As the French say, "soo la voo"...
Well, it finally happened: Quinn wrote another blog post! Don’t get too used to it, mind.
Hello there! This post merely served as a bookmark, a glimpse of a moment in time, a pin in a conversation, something to remember how things were. In short, this past month has proved to be a rather trying time, so the fact I’m clawing my way towards the other end of it is a miracle, and I want to commemorate how far I've come.
First of all, my tenancy is coming to an end which brought up a lot of questions as to where I’d live and who with, and subsequently what I’d do when I lived there. As a rather existential person this caused a lot of inner turmoil as I was presented with a Sylvia-Plath-fig-analogy-esque scenario. Choice paralysis kicked in. Ultimately, I’ve decided to move back home to Glasgow (woohoo! Ggow represent!) and apply for my final year of college to obtain my BA (having already obtained my MA, I’m doing things backwards, you see). I’m excited to return back to my roots and be closer to family, but I’m also slightly anxious about the period of readjustment awaiting me as I find a happy middle ground between starting afresh and picking up where I left off 3 whole years ago. I’m a different person now to who I was when I moved to Wigan, naturally, so it’ll be interesting to see where this new-and-improved Quinn fits in to the jigsaw of Glasgow-living.
Secondly, I lost such an important person in my life; my gran. This marked my first immediate experience with death. I had lost family members before but losing my gran was something I never really expected to happen, even though it was inevitable. She had always been there, and I guess I thought she would always remain. I don’t know if I believe in the 5 stages of grief, but I’ve learned that you really can’t put a timer on it. Whenever I thought I was moving along to the acceptance phase, anger and depression would grab me right back again. It’s taken me over a month to come to terms with life without my gran and it still doesn’t feel 100% real. But I know, in time, I’ll get to the acceptance stage, but I’ll never stop missing her.
Losing my gran added to my already-existing existential feelings which, mixed with my depressive episode, made things difficult with my education as my MA course drew to a close. Previous to this, my summer was spent in a prolonged manic episode which was great in allowing me to draft up my dissertation in no time at all. Hemingway advised "write drunk, edit sober" so I put my own spin on it (write crazed, edit stable). But the final edits were near impossible to make. For one, I was crashing to the depression, but also my mentor and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye when it came to concluding my piece. He felt I should take a slightly abstract approach and submit the piece without a conclusive ending; instead focusing on the middle of the story and branching out with no finality, whereas I wanted to submit the piece as a completed novella. In the end, I submitted what I wanted to (me being stubborn and all), and I ended up being awarded 62% which I’m slightly ambivalent towards, but I completed my course and can now be called “Quinn Morlotti MA” which I'm psyched about!
Now, I’m coming out of the depressive episode and I’m starting to see light again. I’ve also started therapy again where we are using EMDR which has been an interesting experiment as I don’t have any experience with it. If you didn’t know, EMDR is a form of therapy typically used for trauma and serious mental illnesses and is described by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy as “accessing the traumatic memories and starting bilateral stimulation (which) involves stimulating either side of your brain in an alternating left-right fashion to help you access your subconscious mind and process what is stored in there and how it affects you[1]”. I’ll add a few further reading articles below if you’d like to learn more about it. I’m pretty new to the concept but so far, I’d say I can see its benefits and hope to keep working towards better mental health. Although my bipolar disorder is chronic and I can’t ever fully recover, knowing how to control it is hugely helpful and I’m really lucky to be able to have access to these therapies and medications. Furthermore, discussing in therapy people who I look up to with bipolar has been super beneficial as it allows me to rediscover words of encouragement and interviews from celebrities I genuinely care about. This has led to me re-reading one of Carrie Fisher’s books (Wishful Drinking) which has given me a new hope (pun intended) and a refreshed outlook on my illness. I’m also very lucky to have a host of stars to admire including, but not limited to, Carrie Fisher, Patty Duke, Vivien Leigh, Chappell Roan, and Demi Lovato. Aren’t I lucky?!
All in all, it's been a rough couple of weeks of grief, neurosis, and foreboding dissertation deadlines, but I’m glad to say I’m slowly making my way towards the end of it all. Hopefully October will be a much more forgiving month (please, God, allow October to be a much more forgiving month!)
Reading on EMDR:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_and_reprocessing
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/22641-emdr-therapy
[1] https://www.bacp.co.uk/about-therapy/types-of-therapy/eye-movement-desensitisation-and-reprocessing-emdr/
❤️
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