The places you did go

I was looking back this morning at some photos. Lots of photos. The photography bug. Three years ago after we got a camera. Nothing special but better than anything I had owned before, just a wee compact all the same. This one above taken from August 2009. The reason I was led there was for this post. I scanned through recent photos and there was nothing of note. Nothing. So I regressed and I ended up back in 2009. A few things struck me. I was going further afield, a lot further afield. I was taking lots of photos outside as opposed to virtually none now. I was less restricted as opposed to the paranoia I feel now every time I take the camera out. Also I was more experimental with photoshop and the like. Nowadays I just cannot be arsed.

Its maybe no coincidence that I have fallen back to this time because I have done the same with my graduated exposure. Shadow walks. From around April/May of 2009 I started to progress. It took time but by the end of the year I was going much further home on foot that I can manage now. So a few weeks ago I decided to shadow this time and try to keep a pace. So far its been fine because the walks started slowly but I am nearing the time when they really took off. Hoping for a repeat by following the same path. Hoping it will allow me to get my new camera out and start taking photos- it has not even been out the house yet.

Above is just down the road but I have not been as far down as that for well over a year. I have walked further but in other directions. Yet in 2009 I didn't stop here. Sometimes I went through the railway underpass and beyond and one days right down a woodland embankment to the water's edge before having to flee in blind panic. Other times I would take the path left and follow on to the train station or cut through the woodland back home.

Incidentally this very spot is where it all stopped. I stood at the bottom of the road and a police car drew up. Paranoia at the questioning and inference. Never to go back. More paranoia and more intense agoraphobia. But I plan to go back and take my camera with me. The places I will go.

Breaking through the clouds

Its been a shitty old June. Something we should all be used to now. Yesterday and the days before were like a wet windy shitty grey October. Not summer. Nothing like summer. Feels like, in weather terms, a great depression. The holidays are rolling in fast. Days in my youth where I only remember long hot summers. Nothing like this. And as if to stick up two fingers further around about tea time or thereafter the clouds begin to part and summer shines through two later in the day to do anything about it. Like the photo about. A burning bright sun. A breakthrough. A breakthrough too late. Kids already eating their dinner before bath time and then into their bedwear. A promise though of a better tomorrow but tomorrow it always rains in June.

Now that I have the visits out of the way I feel the waters are starting to settle a bit. Maybe the clouds I have been shrouded in these past few weeks are starting to part and allowing in the sun again- in my case never too late. Been bogged down these past few weeks with ailments of all sorts which seem now to have passed or be passing and also the apprehension over the visits which are now a past event. So I feel a bit of a lighter load and able now once again to start planning ahead and trying to make progress. A bit like climbing the mountain and for the past few weeks I have been holed up protected against the storm which is finally now passing and with an ever brightening sky ahead I am now ready to start climbing again.

So hopefully better days ahead- something to talk about. What the top photo and photos of late also illustrate is my lack of getting out. The car is still off the road and the walks don't allow me to venture to new places of interest. An inner frustration boils that I have not been able to use my new camera. Hankering after it for so long and now that I have it I have nowhere to take it. The weather has not helped. The wee camera has taken a soaking but I won't allow the same to happen to my new camera. Don't want to take that risk. Also realise I need a different lens, a pancake lens. Much to my shock when I went to price these I found they are not much cheaper than the camera itself so I won't be getting one of those barring a lottery win.

The weather though is sure to clear. Even if its just for a few days. Hopefully when it does the car will be ready to move to and with the work I will have done by that point I will be in a position to venture out. There is another frustration with the camera. I seem to have lost the appetite. I have a book to learn the art of photography and worked through it previously with the wee camera which was limited. Now I have a camera to learn properly and no appetite to do so. And that doesn't need going out. Not sure what is going on there but hopefully that will return soon too. Its just a waiting, and preparing, game at the moment.

Cycles

My daughter, above, celebrated her 9th birthday at the weekend. Might look like Halloween but that was a face painting kit she got. Very artistic little girl. She drew a fantastic tiger face on her young cousin as well as drawing not so great others on all the other younger children. She did well, more that well- kids are spoiled these days.

