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It’s my 36th birthday today which means The Single Supplement is one. Before I begin my usual column, I just want to say a huge thank you to every single one of you. Thank you for reading my words, thank you for sharing my work, thank you for supporting me and, most importantly, thank you for getting me. It has meant the world to me. This newsletter has changed my life and it’s helped me remember who I am again after getting a bit lost. Thank you for your support in bringing me back to myself.
I wanted to write a really uplifting newsletter today. I intended to reflect back on everything I have learned this year and really celebrate what this newsletter has meant but the truth is I have been struggling for the past few months. I rarely talk about my mental health. This is not because I’m ashamed or want to hide it but more that I don’t really fully understand it myself. And sometimes I have to go through something and then look back to fully realise the impact it has had on me. Quite often I don’t realise how bad things have got for me until I start to feel better.
More than two years ago I was diagnosed with clinical depression, having already been diagnosed with anxiety. The psychiatrist recognised that this was not a new thing and had been something I have suffered since I was a teenager. My diagnosis was actually a weird one as for a while they thought I had bipolar and then diagnosed me with “depression with periods of hypomania” because I didn’t quite fit in the box. Later I heard a highly successful woman with ADHD speaking at an event I was working at. As I was listening to her speaking, I froze. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I got goosebumps hearing her speak because I resonated so much. I spoke to her after and told her about the problems I’d had getting diagnosed and how much I related to everything she had to say. She said it was common for adult women to be misdiagnosed with bipolar when they actually had ADHD. So I went to my GP who listened and agreed it was feasible and put me on a very long waiting list. I’m still on that list. In the meantime, I am having group therapy for my depression. This is weekly and we had only just started when the pandemic hit so for the most part it has been over Zoom.
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My depression isn’t constant. It comes in waves. I could use all the cliches in the book to describe it. I guess most accurately to begin with it feels like a big cloud slowly creeping towards me, shifting how I feel. When the cloud is really over me, it feels more like quicksand that I’m sinking into. Sometimes I can feel the cloud or the quicksand coming and I can pull myself up or out in time and sometimes it takes me by surprise. I once read the start of Matt Haig’s Reasons To Stay Alive where he talks about his depression and then stopped because I really didn’t relate to how it is for him. He described it as so painful he would wish he could just be numb. But my depression is the opposite. It sucks all feeling so all I feel is numb and let me tell you it’s no picnic. When I feel really bleak in my numbness, I wish to feel anything even if it’s awful and even if it hurts.
After I moved into my new place, I could feel the cloud looming. I felt the familiar sinking feeling and I stopped doing yoga or going on bike rides or doing anything of the other things that help. I spent a lot of time sitting on my sofa feeling lethargic and apathetic. I also felt like I was desperately trying to hold on for something to happen to shift things for me. I didn’t know what that thing was until last Saturday when my friend and I went camping. When we arrived, the view at Three Cliffs Bay took my breath away (see above picture). I couldn’t wait to get down to the beach.
We went the next day. The path down was very steep and we were both concentrating on not slipping. We made it down in one piece and when we came over the crest of a sand dune and the beach was stretching in front of us, I just burst into tears. The strength of emotion took me by surprise. I wasn’t just a bit teary-eyed, I was properly crying and trying to catch my breath and saying “oh my god”. It felt like this whole pandemic I had actually been holding on and waiting to make it to this moment. And the moment was finally here and the intense relief I felt to be there just poured out of me. I had made it. I had survived. I was going to be OK.
I was still crying when I asked my friend to take some pics of me spinning around and running. It felt important to mark this moment. I felt like Christina Yang in Grey’s Anatomy when she is crying, holding the fish and having her photo taken. Derek says she is going to want to remember this moment, and I knew I was going to want to remember too.
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More often than not I can function and go about my daily business. People who see me or spend time with me might not even notice a difference. I often don’t share how I’m feeling with even my closest friends. I’ve become incredibly good at faking it. Pretending I’m fine is a full-time job and it exhausts me but the alternative, which is succumbing to how I feel terrifies me because when that has happened in the past I haven’t been able to leave my bed. Then there is the constant battle to behave how everyone else does, which I think is the ADHD if I’ve got it. It presents differently in women and they are often misdiagnosed. One way it affects women is that they are constantly in a state of overwhelm, another thing I read is they are either a tornado of ideas and activity and enthusiasm or they are couch potatoes unable to get off the sofa while watching all their household tasks mount up and their unanswered email list grow. Despite appearing to be a “couch potato” people with ADHD usually struggle to relax because their mind is constantly going.
I’ve become a master of pretending I am absolutely fine but that pretending leaves me feeling overwhelmed and exhausted and that is how I am feeling right now. I’ve had a stressful week and haven’t stopped but it’s also my birthday today and my birthday always stresses me out and make me feel emotional. I could keep pretending but I’ve been so honest and open in the newsletter in the past so it feels wrong. But also I guess I finally feel ready to talk about it. I’ve also been inspired this week by the amazing Clare Seal (of @myfrugalyear) who shared this week about her own depression.
