Note: I talk a little about The Passive Bad Thoughts™️ in this post. Nothing graphic, but please take care if that’s something you’re sensitive to.
My humour still shows through though – and you’re allowed to laugh at my jokes. My ego could use the help, given it’s currently obsessed with destroying itself.

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After a night of The Passive Bad Thoughts™️ and feeling the weight of my mental health, I planned a day of taking it back to basics: self-care, blogging, Greggs, and no stress. But the GP surgery had other ideas and threw a giant wrench into my plans.

So come with me as I walk to the doctors to sort it out – and eat Greggs regardless – while I talk about everything I’ve been dealing with, both internally and externally.

The Passive Bad Thoughts™️

I’ve been struggling with The Passive Bad Thoughts™️ since last week – ever since getting the all-clear from my lymph node scan. I think I’d already resigned myself to bad news, and because I’m in a mental health episode, it felt like the bad news would feel like, “At least everything would be over – all the stress, the constant life stuff I just can’t cope with right now.”

The only person I was truly afraid for was my son. I was anxious for his sake, but I’d already accepted that I might hear bad news. After all, this was my third health scare in the past few years. I’d been on the cancer pathway twice before, both times it turned out to be nothing, and I couldn’t help thinking, How many times can it not be cancer before it is? So I accepted my fate.

I’ve felt so guilty about that acceptance ever since. My best friend died of cancer – I know how lucky I am to get an all-clear, and maybe that’s part of the guilt. Why didn’t she get this news and I did? It feels like survivor’s guilt; like I don’t deserve this outcome when she didn’t get the same.

Since then, I’ve felt a bit like a ghost. Relief never came, even though I tried to feel it. November is always difficult anyway – it carries several trauma anniversaries, three of them – and my scan happened to fall on the anniversary of the worst one. I was even in the same building where, thirty-six years ago, I experienced the most traumatic event of my life at six years old. Both times were medical. Of course I was triggered.

That trauma lasted for weeks, worsened around my birthday, and shaped the months and years that followed. So even when I try not to think about it, November brings it back. I suppose that’s how PTSD works – even if your mind isn’t remembering, your body still does. It’s like an eternal, yearly iPhone alarm – loud, jarring, and impossible to turn off – that fills me with anxiety every time it rings.

Without going into detail, because it’s triggering for me and possibly for you, all of this has led to The Passive Bad Thoughts™️ resurfacing. Last night they were terrible, and I knew I had to act. I needed to strip everything back to basics – to self-care, gentleness, and zero outside stress. The only thing that works right now is waiting for this episode to pass while keeping myself safe.

So I made a plan: today I’d blog, rest, and have another Festive Bake – something that always makes me feel closer to my best friend. But thanks to NHS bureaucracy, it wasn’t exactly meant to be.

You Are Number 28 in the Queue

Last night I fell asleep mid-cry with YouTube playing, and woke up to find that autoplay had moved on to “Relaxing Music and Visuals for Dogs.” Apparently, YouTube decided this was exactly what I needed. It wasn’t entirely wrong – just a bit rude. Woof.

I got up, made coffee, and found my son at home. I’d expected him to be at uni, but his seminar had been moved online. He was so happy – he’s been struggling a bit too since Covid and desperately needed a break. We’d talked about it the night before, so it felt like the universe-ity had given him the breather he needed. I was glad he was home; Wednesday is usually the day I don’t see him until 6 pm.

I told him I’d finish my coffee and get us some Greggs to celebrate. That’s when I got a text about my medication review being due – apparently. First I’d heard of it. The pharmacy that dispenses my meds usually warns me when a review’s due, but they hadn’t. The text said to call after 2 pm, so I waited.

At 2 pm exactly, I called and joined the queue at number 18. I endured the NHS hold music – that fake-cheerful tune that’s supposed to ease tension but instead makes you want to commit crimes against synthesizers. After fifteen minutes, I reached the front of the queue… only for the secretary to say “hello?” several times and hang up. My phone was fine – I checked. I’d just spent fifteen minutes in the queue for absolutely nothing. Perfect visual representation of my current mental health.

The queue message said I could press 8 to request a callback. I’ve never trusted it, but when I rang back immediately and found myself number 28 in the queue this time, I thought, fine. I can’t listen to that cursed music again – I’ll take my chances. It had taken 15 minutes to move from 18 to the front, so at 28 I could be waiting forever. And this wasn’t trivial: these are my daily medications, and I need them.

Fuelled by NHS-induced rage that sounded suspiciously like the hold music itself on repeat in my head, I decided to go down there instead – make a nuisance of myself, Commander Shepard style. “Shout loud enough and eventually someone will come and see what all the fuss is about.” Except not actually shouting, of course; there are too many posters warning against that in the surgery. It’s one of the reasons I moan about it on my blog instead.

I figured I could probably make it there before the callback – which is exactly what happened. But it still didn’t get sorted. Apparently, there were no medication review appointments. I was told to phone or come back at the end of next week – after my medication is due – because, and I quote, “the books aren’t open until then.” Whatever that means.

So let me get this straight: I get a text telling me to call after 2 pm TODAY I do exactly that, get hung up on, walk to the doctors, and there aren’t even any appointments? WHY TELL ME TO CALL THEN?

