Something has changed in my attitude. For me yesterday's panic attack was devastating. The psychologist was on her way and I phoned to cancel. Just couldn't handle it. The apprehension had spilled over and I was a shaking wreck in no fit state to entertain a guest. I know that it appears I am dramatising things because in reality it was not but in my head it was the end of the world. A lifeline ignored at the last chance saloon. It was a black place.
Many was a time in the past when I would not crumble but shatter on impact and it would take me weeks to pull myself together. I would sit with only self-pity to converse with in my dark little world mentally crying over how it wasn't fair. Immediately that is how I felt yesterday. Not only had I let down myself but others too. I swung in the living room for a while hung by a rope of guilt while all others carried on regardless.
And that is how I feel sometimes- like I am not there. Like Gregor Samsa locked away in a room to be forgotten about. Like my world is the word "knight" and i am the letter "K". Or "Gnome" and I am the letter "G". There are of course lots of other words but you get the picture so I won't list them all. That is how I feel. The whole is significant but that letter is not and is really not required. Not only that but it is a hindrance. It does not need to be placed there so why is it there? People just accept it but, god this has been ripping a mental hole thinking about it, what is the point? Someone must have sat down and created that. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Maybe we should all go adding silent letters on to words that are dead in the spoken form. And why stop at two when we could add as many as we wanted. I personally like the number qxzthree, with a silent qxz (Let us see the spell checker tackle that!)
Or maybe even a string of silent letters. Letters that make up real words but are ignored. Like the old warning above hidden in grass while kids kick a ball about ignored yet there. The "no fouling" signs in view as an owner watched their dog take a dump on the pavement and walks off leaving it for people to stand in.
A digression I know but you get down, feel unimportant and ask what is the point but like a silent letter while everyone just accepts your existence despite your presence being of no benefit or even an annoyance. It's just accepted. And this is how I would usually spend the next couple of weeks lost in these silly thoughts spiralling downwards into the abyss of my own dark mind.
Not this time though. I really needed to walk. As the panic started to subside I was left with high anxiety but also a rage bursting through my veins, an inner frustration. I really couldn't sit still and felt I needed to do something. OK I had been defeated once again but I decided that was just another lost battle and I must continue to wage the war on my own terms when possible. So a surprise attack was in order. Beware the wounded lion.
So I walked over and into my wife's work. The first time in there for about 4 months. It was a brief stop but still I proved after 4 months of being held back I could so something new. That felt empowering. Had it not been for the fact I needed to meet my wife again later I would have gone a longer walk there and then.
So that was one plus to cancel out the negative but I needed another positive. First off the obvious was another walk somewhere new but then I thought of something better- the car. I've not been in a car for 4 months never mind drive one so as luck would have it my wife came back from the shops and left the car outside for me to bring the bags in. After doing my duty I jumped in and drove around to the supermarket and back. Not a great distance but an achievement in my book.
So that was my day and what have I spend 95% of the day thinking about? You guessed right. I've been lingering in the panic attack from yesterday giving the two positives no thought at all until I typed them here.
