Irrational

My wife's approach to overcoming agoraphobia is a unique one. Her off the cuff suggestion was to get me a bottle of whisky, fall into a stupor in the car and drive me up North to her parents. Hey presto! We have a solution. But wait there are a couple of snags. For one although I like  tolerate whisky I can only drink it in moderation- ie two small glasses at most. I couldn't drink a whole bottle. Can't remember the last time I had any spirit of any kind. My idea of whisky is slow sips while reading a book and winding down. Then there is the other thing. I would still have to come to. Oh wouldn't that be bliss waking up from a drunken slump with a burst head to find I was somewhere else and couldn't get home. Yep that would just about cure me alright if I was looking for a way to overcome grasping on to my last few strands of sanity.

Don't get me wrong because I know its hard for others to understand. I can sympathise when after going to the shops one day I am reluctant to go to the shops the next. It looks lazy, it looks like I'm just not trying. People do care but just don't have the insight. And to be brutally frank they don't want to know. Can I blame them? In all honesty know. Were I on the other side of the fence I would have to say I would be my own worst enemy and mocker extreme. People don't understand and can't understand. Its not rational and you have to experience it. It reminds me of when I worked in IT and was out of work. My uncle's girlfriend phoned about a job she'd seen advertised working on an aseembly line. She didn't understand why I was unwilling to go for the job when they actually made computers and that was my line of work at the time. People want to help but they can't help.

I had a look back at my first post two years ago. For the most part I could have written it today. Nothing has changed. This bubble I am in pulsates. It gets larger and shrinks. At some point I get out further than I imagined and then I am back to where I started again. And to be honest I don't see it changing. For so long I have been looking for acceptance as a way to get me better and finally I am starting to find it as a way in stopping this futile search for a way out. It grows ever irrational into a world of unreality. 

In the hallway there is a cupboard. In this little old home its the only cupboard and despite numerous clearances it always ends up full again. In fact at the moment its close to bursting. My dad stuck a bolt on one of the doors to reinforce it and this is now sliding through the wood as a result of the pressure of things which are not needed. The irony is that there is space up in the loft to dump all this stuff but I cannot get up into the loft because the way up to it is in that cupboard.

Let me tell you about a very irrational fear and a bit of panic. One time I was up the loft on my own with only a little torch illuminating pieces of my vision. Previously my wife had been watching some paranoia program on TV. There were two guys interviewed and they related a tale of how they both went up an attic and while they were up there something attacked them. One of the guys bolted back down quickly while the other one was screaming above. When he finally came down he had marks on his neck. Oh and it just so happened he had a camera and they showed these picks off of the guy being hanged from rafters by some unknown being. Aye right! But as much as I laughed it off in the comfort of my living room when the thought suddenly returned in the darkness of my loft on my own I freaked out and nearly dived through the small square hole back to the ground level again. Don't get me wrong I still go up but I'm never quite at ease. So irrational but it happens. So me being one to keep feeding my fears I went and looked it out. It maybe happened a little differently from I remember but here is is on Youtube:

Well anyway the reason I mention this is that I have a strong urge to go up there for some things- nostalgia. Actually its little bits of my former self I am craving at the moment. Earlier I looked back at my first post and apart from the cringe factor mostly I could have written it today. Nothing has changed. In two years time probably nothing will have changed again. This I think on a subconscious level set off a search for the former self and came up blank. I've become so set in this anxiety that I cannot recall how things used to be and its part of the reason I have trouble believing things will ever change in future. Anxiety disorders are something you can live happily without but once you've experienced them I can't see how you can ever shake them off because they are basically flashbacks. When they are in the mind they don't leave and maybe some people can bury them but they will for ever more still be in there.

So first off was a couple of CDs that I haven't heard in a long time and tracks that I have not been able to find online. Music from the past always takes me back to certain moments where they meant something. There are a few books up there I would like to read again which again will take me back. But more important than all that are two other things. I have a couple of diaries up there from around 2000. I'd like to see who I was back then. Also there is an old laptop and on it is a diary from my week in France travelling mostly alone in 1998. Again I'd like to see what I thought back then. I'm not looking for answers but just want to spend a little time back in better days. All the diaries I have at hand and online postings are post-panic days which are grim in comparison.

