Its good to talk

 

The old BT slogan of "Its good to talk" seems to be on my mind the past week or so because said mind seems to think the opposite. This is not new. Even in my better times this flared up. It may always have been there to some degree without me noticing it too much. Maybe what was once a minor iritation has been turned into a major agitation with the rushes of adrenaline I have experienced these past couple of decades. In fact I know it was always there but there is another reason I thought nothing of it and that was because the one situation I remember it I was not alone in that agitation. I am talking about feeling trapped in one way conversations by the way, I should have mentioned that. This is of course one I am subjecting the reader to at the moment but at least the reader can choose to stop "listening" without causing offence as I would be oblivious.

My Uncle Billy was the one. He was one of those relatives with a title that was not a true reflection of his relationship in the family tree. He was in fact my dad's cousin related by being the sons of sisters. So not my uncle but that is what we called him as there was no other title that fitted and to not use a title would have been too familiar for a child speaking to an adult family member. Anyway when I lived with my gran I used to dread him coming around and it was quite often as he didn't work and liked a chinwag. He also liked taking my gran shopping as he got a free lunch out of it and sometimes petrol money but that is another story. He was so laid back he was definitely horizontal as the saying goes and he had all the time in the world. So when he had you he did not let go. He wanted an ear and he didn't care who it belonged to. Usually it was about his holidays to America and it was delivered in excrutiatingly slow monotnous detail. He would go through each day, where he was, what he had for lunch, where he went next and so on. I used to be climbing the walls and it got so bad I started staying upstairs when he came around just to avoid him. I was not alone. Everyone did it. In the early days my gran would disappear to the kitchen to do something and I used to wonder why it took her so long. No one wanted to be the one who was landed with Uncle Billy because there was no escape. 

Right now in this week in particular I feel that trapped feeling amplified except Uncle Billy is long gone now. The source now seems to be everyone. As I said I have felt this even when I was doing well. Before my anxiety started we had a neighbour who was a female Uncle Billy telling me every detail of her shopping for example or what she did that morning. In fact the more I think the more I see there has been an Uncle Billy somewhere in my life. This recent crop started weirdly with another neighbour who lives in the flat that the original neighbour lived in. He is a lovely old guy but we have rarely said more than a couple of words over the past couple of years he has lived here because his hearing is so bad that he cannot hear what you are saying. That was until the other week when he stopped me outside as usual and captured me for about 15 minutes. He had gone private and I will spare the details I was not to just say he paid a lot of money to get his hearing back. So now he can have conversations and boy he can talk even if with his new good ears he hears but does not really want to listen. It was very much one sides. Then I felt it. The pang of panic- I am trapped, I need to get out of here. "I won't keep you". Good but still he went on and my agitation made me take a deep breath and start rubbing my hands and moving my feet back and forth. I needed to go and so I went rather abruptly but he didn't seem to notice and I have avoided him since. When I take the dog out I usually wait at the window for him to leave. I feel bad about it. Months ago I wished I could talk to him when I was not having daily panic attacks and now I can I need to avoid him. He has even resorted to puting notes through my door to tell me things like the one pictured above.

That I can handle. Its all the other stuff that has come along with it that is the big problem.