The nights are bitterly cold now and the mornings the same. Its a battle of wills when it comes to the heating. In this credit crunch we, like half the country probably, are so against turning on the heating until at least one of our sets of teeth are chattering. Of course there is the kids to think about but they are so hyper that they whizz about this small box like atoms in the hadron collider so never feel the cold that is the air.
It is great for walking in though even though I'm not doing a great deal of that at the moment. I do like the crisp air and the cold nip biting at your cheeks as you are warmed and blinded by the ever lowering sun that cast long shadows. I wish I could walk more. I used to love the feeling of coming in from a walk in the cold and a bowl of hot soup as an excuse to heat up. I have so many good memories of the cold here, in Paris and in Koln. Memories of up north on a long walk to loosen the weight of the meal before and coming in to be warmed up with a small whiskey from my father-in-law.
The girls have got a new school which is great because the last was a ramshackle but this is brand spanking new- I actually watched it grow in stages. But planning seems to have gone only as far as the building itself which is built behind the old school. Where the old school was a nightmare to get in and out of the new school uses a different entrance which is narrower and right on a residential street too. Its apparently led to many verbal exchanges between residents and parents over parking as you can imagine. So the upshot is my wife has had to walk them to school and walk to pick them up. Given that she also has a bad knee this is not good for her and I feel more than a tad guilty that me in an apparently healthy body is indoors while she does the run. I wonder if a brain transplant is possible on the NHS?
So while I stand at the window with the boy the three females of the household venture out into the cold. Sad state of affairs. I wish it were different but it isn't. I've been trying for well over a year to walk to that school and just can't. I made it a few times in the car but if my wife finds the bottleneck now too much then what chance do I have? In her dogged pursuit to get me well by whatever means she has arranged a phone conversation tomorrow with the GP. Its the one where I have to say I don't want the drugs he gave me and can I have different ones, preferably the ones that he calls "addictive" and refuses to administer unless I plead insanity. I don't know about anyone else but I have a barrier there where I tend to be unwilling to say things are as bad as they are which doesn't help. Some little part of that "I can cope" nurturing preventing me telling all.
Well I'll see what happens there. I need some way out for the bad times which I can't at the moment handle. Been thinking about a big rubber mallet I can knock myself out with when it gets too much as nothing else has worked so far. But if there was something there I knew would give me an escape out of that mind torrent of jaggy statements nipping my brain I may not even need to take it- just knowing I had something may be enough. And that is what I need because fear of consequence is stopping me pushing myself at the moment and agitation has taken its place because I don't want to sit in this little room so the two stances are at odds with each other tearing my mind apart.
No much else going on at the moment. Immersing my self in books like some kind of researcher on anxiety but plodding over old ground in the hope of finding something I may have missed the first time round. Generating lots of new ideas which only serve to add the confusion but in the passing seconds keep me occupied or at least distracted. I've allowed my world to shrink again and maybe with some arrogance thought it would be a case of just stepping out again but find I'm walking into walls and rolling back home. But its not too bad. I was having a hard time coming to terms with that to begin with but have since seen there is very little point getting frustrated over it and become impatient. Best instead to just keep stepping out and see what happens and at some point it will click again. Its this doom and gloom this country is rightly in at the moment which I think has me revved up looking for quick fixes when in fact what will happen will happen and there is no quick fix and also trying to apply one is highly detrimental.
I have been experiencing something strange in the last few weeks and not sure what to make of it at all. I'm hopeless at conjuring mental images as I have found out many times when trying visualisation exercises but lately I have been seeing an array of random vivid images in my head from my past. They are never of people but of places and always very clear still images. It is very bemusing and the purpose I don't know. Mostly they come and go but one has been recurring and I can make no sense of it at all. Its a cashline at a bank in Edinburgh and its at night. Why? I remember at the time it was unique, to me anyway, because it was behind closed sliding doors and you needed your back card to firstly open the unmanned doors before using the cashline machine. I can only think it just popped up at random and because I found it so strange it has kept repeating on me. I'm not going mad honest!
So for now I have to just watch from the window as I said, as I have been doing for some time now. As cold as it is I love the the way frost makes things sparkle, When the bright sun comes out everything gleams and shines momentarily before it melts under its gaze. I still don't agree with those people who think anxious types are lazy or unwilling to do things or even comfortable to sit in their situation without really wanting to get out of it. This time of year I love and would equally love to be out in it regardless of the cold. Its anxiety only keeping me indoors and a lack of solution to manage it. The cold is what wrapping up is for. Walks in the park and through woodland paths are great this time of year. I want to be up and about at the crack of dawn to see the sunrise even on a frosty morning or maybe because its a frosty morning. I don't because there is little point, I need to catch on the sleep lost the night before and it makes the endless day longer. With purpsoe though I would spring out of bed but for purpose to exist there has to be the ability to carry it out. Its perverse that a desire can bring guilt because its someone else's chore.
