On volunteering and mental health.

I want to tell you all about the last seven months of my life. I’ve been a warehouse worker. Yes, that’s the kind of worker that turns up to an industrial warehouse every morning — you know the kind; goods entrance with an articulated steel shutter, rows of metal racking, boxes, so many boxes. For most of those seven months I turned up on a morning, found out what needed to be done and lifted, carried, pushed, dragged and schlepped until it was done.

At first the guys gallantly tried to prove that chivalry does indeed still exist, “here darling/sweet cheeks/cupcake/princess [delete as appropriate], let me carry that for you”. A few steely looks from me and, I’m not ashamed to admit it, the odd demonstrative flex of my biceps, and they were soon letting me lift and carry whatever I wanted. They started to call me Lara Croft.

I loved turning up to that haphazard warehouse twice a week. I loved that 80s classics on Heart blared out of the speakers all day every day. I loved that I would end the day covered in dust, sometimes with splinters in my hands. I loved being tall enough to help put the boxes up high when some of the guys couldn’t. I loved coming home at the end of the day completely exhausted, my back aching, unable to move once I’d sat down. I really loved how you quickly learn the social etiquette of passing people in a warehouse; you don’t have to say hi, there’s no need for pleasantries, and you certainly don’t smile or make eye contact. You just carry stuff from A to B, then turn round and do it again. That’s all that matters.

A to B. A day full of so many mini journeys from A to B. That’s what I want to talk about here.

For me, mental illness is an odd thing. When our lives are completely governed by our mind, from how we understand the world, the people around us and ourselves, to practical stuff like holding down a job, following a set of IKEA instructions or even watching a film of an evening… when it is our brains that allow us all of these essentials (don’t tell me you don’t shop at IKEA), when mental health strips you of the ability to properly use your mind, what the hell are you left with?

I’ve been slightly misleading there, already. Your brain still works. It’s still in that head of yours, whirring away like the most complicated, terrifying yet wonderful mass of neural pathways that one could ever hope to encounter in a lifetime. But when you’re ill, when your mental health is in tatters, it just works in a completely fucked up way. It becomes enemy-in-residence, a wolf in sheeps clothing, a conman dressed in his finest in order to convince you that he is trustworthy and credible. Truth becomes hugely skewed.

Sometimes you can sniff out the bullshit. I think there was a very small part of me that, when I was depressed, knew that the way I was living my life because I was allowing myself to be led by my brain (normally advisable, but not when depressed), wasn’t right. I wasn’t “right” in how I was living my life and the things I was letting myself believe. In other words, I was “wrong”. Which also goes to feed directly into any negative thought loop you have playing in your head at that time.

So when my Mum made me follow my therapist’s advice, which I’d been cleverly pretending to follow by saying “but they just aren’t ringing me back”, by calling and volunteering my time to the charity herself… well, I wanted to fucking punch her. I was very firmly at Point A in my journey at this point except I didn’t consider this the start of a journey, nor even Point A. To me, I had lived my life and here I was at the end of my journey already. Content with the fact that I would always be this new-found bitch that sat before me — and yes, there’s a fair bit of disassociation that goes on for me when unwell — and that I would forever be quite satisfied with moping around, scared of leaving the house and not working. As far as I was concerned, I’d had a life well lived and screw Point B; I was at Point Z. Done. Mic drop.

Do we ever really recognise that we’re learning or changing on a journey? Set off on the Camino de Santiago, get that first day of eight hours of walking under your belt, and feel that burn in your legs. The next day feels just as tough. Until one day it doesn’t. But by this point it feels so normal that you never stop to reflect that something somewhere has changed. You certainly don’t really notice your increasingly toned, muscly thighs, the dry, sun-beaten quality to your face, the hard skin building on your feet. That’s until you get home, to where you belong, where the thick-pile carpet your feet sink into is soft and the moisturiser you slather over your skin is rich and luxurious. It’s then that you think — gosh, my body took a beating, but crikey, look at these gorgeous thighs that helped me demolish the Camino with increasing ease every day.

That, my friends, is a very-long winded, and I’m not sure all together effective, metaphor for what the recovery from mental illness is like. What it feels like to wake up every day and just try to take one more step from A to B with more strength, more resilience and more ease than the day before. In my case, I never notice I’m getting better, or even that my part in that recovery is an active one, until I’m at the end of my journey, exasperated and shoving a massive plate of chips in my face.

So it never occurred to me that volunteering at Jami was playing a role in my recovery. All I knew was that I pitched up to the warehouse twice a week, at a minimum, often feeling ashamed of the heavy, poor excuse for a personality that was dragging its feet behind me, incapable of bringing the real “me” to work, the one that I used to be. At first I found it impossible to connect with the people around me there, the staff and volunteers, though I made a good show of it. Conversations don’t always equal connection, as we know.

What I did know, however, is that I would arrive home at the end of a day at the warehouse — sometimes rushed off my feet, other times suffering with RSI from Instagram scrolling — feeling like I’d achieved something. I also felt part of a team at first, and as the weeks and months progressed, I felt like part of a dysfunctional family of sorts, as little things gave away the fact that the guys at the warehouse cared for and were looking out for me. At the Jami warehouse, I knew my place, knew where I was needed (even when there was nothing to do, simply because I was expected to turn up twice a week), and actually really rather liked the exhaustion I would feel on the sofa at the end of the day, after hours of schlepping boxes round. I suppose I could have put two and two together. That this feeling of slight fulfilment could indeed be leading me down a path of feeling better about myself. But I didn’t. My brain was fucked, remember.

I was making steps, big steps, but gosh I didn’t know it.

And so, dear reader, this is where the happily ever after turns up. I got better. Week by week — and accelerated by a gorgeous trip in Ireland and a couple of hard to process realisations encouraged by a friend — I found myself in a better place. It was slow at first, there was little change, then increasingly more, then suddenly one day I rocked up at the warehouse, Jacs 2.0, and I’m pretty sure Wasim, the warehouse manager, was like “who the hell is this?”.

I’d reached the end of a journey. I felt my personality return to my body like a flower that had bloomed, its roots taking hold in every muscle and fibre of my body. I was seeing in colour again. When I breathed in, I could feel the fresh air rushing through my lungs. When I looked at happy people I could see their happiness, and when I looked at sad people I could see their sadness. And feel it. When my Mum smiled and hugged me, I could feel the love connecting her to me. That flower that spread through my body, I’ve been watering it every day since. Life feels much better with a beautiful flower inside me.

But again, I’ve not told the whole truth. It was the end of a journey, not the end of my journey still. Once you have been in that dark place, when you find yourself opening your wardrobe door one day and inexplicably crying into its emptiness, like throwing your tears and anguish into a black hole that others can’t see, you will never stop fearing that. You will never stop fearing the day that you thought to yourself “I can’t take another day of this” yet waking up the very next day to the same reality. And you will never stop fearing that feeling of your life on this earth being so fucking pointless that you may as well not be here at all. That stuff doesn’t just disappear with a bit of good mental health. It gets stitched into your being and it will pop up and remind you that it’s there and waiting for you every so often.

Because of this, I still feel on the very same journey, but just a different part of it. When something has such a profound impact on you, it doesn’t just provide a different journey at the time, it changes the course of your life.

I once read a post from an artist about depression feeling like an eternal Sunday night. The never-ending dread of tomorrow. Except in this world you are not afforded the sense of progress that comes with waking up to a new day, the feeling that a line has been drawn under yesterday and you have a fresh start. No. You wake up to the exact god damn awful Sunday night. The day that you are freed from depression is the day that you’re stepping into Monday like Yassssss Kween. At the point where I felt “better”, but probably wasn’t, I felt like I’d woken up on a Monday morning, completely blinded and shell-shocked by the light streaming in through the window (who forgot to draw the bloody curtains?), and tentatively stepping out the door. I wasn’t stepping into Monday like Yasssss anybody, more like “fucking, shitting, bollocking hell, what sweet terrifying beautiful paradise is this?”.

I was on the journey of a million Mondays. Volunteering had helped me get there and so I continued to pitch up to that crazy, chaotic warehouse in Borehamwood two to three times a week, taking on more and more responsibility, proving my value to my boss and to myself. It brings tears to my eyes to say this, as true as it is — from that day, I never looked back.

Some days I feel like I’m so far beyond Point B that it sits as a distant dot on the horizon when I crane my neck to look for it. But then I remember a couple of things. The first: I’ve only been “well” for three to four months. I also know that sometimes my good mental health has only lasted for six months. So no cart before this horse. The second: if I start believing that my job is done, that the work is behind me, that I can kick back and relax… Christ, I’m mistaken.

Mental health, for those that struggle with it particularly, is constantly there, like a needy child wanting another feed. Like having a baby, once you’ve experienced any sort of mental illness, your life is changed forever. Your attentions are focused elsewhere. You can’t decide one day that this whole baby thing was a mistake and you’re taking a week off; I’m sure the baby will learn to feed itself, keep itself out of trouble, and the like. No, your mental health and the need for a keen awareness of how it’s getting on are here to stay. I got myself a dependent and I didn’t even ask for it.

So I’ll keep going back to Jami. Not because I need the structure or opportunity to socialise anymore, nor the need to feel I’m being productive with my time. I’ll be going back to Jami, firstly, to help, because I care that the charity does well. But mostly I’ll be going back to Jami because, in that charity warehouse, I found a bunch of people who I now love and care for beyond reason. I need them because they get it, they kind of get me (not always easy) and they make me feel it’s going to be alright. Perhaps because they’ve been through stuff and out the other side themselves. But also because I know that, should I end up with a brain like a sieve again, I can turn up at the warehouse even after months and months have elapsed, saying nothing, but being greeted with an understanding smile, a hug, a cup of coffee and some heavy boxes to lift.

And I’ll know I’m already on my way from A to B.

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