The Last of Last Year's Beer

Last year, I started brewing my own beer. Over the last couple of years I seem to have moved without any apparent choice or fuss into the same early-middle age hobbies that were previously enjoyed by my Dad. Looking back now, it's as though becoming a runner, starting to grow my own vegetables and brewing my own beer was inevitable: it was always going to happen, there's probably something genetic about it.

My lovely brother and sister-in-law gave me the brewing kit for Christmas, and I eventually got started last summer with a Yorkshire Bitter, and it took 6 weeks or so to be ready to drink. It was really rather good, but I knew I could do better, and so went straight on to a London Bitter which was ready for the cold December and saw me through to the beginning of this year. I wanted to drink the last bottle at a special time so I saved it to have with my Dad, knowing my parents would be coming over from Portugal in the Spring for the second of Mum's knee replacement operations. It doesn't travel very well, and they've so far not come to the house for a visit because Mum's not driving yet, so that last bottle has been sitting around taking up house room.

Today I finally got chance to spend some time on my poor neglected vegetables. When I'm thinking about the veggies, something happens to me that I can't really explain. I am totally focussed, and completely calm. I can stare at the greenery for many long minutes at a time, thinking only about how far the plants are spaced apart, and what the soil needs (made from previous years' potting remnants, all my shredded paper and cardboard scraps, coffee grounds from the cafe at work and composted veggy kitchen waste), and what I might need to do the next time I get chance, but somehow my mind is free to solve other problems without my knowledge. I love sitting on the back step first thing in the morning with a cuppa and my breakfast, but that hasn't happened as often this year thanks to rain and my early runs. Whilst enjoying breaking the soil apart and re-potting my tomatoes, I realised how different this year is from last year.

Last year, having made the decision to get off my arse (again - this time for good), I lost 2 and a half stone, and made myself much healthier. When Jem came up with the 200MMM idea, I knew the running would become really serious, and I welcomed it, knowing that my depression needed me to be active. Although I was too terrified to admit it to myself, I was beginning to feel that no amount of exercise would be enough to chase away the horrible dark waters that seemed to have welled up around me. I knew I was surrounded and chest deep in heaviness, and when I did consciously think about how I was feeling I had begun to accept as objective facts some of the conclusions my poor head  had reached. It seemed reasonable to believe "I am never going to be good at anything," "I am not as intelligent as I used to think I was" and "I do not deserve to feel loved." Despite being open about my mental illness since diagnosis in 1999, there are still very few friends I can ever be totally honest with about just how dark things get. Not many people know how to take the information that a friend regularly uses considering different methods of suicide as a management technique for their low moods. I'm not saying I'd ever do it, but on many, many occasions, my way of knowing if I'm able to go on with life the way it is, is wondering if that tree over there is tall and strong enough, or what might happen if I jumped off that bridge. If the tree isn't suitable, or the bridge jump would just leave me wet and cold, then it's clearly not time to do it yet, and I go on.

By early May, I felt that the edges of my vision had begun to close in, as though the colour was seeping out of my world, and not just in the metaphorical way. It being time to update them anyway, I got new glasses and contact lenses, and my overall vision improved, but as a photographer, I was mildly concerned. By this point, I'd run my first half-marathon and was doing the distance fairly regularly in training, but was becoming aware that the runners high, the pay-off for all that hard work, was increasingly short-lived. I'd also totally failed to lose the spare tyre around my waist, and it was this that took me to the doctor.

I didn't really expect there to be any other answer apart from perhaps to do different exercises, do more. The blood tests for all the usual early middle age suspects - sugars, iron, thyroid - were a formality. The results changed my life.

My blood was taken, and roughly a week later I got a call to say the result for the thyroid was abnormal and that the doctor wanted to see me. In the week after that phone call and before the appointment, I did some internet research and read as much as I could about thyroid problems, so that when the doctor told me my results were "blooming awful," it came as a great relief.

Previously, all I'd known about thyroid glands was that they had something to do with iodine, and that fat people blamed their weight on them. Now I understood that without the right amount of thyroxine, your whole body does weird things. An under-active thyroid gland, creating too little thyroxine, can result in every organ and process of the body slowing down, cutting out non-essential functions, slowing down metabolism. To preserve the resources it has, your body cuts out any fancy stuff, like higher cerebral functions, peripheral vision and keeping your hair and nails hydrated, and just keeps you ticking over. Thyroxine is the hormone for the body's basic running mode, it keeps the heart beating regularly, it helps you draw energy from food, it enables the cells of your brain to communicate with each other. Adrenaline is similar, but it's the emergency hormone, it gives you a faster heartbeat, faster reactions, and creates feelings of excitement and the runners high. The doctor explained to me that my thyroid results were so bad that it had to be the adrenaline from running that was keeping me going. No wonder I was feeling rubbish. Whenever the adrenaline levels receded, my body was going into safety mode, leaving behind a crashing low.

I started taking 50mg of thyroxine every day immediately after diagnosis, and now I'm about to go for another blood test to see how I'm reacting to that dose. It's been 2months, and over the last 2 or 3 weeks, I'm beginning to notice how much I've improved. I've lost 10lbs since then, but that's not the biggest change.

Doing the veggies today helped me remember that last year I did all those new pottering-hobby type things without really thinking I would be doing them this year, or any other year. For most of the last few years I've had a background thought ticking away in the back of my head that a 5 year plan was too long. Nothing really meant anything to me, I just went through the motions to look like I was doing normal human things that people are supposed to do. Business, relationships... nothing was important. The future meant nothing to me, because I didn't really want to be in it. With thyroxine helping my cells do what they're supposed to be doing, I've recovered some self esteem, I can think critically and logically, and I remember what simple happiness is, and it's been waiting for me in these little, small places all this time: making things from scratch, spending time with people, talking.

I walked into town today thinking about how things are changing for the better, and while I was smiling to myself, I caught the eye of an old Sikh guy on a bike. He looked so cool, with his dark t-shirt and a bright golden-orange turban on, and below his dark sunglasses he wore a full, flowing grey beard, and a massive smile. He waved at me as he went past, and I waved back, smiling from the core of my being. A white van with the window down, following a couple of cars behind, slowed down to allow the guy in the passenger seat to lean out and call "Born smiling!" to me and let my smile spread to his face too. I smiled all the rest of the way into town. It's cheesy, I know, but that's how smiling works and I can do it too now. 

I thought about the one remaining bottle of last year's beer, and the person who brewed it. That person, that version of myself is so different to the person I am today. She was heavy, dark, and becoming desperate.The new, better me appreciates what she did, and would very much like to raise that bottle of beer to her in thanks and appreciation. Here's to you, and thanks for the beer - it is even better with a few months wait!

Thanks for hanging in there, and getting me safely through all that dark stuff. I know it was hard work. You were so strong and you did brilliantly. It's ok now. I'll take it from here.