I am much more a cat person. This is lucky, because we have twenty of them. However, our four puppies (I say puppies but the youngest is seven years old) have grown on me. Because of this, I think black dogs in particular have gotten a bit of a bad rep. What does this have to do with mental health, other than once again proving that I have the attention span of a meth-fuelled road runner? I’m talking of course about the Black Dog that stops us from getting up in the morning. Waking up and not wanting to get out of bed is a common thing. The alarm is annoying, it’s cold outside, and we’ve all collectively agreed to sell a significant proportion of our lives to corporate scumbags for cheap. No wonder we don’t want to get out of bed. But this is more than that. This is when even patting your cat who is punching you in the face wanting you to get up is hard. You want to move, but the weight of the world is holding you down. So instead, you lay there, while your brain calls you the most horrible names it can come up. You piece of shit. You’re worthless.
What’s even the point of getting up, the world sucks anyway.
I know what that’s like. Lots of us do. You’re not alone.
I’m not here to tell you to practice mindfulness and everything will be ok. I’m not here to tell you that the world is an amazing place and you can get out there if you just change your mindset. I’m not an annoying ray of sunshine who tells you to get high on life. Life is hard. We didn’t choose life and we can’t really choose anything else (big ups to the Buddhists for coming up with a way to do just that). But the first rule when you get knocked down is get back up. All you have to do is get up, and momentum will carry you.
Breaking tasks down into smaller pieces helps me. All I have to do is pat this annoying ball of ungrateful fluff – nothing else. Okay I’ve done that. All I need to do is put my dressing gown on. Okay I’ve done that. All I have to do is….and that’s how I get through a day when stuff gets difficult. Survival. And again – I don’t want to sound like a fucken ray of overactive sunshine, but you’re worth getting back up. So get up. Find some way to get up and keep going. Cos your brain is wrong. You’re not a piece of shit. What do brains know? What have brains done for us lately anyway?
