Out of town

A planned drive out of town with the wife driving. Where the job centre is I cannot go to and where I will no doubt be summoned soon. I tried and I got close but could not take the final steps even in the quiet dark of night. With praise and encouragement my wife has been urging me on to that end without any success and to other destinations too. Slowly she has been pushing me on. Still though the run out of town never came.

Last night we went north to a place we have been twice before but since a week has past since my last journey in the car my wife drove. To me the anxiety doesn't matter whether I am a driver or a passenger as its the thought of being so far from that trips the panic switch. But not being at the wheel I can hide behind the camera snapping blurs, lights, darks and colours. So we went out there and parked for 5 minutes before returning home. But when we neared home the SODS had once again got their roadworks out and cut of the path. Panic stations! We would instead have to drive away from home on a long, to me, detour. It was OK though to be honest. And at some point I found myself outside those buildings I have planned so hard to get to and it wasn't as bad as I thought. I found myself also outside the local council buildings, pictured above, which seem to hog the skyline from wherever you look but until this point way off in the distance. Not much in the way of panic and I managed well. It also meant that we had to drive over Bothwell Bridge which should have been exciting but it was not lit up.

My driving circle has expanded quite a bit. I mean it wasn't so long ago I couldn't even face getting in the car. Now I can go as far as 25 miles. Its all still centred around my home but is expanding. The more I can push out the more insignificant the little centre will become, I hope. But I would not have reached any of the points above were it not for my wife so I have so much to thank her for and she gets as big a kick out of each new step as I do. And all the while the kids sit in the back enjoying the night time drives looking forward to their hot chocolate before bed. It has become a real family affair.

Electricty

There was a spark and a loud bang. It lit my dad up causing a shadow of grimacing shock across his face as he jumped back. He was OK though. My legs were shaking and my heart bursting through my chest. It was the last thing I needed. For a moment I thought he'd electrocuted himself. Still it didn't stop him ignoring my advice and trying to continue tampering with the unknown.

It was another incident to add to the collection. Memories of my brother-in-law scaling a roof to climb in a window and open a locked door from the inside to find my impatient dad had already broken the door down. Remembrance of struggling to move a once wobbly wardrobe about the room which my dad had "fixed" and on closer inspection discovering he had nailed it to the floor and wall to secure it. The list is endless.

It wasn't a good night all round. Slowly I have been getting better with people visiting but tonight I found myself on the verge of full panic about 10 minutes after my dad's arrival. It is the worst I have felt in years in this situation. Our electric oven was on its last legs and as luck would have it my sister had a new one in her garage which she had inherited when her father-in-law passed away a year ago. So my dad had brought it through volunteering also to install it. It is a heavy bugger and we had to carry it up the stairs. Not being used to heavy work I think that is what set the panic off as it came shortly after sitting down. As much as I struggled I did get through it. What helped was a distraction.

My dad knows nothing about electrics. The first argument revolved around me insisting that I turned off all the power. He wouldn't have it. Instead he contented himself with removing fuses, applying masking tape and fiddling among bare live wires with a small metal screwdriver. So that is how the mini explosion occurred and how our little screwdriver is now black. You would think that would be enough of a scare to agree with me but not my dad. Only the sockets were to be turned off and still he played about with the wires while I looked on through my fingers awaiting the next blast.

It was an ordeal. About 2 hours in all and then my dad was gone after we'd carried the old oven out. We have a new oven installed but it won't power off. I'm not happy. But my biggest worry is this image I keep getting of faulty wiring and the house burning down. Hopefully in the event that he has done something wrong the trip switches would be as effective as they were when he nearly electrocuted himself. The socket that he was playing with is about hanging off the wall now and he's not sure that he put the wires back where they were. In fact I know he hasn't because the socket is constantly on and I worry that there are bare wires behind it waiting to meet. It was a nightmare and continues to be so.

Tomorrow morning my wife's friend is coming to have a look as he is an electrician. Only then will my mind be at rest as I know I'll get no sleep tonight.

Stream

I said I would go back and today I did. Again in the quiet woodland I was at the stream and this time I crouched down putting my fingers in the cold flow. It was a nice feeling. The movement of water like the cycle of life. Where you put your hand is always the present and always changing.

For what ever reason this time around I was not as calm as before but it was still OK despite eventually having to fight panic all the way back to the car. Confidence and well being I have found have a big part to play. For me, and for others, the balance is very fragile and can be tipped over with the slightest sensation which reverberates for some time after. After a long period of confidence it is now like thin glass so I must just be sensible and protect it as best as I can to let it grow stronger again. But it won't stop me trying to find enjoyment where I can within my small confines which are ever expanding of late.

For over three years I could not see a way down here and today I was standing taking photographs of tourists with their own cameras as mementos of their visit. Oceans crossed yet they stood relaxed while the guy who had leaped a stone's throw was shaking like a leaf. This is life for now but it still felt good to be among it rather than watching from afar. And when these situations become mundane and anxiety free I will know it is time to get out the binoculars, stand on high and scout beyond the horizon. For now though I am content to have dreams of the stream in the quiet woodland.

