Life From Another Side

"...was inspired by a desire to see life from another side"

Bollocks.

He wrote that poem for me.

It was my Christmas present.

Well it's a little late, but thanks very much.

Comes around...

It's that joint anniversary again; DK's birthday, and the day my dad died.

It doesn't get any easier.

And it doesn't help that I'm at a particularly low ebb at the moment. Or maybe that's part of the reason why I'm feeling so down. I don't know.

Either way, it's a stinker.

Ball of Wax

Busy week coming up -- dog sitting for brother while he flies off to Cuba, and in the middle of that, final hospital trip before my operation.

Hm.

What was that someone said about avoiding stress?

Clinic trip with son tomorrow about his hearing, number two daughter having counselling and needing to see a speach therapist, and number one daughter having blood tests and doctor's appointments galore for nasty problem that refuses to be sorted. No one is having fun at the moment, at all.

Add to that the fact we still have only half a kitchen and no paint on the walls, and it's an all round cheery place to be.

I've had to stop taking one lot of meds because the side effects were becoming unbearable, but I'm nervous being without them at the moment. My psychiatrist is in the process of writing to my GP and telling him I need more support in place ready for when number one daughter leaves home. Given how unsuportive the support was last time, I'm not optimistic.

It's now six months since I last spoke to he who left me.
I still miss him every day.

2008

Well, it has arrived quietly enough.

Lets hope it continues that way.

P.S My New Year is quiet. I'm trying to ignore the neighbours shrieking and rowing in the street, and praying they haven't started as they mean to go on.

Final Furlong

It's been another tough year, so I can't say I'll be sorry to see the end of it -- I won't be.
Christmas doesn't get any easier, and I still have tonight to get through yet.

That's not going to a walk in the park, especially without even a glass of red wine to soften the edges a bit.

I don't know what to say about it all really; I've tried the 'things can only get better' approach; the 'this year will be better' approach; the 'I don't give a flying fuck' approach.

I think I'll just keep my head down this year.

It's my party...

... and all the drinks will be non-alcoholic.

I've often wondered what it would be like to be told 'One more drink could kill you.'

Now I know.

According to the consultant, a liqueur chocolate could be enough to land me in the hospital; a small sherry could land me in the mortuary. So I won't be hitting the Gordons this Christmas.

Apparently the pain I was in in July/August was pancreatitis, and I was lucky it went away so quietly. Next time I might not be so lucky.

So now I am psyching myself up for an imminent MRI scan, to see if they can risk leaving my operation for another two months. Otherwise I shall be in the hospital sooner rather than later.

Not quite how I planned on seeing out the year, but then things never do turn out how I plan them.

There's a lesson to be learned in there somewhere, I'm sure.

Winter

It's so cold here, I can't ever seem to get warm.

It doesn't help that I don't really have any proper heating.

I can't sleep at night, it's so cold. It has to snow soon; usually it warms up a bit when it snows.

Three jumpers and a jacket and socks and boots and mittens indoors is too much.

***

Back to hospital for some results next week.

***

And we're not doing Christmas.

Not after last year.

Only a stubborn daughter number one and an ambulance man's dislike of paperwork kept me out of hospital; the police would have had me locked up faster than you could have said 'padded cell.'

So no Christmas.

Just another Tuesday in this house.

Another cold, cold, Tuesday, with not a turkey to be seen.

Asking for it.

One of the worst weeks ever.

I hesitate to say that things can't get any worse, because that's just inviting trouble.

But they can't.

Cold

It's a year ago today since I last saw He Who Left Me.

And that last meeting was painful, and he hurt me very much.

I can't imagine feeling that hurt about something now.

I can't imagine feeling that much about anything anymore.

I think my doctor said this might happen -- that the pills dull things, so one can't feel the lows (or the highs) quite so keenly. It's a dull -- but safe -- place to be.

I tell myself it's the pills, because the alternative is that without him, I don't feel anything.

Splitting

I've been on the new pills/increased pills for two days now, and the headaches are excruciating.
The pain of it keeps me awake all night (well, that along with a poorly dog, who has only just stopped being sick after 48 hours of puking and diarrhea...)

