plant

Being a human on this planet, whilst fascinating, beautiful and ultimately a privilege, can also be a complete headfuck.

The world these days is absolutely mental and, due to the evolution of modern mass media, it is pretty much impossible to shield yourself from the seemingly incessant stream of bollocks going on.

Every now and then, my brain decides to deal with this near constant influx of random crap by casually imploding in on itself and ceasing to function like a normal human thinking machine.

Over the years, I have become quite adept at noticing the signs that I am going down a mental health hole which I have narrowed down in this blog post because expressing this stuff is supposed to be cathartic and that right?

1. Making completely unaffordable travel plans

Whether the cause of my mental health blip is situational or a surprise ‘oh I am randomly not functioning’ sneak attack, my first gut instinct when I start to feel the beginnings of the big sad is to run away from everything and everyone.

As a result, I will often find myself manically researching holidays in a fit of unregulated escapism with absolutely no regard for my bank balance or personal safety.

I guess I am operating under the rational that being on an extreme adventure holiday in the arctic circle will momentarily distract me from the intensity of my thoughts and emotions, even if I am living under the vague threat of a polar bear attack…

2. Weird eating patterns

The next sign of a lapse in my mental stability is a complete collapse in the stability of my eating schedule.

What my brain considers to be an adequate source of sustenance during these periods suddenly becomes incredibly dubious.

Often the notion of three healthy meals a day will completely disintegrate and I will find myself randomly eating the most immediately accessible food at whatever time my body decides it should probably ingest some calories.

Honestly, eating Cheerios dry out the packet at 1am when I am in fact the complete antithesis of cheery is a real vibe…

3. Impulsively buying shit online

One of the main ways in which I monitor the state of my mental health is by keeping track of how much random shit I’m buying off Amazon.

If I’ve got over five functionally useless items in my basket, I know it’s time to get concerned. If we hit double figures, it’s crisis point – like, I’m only one impulse buy of a make your own bath bomb set away from a complete mental collapse.

I’m not sure why I experience this impulse to buy copious amounts of useless shite as I am normally not a particularly materialistic person. I guess part of me thinks that if I accumulate enough random objects it will eventually fill the insatiable chasm in my soul. Or maybe rock salt lamps are just chill and pretty and that. Who knows…

4. Getting trapped in existential thought spirals

Another sign that I am tits deep in the mental health bollocks is a complete loss in my capacity to lift myself out of meandering thought patterns.

The tiniest thing can send me spiraling into a pit of existential angst and leave me contemplating the very nature of existence.

Ironically, during big sad times, my brain becomes completely numb to big life issues and instead decides to grapple intensely with insignificant concepts which is always a wild ride.

5. Crying over illogical things

My emotional system will also be irrationally sensitive during a flare up of the big sad.

It doesn’t really matter what emotional input my brain is experiencing, every single thing will go into the emotional processing machine and come out the other end twenty-billion times more intense than it should be.

As a result, any kind of remotely sad/ happy/ frustrating/ cute input into my system will immediately translate into OK SO APPARENTLY WE ARE CRYING NOW which is always a good look.

6. Having deep introspective chats with the dog

I live with two dogs, both of whom absorb the brunt of my emotional and existential chaos.

Something about the simplicity of a dog’s priorities is incredibly comforting and grounding when you are feeling the full brunt of your human brain.

As a result, I will often spend extended periods of time stroking their fur and telling them about my inherent self-destructive tendencies and the pitfalls of my ego etc. whilst they look up at me with a simultaneous sense of complete understanding and total bafflement.

7. Malfunctioning in social situations

I am not particularly good at the performative aspects of social interaction at the best of times.

However, when my brain is functional state, it is usually able to flick through a rolodex of socially acceptable responses and select an appropriate one for the type of conversation I am engaging in.

However, when I am going through a mental health flare, the complete overwhelm in my brain will cause a glitch in the system and the rolodex will start to spit out random responses regardless of the context of the situation which can be awkward and confusing for all parties involved.

8. Apologising excessively to everything and everyone

During a mental health flare, I will also become irrationally convinced that my existence is inconvenient to everyone and everything which logically I know is not true but for some reason is suddenly a completely compelling narrative for my big sad brain to believe.

This particularly stupid side effect manifests itself in a myriad of different ways.

Sometimes, it will involve me saying sorry to to someone after they bump into me and then proceeding to say sorry for having said sorry when they tell me it was ridiculous for me to have said sorry in the first place.