What I have also realised is that I am living in a self created bubble. A recollection came to me again tonight. In between jobs, actually before my last job, my sister in law said to me that it was unhealthy the way I was living. Looking back I was. I was spending weeks and weeks indoors learning to program and writing applications which I posted on the Internet. She said that I should be taking breaks and going for walks. I scoffed. Seems funny now, how right she was. I see a pattern. I had lived alone for a few years prior and then moved in with my wife after I lost my job. Then I stayed indoors for the majority of the days. Finally I get a job and wind up in a corner facing a wall every day with no one to talk to.

Now when the first child came along the anxiety problems started, or at least I started to notice them. I see my bubble and wonder if the onset of responsibility and being pulled out of my little world was the first friction. Marriage, christenings and then other peoples affairs were a further resentment of being pulled from my place. Yes I do think that is what it is and it hasn't changed. My bubble has just got thicker yet smaller and I am less inclined to leave it. A long time ago I think I started to recede away from the world and not far around the corner were events that were going to tug me right back into its clutches. I go out the door now and I think to myself I don't belong here- this isn't for me. The years now have made it a foreign place and to be honest I don't want to be in it. Or at least not this immediate environment. There are plenty more places I would love to go to but always I must pass through here to get to them and that is like swimming through tar.

But for now the only place I want to go is up that loft and see who I was. It might turn out not to different from now. The fact is though the urge is too strong to ignore and I really need to have a look. There are old thoughts up there from a time before all this and I want to see if they are as foreign as the world is now. But I am content a little now that I can see how I got here. Some arrogance on my part as well as more that a dollop of ignorance ensured that I never seen all this coming. Even when I was going to the doctors asking for answers there was no urgency because throughout my life I has always coped and never experienced anything other. And I am sure a lot of you know how shattering it is to be strong and then feel at the mercy of something you cannot cope with. I can see the path though and in some ways I think I need to retrace my steps if those diaries tell me something different to what my mind is telling me now.

Keeping the head above water while the dark seas crash

I'm going to take you to a secret place. Somewhere where no one other than myself has been before. But I warn you now its not a nice place. In fact its a highly unhealthy place. What else would you expect from this blog which teeters always on the pit of darkness expecting at any moment to fall in and right through? Its a blog entitled "Metamorphosis". Its my blog. Its a private blog that I post on often but rarely read. It started as a therapeutic blog in thought but has always given me mixed emotions. The purpose was to post all my dark thoughts, health anxieties and whatever else I keep from public view in a place where I could just get them out and not look upon them again. But there were two other uses besides that. One was to track health anxieties when required and prove to myself they were recurring nonsense. The other was to have a place to type at will amid panic. I don't no how many readers have panic attacks at home which appear at first to come out of the blue but I have them occasionally and as the home is the last safe haven it is probably worse than outside where I can at least escape to a safer place if it all gets too much. But they are infrequent and I have found the only way to cope is by typing away in the course of having a panic attack. And it is one such episode I'd like to post today. What you will notice is that the entry is much like blogging to someone. Despite being for my eyes only and usually not even my eyes I always write it that way. It is never with the intention of someone reading but more like me talking to myself like that internal dialogue on electronic format.

I said these attacks appear at first to come out of the blue. When you go back and look though there are usually plenty of reasons why they occur. Its mostly apex of many things. Maybe the promise of so much falling into a rut. Maybe a draught from a window left open over a night where the temperature fell. Many reasons. I won't bore you with the lead up to my own because its not important but I thought I would share a little of my head space in the clutches of panic. Outside its more difficult to recall but indoors at a keyboard its more true. So however irrational or embarrassing below I have posted some of what I typed today. In fact I typed tons so this is just a little bit of it. In fact its the point where things seemed to turn for the better but you know panic. It doesn't play by rules and even now its in the shadows waiting to pounce. Anyway a panic episode raw with not much editing except for personal details and the like...

17:53 It is so confusing. I think what has happened is that all this shit has manifested into a full blown panic attack. I am definitely amid one of those and have been for at least the last hour. I feel like screaming and would do if I thought it would help. Part of me wants to stay semi-protected on the couch while the other part wants to go out- get out of here. But neither is an option despite being then only options and that is what is driving the rod of agitation up my spine and shaking me about. I can't stop pulling and clawing at my skin. I am in torment, real torment. Its how I would imagine being kept away from home to feel. Yet I am here in my home which is supposed to be the safe place. My hands are shaking and I can feel the tension around my arms, shoulders and neck. Constricted breathing, blurred vision.