238857 still

Yes that old moon is still 238,857 miles off but I'm still chasing it with my little hand held camera and a rather pathetic 5x optical zoom. And still I delude myself that I can capture those magnificent features that the guys with their DSLRs, tripods and huge telescopic zooms can. Its classic obsessional behaviour and a current which runs right through my life. If I had the cash I would probably go out and spend thousands on camera equipment just to get a clearer image of something that doesn't really matter. But that's me. I could even copy the guys who use a telescope but that seems to me impure. Were I to do that I would be as well photographing a picture out of a magazine or book from NASA.

Anyway I did get an improvement last night after spending 45 minutes fiddling in the darkness of my bedroom with the window open- it only opens about halfway. Hanging half out atop of pile of clothes and other rubbish I tried all sorts to get that photograph in my head but all I got in return were distant blurred bright white blobs on black. Finally after almost 100 images I discovered that manual mode using the digital zoom got me the best I was ever going to get and that is it above. It has detail which are unfortunately in big pixel chunks. It strange when you see this dominating body in front of you that it turns to a tiny pin prick on the camera's LCD even with the zoom. The shot above is actually blended but taken from the same night. the window shot had a tiny white dot shot without the zoom and the moon is with the zoom blended on top.

My wife bought me a book for £6, retails at £20, on digital photography masterclass which she hopes will keep me occupied. Its very sparse in instruction and I don't think I'll finish it as the new David Bailey but its interesting. Also only having a compact a lot of it is irrelevant to me but maybe one day. Each short chapter ends with an assignment so I have decided to do one a week in the hope of having a purpose to get out. This first week has been night photography which I just cannot get the hang of but no worries as it will soon be something different next week. This moon capture will do as the culmination of my efforts for week 1. God knows what I'll be putting myself through next week.

Seek

I know I am in danger of repeating myself here but just thinking out loud as it were. No matter what I do it always comes back to this and just when I think I have come to a conclusion I am soon confused again. It is the internal battle that keeps raging and one that people with any anxiety problems, even without it being a disorder, know about.

I was reading something today about panic attacks and a proposed solution to overcoming them. The technique itself is quite familiar and nothing new. When panic begins to intensify we are to accept and become an observer. Where this technique varies from most is that at the point where we feel we are going to lose control we must ask for more. Here we do not take an aggressive stance but instead invite the sensations to intensify and befriend fear without making it a confrontation. In doing this apparently we defuse the intensity of the fear as it cannot give us more. We reveal that it was all a hoax and there is nothing to fear. In fact we learn that we are the ones who decide to have panic attacks. It is our reaction to the initial sensations which everyone experiences which causes a panic attack and with our reaction of fear we make the choice to panic. Simply put the difference between someone who has a panic (or anxiety) disorder and someone who does not is that the former fears the sensations and the latter does not.

All very interesting but not anything new if you have read most of the anxiety/panic literature around. What I did find interesting was the employment of this strategy. We are not to wait for panic to come but instead actively go looking for it every day. I can't help thinking of the biblical quote "seek and you shall find". But that is the point. In order to overcome panic we are too experience it as often as possible which we are told will give us a feeling of empowerment. Armed with the knowledge that a panic attack cannot harm us and as horrible as the sensations are we take this method with us and defuse the panic bomb each time we track it down. Repetition of this will ensure the habit of panic no longer longer mattering and so as a result occurring less frequently until not at all. Additionally when trying to find panic we will, it is said, find it hard to find.

So am I ready to go seeking? To be honest I am not at the moment. At the moment I am making slow progress but still skirting around panic and trying not to induce it. When it rears I fight and hope it will allow me to keep making little movements forward. This progress though is fragile, very fragile. It grows slowly but is made of paper thin glass and every time panic appears from nowhere and screams "boo" it feels like the glass will shatter. Everything hangs on that moment. Months of building confidence smashed in a single instance.

Doubt still clouds my mind. I have to balance what I must take as blind faith in the words of others over my own experience no matter how many others have arrived at the same conclusion. And I know people say life is passing me by but a life of mental suffering, which is my experience with panic, in constantly panicking is in my opinion a tad less appealing than slowly trying to build confidence without the panic. It is restricted living but livable. God its all so confusing. All the advice points to seeing panic and enduring it but experience, which our emotions are effected by, conflict with that advice. It is difficult to override the uncertainty. I mean what if I am different. What if I am not going to recover in this way and instead just make life hell for myself and go backwards until I am afraid to get out of bed again? They say it will work but why was it never worked in the past and all I have gotten out of it is pain and lost days?

What I have been looking for is peace. I have been reaching out for a place of comfort and relaxation free of angst and terror. Everywhere I look people are pointing to the same place and the only road passes through dear Hades which I've visited many times and have the mental scorch marks to prove it. I just don't know. My opinion on whether enduring a panic attack is for me is constantly banging in my head between right and wrong to the point where it is starting to agitate me. For now I continue to struggle with the choice between seeking solace which my mind demands or seeking the misery that I am told will lead to the other in the long term. Presently and continually I stay in the safety of the shadows sometimes getting closer to peer in and then running away quickly back in to the dark that has become my life.