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| Canal reflections |
I spent the first weekend of
August in bed again. The niggle in my
throat and nose returned, I had nosebleeds, and got even less sleep than normal.
My partner also had a cold. He took it easy but did go to the shop for essentials
such as cake, and did most of the cooking.
The highlight of our weekend was booking a holiday to Kos for the end of
the month.
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| Customised blue dress |
I kept busy with crafting. I
customised an old blue dress – it was
covered in plastic sequins which had always been breaking and falling off. I decided to totally redo it. I took them all off and sewed random beads
on. It took me all day but I was chuffed
with the result. I should have done it
years ago, but I didn’t have the crafty confidence before I guess.
I got even more depressed by
the world news – Israel had bombed a total of three schools in Gaza and
counting... As the month wore on, equally
depressing news emerged from Syria and Iraq.
Just as I was settling down to
sleep on Sunday night, my partner set the smoke alarm off. It was attached to the landing light so he
had to leave the light on to stop it buzzing.
In a bid to get some shuteye, I performed all my relaxation techniques. My body felt very floaty and relaxed but alas
it didn’t work on my brain. I reflected that
I had now suffered for two whole years. I was not sure if I could cope anymore
with the whole melange of mental illness, sleep deprivation and recurring viruses.
On Monday morning, I was upset after
a terrible night. My partner sympathised and moved the smoke alarm to the spare
room so it would cease to annoy me. despite feeling terrible, I had to get up
to go to a counselling appointment. I
had cancelled the last one due to illness and as we were going away at the end
of August, I resolved to attend three weeks in a row to get it over with.
It was predictably tedious, as
were the subsequent sessions. After the
preliminaries of the meaningless questionnaires and telling her how I felt, we
started the EMDR therapy. For most of
it, I sat there feeling daft holding these two buzzy things with her getting me
to relive one tiny part of my ordeal over and over again and asking me stupid questions
‘on a scale of 1 to 10...’ I wondered
what on earth she expected me to say. I
did try really hard but my mind kept wandering and I kept saying to myself ‘this
is a waste of time’.
Eventually I couldn’t bear it
any longer and signaled her to stop. I
had a pain in my throat and my eyes were watering so I reached for a
tissue. She interpreted this as me
crying. I explained that I had viral
symptoms and was not upset by reliving the experience; I had done it enough
times myself. I just found it really tiresome.
We talked about it for a while and
after revisiting the other limited options available and me still being adamant
I did not want CBT, I agreed to give it another go next time . I had already promised myself that I would go
through with it and decided it would be a shame not to give it a chance.
On the way home I went to the chemist
and got some nose spray. I remembered
that a while back when I had a similar recurring illness it had helped. However, after trying it for a few days I realised
it was doing no good – in fact, my nose became more snotty!
The next day I slept in quite
late. I didn’t feel as viral but still really tired. I stayed in bed working on my blog. It took me until the Thursday to insert the
photos and publish it but I was happy with the result.
I thought about how it had been
two years since I walked out of work, and one year since I became officially
‘work free’. I should have been enjoying
my life, being able to do what I wanted when I wanted. Instead, I was still ill and apparently suffering
severe fatigue due to two years of insomnia.
I recognised that the recurring viruses were connected with a lack of
sleep compromising my immune system and creating a vicious cycle with no end in
sight. Despite all my efforts, being
productive, trying to keep positive and forward-looking, it was wearing me down
leaving me at a loss as to what else I could do to help myself get better and
get on with my life.
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| Pocket watch necklace |
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| Charm bracelet |
By Wednesday I felt slightly
better and managed short periods out of bed.
My partner took a day off work.
He still had a cold and the events of the previous two weeks with his Mum
dying had taken their toll. I did not
feel well enough to go to my painting class.
Instead, I made some jewellery out of recycled parts including a pocket watch necklace and a matching charm
bracelet.
I saw a photo of my friend
with the interesting ailments on social media with a broken arm.
I messaged her and she was scared she wouldn’t
be able to go on holiday the following week.
I arranged to meet up with her before she went.
