that now is the panic time, and thus I must feel nauseous and tense with no discernible cause or target.
I tweeted the other day about self-doubt and impostor syndrome1 and someone suggested remembering that these thoughts are my brain trying to protect me: if my brain succeeds in telling me I’m shit, I won’t try, and thus I won’t experience the pain of rejection. When I read this I thought: that’s such a good point but also god I wish my brain would try to protect me more often. A large portion of the time, my brain seems to be actively directing me towards harm, whether that’s OCD deciding that if I touch a certain thing or eat food prepared by someone else I will be forever contaminated, or that if I don’t keep checking I’ve turned off a plug the house will burn down and the cat will die, or my depression guiding me away from things that are objectively good for me (going for a run! being nice to myself!) and towards bad, bad, bad, bad. My brain fails at protecting me from itself. It digs holes in the ground, covers those holes with a blanket, then when I fall in, goes down there with me and says oh no, you’re in a hole! and you’re an idiot for falling in that hole, and maybe you should just give up and stay in this hole forever and actually just kill yourself, might as well.
I was riding my bike to the cinema on Monday evening when I stopped at a red light, a girl on a bike to my right, ready to overtake once the light turned green. Then a guy on a Lime bike sped past the people behind and in between me and the other girl. I don’t know what exactly happened, because it was fast, but some part of him or his bike made contact with my arm(?) at such a speed that my body and the front wheel of my bike twisted, and I fell forward. Not fully off the bike, but slightly to the side and forward, doubled over. Plus my arm hurt in multiple places.
My body said ‘oh my goodness’, which is so much less cool than just swearing, followed by ‘fuck’, which didn’t make up for the first thing. Someone behind said ‘dickhead!’. The Lime bike guy didn’t stop. A second later, the little light in the shape of a bike turned orange, then the one below turned green. I cycled for around 6 minutes more until I was off main roads, then pulled over to breathe and regroup. Then I looked at Google Maps and saw that the cinema was only 4 minutes further away, and thought actually, I can just keep cycling even if I feel like I might cry or throw up and my back now hurts in a concerning way.
I watched the film (it was excellent). I cycled home (it was fine). I cycled to work the next day (also fine). But when I cycled back home after that, I found myself feeling that same sick-y panick-y cry-y feeling when I pulled up to the red light. It didn’t go away even when I reached home, until I realised the press copy of Caroline Calloway’s book (also excellent) had arrived in the post and got sucked up in reading that.
I sometimes feel like cycling in London is the best way to see the worst of people. On my cycle home on Tuesday, in the midst of the sick feeling, a man called me a fucking idiot bitch because he wanted to cross the road over the cycle path and I didn’t stop, because I knew we were each moving at such a pace that we wouldn’t collide. A few weeks ago, a van turned without indicating and nearly knocked me off my bike. Sometimes someone will beep their horn and laugh when I’m startled. Sometimes a car will swerve closer to me than it needs to. Every other day for the last few months, I cycle past typed up signs stuffed in plastic files and taped to lampposts, telling a story of a ‘much-loved’ dog killed by another dog let off its lead, and begging people to please not let this happen again. In recent days, someone has painted a message in white on the pavement: ‘keep dogs on lead’.
With a broken brain, it’s tempting to generalise. People are bad. The world is scary. Sweet dogs get killed by other, un-sweet dogs with owners who don’t care. Danger will swoop up next to you and hurt you, and you will be embarrassed.
Recently a friend (hi, Miranda!) asked me to explain what it’s actually like to be mentally ill. Don’t worry, I like these kinds of questions. I focused on depression and said something about having a voice in your head that tells you you’re terrible and should die and everything’s pointless and on and on and sometimes it’s loud and sometimes it’s quieter, but it’s always there, and yes, I know a lot of what it’s saying isn’t true on a logical level, but often I believe it anyway.
