Adam is on holiday this week, something I think he has needed for a while as work has been getting to him big style lately. The NHS in Scotland is in a state of flux as they are phasing out all the paper notes and going over to on line notes only, with Adam working in their admin department it is having a knock on effect and problems everywhere. I know we all sort of forget about the work required to keep hospital running and focus on the doctors and nurses, but a lot of people behind the scenes are required, people who generally take a huge amount of flack from those who should know better. Things should get better in January as all the paper notes leave the building and will only be used by the department that Adam works for, for some reason the consultants can’t work on the system as the results coming from the tests they run can’t be scanned onto the system. It will make Adams life easier as all notes will be in just one place and not spread over every hospital in the region. Unfortunately there is one thing that is certain to cause Adam more stress than work and that is the dentist. He broke a tooth on Saturday evening, by the time I was going to bed he was down to the lower state of panic, just stating that ‘he would rather have a Pitbull attached to his ****s than go to the dentist’, luckily that has lowered again and he now has an appointment for tomorrow, so I only have another 20 plus hours of how he feels about going. I guess it’s one of those things that if I didn’t love him, I’d be shouting shut-up, but instead I am smiling and laughing inside because this is just the man I love and just the way he is.
I have become used to being on my own through out the working week, so it is always odd when he does take time off, as instead of the silence, other than the TV, I have nothing but my thought and what I am doing on line to fill my time, I now today also have loads of chatter, normally about nothing. Clearly to those who have read for a while, my mind seems to have little trouble in coming up with and working on all the things that have ever touched my life and where they will go into the future. I have always believed that to live a full life you have to stay mentally active, something that I don’t think most jobs actually do, far too many jobs are just repetitive and or dull. To me it is essential to stretch our minds as much as we possibly can, to be constantly learning new things about everything and anything. I know for me that is why I hate movies, beach holidays, drivel on TV and reading most books, as I now have a brain that loves facts and anything that I can analyse and pull in many different directions, clearly proved by my constant theories. I know that my memory isn’t what it used to be, but I don’t see that as an excuse to just give up. The more I know I am loosing, the more I am trying to replace and to add the new, daily. I suspect that is one of the reasons I don’t feel lonely, lonely to me starts when we have nothing happening in our lives and that doesn’t have to include being physically surrounded by people. If I sat all day in front of the TV, I think loneliness would settle in with not just ease, but with incredible speed. I have always thought that loneliness is an extension of being bored, it doesn’t matter how much you love your TV programs, there is something about sitting on the settee watching TV alone, that just feels wrong and actually screams inside you that you are alone. To be honest that was why when I was married to my first husband who was in the Navy, that I spent my evenings always knitting, crocheting, doing embroideries or reading a book, while I watched TV, often managing book, TV plus one handy craft, as being busy on another level, replaced the chatter that naturally is needed to make TV complete. You don’t notice you are alone as long as you have things to fill your mind and the more you have to do.
I don’t believe that it ends at loneliness either, the next thing it will hit is our pain levels and awareness of all the things that are wrong with us, just as I allow myself to do nightly when I go to bed, but if you become centred on it as there is nothing to distract or occupy yourself with, those small things just grow. I know that one without having to prove it to myself, as every time I stop for a short time, I start to feel things that had to have been there all along, I was just too busy to notice them. So now we are feeling lonely, compounded by the fact we believe our health is getting worse and the pain is increasing, it is no surprise that the next logical step is depression.
I have mentioned several times in the past that I fear becoming bed bound more than anything else, loneliness is the biggest part of that. I know there is no reason why I couldn’t have a PC through in the bedroom and there is no reason why I couldn’t do almost everything that I do now, as long as I have the energy to, but there is a physiological barrier, one that is hard to get past. I was brought up to never just lie in bed, the second I was awake, was the second that I had to be up and doing something. I wasn’t even allowed to read a book in bed and for the same reason there has never been a TV in the bedroom either. Bed is for sleeping, not a place to live, only those past living, or so ill they aren’t capable of sitting up should ever be there. The whole idea of me become bed bound, makes me go cold and I cry inside. Logic says that I am being stupid, that there is no reason why I couldn’t have a TV and a PC through there, there is no logical reason why life couldn’t continue, maybe not as it is today, but I could still have what I count as a life. My brain wouldn’t change just because I would be horizontal rather than vertical, I could still learn, still take part in this wonderful on line world, I might have to pull back on what I do, but why would things really change that much. But that’s logic, what I feel isn’t. What I feel is that that would be the end of me, me as a person, as people don’t live like that, they die. How could I possibly do anything, bed is this island, a sanctuary where we go to be cut off from everything, to sleep and to leave the real world behind, it is our place where we are protected from life, letting life in, just isn’t allowed. No matter how much I have thought about it, analysed it and pulled it in every direction possible, I can’t get my brain to accept it, but I don’t want to let go of life that easily, somehow between now and then, I have to work on this one, to somehow settle myself to the inevitable and to make it work for me.
Although others are, I am not surprised at all that I have managed to accept and live my life without depression or loneliness to this point. I have managed, as I could see no reason not to, it’s as simple as that, the practicals were simple, the physiological was easy and life had to go on so I went with it, but there is that one thing that lies ahead, that I can see so many reason not to. Not because of the practicalities, all of them can be managed, but because life has set up through learning and teaching, a row of barriers that once were a virtue to my life.
Read my blog from 2 years ago today – 15/12/12 – Understanding people
Two Rooms Plus Utilities 
You have hit the nail on the head once again. Loneliness occurs when people don’t have anything happening in their lives. There has been much made recently on the radio about lonely people. I just can’t understand their loneliness, as I have lots going on and lots that I am interested in. You have proved that you don’t need lots of people around to allay any lonely feelings.
P.s. hope Adam gets on fine at the dentist 😀
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