2008

Monday 14th January 2008,

I've always wanted to write a novel. Get ideas from time to time. Don't have the staying power to do so. Don't have the patience. Probably don't have the talent. One of those ideas was just a start point. A room. A family of five in that living room. Normality. The kids are playing among themselves. The wife is sitting watching the TV. The man is staring into space. Just looks lost in thought. His family can't see that his body is trembling. He is not lost in thought. Something is happening inside and only he can see that. A dark curtain came down in his mind. Time had stopped. Then it started again. He jumped out of his seat. It startled his family so much they turned to look and he looked back curiously but with a growing fear. Then he yelled: "Who the fuck am I?". These people were strangers. The room he was in was foreign. He ran out the door and got outside and then he realised he had nowhere to run to. Everywhere was foreign. His pseudo wife called from behind him but he just ran. He had memories but they were not of this place or that family. He was in despair. What to do?

And then sometime after I thought "Total Recall" or was it another Arnie film? Anyway. A borrowed idea I thought was my own. But I mention it because its a bit like I feel now. Since the millennium things have gone downhill dramatically. Was hoping it was just a bad decade but it just keeps snowballing. At times I thought things couldn't get any worse but they did and at the end  of 2006 something happened that I was not prepared for. My life changed forever in one day. In one car journey I went from someone plagued with, and for ever fighting with, anxiety issues to a housebound agoraphobic. One god almighty panic attack on my own in the car out of town that filled me with a terror I did not know existed and at the time I was sure I was either dying or had lost my mind. Life changing. Traumatic enough to keep me housebound.

Anyway life has been difficult. A CPN was brought in and did diddly squat to help before running off into the sunset and leaving me on my own. I muddled by and no longer housebound but still cannot go out very far. A slight improvement. But I was willing to work on my own in the hope I would find a solution. Meanwhile my wife is pregnant and due to give us a son in early March. Something to look forward to but it has also been filling me with dread because at the moment I cannot see how I can be with her at the birth like I was with the girls in 2003 and 2005. Then last night my world was once again turned on its head.

Near midnight my wife went to the bathroom. Then I heard the shower running which was unusual. Then she called me and I could detect the fear in her voice. I was to call an ambulance. I did. They took her away. I spent the next few hours wrapped in a blanket on the couch shaking. Finally a call from a nurse around four to say mother and baby were OK. A relief but I was sure that would not be the end of it. It wasn't but neither had I even given a thought to what was about to happen.

She called earlier today. A couple of hours ago. Her voice was quivering. She started to cry. She said: "Its not good news.". At that I thought only one thing and for all the crap that had been thrown my way I will be forever thankful it was not that. Both she and the baby were OK but not well enough to come home. How long were they staying? "Indefinitely". It sounds selfish and maybe it was but I cannot help the sheer terror I felt in that one word. I felt I was falling without ever landing. How could I cope? My mind was suddenly overwhelmed.

I cannot go to the shops so how could I feed the girls? I cannot get in a car so how can I take my daughter to nursery? So many emotions. Guilt that I was thinking about myself. Fear because I know my wife and son are not out of the woods yet. Despair. Terror. Those two definitely. Frustration at how weak I have become, how useless I am. So many emotions and so many thoughts. Disgust at who I have become. Too many thoughts. I should also be there for her but cannot get to the hospital. What about the birth? Thoughts turning to how she will cope stuck in a hospital for anywhere up to 6 weeks. All her family are 60 miles away so its not as if they can just drop in.

So I needed to start a journal again. I need to sort things out. I just cannot see how I am going to do this but what choice do I have?  I need to put a plan together. I need to call the CPN and ask for medication. If I get no joy there I will try the GP. If there is something that will help me look after my daughters then I will take it.

So I expect to fill pages upon pages over what could be the next 6 weeks. I just pray the end is a happy one. For now that is all I can write. My mind is in overdrive and I am left with this sense of the unreal like I have passed the point of despair.