The thing is this: because I am having this ongoing panic attack I now cannot tell if I am ill or not because whatever other sensations there were are now buried underneath the panic. And you might think it can't be that bad if I am typing away. Well it is and the only reason I am typing away is for distraction. Even though I am typing about it the typing is keeping the worst at bay but only until I stop. What I am looking for is an off switch. I don't want to be awake while this is what its like. Its like waking up to find you are drowning under water and even though you cannot actually drown the sensations are horrible. Imagine you could not die and you got your legs stuck in rocks underwater. No-one knows you are there. You are stuck forever taking in water which won't kill you but is just a horrible beyond belief scenario to be in. And because of it you cannot sleep and cannot escape but instead resigned, no not even resigned, to this awake state of threat that is never going to reach fruition and never going to end any time soon enough. That's how I feel at the moment.

But as bad as the sensations are its these constant intrusive negative thoughts which have not only kept it going but continue to do so. I cannot stop them- no one can do that. But I cannot deal with them. They are so strong now that they have exploded before I even have the chance to deal with them. Its like trying to bat away a barrage of hailstones with a baseball bat. It feels futile yet I continue to do it because it is at least better than doing nothing and no one in a panic can do nothing because the whole point of fight or flight is to make you take action and not taking action just causes more discomfort.

The strongest thought of all though is that I am stuck with this and there is no way out until it passes. But it cannot pass fast enough and nor will it. In typing I am glimpsing what is happening and hoping with each glimpse the games are stopping but they are nor. What is to be gained by facing this? If this panic was an opportunity to prove I am bigger than it then fair enough. If I could ride this out and then get a rush of victory then it would be worth taking a risk. That would be empowering. But it doesn't work like that. I have ridden the storm many times and it doesn't just stop. It does not leave a sense of achievement. In fact it doesn't ever quite go but instead will linger for the rest of the night threatening to strike again sapping the body. It never goes it just eventually eases into a slightly dormant but volatile state. Its not a case of worrying less that it might return because you have passed through it. Its not nice. You don't want more of it and you could well do without it returning quickly in a drained disposition. No there is no positive to passing through panic, at least in this way. If I was of the mind to panic, say 'so what?' and then it didn't bother me then that is different. But it does bother me because I never feel in control enough to be able to do that. While I try feebly to conjure up some accepting by tapping my pathetic little magic wand on anything that looks like it will come to my aide my voice is a yelling whisper beneath the crashing tide of all the negative waves of emotions and thoughts flooding in. I am not in control. You need to be in control to do that and I am not. These thoughts come fast and furious leaving big gaping craters on my confidence with each rapid impact while I float around trying to feel with my feet where the ground is and I spin around and around looking aimlessly for the control stick. With my hand I reach out for those books with all the answers in them: 'what to do in a mental crisis', 'the idiots guide to sailing in rough seas', etc. I see my hand but the books are far far away on the horizon. Out of reach and almost out of sight. No chance. Trying to wrestle back control is like jumping on to a spinning gyro on a pair of stilts and trying to keep your balance. Is there a calm place in there somewhere? A place where you can insert a straw and suck up some of that fine old 'inner strength' juice? I sometimes wonder. I wonder if it actually exists and I just haven't found it yet or whether its a myth.

What I conclude is that amid the storm its just a case of getting out the old bucket and bailing out the water until the storm has passed before attempting a patch up job on the gaping hole. There is no passing through and finding the eye of the storm. Maybe it exists but I've never believed in anything without experiencing it first hand and as yet it is an experience I have yet to savour let alone touch on. Much better I think to stay up in the crow's nest and watch that horizon on standby for any trouble lying in wait. At least then you can prepare for what is coming or steer your way around it- even if that involves backtracking. Passing through? Well when you find yourself inside the storm you have no other option than to pass through. Some storms are real bastards though. Just when you've passed through you find the wind changes direction and the blasted thing is following you for the rest of the night looming over waiting to catch up again. Its a tiring business. I think though the worst of the storm is finally over- maybe.