It looked sunny and warm
outside so I got up, put on a dress and sat outside. In fact, it was a bit cloudy and breezy and my
knees got cold. I went back inside but
stayed out of bed. I rang my Mum and did
a few jobs round the house. I was on the
stairs when I had a funny turn – I felt dizzy down my right side and almost
fell sideways off the step! When my
partner got home I mentioned it to him.
We wondered if it was because I had been a bit over-enthusiastic about
feeling better.
At about 10 o’clock that night,
we noticed fireworks being launched from somewhere down near the canal. I watched from the window. They were much better
than the normal crap from the corner shop.
Not quite as good as a display you would pay for, but impressive all the
same. They had obviously been put
together by someone who knew what they were doing and it lasted a good quarter
of an hour. I put a request out on social
media, to have one every night.
I took Temazepam and was asleep
soon after 12. I still felt very weary
and wobbly the next day but I had to go shopping. I discussed our changing shopping habits with
my partner: we seemed to be able to survive without doing a big shop every week
(and it worked out cheaper). In general,
people appeared to have eschewed the big out-of-town retail experience and become
more diverse in their shopping habits. We
mused that we had followed this trend without being conscious of it.
Some men had been working on a house
on the street below. That morning, there
was such a terrible racket that I put earplugs in. We looked out and saw a man attacking an old
water tank, alternately using an angle grinder and kicking it. My partner said ‘what is he doing?’ I surmised he was cutting it into smaller
pieces so he could get it in his car to dispose of it. He said that sounded like a reasonable
assumption but then said ‘why is he using an angle grinder?’ ‘Because that’s what he’s got’ I
replied. I know I often complained about
being disturbed by men and their power tool noises, but this just proved that
men will use them willy nilly – even when they are totally the wrong ones –
simply for the sake of it. Later in the
day it went very quiet but of course just as I contemplated having a little
sleep in the afternoon the dreaded grinding started up again!
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| Action cat crosses the canal |
On Saturday we both felt quite
fragile. It was a lovely day with a
hurricane expected later in the weekend so I convinced my partner to come out
for a walk in the early evening. We
walked up the canal for about a mile, taking
loads of photos including the stunning reflections in the water and an amusing
‘action cat’. On the way back we
stopped at a canal side pub for dinner and a couple of pints.
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| Beach horse lino print |
The next day we slept in very
late. The hurricane had arrived and we
agreed to have a Sunday ‘crafternoon’ making lino prints. My partner did some of his Chinese writing
and I did one of a beach horse copied off a
bathroom rug we bought in Zante last year.
I was very pleased with the result.
As my art teacher would say, I
‘caught the spirit of the subject’ with a sense of movement and fun.
On Monday afternoon my friend
with the interesting ailments visited and told me about her accident wherein
she broke her arm and her upcoming holiday to Crete. I gave her some tips on getting round on buses
and lent her a sarong to stop her whingeing about all the clothes she couldn’t wear
due to her cast. We also talked about
the therapy lark. Although she was unfamiliar
with EMDR, she knew where I was coming from.
She had been through all sorts of other counselling and therapy and was currently
being ‘persuaded’ to go back to art therapy.
That night I couldn’t settle at
all. I tried my relaxation techniques
but nothing worked and I tossed and turned for ages. I churned over the therapy appointment. I had decided I would go as I would feel very
uneasy if I didn’t. However, I decided I
didn’t want to continue with the EMDR.
When I got to the appointment,
I started straight in telling her what I had been thinking. Namely that the EMDR concentrating on one
speck of time was unhelpful; that there was a backdrop to what happened to me
at work and in my personal life at the same time. She called it ‘spaghetti’ which was not a bad
analogy. She tried to persuade me that
EMDR was not just about dealing with isolated incidents. Then proceeded to pick out other events in
isolation! I took issue with the use of
the word ‘distressed’ to describe what I felt when I thought about the
shit. I said I actually felt anger and
frustration. She said after what I had
experienced it was no wonder. She
convinced me that I needed more time to feel better. This was actually quite helpful as I had been
fed up with still not being well after two years. Perhaps I just needed to accept it was going
to take longer.
