Altered States

I'm feeling proud of myself for small victories. 11 weeks now of 10 mile walks. God, some people twice my age can walk that in the one go. For me though progress. I have only reached that level twice before and both those times were in 2009. The first time I only managed it 2 weeks in a row and the second time 3 times in a row. 2010 and 2011 I never got anywhere near that in a week and this year I started off struggling to break the 2 mile barrier over a week never imagining that I would get to this level for almost 3 months. Its important to give yourself a pat in the back otherwise you just keep taking on the negatives. But I do keep it in perspective. Anyone reading this would think 10 miles in a week: so what? Rightly so, in my world though it means something.

Some cruel tormentor though is at work always looking to slap me down. I logged on to Facebook this morning to look at what's going on in the lives of people I have not seen for over a decade mostly. And there was a post from my dad: 6 mile walk this morning. Slap down. Twenty years my senior and in the last year hospitalised after a heart attack. 6 miles. I struggle to get a mile under my belt. I think: what the hell is wrong with me? Why do I struggle to do a mile and he with his seniority and ill health can do 6 times that? Something is wrong. Of course its that old question for me of how much is agoraphobia and how much is fatigue and how much of the fatigue is caused by the anxiety and how much of the anxiety is caused by the fatigue and so on.

Thinking today I am begining to wonder if fatigue isn't more of a problem because to walk around my block is one third of a mile and were I to attempt doing it 18 times in a row I doubt I could manage past the 3 so that is not agoraphobia. I would start to get anxious but only because I would get breathless and unsteady and weak and feel the need to get back home and rest. Anxiety from my agoraphobic state is definitely a big issue as I know from car journeys but I also have to start accepting that fatigue is as big an issue.  If suddenly I lost my agoraphobia overnight and was anxiety free I still think I would have trouble walking far and attempting any kind of physical exercise. What I also have to remember is that before the anxiety problems started it was fatigue that led me back and forth to the GP without any resolution despite the numerous tests. Just a note.

This is been a strange old week. For the first time in what must be at least 8 years my wife and I spent as few days alone. Her parents took all 3 kids up north last Sunday and my wife went up to get them on Friday. It was strange. Strange being together and finding that with time on our hands there was not much we could do with it together- she could on her own. But for her a welcome break as I have had plenty of time on my own but this was her first time. That is the price you pay when you don't have family living nearby. I doubt, unless I can get myself well soon, there will be another period in the near or distant future until they start leaving home.

That brings me back to guilt. They are growing so quickly and I look at the oldest who is still but a toddler in my head and think she will be 10 next year. All 3 have never known any different from the now- crammed in a small damp ridden flat with no garden and a dad who doesn't work, doesn't go out, won't go to see them in plays at school and won't go weekends away with them. A dad who may very well be as well not being there, what difference would it make? If only this was enough to get me well. If only that will power was enough. Its the kind of thing that has sent me many times out the door headlong into panic and pushed through it with gritted teeth determined to get to that point I keep reading about where the panic subsides and instead finding it increasing more and more until I can take no more, come scuttling home and am of no use to anyone for weeks and sometimes months after. So frustrating.

But any road to recovery starts at least, and usually with, small steps. I wonder if a really disturbing episode is a step in that direction. When I say disturbing I mean disturbing to me at the time because I could not seem to handle it but on reflection now nothing to worry about. On Monday I had this strong sense of deja vu but with it came a sense of dread and I could not get it out of my head. The reason on reflection was probably change. My day never changes and yet here I was with my wife and no kids and it seemed to take me back a decade and unsettled me. I remember reading in a Dr Claire Weekes book once how people in a situation such as I am in can find even subtle change very hard to deal with but until Monday had never experienced it to my knowledge- though if I look back I probably have. What it did was lead to full on mental panic which is basically like a sensory overload giving a sense of unreality which if I am honest is scary even when you know what it is. I really could not get to grips with it at all but by the Tuesday it was gone. I say it could be a step in the right direction as I see it as an extreme of something else I have been experiencing lately.

Over the past few weeks and to a lesser extent over the past few months I have been experiencing weird flashbacks. Well not weird but just out of place. What they are is actually flashbacks of normality. I could be at the laptop reading or typing and see a bank of Scotland in Edinburgh where I used to withdraw money when I worked there. For a moment I see myself as a passenger in a certain street in Perth from when I lived there and a street I had forgotten about. More and more of them come. It makes me wonder if its my mind trying to make sense of it and trying to stitch back the normality that existed for so long before the agoraphobic days of my latter years. I have become so introspective and so cut off that I see it as the mind starting to build paths to the world that exists outside of the bubble I have been living in and the begining of piecing reality back together in some ways a bit like what might happen to someone who has been in a cell for 10 years and finds the outside world daunting but over time it all starts to come back and the fear of it is lost. Just a theory but one I am hopeful of as I know that I cannot just go from this existence straight back into what I once termed normality.

So positives of sorts. Also in mentioning there mental panic I was given thought to look back at the actual panic in my life of late and have to say I cannot remember any episodes. Strange but good. Last weekend was the closest right up to the arrival of my parents for the first time in a few months but it went much better than expected and then the following day I had the inlaws for a much longer time at home. No panic. Not entirely anxiety free experiences by any means and still fleeting panic with the constant threat of it going full blown but no actual panic attack. So good. More positives. I have to note these things and try to use them to spur me on. What I have learned is that I cannot rush this. I have to keep at least maintaining what I am doing and when time comes to increase things it will come naturally and gradually. I just have to go along with it and pick up every little tiny positive and pin it to my chest to remind me I could be heading in the right direction however far off the end in sight still seems.