Off the grid

 

Finally we are back on the grid after falling off for a week out of the blue. It is amazing the things you take for granted in this modern age until they are gone. I like to think I can do without technology and find ways to spend my time elsewhere but it turns out I suffer the same seperation anxiety as everyone else when I am expelled from the matrix. That is circumstances at the moment for sure. A few years ago I could easily have sat and read a book all day and enjoyed it whereas at the moment I feel constant agitation and no enjoyment in reading. It has become a chore. But my main escape was the outdoors. Having overcome the vast chunk of my agoraphobia I liked nothing better than to just head out for a few hours and get back into the outside world whatever the whether. At the moment just getting around my block is hard enough and mostly I am leaving it until quieter times so I feel more hemmed in. The day the Internet died I found the first few hours in particular very hard indeed. I am used to typing things out to deal with them and now there was no way of doing that. I forgot my Chromebook relied on an Internet connection and without one it was as good as dead to me. 

Anyway one day the Internet stopped and a few hours later it come on. Then it went off. Then it came on. Then it slowed down until it eventually stopped and just when it looked like it was gone forever it popped up about 48 hours later but at a snail's pace. Now this is the hard part and most frustrating part. Knowing that it is a bit of kit that is at fault is all well and good but trying to convince BT of that is another thing altogether. I remembered back to the time we made the switch from Sky to BT and the week without Internet trying with all my might to convince countless people in countless places that it was the line that was at fault and having to go through scripts that were futile. We had two boxed I think sent which I knew would not work and didn't. Finally they sent out an engineer and within a minute he said the line had not been patched in- something we were told over the phone had been done. Frustrating. I had no appetite for that again so my wife instead cancelled out Broadband and we went with someone else. 

Finally we are back online after what was a very long week for everyone. It should have been an opportunity to take a welcome break away from technology and find something else to do but unfortunately it wasn't. It was paying for for more 4G than normal and watching the clock. Sad really but that is the reality for most in modern life. 

Panic at home

  

I woke on Monday morning with a feeling of impending doom. It was there in the darkness making me physically squirm and finally get up to let in the light. This though only took the edge off it. The doom remained. Even now I don't know why but thankfully its been a while. Because its been a while it started to lead into panic. I was awake alone, had to take the dog out and came back still unable to shake this apprehensive anxiety. It brought about sweats. My wife and youngest girl were due up for school. I felt hemmed in. Nowhere to escape to with this rising panic when I need to be alone. I had to get the boy up shortly after for home schooling. It accelerated and agitation grew and I got more and more restless then suddenly it stopped. More than that though I knew I was fine. Unlike most past times when the threat remained this time I was OK, reassured of no repeat.

It got me to questioning when my last panic attack was. I can't remember. Certainly I have had less in the past year. That is ironic really. Where most have had their mental health challenged in lockdown my own has been helped. Why? Because outdoor life has been restricted I've had less situation to panic. When it was quiet outside it helped. Of course this is not a long term help because when the mad world returns to crowds the panic will return. For now though it has helped. 

Until December last year I really had a hard time mentally with dread. I think this could have been an echo of that. Things didn't just go from very bad to good overnight. Those feelings are etched into my body and mind. The waking in dread soaked in sweat feeling there was no way out. The feeling of suffocation. Just the darkest of places which bizarrely brought about an acceptance because I realised it was out of my hands. Those effects don't just disappear. These I feel are memories of that. The effects are long lasting. Even now I am reluctant to check my bank account online fearing there will be nothing in it and its months since I did so. That was a fear that was with me for a long time and I just cannot shake it despite there being no danger now even if there was nothing in the account. 

All these months on I thought the good news in December would see me striding back to wellness where I was a few years ago but it hasn't. I cannot explain why. This episode of panic is not new lately and my fear is its getting more regular. Because I went so far back my world has shrunk and with that anxiety grows each day. So I must return to the CBT which helped me so much previously. I cannot afford to sit back and allow my world to be swallowed again. I need to push on now and try to just ride the waves that are coming.

Restless solitude

For the immediate future there is no peace to be found, that is my conclusion. So I can either stress about it or accept it. Whatever I do its not going to change so I'm laying down my arms. I can't remember if there was a time when I was truly at peace. Maybe that in itself is an illusion that keeps me fretting, a perversity in my nature. Continually I am chasing rainbows which is futile and tiring. But that is not to say I am giving up. On the contrary I am still going to keep pushing forward but while I do I also have to develop a different mindset to my current habitually negativity mind machine. I have to carve in stone the understanding that this dark place I live is in a large part my own creation.

Over the course of however long I have struggled with the reverberations of my nerves being rapidly twanged like the strings on a Flamenco guitar and I have built alternative realities. Scenarios have been created which are false. Situations have arisen which cause fear when in fact they are all part of the bigger whole. Contemplating this week I have realised just how ridiculous this is. For the best part of this week I am alone at home and that is a scenario which causes my anxiety to rise as I become restless in solitude. On Friday I will become the stressful father as my family return home and my wife goes for a night out leaving me with the children. Two scenarios which in my head are going to cause me to become anxious but both are of my own making. I am anxious anyway and these are just structures to run away from.

The truth is I am always anxious. There is no situation where I am calm and relaxed. This is what I have to come to terms with. This is what I have to make my understanding without clouding it with terrifying visions of the yet to happen. The only purpose served by creating fearful scenarios is the cementing of apprehension. Wherever I am on the inside I am the same and it is only the external which changes. It is my fear of that change which disrupts the inside as I buy into my own self made horrors. It makes me wonder that if I were blind would I be anxious? If not then surely I must be the one perpetuating this myth of an attack.

I am an anxious person from waking until sleep. This is who I am. That is the truth I must learn to live with and stop myself falling into the trap that it is a variety of different situations I am forced into that is making me this way. Possibly only then will I find the peace I was searching for and also discover that it is not what I was seeking at all but something very different that only transpires through that much used word 'acceptance'. While my thoughts whizz like a humming top through every moment of consciousness it is difficult to hold on to those moments of clarity so I must keep reminding myself of it until it becomes habitual and the walls of this judgemental prison that have kept me imprisoned for so long are eroded.