Clumsy

 

---

Out of frustration a little I pushed myself to hit two miles this week for the first time this month. A real good effort. I've had a dose of the old lurgy in me and with the exhaustion it totally drained me but worth it just to remind myself it can be done. Just a pity I cannot do it every day but as I said previously that will come.

The photo here is something different. Its of me. A snippet really as I am not one for getting my photo taken. Actually I was talking to my wife about this the other day. She was going through photos on her phone. Mostly they were of her mum of course but some with her dad, her sisters, the kids, work collegues and friends. None of me. In fact I don't think there are many if any photos of me about. I said to my wife if I was gone tomorrow there would be no trace of me. She just sort of shrugged which I suppose is about all you can do. I am relating to Gregor Samsa or at least wallowing in self pity- so I need to snap out of that quickly.

Anyway the photo was taken not for here but for me to check out my head. Somehow I managed to whack myself on the head with a fridge door. It was all down to timing, bad timing. I cannot even remember what I was looking for but I opened the fridge door, stuck my head in to look, closed the door and then went take my head out. Not quickly enough. Crack! I didn't expect there to be a mark but I managed to cut it a little. Silly sod. Its not the first time. I remember doing it sometime back on a walk at Strathclyde Park and cutting through woods only to cut my head on a branch I never saw coming. Its down to lack of awareness in a mind that constantly has more room for the inner dialogue than the surrounding world. I need to be more mindful I suppose.

I feel really guilty because yesterday the boy left for his school trip up north which will see him stay away until Friday. I feel guilty because for the girls I was there in the car park to wave them off. Today I had to leave him and his mum in the park because I feel so crap and agoraphobia is so strong. Furthermore on Friday when he returns I won't be able to meet him and instead will have to get someone to collect him. I remember that from high school coming back from Spain and all the parents were there but I was left to walk home alone. I remember the tear in my eye which I could not stop and that empty feeling going into an empty house. I'm motoring down that self pity road again, snap out of it. Its weird not having him here. He was upset when he left as he has never been away on his own before. I just hope he has a good time. 

---

Silent letters

Something has changed in my attitude. For me yesterday's panic attack was devastating. The psychologist was on her way and I phoned to cancel. Just couldn't handle it. The apprehension had spilled over and I was a shaking wreck in no fit state to entertain a guest. I know that it appears I am dramatising things because in reality it was not but in my head it was the end of the world. A lifeline ignored at the last chance saloon. It was a black place.

Many was a time in the past when I would not crumble but shatter on impact and it would take me weeks to pull myself together. I would sit with only self-pity to converse with in my dark little world mentally crying over how it wasn't fair. Immediately that is how I felt yesterday. Not only had I let down myself but others too. I swung in the living room for a while hung by a rope of guilt while all others carried on regardless.

And that is how I feel sometimes- like I am not there. Like Gregor Samsa locked away in a room to be forgotten about. Like my world is the word "knight" and i am the letter "K". Or "Gnome" and I am the letter "G". There are of course lots of other words but you get the picture so I won't list them all. That is how I feel. The whole is significant but that letter is not and is really not required. Not only that but it is a hindrance. It does not need to be placed there so why is it there? People just accept it but, god this has been ripping a mental hole thinking about it, what is the point? Someone must have sat down and created that. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Maybe we should all go adding silent letters on to words that are dead in the spoken form. And why stop at two when we could add as many as we wanted. I personally like the number qxzthree, with a silent qxz (Let us see the spell checker tackle that!)

Or maybe even a string of silent letters. Letters that make up real words but are ignored. Like the old warning above hidden in grass while kids kick a ball about ignored yet there. The "no fouling" signs in view as an owner watched their dog take a dump on the pavement and walks off leaving it for people to stand in. 

A digression I know but you get down, feel unimportant and ask what is the point but like a silent letter while everyone just accepts your existence despite your presence being of no benefit or even an annoyance. It's just accepted. And this is how I would usually spend the next couple of weeks lost in these silly thoughts spiralling downwards into the abyss of my own dark mind.

Not this time though. I really needed to walk. As the panic started to subside I was left with high anxiety but also a rage bursting through my veins, an inner frustration. I really couldn't sit still and felt I needed to do something. OK I had been defeated once again but I decided that was just another lost battle and I must continue to wage the war on my own terms when possible. So a surprise attack was in order. Beware the wounded lion.

So I walked over and into my wife's work. The first time in there for about 4 months. It was a brief stop but still I proved after 4 months of being held back I could so something new. That felt empowering. Had it not been for the fact I needed to meet my wife again later I would have gone a longer walk there and then.

So that was one plus to cancel out the negative but I needed another positive. First off the obvious was another walk somewhere new but then I thought of something better- the car. I've not been in a car for 4 months never mind drive one so as luck would have it my wife came back from the shops and left the car outside for me to bring the bags in. After doing my duty I jumped in and drove around to the supermarket and back. Not a great distance but an achievement in my book.

So that was my day and what have I spend 95% of the day thinking about? You guessed right. I've been lingering in the panic attack from yesterday giving the two positives no thought at all until I typed them here.