It’s not like I could’ve ignored it – but apparently they can. That’s how it works: don’t be one minute late to their appointment, but they can just not give you one at all. I don’t understand why getting mental health medication is the most stressful part of having a mental health condition. Every month it’s the same: I chase prescriptions, do the admin work myself, and mediate between the pharmacy and surgery, who refuse to talk to each other and both get mad at me for having the audacity to take meds. I’m so done. UGH.

Rage and irritation from the NHS is not exactly what you need in a mixed episode, where irritation is already the baseline. Now I had REASONS. I was upset too. My “no stress” day was ruined; I’d spent hours sorting it out and got nowhere.

Still, that might just be my mental health talking – the part that catastrophises. So I headed to Greggs anyway, hoping I could salvage the day while simultaneously thinking the day was ruined, nothing would solve it, and I was an idiot for believing a pastry could make any difference.

Contra La Luna – Against the Moon

I love the track “Contra La Luna” from the Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty soundtrack. It means “Against the Moon,” and it plays during the part of the game where you face overwhelming forces – even the NUS government – to get So Mi to the moon for a cure.

As I was power-walking to Greggs, fuelled by rage and fury, listening to it, I couldn’t help thinking that trying to get my meds felt as difficult as that mission did on the hardest difficulty – just me, So Mi, and the Blackwall. Except I couldn’t command rogue AIs beyond the Blackwall; all I had was a phone playing the most annoying hold music and my overly polite, “No, that’s okay, I’ll call back next week.” Not quite as effective.

My rage was so strong that the pain from my hips, knees, and shin splints only spurred me to walk faster. This pain is what I deserve for struggling so much with a simple text message, I thought. By the time I reached Greggs, I was sick of listening to the racing, droning mental health noise in my head. It was infecting me the same way the Blackwall infected So Mi – and my cure might as well have been on the moon too.

But then I reached the blue glowing altar that is Greggs and stepped inside, penguin in hand. To my absolute dismay, there were no Festive Bakes in sight. “Just my luck – as if this day couldn’t get ANY WORSE,” I thought putting too much hope on a Festive Bake to save the day.

When I reached the counter, I asked the lovely Greggs lad, “You don’t have any Festive Bakes, do you?”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “They’ll only be five minutes if you want to wait.”

And just like that, the lovely Festive Bake cooker of Greggs saved my entire day because “YES, I’LL WAIT, THANK YOU SO MUCH!”. I could have hugged him, my mental health is wild right now.

I also got myself an Americano, a salted caramel latte and sausage roll for my son, and some Pudsey jammie biscuits because they were adorable. I couldn’t wait to be home again, so I raced off as fast as you can when you’ve got poor balance, shin splints, knee pain, hip pain and shaky arms carrying two hot cups of coffee. There were occasional spills and me shouting, “Oh FFS!” at my lack of proprioception – as if my failure to grasp gravity offended me personally. It did. I didn’t study the laws of motion for my body to fail to understand them.

But finally, with 80% of the coffees intact, I was at home.

Best Friend Comfort

Getting the Festive Bake was important to me. I’ve written about their meaning before, but I’ve already had three of them since their release on November 6th. I needed some WeeGee comfort, and the fact it was baking hot fresh from the oven made it extra nice to eat.

If I’m honest, I’ve been really struggling with recovery lately, with my mental health being the way it is. I’m constantly caught between binge urges and the urge to restrict. It feels a bit like the beginning of recovery again – which is demoralising when you’ve come so far.

Covid knocked me off balance, and since then so much has happened. My mental health has deteriorated, which is normal in recovery, but still hard to accept. It deserves a post of its own – everything this wobble has taught me. I suppose that’s why they say slip-ups and lapses are part of recovery. It’s definitely more of a wobble than a lapse, but basically, things are chaotic with my eating.

Eating the Festive Bake today was me keeping recovery as a wobble and not a lapse. But now I’m struggling with the thought of eating my burrito too.

At least being home with my son, blogging, and eating Greggs in my pyjamas – like I’d originally planned – still happened, even if there was a giant, stressful wrench in the middle of it which I ended up writing about instead. Although, the NHS is more of an oddly sized Allen key that doesn’t seem to fit any of your furniture than a helpful wrench.

It’s exactly why I didn’t bother them with my Passive Bad Thoughts™️ – because historically, they’ve been just as unhelpful. “It’s not like you’re going to do anything though, we’ll see you in three months.” That kind of response only makes me feel more like a burden than my own rapid thoughts already do and I can’t risk that right now. It was bad enough with my medication.

When All Isn’t Said or Done Because My Brain Won’t Shut Up

Everything with my medication is up in the air – same as my brain, which refuses to pipe down. A piping hot Greggs Festive Bake was soothing, though. For now, I’m somewhat surviving the chaos, and my ED being chaotic feels like a metaphor for how things currently are.

There’s always tomorrow. Maybe I’ll finally get my restful day. That’s one of the things that gets me through The Passive Bad Thoughts™️ – the hope that tomorrow will be different, and the understanding that I have to observe it for it to be true. I won’t know if it’ll be better or worse until tomorrow.

Schrödinger’s tomorrow.

For the anthem of the post: the song that powered my rage walk – Contra La Luna from the Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty soundtrack. The drop is my favourite part.

I moaned about the NHS hold music earlier, but honestly, it’s probably for the best it’s not something like this. If they played Contra La Luna while I was waiting, I’d show up at the surgery in full “tear down the NUS government” mode.