The other reason is that I had a conversation with a reader who I shared my diagnosis with and she asked if I thought my mental health / potential neurodiversity issue was actually the reason I’m “still” single. The question felt like I was being hit with a stick. My first instinct was to call bullshit. Plenty of people who are neurodiverse or depressed are happily partnered up. But a small voice told me that maybe it was true and everything I’ve read about depression and ADHD, in particular, does point to people struggling to maintain relationships. I don’t have the answers and, of course, even the question grates on me. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there is nothing wrong with being single. Being single can and often is awesome and for many people, it is a positive choice. For others like myself who do wish to get a partner eventually, being single can still be really positive and it isn’t something we want to beat themselves up for being (even if society and the media want us to!)
Anyway, I’m sorry if this newsletter is a bit of a downer today. Having this space to write is such a privilege and I don’t take it for granted. Thank you for reading. Thank you for listening.
Lots of love,
Nicola
Twitter: @Nicola_Slawson | Instagram: @Nicola_Slawson
Celebrate with me
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I’m so excited to be finally hosting a party to celebrate this newsletter and this wonderful community of single women. It will be a chance to get to know each other better, have a bit of fun and there might be a surprise or two.
To cover all the costs of Zoom and my guests (to be announced) there is a small ticket price. Tickets are only £5 (plus the Eventbrite fee) and I’m extending the early bird offer until next Friday. Get your ticket here.
My favourite Supps
Instead of sharing my usual recommendations this week, I wanted to mark the occasion of it being this newsletters first birthday by sharing some of my favourite articles from the archives. I would love to know what your favourite has been!
Yes she's still single, but don't worry she has a career!
This edition tops the list of my most-read newsletters. It’s from November last year before I had proper branding but I still love it and I love that people related to it so much. I wrote: “I do think a part of it is that people feel need to label others to help them understand because there is a fear around people not conforming to the status quo. It’s easier – and more socially acceptable – to put me in the career-obsessed box as a way of explaining it away. I feel like people are thinking: “Yes, she is still single, but don’t worry it’s only because she is one of those career-obsessed types.” By the way, for the record, my career is not the reason I’m single.”
How to look after yourself when there's no-one coming to rescue you
This newsletter feels like my past self coming to give me some really good advice while I’m currently feeling pretty shitty so maybe that’s why I had to choose it even though it’s a bit different from my usual fare. I said: “Accepting your circumstances in the moment can help if you are finding yourself wishing things were different. I have often told myself: “No-one is going to come and rescue me, I have to rescue myself.” Far from making me feel depressed, I actually feel empowered when I think this.”
You should close this newsletter down and other lies shame tells me.
Shame is one of my favourite topics to discuss and this newsletter also feels very relevant today. I said: “As Brené Brown says in her TED talk on shame, the real critic we are facing is ourselves. Shame makes us tell ourselves we aren’t good enough and it also makes us ask “Who do you think you are?” Because of the stigma and the societal pressures especially on women, when it comes to talking about being single, I feel like that voice is saying “Who do you think you are to be so OK with talking about being single? This is not something you should be proud of.” That voice wants me to stay small. It wants me to never admit that I am either feeling fine about it nor that I’m feeling shitty about it. It makes me want to close this newsletter down and go back to being quiet. Or as Brene says “shame, for women, is a straightjacket.””
The power of male friendships (by Miranda Larbi)
I love what my guest writer Miranda Larbi had to say about the men in her life and a lot of you really loved this one. She wrote: “Spending the past 12 months with such extraordinary men has really given me intense joy and hope during a period in which I could have easily gotten lost. When you’ve spent the past decade bouncing from one codependent relationship to another, it can be terrifying and isolating trying to rediscover who you are. And it can be even more worrying when you start on a new emotional adventure to think that you might fall back into old habits.”
The anxiety comes in waves (Q&A with Tiffany Philippou)
The amazing Tiffany Philippou put into words what we were all feeling the day before the UK went into lockdown. She also had some words of comfort. She said: “I also know from my past experiences that out of the worst times in our lives come the greatest moments of growth and even though we’re having to make huge sacrifices and it’s really uncomfortable, I have hope that we’ll emerge stronger. In the grand scheme of things, this time period is going to be a small blip in our whole lives. The time will come when we’ll look back on this time and say; ‘omg remember that bonkers time we were all indoors.’”
The Lowdown
To celebrate both my own birthday and the birthing of this newsletter, I have slashed the cost of the annual membership to The Single Supplement by half for a limited time. That makes it 50p per newsletter, which is an absolute bargain even if I do say so myself. Your support would mean the world to me!
Cat update. I am still reeling from the news that my landlord has refused permission for me to get a pet of any sort. I’m swinging between resigned acceptance and wishing all sorts of terrible things to befall this woman (which, yes, I feel bad about but c’mon!)
If you’re a writer (or a budding one), Tiffany and I are running our pitching masterclass again on 13 October. We’ll walk you through how to structure your pitches and we’ll share some of ours. We’ll also guide you with how to work with editors on your personal stories and how you can make use of the same story across multiple publications. Grab your ticket here.
If you didn’t know, I have an agony aunt column for paying subscribers of this newsletter. You can take part even if you don’t want to sign up. Just fill out this form with your burning question or problem and pop your email address in as well. After I write the column, I’ll forward it to you. Your identity will be kept totally anonymous in the version subscribers can see.
About me
For those who don’t know, I’m Nicola Slawson, a freelance journalist who lives in Shropshire, UK. If you would like to support what I do, please consider subscribing to be a paid supporter of The Single Supplement. If you would prefer to make a one-off contribution, you can also buy me a coffee, here’s the link to my Ko-Fi page. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter.
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