Other times, I will find myself on my knees, weeping whilst cradling the withered form of my dead house plant, beseeching my failures as a mother. Honestly so random guys!

9. Regressing to sentient flesh lump status

Over the years, I have developed an elaborate network of coping mechanisms to prevent the big sad crazy depresso times from developing in my brain.

However, whilst you can put measures in place to stop yourself going down the hole, there is not a massive amount you can do once you are there.

All you can really do be present with yourself as you are, embrace the concious flesh lump vibes you’ve got going on and know that eventually the big sad will fuck off into the ether and you will feel like a slightly less deranged version of yourself again.

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A few months ago, I went for a drink with a girl. The drink went quite well and afterwards I gave her a lift back home and she invited me into her house.

As she led me into the living room, I noticed that there were a lot of plants around the place, so many in fact that I decided to comment on it.

‘I’m guessing you like plants?’ I said, expecting her to simply confirm she was, indeed, pretty fond of plants.

Instead, she said something altogether more unexpected:

‘Oh I see,’ I said, glancing around and trying not to become too concerned by the large number of plants in the immediate vicinity.

‘It makes sense if you think about it,’ the girl continued. ‘You see, at the beginning of last year, I realised I had a lot of negative people in my life that were making my personal atmosphere very toxic, like emotionally. But plants are, like, the opposite of toxic. They do all these good things for the atmosphere, like making it clean with their photosynthesis and shit. So I just thought why not have less shit people in my life and more plants?’ She shrugged. ‘That’s science for you.’

She looked at me and smiled, eyebrows raised, as if expecting me to validate the credibility of her hypothesis. I smiled back and chose not to point out that her use of the words ‘photosynthesis and shit’ to describe her theory had somewhat undermined its legitimacy as a scientific concept.

Besides, although the way she had phrased it was slightly intense, the core idea of having less shit people and more plants didn’t seem like the unhealthiest coping mechanism in the world, so I decided to explore it further.

I moved across the room and picked a spider plant up off the windowsill.

Who’s this replacing then? I asked.

‘Oh that’s my ex Sarah’, the girl replied nonchalantly. ‘She was dead clingy, you know, wanted to hang out with me all the time, always needed to be validated.’

‘It honestly is really hard to kill,’ she continued. ‘Which is kind of ironic because Sarah was also really hard to get rid of.’

I stared at her, incredulous, momentarily fearing for my life. ‘Get rid of…?’

She laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t kill her off or anything. But I did have to break up with her like six times.’

‘Oh right,’ I said. ‘Haha. Ha. Haha. Ha.’ I placed the plant incarnation of Sarah back on the windowsill and picked up a nearby cactus.

‘Let me guess? Another one of your exes?’ I joked.

‘Yes’, she said, her face completely deadpan. She reached across and took the cactus from my hands. ‘This is one I got to replace my ex-boyfriend Chris. He was like the opposite of Sarah. Wasn’t emotionally available enough.’

She paused.

She put cactus Chris down and picked up another plant.

Who’s that? I asked, slightly apprehensive of the answer.

‘My mate, Callum,’ she said, passing the plant to me.

She shrugged.

The girl removed plant Callum from my hands and placed it back on the coffee table next to another plant with sharp pointy leaves.

I gestured towards it. ‘What’s this?’

‘Oh that’s a snake plant,’ the girl said. ‘I got it when I found out JK Rowling was a TERF and I had to get rid of all my Harry Potter books.’

I nodded, unable to fault her reasoning, and then moved over and pointed at a large plant positioned near the door.

She then proceeded to provide an extensive and incredibly detailed explanation of why, all things considered, her mother was a bit of a monster.

By this point, I was feeling quite uneasy, a feeling that persisted throughout the evening and followed me when I left her house later that night.

Although I had enjoyed the initial drink we had had together, I couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen if I continued to see the girl and something went wrong in our relationship. Would I be added to her horticultural museum of percieved knobheads? If so, what type of plant would I be replaced with?

I envisioned myself in flower or succulent form, perched forlornly on the windowsill with only plant versions of Sarah, Chris and JK Rowling to keep me company. The idea of ending up side by side with a plant TERF didn’t exactly appeal me.

Turns out I needn’t have worried because a few days later she sent me a message saying that, although she had enjoyed my company and the drink, she hadn’t felt a spark between us.

Overall, this was a massive relief; however, the rejection was still a slight bruise to my ego and it took almost superhuman levels of restraint not to buy a plant pot with some soil and a seed in it and drop it off outside her front door with the following message:

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to check out some of my other posts. For more blog posts and drawings, you can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook .