I wonder how Marian is doing...

I wonder about Marian Keyes a lot - not just because she remains a real inspiration to me and I feel like I know her even though we've never met - but also because this year she has been battling the horrors.

I know what the horrors feel like. They are like my long lost friends - and every now again they pop up, as if on Facebook - and poke me as if to say "we haven't gone away you know".

Lately I've been feeling a bit 'horrific' again. Some keens observers may have noticed - indeed some have contacted me to ask why this blog has been so quiet. Yes, I have been launching a book, and trying to write another book, looking after kids and taking very funny turns with the old dizzy spells and the like but I've also been feeling mired in, well, crap.

I cannot concentrate. I cannot have conversations - although I do feel as if I'm having a constant conversation over and over in my head with myself.

I feel raw and exposed as if everyone is looking at me and pointing and laughing.

I googled Marian this morning to see if there had been an update and I found her newsletter from May.

In it she wrote

I’ve heard people describe depression as feeling like they’re living behind glass, of being numb and unable to experience anything, but for me, it has been totally different. It has been like being poisoned, it’s felt like my brain is squirting out terrible, black, toxic chemicals that poison any good thoughts

I hear you Marian... I am trying, I swear. I am trying my positive affirmations but the nasty voice is louder.

She also wrote that there are days when her ambition is just to make it through til night time. Thankfully those days are few and far between for me but I do feel as if, well, could it just stop for a while? The routine? The monotony? The pressure?

Generally people have been very lovely indeed and I have some very lovely and supportive friends who have picked me up and dusted me off more times than I deserve, but I feel lost all the same - as if who I am is a mystery and who I might become is a scary prospect. I just want to be me.

The hardest thing is that writing has become a chore - one which I enjoy when I'm in the middle of it but one which fills me with a sense of dread at times. When it doesn't work, immediately, I panic. I panic that I'm broken and four books in, I'm done and that the well has run dry and that I'm done.

Of course all this is a bit self absorbed and waffly, but all in all I wonder how Marian is doing and I hope that she is clawing back from the brink because if she can, I can.