Charmed Life

When I hold you in my arms,
And look back on my charmed life
My charmed life
I hope, I hope if nothing more
That one day you’ll call your life
A charmed life

Charmed Life

Divine Comedy

At some point I'm going to have to get that camera out and start taking photos to fill the posts I have made. Seem to have slipped out of that like I do with most things. Strange to think that I dreamed for so long for a proper camera while I squeezed all I could out of my little compact and then when I get one it sits in a corner like an ornament gathering dust apart from special occasions. Its a problem with me. I keep meaning to get that Tom Ang book out and work through it like I did with the compact but properly this time with all the functionality but an intention is all it remains. Like so much.  A long to-do list that grows with every intention and the intention is squeezed into a cupboard behind a door which is ready to burst with the weight behind it. So many books lying unread when the desperate need to buy them was fulfilled but the intention to read them was left wanting. So many things. The great procrastinator. The stupendous puter-offfer. Letter unwritten and problems unfaced. There is always tomorrow- a detrimental mantra, in my case at least.

Things have been going well though. I had a period of doubt and have managed to push through it and gain strength from it in my climb up the mountain. In some ways I am getting things together and realised that this road is full of setbacks which must be overcome. Still there are obstacles still to be maneuvered but I feel with the right approach I will take them on when the time comes.

I guess what it comes down to is trying to not be overwhelmed by all that life throws at us. Any person has a million and one concerns in their life. Some darker and harder to deal with than others. Plenty I know more than I- people with problems that would scare the life out of me. A change of mindset is required. In this worrying mind of mine its too easy to keep placing all the negatives at the forefront at my mind and forget the things that I am truely lucky to have. I have my parents and I have my family and I have, I think, my health. I read "Some people are so poor all they have is money". So true. I have so much to be thankful for. I know so many people who have real problems- problems outwith their control. Life changing problems. My problems are microscopic in comparison.

This shift in thinking is of course and not yet a full shift but more a nudge in the right direction. It is though not forced. For whatever reason I see the people I admire most are not the kind of people I used to hold up as people to aspire too. That will change with age. I am now in my 40s so my aspirations to be a footballer, actor or rock god are now all behind me. But its not just that. All my life I have admired fearless people and successful people. This has changed. Not that I don't admire fearless people as I do. So many people with courage come to mind and maybe that is a better term- courageous rather than fearless because no one is truely fearless. But success has no place in my world and instead without making the conscious effort to do so I am drawn more to more judgemental laid back people. People who treat idiots the same way as samaritans. "Water off a duck's back" people. People who just accept people for who they are and just sort of amble through life without looking for some great prize. People not trying to win friends, affection or enemies. They just are themselves and maybe that is what I admire more and where I have been going wrong all these years. I have always tried to be something I am not and have always been disappointed by that. Even now I cannot accept what I have become. Maybe I should.

But these people I am sure aspire to something even if they don't care if they get there as much as more driven people do. That is OK, I like that. And that is what I must do. I must just accept what I am and who I am and keep trying to improve my life without judgement. I must be able to go to bed at night content and maybe that is all we can ask of ourselves.

Forgetting

One of the hardest things to deal with when you have anxiety problems is the range of different ways in which the mind and body are affected. Combine this with a person who is low in confidence as a result and full of self doubt and easily spooked then it can become a living nightmare. Yesterday's big issue is soon swamped with another and another until finally one of the old ones resurfaces and it seems like there is never a minute in the waking day where something adverse is not happening.

Take waking this morning. It was the pinnacle to a lot of recent worry and scared the life out of me. I woke up and for what seemed like a long alarming period of time but was probably only seconds I could not recall anything. Most of all I could not recall where I was. I obviously didn't have clear vision on waking or the bedroom was not familiar. Scary. And I could hear an adult male voice shouting at a crying child outside. I just could not recall where I was. In that moment I knew who I was but not what stage I was at. I couldn't recall that I was married and had kids. It did all come flooding back but that moment was scary. Then of course I am left wondering if it was anxiety or something else.

There have been a lot of similar episodes over the past 6 months. At one point I could not recall whether my sister had 2 or 3 children. The other week I asked my wife if her brother-in-law's mum was still ill and with a shocked look she told me she had died at the start of the year. Who wouldn't find that scary and worrying?

So then I ask myself if there is there a reason for it. Could it be explained in some other way? Well I suppose so. In these previous instances I have mentioned the fact I am so cut off from the world could explain it. I never see anyone. I am out of the loop so maybe then it is harder to retain facts I have maybe been told. When you are not around these people their lives do not leave the same imprint it does when you are around them. There have been a few instances like this and I guess what I worry about most is that they are all recent. Or are they? I have said many times I have a bad memory.  

Even the episode this morning could be explained. This is the first time this has happened. One thing I have to remember though is that I was probably woken from sleep by a foreign voice. Being woken from a deep sleep would tend to do that to you and if it was an incident on its own then I probably would not worry. That is though a likely explanation. I think also though its the connections. I think back to the episodes of fleeting images from my past and that was followed by horrible moments of deja vu leading to this.