On the cycle home I pondered better analogies, considered black dogs and rain clouds. Ultimately the closest comparison I came to was a kind of fighting-based video game, like Tekken or Super Smash Bros. I don’t typically personify my depression or OCD, because it’s part of me, but for this analogy that seems helpful, so let’s call my opponent Death Ellen. Every day, I need to wake up and battle Death Ellen. We each have our own missions. Death Ellen wants me to die. Or sometimes Death Ellen wants me to do nothing and rot in my own swamp of self-hatred and guilt. Death Ellen has a destructive vibe, in short. Normal Ellen has various other missions: write a novel! do a good job at work! get through the day! be okay!
Sometimes Death Ellen has extra strength, or Normal Ellen is lacking strength due to tiredness or stress or whatever. There are times when Death Ellen has sneaky magic boosters that normal Ellen doesn’t have the ability to block. Sometimes Death Ellen will have a strange new mission, to get me to run away or take a load of harmful substances or smash up my life. Medication weakens Death Ellen, but doesn’t entirely defeat her.
Unfortunately, this analogy doesn’t entirely work, because there are days when it seems like Death Ellen hasn’t showed up for a fight, but that’s because Normal Ellen is being Death Ellen that day. Sometimes Normal Ellen goes maybe Death Ellen has a point and joins in. Death Ellen doesn’t really land punches, but slips inside Normal Ellen and asks why she keeps hitting herself. Often it doesn’t feel like a fight, just a settling in to that warm, cosy bath of self-loathing, doing nothing, and hating myself for every moment.
If we do keep this analogy, though, it begs the question: what powers up Normal Ellen? The usual stuff definitely helps; sleep, lowering stress, moments of connection, accomplishing stuff, and little pockets of joy.
Some joyful things I’ve witnessed while riding my bike through London:
a boy sitting on the back of a bike and holding a little pink flower the entire way down the CS2
two men on motorbikes crossing paths, recognising each other, pulling over, and hugging
they seem to be rewilding parts of my route home and there are poppies and bluebells
there’s someone I often see walking a shiba inu in the evening
when that van turned without indicating, the car behind slowed down and the woman inside rolled down her window. “That was awful,” she said. “I beeped my horn so he’d know it was wrong. I hope you’re okay.”
I watched a black and white cat cross the road at the assigned crossing
a man had his dog in a special backpack, and the dog rested its chin on his shoulder
a man carrying home a bunch of flowers on Valentine’s Day
a corgi!
a sausage dog!
two cats having a secret meeting on a speed bump!
a beautiful sky!
the breeze rustling its way through long grass and dry leaves
the sound of fat drops of rain thudding on top of my helmet
the smell of rain
a man smoking weed while riding his bike (impressive!) immediately in front of me for approx a mile, and as a result getting a slight backwind high but not enough for that thing where I get high and feel like I’m going to wet myself
two friends jogging and calling encouragement to each other
that time it snowed
I wonder sometimes if those people, things, moments, have any idea that they’ve tipped the balance from a bad day to a good one, from Death Ellen winning to Normal Ellen being able to do her daily gratitude list, from the world being a bad terrible place to one that’s okay.
It’s reading rec time!!
Amelia Tait is at it again!! (‘it’ meaning writing brilliant features)
If you haven’t read any Lorrie Moore, you should. I’ve been reminded of how much I love her work this month, thanks to finally reading Who Will Run The Frog Hospital and listening to a talk with her
Absolutely fascinated by this piece on what people did after work before smartphones
Over at Stylist, the brilliant Amy Beecham did a deep dive into the creep towards misogyny happening online
obviously that self-doubt/impostor syndrome thing happened when writing this substack too. I thought: why would anyone want to read what you have to say, you dumb bitch? God, you’re stupid and boring and terrible at writing. This is embarrassing. People probably see you’ve written something again and they laugh at how ridiculous you are, or they think wow, that’s actually really sad and pathetic.
my approach to this is just to write, refuse to read things back, then hit publish immediately. if I leave an email in drafts and come back to it, it will never be sent and is at high risk of deletion. I like to throw stuff out there impulsively so it’s too late to dither and question. unfortunately I can’t do that with long-form fiction and non-fiction.
Keep gathering up those little pockets of joy however small they may be.
This was great to read. Thank you. Love the pink flower detail