Apologies if that was a bit dark. It was the darkest of places, a visit to the blackest recesses of my mind. For some reason I just felt the need to post it and get it off my chest rather than leaving it locked away. But a bigger part of me wants to stick it in draft to be deleted at a later date as I do with so many posts. But I won't. This is how it is and I hope by getting it out of the way I can maybe move on to some lighter posts. Lastly I know the title is a bit over the top but I'm lacking inspiration at the moment but like using the boy's bath toy as some kind of visual metaphor. This stuff goes on daily, cycles daily. If anyone thinks I am sitting here enjoying the good life on social handouts then I beg to differ. Its not a nice place. I tell you one thing: its not a place you would ever want to reside for more than a moment so try living with it in every waking moment. 

Little girl adventure

A young Lara Croft with a dashing of David Attenborough seeks adventure and new wonderment in her surrounds. Deep in the urban jungle at a crossroads she indicates that she is unsure which path to follow. Her old faithful companion on these adventures nods to the right. A good choice. A nod to the left would have been met with folded arms, a petted lip and a huge sigh.

THE WALL OF TERROR

Today she has brought along the whole clan leading the four others like the seasoned explorer she is and with a hint of the travel guide about her as she points out each stage of the Indiana Joneseque trial ahead. First to the wall of terror which must be traversed cautiously less to drop far below. Cherry blossom branches stretch out and gaps must be jumped over. At the end there is a massive leap- old companion's back permiting.

THE DA-DAS

With the wall of terror safely crossed the roads leads to a number of peaks which have been named by the small adventurer herself. The are named "The da-das". This is owing to a custom born of reaching each summit. On the very peak the climber(s) must stand and reach for the sky with a shout of "Da Da". Then its time to ascend for some much needed revitalisation.

THE LAND OF TREE HUGGERS

This land is filled with trees. Every tree is kept upright be supports which act as stilts for the tree loving people who inhabit the grassland. Our little adventurer ensures she respects local custom by following suit. Its not only out of respect but also feeling the warmth and deep joy of getting in touch with nature.

THE FOREST OF BUGS

In keeping with most previous expeditions she aides her old companion in some nature study. He follows with his camera as the bug finder general utilises her tracking skills to discover new life.

Adventurer: You need a bug finder right?

Old Companion: I need the best bug finder. Where am I going to find one of those around here?

Adventurer: You're talking to her.

And off she goes always finding something. Names are given as found. Little orangey on the white flowers along with black and yellowy. An evil waspy is also present along with the occasional dirty fly. Its a dangerous job with jaggy thistles protruding and stingy nettles lurking in wait.

THE CRACKS OF FEAR

Nearing the home run a path must be crossed full of cracks. Stepping in these cracks is not something to contemplate. Deep down under the ground falls the victim. Tip toeing around them our heroine dances almost all the way through. Suddenly though disaster strikes. Time stands still as she stands on a crack and looks up with eyes wide and mouth agape.

Old Companion: Oh no. Are you OK?

Adventurer: I'm fine. Its only one life and I've still got two left.

The end averted with a quick change to the self made rules and the five go on in good spirits.

THE PATH OF BEES AND FLOWERS

As long as the group keep to the middle of the path then all is well. As long as they keep their nerve they will be fine. On the penultimate challenge a path is surrounded on either side by thousands of bees pollinating flowers, They are not dangerous if left to their own devices but could get nasty in a group if they are disturbed from their work. Quickly this path is crossed without incident.

THE JELLY AND LAVA BRIDGE OF DOOM

The final stage of the journey comprises of the rather long windedly named jelly and lava, only added this week, bridge of doom. Its akin to a tightrope across ridges with a steep fall beneath. And if the fall doesn't get you then the jelly and lava will. Luckily today our petite heroine passes with flying colours and arrives home safely with her four followers. The adventure for another door is over. Dinner awaits.

Old Companion: Next time will be more dangerous. You'll only have two lives, won't you.

Adventurer: Don't be silly daddy. When we go back around the block tomorrow I'll get my three lives back again.

So I was put in my place and after all I'm not the one that makes up the rules of this game. A walk of not much more than half a kilometre can be monotonous but with a sprinkle of imagination it can be something more enjoyable. Today was a family walk which we never do and the kids enjoyed the short jaunt with both parents. If nothing else it makes me want to take longer walks and see what other adventures lie ahead. (And hopefully next time I will look at what I am photographing when I am doing it rather than the casual carry- apologies for those blurred and/or grainy ones)