She went back to the old NHS alternatives
of CBT, counselling and ‘guided self-help’.
As she expected, I eschewed these options – again! In the end, I agreed to purchase a book on
‘mindfulness’ and report back to her. We
only had one session left and I suggested waiting a few weeks to give me chance
to have a go at it first. However, she
said she could not book appointments too far ahead and as I was on holiday at the
end of August, we ended up booking for the following week. This would of course prove to pointless.
In the afternoon, I did some meditation
and caught up on some sleep and felt loads better. I tried a new technique to help me become
more serene and accept that I needed to be patient with myself until I healed
fully. This seemed to work at first with
improved sleep quality. I had another really good night with five and a half
hours straight. Unfortunately, the following night was terrible. I kept telling myself I needed to be still
and calm as it had worked the day before but to no avail. I detected a pattern that whenever I tried a
new relaxation technique, it only seemed to work once or twice.
Mid-week I went to the library
and was amused by kids collecting stickers for the ‘reading challenge’. The Librarian said to me ‘you don’t get
stickers sorry’. I replied ‘that’s
alright. I don’t need motivation to
read’. (As should have been evident by the pile of books I had returned, most
of which were about writing).
At painting class I started a
painting out of my head, inspired by a
photo I saw of street furniture silhouetted against the light so the shapes
looked like animal. Of course I didn’t
quite get the effect I wanted. The tutor
advised adding shadows which I attempted with mixed results. I had a bit of a laugh to myself at some of
the pretentions of others in the group. One woman talked about her voices:
‘they’re not coming to me’ and another one was doing a self-portrait. I thought (but stopped myself saying out
loud): ‘ooh! You’ve done a selfie!’
My partner was on a photo shoot
with our American friend . We met for Coffee
in town. She said they’d had a great
days’ work at her new ‘studio’ which was basically a massive warehouse
space. They had done various projects
including her daughter sitting at a Victorian school desk which made for very powerful
images.
I spent some time during the
latter part of the week editing my early blog for a book. I finished proofing the first third which
felt like an achievement. I also
prepared for our upcoming holiday to Kos and worked on a second horse design
for a lino print.
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| Old photo nicked from the pub |
On Friday night my partner managed
to get home early for once. We went out
with our walking friend for food and beer.
She seemed concerned that my partner was very tired. I thought: what’s new? Aren’t we all? Isn’t that normal nowadays? He managed to amaze her with his instant art
skills, using his phone and bits of shit. We examined an old photo on the wall which
I decided to nick and post up on social media. Unfortunately
the beer did not have a soporific effect and I had a terrible night, waking all
the time and lying awake in the early hours.
On Saturday morning I discussed
what our friend had said. I had been
somewhat irked that she noticed he was tired but that I was permanently tired
yet got no sympathy. My partner said he
realised what a big effort I made when out and about. Maybe to such an extent that other people thought
I was fine. I always felt exhausted
afterwards. But I preferred to do stuff
and suffer later rather than not do it. I
mused that as lack of sleep and tiredness had become normal, maybe I should
learn to love it!
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| River ducks |
The bad weather swayed us to
stay indoors. My partner cut my hair into a new style and dyed it for me. Sunday was no better - literally raining one
minute and sunny the next. But I needed
some air. We walked into town and took
photos of ducks on the river. We shopped
for needless items such as sweets and DVDs.
The following week brought more ups than downs for a change. On the Monday I had my final counselling session. As predicted, it was a waste of time. She repeated loads of patronising advice and comments about me doing all the right things and said again that I just needed time. On the feedback form I reiterated what I had said before - that until a whole range of services was offered rather than just counselling and CBT, it will never be truly tailored to the individual and help people get better. It was also ridiculous that you had to wait until you were severely mentally ill to get referred to a proper psychiatrist and then there was a two year waiting list!
When my partner arrived home he
said it was cold outside – I had noticed it had gone rainy again but actual
cold in August! We decided that autumn
had indeed arrived early. The changeable
weather and drop in temperature with even
the odd touch of overnight frost, had already started turning some leaves
brown.