I hope these are just temporary adjustment pains, and that things settle quickly, because I really need this to work.

Five more days on this dose and then I increase again -- I hope that doesn't mean the headaches increase too, because I'm not sure I could stand it. This already has me climbing the walls, its that bad.

I don't remember it hurting before when I have had previous dose adjustments, but my memory is not up to much at the best of times, and these are not the best of times...

Keeping my fingers crossed.

***

Daughter number one and I went to a remembrance Sunday service, which was very cool, and proves I'm doing at least slightly better than this time last year.

***

And said daughter has started receiving offers from universities for next year, which makes her leaving seem all very real, and scary, particularly at a time when I don't want to be left.

I'm not good at being left.

Pee-ess

I got my mobile phone bill yesterday, and I forgot that it would be itemised. It turned out that I also managed to phone 112, which my children inform me is the emergency services.

Just in case my humiliation wasn't complete enough, I worked out that the whole episode took place around the time I was in the ladies room at Marks and Spencer. I'm not sure exactly who was treated to that -- I don't want to know -- but I really hope it was the CSA.

***

This afternoon I start tests to see if I have pancreatic cancer.

Daughter number two is taking the afternoon off school to come with me.
Not that I'm scared, or anything.

Space Between

Halloween has been and gone, and firework night is nearly upon us, and the kids keep reminding me how ill I was this time last year, and I can't remember any of it.

It's like someone has been inside my brain with a hoover, and sucked my memory out. Apparently I didn't leave my room for days, I cried and screamed, and all I wanted to do was die.

The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

It is exactly 2 weeks until the anniversary of my first meeting with my psychiatrist, when I know I had decided that my only options were that it went well, or that I would die.

***

Having said that, its not all roses and smiles at the moment. I spoke to my psychiatrist yesterday and he is concerned about me. Concerned enough to increase the dose of my mood stabilisers and put me on antidepressants. Probably just for the winter, he said, but he doesn't want to risk me getting any lower.

***

Days like like last Thursday are enough to render even the toughest soul low. As if finding out that my son is going deaf and needs a hearing aid wasn't devastating enough, I didn't lock the keypad on my phone and it proceeded to dial its way through most of the people in my phonebook, including my dead father, the CSA, and he who left me (with whom I have had no contact for months). I actually stood in the Disney shop and cried when I realised what had happened, so mortified was I that he might think I was initiating some kind of contact. Horrifying, no matter how much I miss him.

The big-eared elephant wasn't the only Dumbo in that shop.

Saddest Day

I think I realised today _finally_ that it doesn't get any better -- that I'll always be alone, so really it's just a question of deciding when and how I go rather than deciding if I go.

It's not that I don't want to be with anyone else, or I can't find anyone -- I can't be with anyone else. So there really is no decision to make.

The decision is made.

End of, as my kids would say.

***

I first found my birth mother fourteen years ago tomorrow, on her birthday.

***

It was a couple of years after that I last saw her.

Dark Days

I feel pretty crappy at the moment.

It might be the result of dark mornings and ever darkening evenings. I might have to invest in a light box -- my psychiatrist seems to think that it will help. Its not seasonal affective disorder, but he says bipolars suffer similarly at this time of year.

I can't bring myself to take the last of he who left me's stuff to the tip.

He might be hating me for some presumed misdemeanour, but I still can't do it. So I'm stuck with it. I don't fancy having it delivered to him and opening up that particular can of worms. Storage is too expensive.

So until I figure out what else I can do with it, I'm stuck with it.

Beyond Economical Repair

Three months ago I met someone.

He says he likes me. A lot.

He's bright, funny, clever, interesting, sexy, helpful, and he likes me. A lot.

But I can't do it.

I can't do the whole connectedness thing.

Any time we show any signs of any real connection, I switch off. I can't believe he won't just run away. I can't believe he will still be there in the (metaphorical) morning. I can't believe its all for real. Maybe I don't want to believe it's for real, I don't know, but it's not happening. So I tell him I need space, and to leave me alone for a bit, and I'll text him when I feel better, which I have no intention of doing.

