Creating the Positive.

An image from my shoot this weekend. Re edited for personal portfolio.

Things started going downhill, as is perenially the case, in December. A time of year when things are supposed to be perfect, shiny, full of hope and anticipation is often, for me at least, not the case. At best, when in a mindset of depressive angst, things tend to snowball (pun unintentional) to a point where you end up lolling on the sofa, compulsively eating After Eights and weeping at things involving sentimental family reunions. Christmas is not a time for the lonely.
I have a lot of amazing friends, I am blown away by their awesomeness on pretty much a daily basis, but when the dark cloud decends, nothing and no one can penetrate the fog that settles around your brain, nor the icy hands around your heart.
I am alluding to weather here because I just read the frankly brilliant letters of note blog, which features a missive from Stephen Fry to a depressed young girl. It really struck a chord with me. My Christmas was terrible. As is typical of either the very depressed, or simply Abi-in-refusal-of-help mode I am not proud of how I handle my loneliness. I wallow, pathetically on the one day of the year where nobody wants to hear it. Attention seeking in my grief, I say things I do not mean to people I care about so they turn their back on me when actually all I need to do is be honest. My inability to be honest when I am falling apart disgusts and disappoints me.
But you may have noticed, it's January. I am still here and I am writing this blog. Which means I must have survived Christmas. However bad it gets and however much I feel like I'm losing the battle to stay afloat. I always get through it. This alone gives me confidence and hope.
Magically, a New Year, full of hope is what many of us need after the emotional melting pot of Christmas is over, though this in itself often throws up a lot of weird feelings. In my case, who I should be spending it with. This year, I didn't go out on New Years Eve, for the first time in years. I stayed at home with my cat, thinking about someone I shouldn't and fighting the icy hands around my heart feeling again.
It wasn't as bad as I make out. A bad Christmas is nobody's making but my own, next year I am going to suck it up and be impossibly jolly, next year I won't be missing someone so much I can't breathe. Next Year I won't fall in love. Next Year I won't be counting my losses.

Loss is a particular theme of December, at least it is for me. We are bang slap in the time of material gain and all I can think about is the fact I lost my job, my sense of get up and go and a person I really cared about all in the same week. Then to cap it all off, a New Years Day Walk ensured I lost the ability to walk without a limp. Happy New Year!

We are now knee deep in January and my sense of get up and go returned on the 3rd of this month when it made me get off the sofa, have a shower, put some makeup on and face the world. Working for somebody is not the be-all and end all, I can work for myself and people will pay me. Missing the deceased does not have to be bottled up for 11 months of the year only to incapacitate me for the entirity of December, a daily pang will suffice. The actions of a person I let get close to me may have broken my heart, but hearts mend and pain is temporary. I start the new year with a new business venture, a new outlook on things and hopefully, in time, the rest will follow. Nobody is drawn to negative energy, am I to blame for the good things abandoning me? Did my own negative state of mind cause all of this? I hate to think it did, and although nothing is entirely simple as apportioning blame I can, for my part accept that I can drive people away. To those people, I am sorry.

But as I said, it's January. We have another 11 months until the rot sets in.