Its a time I always dread. Visitors. Lots of visitors. A shock to the system for me. No soul for weeks and then people traipsing in and out all weekend. Staying, squatting in my only refuge. Great people, people I want to see. Still it makes no difference to the anxiety. It was already a hard week for me and all I wanted to do was crawl up in a ball in bed away from it all. Truth is the last time I actually done that was just over 5 years ago.

At the start of 2007 I experienced visitor panic for the first time with my parents out of the blue and when it happened I tried for 10 minutes to put up with it but then eventually disappeared to bed and fell asleep with exhaustion. The visited a month later and the same thing happened again except this time it happened as soon as they came in the door and I put up with it for less time. It took a while to crash out in bed but eventually I did. And this is what it all goes back to, these two times. Since then every visit has been a nightmare but I've never had to flee as much as I wanted to. But even 5 years on it doesn't get any easier and that memory seems to be relived as strongly now as then with all the "successes" in between meaningless.

Now its a past event, or series of events. Glad its over. The younger girl turns seven next month. More of the same. More CBT inbetween. I have been doing it lately but problems in the last week have been more of a distraction to keep me away from it.

My walks have taken a pounding. Not much to speak of. One thing not noted amongst a lot of so called anxiety self help gurus is the fatigue. GAD, general anxiety disorder, is tiring. Being a constantly anxious type is exhausting. No, not constant but from when you wake until you drop off finally in the early hours and the greatest part of the inbetween being filled with fear, tension and adrenaline over days and months and years it is depletingly tiring. Dr Claire Weekes spoke of people being bed ridden by it. The energy reserves never seem to get a chance to replenish. If I were single I'd probably not go to bed until the light is breaking as I seem to do now but also sleep well into the day but as a father of young children that is not an option. I am finding 4 hours is an average of disturbed sleep and 5 hours is a good night. Things rarely talked about.

And that is what the problem has been with the walks- apart from a spell of a couple of days last week when even walking was painful. Its been the fatigue. Not even being able to get to the point of agoraphobia because the body is to fatigued to get anywhere near the outer edges of the comfort zone never mind beyond them. But slowly this week for whatever reason that is easing bit by little bit as I looked to built again to a point where its a mental barrier to walk any further rather than a physical one.

Anxiety is all about cycles. I feel my attempts at recovery are like cycles or like waves like those good old adrenaline rushes. Just as I am rising I fall and just as I am petrified I am descending too far and too fast I am back on the up again. Never touching the sea bed and never touching the sky. Just bobbing along up and down somewhere in between going around in circles.

Doctor Self

Its been a difficult time and it remains the case. Its nothing new and nothing I need to bother others with as I so often do. The point of this blog I have lost along the way. I set out to talk about my life and dealing with my anxiety problems. As time as passed I have allowed my own obsessional thoughts to creep in here to begin with and now spill full flow. Its not what I intended to do. It stops now.

But what I will say is that because of my restrictions due to my inability still to cope with anxiety my problems are magnified- in my head. You see if I have a problem I cannot just go to the doctor or if its bad go to the hospital. Rightly or wrongly doctors are also reluctant to come out and I am reluctant to call them. So the offshoot of that is that I have to become my own GP. Since I don't have a medical background that has shown to be problematic and always will be for as long as I am agoraphobic. I'm not a medic but maybe the arrogant problem solving part of myself thinks I don't need to be and I can break things down to a resolution through reason- let's face it I have no other choice.

More and more I am seeing this as problematic. Misdiagnosis is a regular word in my head and even a proper diagnosis is always clouded in doubt. The former though leads to prolonged problems. It can lead to more severe problems. Both of which I have encountered in the past 2 weeks and for all I know longer still. Something that was preventable was missed. Something that then became fairly simple to treat was then left untreated. Misdiagnosis. Two things. Cause and effect, primary and secondary. I got them the wrong way around. By the time I saw the mistake I think I did then make the right diagnosis but then another mistake by presumption. The treatment was wrong and it was almost at the point of no return that I discovered this over a week after the initial problem started. Third time lucky and finally relief but then other problems have come from that which would not have bred had it been prevented at the outset or treated correctly early on. So now another problem and hard at work at another diagnosis. I could write my own medical book, maybe I should for myself to refer to.