On the upside, I got back into
a morning exercise routine and felt the benefits after a few days. I made a shopping trip to the big town and
congratulated myself on leaving the house shortly after 11 a.m. – a record
apart from when I had to go out for an appointment. I had timed it to catch a particular bus but
it sailed past me, even though I ran and waved at the driver! I walked quickly to the main stop to see if
he would wait there a few minutes as they sometimes did but saw it pull away in
the distance... so despite my best efforts, I did not reach my destination much
earlier than normal.
In the evening my Mum rang. My
sister would be in Turkey during our trip to Kos. I texted her to see if one of us could do a
boat trip and meet up in Kos Town or Bodrum – that would be fun!
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| Landscape with balsam |
At my last painting session,
the tutor said we would go out to sketch seeing at was a fine day. We
walked uphill to come out above the playing fields. I had never been there before and took quite
a few photos including landscapes with balsam which most people hate but I quite like it. I tried to do a sketch with some dark pastels I had borrowed
from the studio. It was predictably
rubbish. The tutor came along and told
me to put more light in it to get a sense of perspective but with no white in
the pack it was hard. We started to get
cold and bitten by midges so we retreated.
I chatted to fellow students on the way back to the studio about the
class. I said I liked the tutor, but he
didn’t really do teaching. I needed more
help with technique rather than the workshop-type format. When we got back it wasn’t worth starting on
anything else so I found the paintings I’d already done and told him I was
going. I said I would sketch on holiday
and he said ‘yes, as much as possible’.
In the evening I met my art pal
at the pub at the corner. She got a place on an access course but work wouldn’t
let her go part time and extended her contract to December. She planned to move back to Wales though and had
applied for jobs over that way. She suggested
going for a drink for my birthday when we got back from Kos.
Later in the week I started
writing a short story. It was slow and
made my brain hurt a bit but I did almost 500 words.
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| Amusing slogan |
On Saturday we met our friend
from down the road for coffee and cake. She
showed us tons of photos from her Canadian trip (lots of sunsets). Afterwards, we wandered round town. We Looked at the labour club’s 90th
birthday street party – very sad with a white man singing ‘No diggedy’ which
was just plain wrong! At the newsagents,
we laughed at a billboard for the local rag, which I edited to make an amusing
slogan ‘Young drinkers shock’. A feature in the weekend magazine about
‘sleep hygiene made a lot of sense to me: if it was simply a matter of not
drinking caffeine and turning off computers, how come I slept without follow
those rules two years ago?
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| Huge rocks |
The next day was lovely and
sunny. We walked up the valley and took
loads of photos, including some ace huge
rocks. We also came across a
succession of manky-looking fungi
and a crucifix apparently made of books
– WTF! At the top of the valley, I
almost stood on a butterfly sitting
on the path. I posted this up on social
media the next day and got a few ‘likes’.
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| Tree with fungi |
We had a dodgy pint at a country pub before getting the bus back into
town. I needed another pint to make up
for the nasty one. Most hostelries
looked full of bank holiday knobbiness so we retired to the pub with the beer
garden.
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| Crucifix made of books |
Bank Holiday Monday brought
nasty weather with it of course. My partner spent the day ironing and
packing while I worked on my blog. I went to the supermarket and saw a friend from art class. We had intended to go to the pictures together
over summer but had failed. We said we
would definitely meet up soon though.
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| Butterfly on path |
On
the way back I bumped into one of our old drinking mates on her way to
work. She told me that she found it hard
to motivate herself at present, even to go to the pub. She seemed jealous of us going away and said
she couldn’t afford a holiday as she had to fork out for new boiler
recently.
I replied: ‘when you don’t feel
like going to the pub, don’t go. Save
your money and then you might have enough for a holiday’. She said ‘you’ve got a point there, £30 is
nothing... but I am in the house on my own’.
I said she was welcome to come round for a cuppa and chat whenever she
liked. I actually thought she might be depressed
due to the drinking but I didn’t consider the street a good place to talk about
it.
That night I took Temazepam. It would be my last chance for two and a half
weeks and I wanted to improve the odds of getting a half-decent kip. We left very early on 27th August
to catch a plane for a fortnight in Kos!
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