Are the voices in my head too loud for you?

Lamentations

What a day.  I am still trying to come to terms with the fact that I had set rather more of my heart on the job and community posssibilities that got away at the end of last week.  At least I know now it wasn't just me that was the problem.  It is money.  A huge relief.  But I will need a job which takes me into new and stimulating situations for sanity's sake.  I will need to earn and I will need to do what I can to get to being me - I won't say again - because each depression brings different insights.  Different me-s emerge and dominate.

I write better when other things are happening around me; I use time like it matters and I am better house-trained.  Appreciated by the family.  Jane, well, and frustrated, was once described by a now retired Archdeacon in East Anglia as a " caged lionness".  Very true.

I know these things with the top 10% of my head - the other 90% is pretty much dead as a Dodo.  The only thing I can settle to is sleep.  I have been filling in a timetable looking at what I actually do in the day, when and what anxiety rating I give the activity/interruptions. 

Amazing the things that just now send me up to 8 or 9/10.  Answering e-mails - but not writing blogs. Unexpected events of any kind.  (Mungo ate my Diazapam this morning and I ended up taking one old tablet and one new before realising the old pill I had taken was 5mg and not 2mg - so I took 7mg of Diaz this morning - but then had the panic while my partner phoned the vet who said we should have a quiet day - dog-wise.  (Mungo - our usual 'trumpeter' and warner of approaching people and cars - has been a bit like a pyjama case, spending most of the day on my partner's pillow or in the dog bed with Delia his dinosaur - but no further medical action needed.)  Expecting myself to do something and then realising I can't manage it has been the toughest part of the day.  My new mantra is "I know I am very ill but I trust the staff at the centre to get me better".  I am working on it.

"I know I am very ill but..."

I've also had fun - yes (the word does enter my vocabulary even when I am mentally working out how many paracetamol and codeine might be in reach) filling in an interest checklist supplied by the centre.  I realised it would have very little filled in if I based it on now (sleep, eat and think and not thinking aren't really hobbies) so I have tried to think back and remember some of the things I would have loved.  You are supposed to use 1 for not interested; 2 for a little interest and 3 for a lot.  I had to introduce 0 for ironing which I want defended as an interest. It is male oppression and for some females an obsession but it is not an interest.

It's easy to be flippant just because that's one of my finest lines of defence - and I guess some would argue - attack.  But the truth of the matter is I look like death warmed up - at least still warmed up (stay positive).  I live with dark, dark thoughts of a happier world without me and torment myself with guilt and shame about things which I am sure in the clear light of day - the part of me which has gone walk about again after the calamity of having to reassesss what my future now can't be in a few months time - I will look back on and assess as the hubris of a ridiculous Tragedy Queen over-reacting to the kindness and affirmation of others (still be all my fault though, I expect).

For now I am struggling with the call to pull me out of my stupor and move on.  But I have promised to trust and I will.  Dear friends wrote that I should hang on because there will be a light at the end of the tunnel.  I can't find the tunnel just now and lights aren't much use if you are myopic.  Stay positive.

The toughest part is that I feel I have run out of the energy to keep fighting.  I am still thinking and working hour by hour just now to try and keep the anxiety under control.  I feel it's a losing battle.  It's just after 8pm now.  It may be better by 9pm.  Who knows.

No painting today.  Failed.

But I have done my homework for the centre.

I've probably spent far too much time with my own thoughts - which is not considered good.  I wonder if CPNs are generally ENFJs?  But I have little to say out loud and no energy to engage.  I have to use that energy to block the incessant child-like tantrum screaming in my head: "Just give me my life back - any life - just life back NOW!"

I wish I could write more positively and conventionally - but I know I am in the heart of the writers of The Psalms, Lamentations and Job.

"Wicked"

I am recalling the teaching of Jesus when he invites the enquirer to remove the plank from his own eye.  I feel I am excavating elements of mine as I take my self-care seriously once more.  I must have been nuts.  I have worked six weeks on the trot with no day off.  Firstly getting loads of things done before our son returned home for the summer and then - a summer of a mixed diet of retreatants and friends coming to stay.  I probably invested far too much emotional energy in the visits of friends which I anticipated would be feeding and refreshing - and in many ways they were - but they still retained many of the facets of the hospitality we award to strangers and pilgrims.  To treat someone as Christ with us means exercising the gentlest and most affirming of hospitality.  I loved doing this, but I was bonkers not acknowledging that I needed more space for me.  I thought I could defer my own emotional needs - I would be giving a retreatant a gentle nudge to re-frame if I heard them utter such a misguided intention.  Indeed I was truly brought to my knees (metaphorically) when I reflected that the words I said to another recently are exactly what I need to hear myself.  Paraphrased:  being taken seriously begins by taking myself and my needs seriously.  I need time to be fully me - and much of what is fully me is exercised in silence and alone.  It's a pain because, like many I would love to conform and just be friendly and people-focused 24/7 but the reality is I need the space for the creative pulse that makes me, me to throb and produce the work which feeds the more extrovert presentation of myself.  When I dismiss the inner need for this space I am very quickly diminished and time, which would normally be a pleasure in the service of othere becomes a little harder.  The balance; the nuanced subtlety of a life lived with open hands, enquiring mind and heart is reduced.

So prayer this morning focused on silence and simplicity.  Instead of ploughing into the inevitable tasks that need to be completed I pick up my escape of the moment - a brilliantly simply written but crafted with little less than genius - Jilly Cooper and had two cups of tea and marmite toast delivered courtesy of the W-G room service!

The novel takes me straight back to supply teaching in a school in Putney!  Wicked is a smashing fantasy romp - very amusing especially for ex-teachers!

So the day now has a different colour, texture and hue.  I feel fully present - but I am not going to assume too much.  I need to in-fill and rebalance - and not assume the equivalent of an emergency spiritual and emotional elastoplast is enough.  I am relieved I am feeling better, but anxiety is there.

Today is therefore mine.  I am claiming it.