And I'm not blaming He Who Left Me entirely; God knows I wasn't without damage before I met him. But now I am incapable of being with anyone; relationship-wise, I am beyond economical repair.

Now thats a scary thought -- the prospect of life alone. Life alone when you just haven't met the right person is one thing, but life alone when you know there never will be -- never can be -- a right one, is entirely a different thing.

How long can I endure a life like that?

How long do I want to endure a life like that?

Beta male heart throbs?

Interesting article here about the attraction of the beta male, those less than alpha specimens that we can't help falling for.

I've known for a long time that I'm not attracted to the macho sort, out for saving a woman in distress; frankly I find them rather laughable, and it isn't that I don't often find myself in distress. I just don't see myself as being saved.

But clearly there are women who would never consider going out with anything other than the alpha male. No beta (or omega) types for them.

So what is it that defines the types we go for? How do I differ from the woman who goes for the alpha? Is it a maternal thing -- I want to care, she wants to be cared for? Or a deprivation thing -- I can't be cared for?
Or maybe I just like men who can't tie their own shoe laces.

Who knows?

Silence Ever After 2

So as expected, there were death throes.
And a brief resurrection.

We talked about couples therapy.

He said he'd go to relate.

There was a waiting list -- end of August, they said.

So I waited.

And it was school holidays so I didn't expect to hear because my daughter doesn't know that we communicate so I can spare her from the mess that sometimes (always) results.

But when I did hear it was for him to accuse me of doing something to hurt him.

Was it because he really thinks I would do that? Or because he doesn't want to have to talk about our relationship?
This is the closest he has come to having to do it -- I have waited over eight months since he said he would seek third party advice, and it must have been only days away at most, and he does something to screw it up.

What am I supposed to think?

So thats the final nail in the coffin.

I shall take his stuff that I have been keeping in my shed to the dump -- out of my life and out of my head. Finally.

I went out with an ex-partner from eight years ago last week, for old times sake, and it wasn't much fun. It proved to me that there is no going back.

This proves to me that there is no standing still, either.

Solsbury Hill

I haven't been able to listen to music for so long, and today one of the Sunday papers gave away a Peter Gabriel cd, and it sounded like the best music my ears had ever heard.
That was the best birthday present I could have asked for.

Almost.

My kids had a portrait done for me, of the three of them.

I had a good day.

Being 40 isn't so bad. So far.

In the Summertime

I'm tired.
It's not lack of sleep, and I'm aware that my pills are affectionately named dopamax, or stupamax, by some who take them, because of a certain dulling effect that they have on one, but I don't think it's that either.

I think that summer is coming.

My psychiatrist tells me that summer is a much easier time of year for 'people like me' -- that those of us who are classically bipolar feel the pressure lift in the summer months, and that urgent drive to do whatever-it-is during the early spring and autumn suddenly lifts during the summer, and we can relax.

So I think that is what I am 'suffering' from now.
It's a curious feeling.
A weird sensation of not really having to do anything.

I keep trying to work out if this is what 'normal' people feel like most of the time.
It's very odd, but it's early days yet.

Maybe I'll try more sleep, and June, and see how I am after that.

Slow Death

Well it took a lot longer than I thought it would, but I think we are finally there.

Imminent visit to his brother was the final nail in the coffin; he can't possibly cope with family and communicating with me, we've seen that before.

So something had to give.

And the something was me.

I'm not surprised, or even that sorry. I know it might just be a delayed reaction thing.

Or it might just be a been there, done that, don't care thing.

***

My only regret is that he has now (finally) last night come off anti-psychotics and started on lithium. Finally there might have been some improvement in his mood / condition / whatever. And he was finally going to get some kind of psychological assessment, and get some therapy. After six months of saying it was urgent and he was going to do something about it, it was finally going to happen.

But I won't be around to see it.

Maybe, eventually, it all just got too complex. I didn't want to be around for the unravelling. I don't know.

***

I wouldn't be surprised if there are some final death throes.

Some dead things just don't know when to lie down.

***

Given all the above, my own head-weather is surprisingly good.