Then again maybe its all just anxiety. I just don't know.

The last thing I want to do is scare anyone reading this who also has anxiety problems. It is one of the many known possible symptoms of anxiety and panic. So I had a look back through notes I keep and at the end of 2012 I wrote about the same fears after forgetting my parents had been to Las Vegas and a few other things. A further search revealed in 2011 I had the same fears again forgetting things that had happened recently to that date. Very strangely both these notes were taken on my last 2 birthdays. Now that says something. As I say I am cut off from the world and then on birthdays people come and I am out of touch so its all a bit unreal and hard to grasp. Its from being cut off and being introspective. And on the subject about forgetting about the death although I have no note on that I seem to recall that I was not told about it at the time and only found out much later so that is maybe why I did not retain it. Anyway I just wanted to end by saying as worrying as it can be it can be attributed to anxiety/panic and even if you are free of those it does still happen when then mind is overactive and/or you are a very introspective person.

Wish

They say be careful what you wish for. I wished for a proper summer, I was no alone and now we have it. I am melting. We are all melting.

But I am not complaining. Apart from the hit my walks have taken because is so much more difficult trying to get far in baking heat it has been all good. Even just sitting out is good. UV rays my skin has missed and needed are back and the spirit soars with it. Good also for visits because we are not confined to many in a small room but outside where its less claustrophobic. Yesterday it was my youngest daughter's birthday and we sat out the whole day. Well the adults did. The kids for some reason disappeared indoors to play the Wii for most of the time.

And finally I have the decision of my appeal against ATOS's decision to declare me fit for work. What is that decision? I still don't know. It arrived this morning and the letter sits in a pile unopened. It won't be opened in the daylight hours. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. I know the answer so I am putting it off because I know it will lead to a bout of desperate panic. I put everything off until tomorrow and therein lies my problem. I can't seem to face up to it- I cannot still face the panic.

Its been a strange old week. Most of it has been spent alone while the family were down South for a good few days at a wedding. The wife and boy came back first and the girls arrived back yesterday. So its back to a full home and long days and long weeks ahead. I am trying to work harder with the CBT. I can feel myself starting to slip back. And the problem also with the holidays is I start to stay up later and later but don't rise any later and so fatigue slowly builds which in this heat is no good.

But enough moaning. A short little post from the dull confines of this room before heading out into the sunlight- hopefully a metaphor for something.

Life of an agoraphobic

The old man is just there or he is not there. He never appears and never disappears. I mean to say I never see him arrive or depart. He is just there- or not. There is a dead look in his eyes. He is there but he is not there. And maybe he's never been there. I watch him move up and down the same stretch of path- when he is there. Repetitions. He shuffles slowly pushing his zimmer that looks more like a shopping trolley with a dead stare straight ahead. No he is not there. His hunched body is there slowly pushing along back and forth but his mind is not and is most likely in the past. He is living his former life in his head but still his body moves in the present.

I remember when he used to not need the support and his body was straight straight as he walked back and forth. That was when he was there. That was when there was life in his eyes but that light has now dimmed. Still he walks more than me putting me to shame. Twice my age at least and fitter than my lifeless body that won't restock on energy and rots away to skin and bone. That has always been the way. In my mind as I walk to the traffic lights watching the old man I am not there. I am pre-teen in a white karate suit. A friend is in the same class. In fact two of my friends done karate at that time- the other done it somewhere else. And into our teens they developed big strapping muscles like Olympian athletes while I remained skin and bone. Three kids all doing the same exercises and yet one does not develop. Why? That has been the story of my life. I did extra training when I was younger and besides the karate I had football training multiple times a week and no amount of hard work would develop my feeble body and nor could I put on weight- in fact I only put on weight in my twenties when single and in a good paid job and eating mostly take aways.

At the karate another memory which makes me fear for my son. We are worried about him. He starts school in the new term and we are worried he might get picked on because he bursts out crying at the slightest thing. Its a worry and my fear is shame too because I remember being the same way in primary. I didn't get picked on but where I lived was not rough like here. He has a cousin who is the same and has been bullied. I don't want that and I think this is what made my parents push me into karate. And yet I couldn't cope. I remember hating it. I remember being in tears one night from kicks to the ribs which others seemed to be absorbing but the bigger kid kicking me was about cracking bones and it hurt. That was a problem with being tall for my age because I was paired with older guys who were more developed and had either fat or muscle to protect those bones- and they had a much harder kick. So we worry for him and I know what it is like but I did manage to snap out of it in the early school years. My fear is that he doesn't.

