My grandfather was a cyclist, he died while cycling before I was born, so I have nothing against them but I fail to see the purpose of the council's latest venture. While school buses and free water in school has been cut the council have decided it was time to spend money on cyclists. God knows the expense of these things. Where this sign stands there used to be a ballard like the one next to it. It took a couple of weeks and lots of mess and expense. First a team came to dig up all 4 ballards leaving all their signs and eqipment behind which by the time the next lot came were strewn everywhere. On another day someone arrived and took a ballard away. Another day a crew arrived and reseated the remaining three ballards- changing the previous spacing. Next it was a crew to tarmac that stretch again. A long drawn out process.
It left a gap. They left more barriers and stuff which disappeared into gardens and such like. That gap it turned out was large enough to fit a car through. And so the no through road became a through road for a couple of weeks. We had to be very careful with the kids as the road is right on our front door and cars were flying up and down it. Finally they are arrived with this and planted it. What a palava. I could easily and went over and drawn a bike on the ballard that was there and saved them the trouble.
As well as this they have been blocking streets painting cycle lanes and levelling out roads so the cyclists don't wobble. All well and good. The irony is the bloody cyclists never used the road and still don't. Its the footpaths where you are most likely to be struck by one. Bikes, skateboards and scooters. OK serious cyclists use the roads but I see hardly any of them and the few I do see pass along the main road but up and down streets. I really don't see the point.
Anyway, rant over. Just a little bit of irritation in my life at the moment. Much like I could say about anxiety which I haven't talked about for a while. With good reason too: there is only so much you can say about it. Instead I look for other ways of expressing it. But its very hard for people to understand unless you have experienced it. Anxiety is one thing, panic is another however much the two are linked. Panic is very hard to describe. You can describe the physical symptoms that come with it and say that the fear is terrible but no one can understand that. Its more. No one can really appreciated that horrible ambiguous feeling of sheer hopeless terror in the peak of panic unless they have experienced it. And it is that hard to describe thing which keeps an anxiety disorder going for fear of it returning.
I've been doing some CBT at the moment. I get it but can't get it to stick at the moment. Like all self help for anxiety they say its important to know you are not in danger and this helps ease the fear. Well I don't quite agree with that. I know I am in no danger but it doesn't mean I don't fear more panic or hate with a passion constant anxiety. Is being frightened out of your whits any more reassuring when you know it will do you know harm? Afraid not.
But panic is the worst of it and the most frightening and thankfully the shortest lived. That doesn't mean the anxiety is easy. With anxiety disorder its not a constant but as good as and its self perpetuating. Worry, fatigue, more worry, more fatigue, etc. So you wake up fatigued and then soon the worry machine kicks in and although there are spells where you find peace you are never refreshed and worry is never very far away. So the agoraphobic goes out and soon finds they can go no further and is unsure whether its mental or physical because as well as rising panic the body is so fatigued that it struggles to go on.
But then its only worry isn't it? Why should that be so bad? Why not just ignore or think of something else? Its hard to explain that too, it just is. More and more I see things in books or on TV where there are panic and anxiety parallels be it intentional or not. Lately its been in the strangest place- kids TV. Ive had that for 9 years and one aspect of the kids getting older I am looking forward to. So a bit of light-heartedness to end this post. One of these anxiety parallels, an unintentional one, comes via the kids cartoon Kick Buttowski. In the clip below Kick is having another fight with his brother Brad and enlists the help of Luigi Vendetta to help him. Luigi Vendetta sums up anxiety for me to a tea. Its a perfect illustration of it. I hope you get it.