The traffic lights take to long. They always do. I wait to cross knowing that there has to be a gap in traffic before they will change and on a busy road that feels like a lifetime. Besides that motorists still don't want to stop. They will run through it regularly or slam the breaks on at the last moment. Its a bit like chicken as they dare you to cross hoping you will not want to take your chances and they can continue without delay regardless of the colour of the lights. So I cross and the old man is coming back the way past me unaware I am there and likely unaware where he is. Its sad. Before him there was another man who strode with purpose and then slowly he needed the aid of a walking stick and finally a zimmer. The same stretch of path. Very rarely I see him still. He stands at a door shaky and looking out with his had against the wall as if contemplating whether to go out. I have never seen him out again.

Down the street I go past the council building where some workers are out smoking at the front. Its busy. People are going in and out constantly. Workers and lorries come up and down the road on the way back and forth from the industrial estate opposite the council building. The road leads to a park so it a prime location for dog walkers and for me its the regular route to school which is why I am walking it today to try to keep those walks going over the summer holidays and hold on to what I have. Also there is a path leading through the woodland to the train station. A decision to be made. Park or towards the train station? Really I am not feeling confident today. The train station is a location I want to get to but not today. I am feeling very weak. I have not done anywhere near the distance this week that I have been doing due to the schools being off yet I am feeling more fatigued for it. So fatigued. So exhausted. I turn into the park.

The park is busy. The skate park is mobbed. The goalposts are down and the fields are being replanted. Dogs are walked and cyclists vie for room. And not just that but council workers drive around the pedestrian area expecting you to move- which you don't. Most annoying of all though is motorists again who cannot be bothered driving on the road around the park so drive through it again expecting you to get off the path- which again you don't. Not today though. The gates to the exit are locked so they cannot pass through. I'm feeling really weak as I get halfway through the park to a crossroads. Whether to go on or start heading back. Normally on the school run I go on. Yesterday with a lot of discomfort I went on. Today I really do not feel up to it. The weakness is making me anxious and this in turn is tensing me up. I cut up through the top of the park.

The phone goes and its a text. Its from my wife with the simple message: 73 miles to London! This starts my mind wondering. She is on her way to Surrey with her sister, my son and her sister's daughter. They are in the car and an hour from then would be reaching the ring road. I imagine it in my head and then I imagine my girls who are heading there too but by different means with their grandparents on the train right into London and then a cab and another train back out. I imagine sitting looking at the passing world as I used to love to do by train. Here though I find myself in too much noise. The swing park to might right is full of kids shouting and screaming and parents bawling over the top of them. Too much noise and too much movement and I am feeling so tired and the path now takes a big incline up to the moment and another set of traffic lights and my balance does not feel right as I climb. I am struggling and the urge I have to head further away from home is disappearing fast. There to the right further down the path are a set of benches and I could go there and sit for 5 minutes to compose myself. Who am I kidding? Sitting down is no use. I get more anxious because I am not moving and fear I will not get home. Its like coming to a stop in the car far from home and all the fears rushing in. No I will push on a different way. I reach the traffic lights. I cannot breathe.

Really I cannot breathe. I am getting no air into my lungs. But my body is not reacting. If it were true I was not getting enough air my body would force me to breathe wouldn't it. The body would take over and make me breathe. Still though I cannot breathe. Panic from nowhere spikes. Shit- I cannot breathe. The lights change and I cross. Be mindful. What do I hear? Noise. Lots of noise. What do I feel? I feel sweaty inside and the sun on my face but my hands feel cold from the wind on them. What do I smell? I smell nothing. Who am I kidding? This is not working I am in panic. Try to release the stomach muscles which are tight and allow natural breathing. Try. Try. Try! Its no good. Still I am not breathing. I get my phone out for distraction. Half a mile. That is all I have walked. Half a bloody mile. 10 minutes in total and I feel like this. I head home already calculating the distance to help calm myself.

My balance is all over the place. Its too bright. The sun is glaring and its affecting my eyesight with bright spots which is in turn shaking my equilibrium to buggery and I quicken my pace. Its as depressing as it is frustrating. I see so many people and I am jealous. Lots of people sitting down without a care eating the delights from the local bakery. People just walking about. I walk past an old couple walking arm in arm and he is looking very smart in a suit and I respect that but I need to get home. So many people walking about without a care and I have been out 10 minutes and panicking to get home. This is the life of an agoraphobic. Something I have battled against so long and despite making progress still lose at some point by the same method.

I didn't go home. I walked on and I walked on and I wish I had just kept walking. A mile and a half in total. Half an hour. And then I could walk no more. At one point I pulled out my phone to look at it and as I looked at the display I swayed to one side. The woman coming the other way put her head down no doubt thinking she was passing a drunk. And then I was home when I could walk no more and lifeless on the couch and all that was going through my head is that I have to do the same again twice more today and tomorrow and every day after. Well I don't need to. Not for anyone other than myself. I am here alone and could stay indoors if I wanted to. But I want to go out and I try to stay out and I just can't do it and the effort both physically and mentally leave me shattered and then the next one is harder and so it goes on. But I keep going and I will keep going. Its all I can do.