So far today has been a total rerun of yesterday, no better and no worse, but here I am again just wishing I could just go back and sleep through until tomorrow, in the hope that I might just wake again feeling a bit more like myself. It doesn’t take much brain power to know what is pulling me down, but I am just not finding my way out of it. I suppose in many ways that it isn’t surprising that I haven’t felt like this sooner, but anyone would get down when they have spent four months in the exact same pain with no end in sight and no answers as to what is really happening. I know I have my theories, but theories aren’t the same as truly knowing. I am just so fed up with being in constant discomfort, four months of not being able to take a single breath as we are supposed to do, without even knowing it is happening. I really think that my body is determined to make my day more difficult than it needs to be, as from the second I sat down at my PC, I have been plagued with spasms by muscles across my backside and up in between my legs and not any of my tricks that have helped on occasion, haven’t made the slightest difference. The good news though is I know the difference between depression and down, there is no comparison, this is nothing more than down and I know I will eventually pull myself out of this stupid mood.

Ironically, I used to be really good at fixing the odd mood like this, work was always a good one but if one did hit when I wasn’t working, well the quickest route out was to go out and just sit somewhere where I could watch people. When I first moved to Glasgow, I spent six months more or less alone for the whole time, I didn’t have a job to start with and I didn’t know anyone. If I am honest I didn’t actually feel the need to work at that point, as so much had happened in my early life, all documented here in my blog that I hadn’t dealt with, that what I really needed was the space to sort it all out, or to at least try to. It was during that time that I first discovered that I didn’t mind being alone, I had had some training towards it, from my childhood firstly, but also I had just spent ten years married to someone who was in the Navy, but then at least I had my daughter and friends, when I came to Glasgow, I came alone. It wasn’t long before I discovered that if I could just watch people while I was thinking, that it did two things, it kept my spirits up and worked as a great distraction on the days that I needed to not think. If there is one thing that I miss, one thing that being housebound has taken from me it is that opportunity to watch people. I used to spend hours sitting whilst appearing to be reading a book, but all the time I was watching and listening to those around me. It was the great joy of being a DJ and even when I worked in more conventional jobs, it was the people who were around me and what they did and said that fascinated me. My health has destroyed all of that, not just because I can’t get out there now, but when I do, when I am at the hospital where there are loads of people, I get so tired and find it all so overbearing that all I want these days is to come home, the final straw for a people watcher, I just can’t deal with them now.

We all must have those odd things, the things that don’t quite make sense that we have lost in more ways in one. For some, it might be going shopping or those trips to the theater or cinema, they still exist in our minds as something we want desperately, but we know even if we could get there, that we would just want to come home again, too tired, too overpowered and just too ill to stay. How can we long for something that we know without the slightest doubt will make us feel worse? As I said it doesn’t quite make sense. The closest I get these days is on Twitter, I know I can’t see the people any longer, but I can hear them, I can without difficulty listen to their conversations and know what is happening in life. The news keeps me up to date with what is happening in the world, but it takes people to tell us what is happening in life. Chatter is a wonderful thing for gauging the reality of the world as it is today and how that chatter has changed over the years, without any of us knowing it, we are all part of the biography of life.

Memories have to be the quickest way of changing how we feel, all of us can pull up an image that will never fail to make us smile or make us cry, a trick freely used by actors worldwide, but it’s also a trick we can all use, or can we? I used to, I used to use them all the time, but there are firstly only so many memories we have freely ready to bring to the front of our minds and after 8 years of living with them without any new ones really being made, their charms wear thin. Even my memories are now a place I shy away from, I can’t avoid them, that would be impossible but I no longer go looking for them as all too often I find the lacking, those horrid gaps and places where I find myself searching for hours for what I know should be there but isn’t. There isn’t a single part of me that hasn’t now been spoiled by my health, most of the time I brush it away, I look at the good the things that I do still have, the things that I want to celebrate even in my life the way it is and there is much still to be happy about. I still have my home, my daughter and most of all Adam and every day is made brighter by them, but I am becoming worn down by this damned pain and discomfort that just won’t end. I hoped that today was going to be better that today I would wake and I would feel good again, pain or not, but I haven’t.

I tried this morning to pick myself up, I wondered round the living room, picking up my favourite pieces of crystal and holding them, letting the shape, feel and weight merge into my hands. Just holding such beautiful objects still held the joy it always does, but even they couldn’t reach far enough into me to break this stupid mood. I turned them over and over, running my fingers along their lines and letting the coolness of the heavy pieces change the temperature inside me. I gloried at the skill of the craftsman who could change a lump of lead glass into the smooth and lithe panther, the strong pouncing tiger, then the proud lion. I lifted the water goblets and followed the deeply etched facets that played in the light of the TV, I ran my hand over the curves of the candle lamp, cold and unlit but holding the promise of it’s beauty just waiting for that candle, each in turn I admired in the hope that I wouldn’t just feel and see them, but they would break me as they have done a million times in the past, but they didn’t. for now, I am stuck here, unreachable by anything I can think of, see or touch, maybe tomorrow will find me better suited to being myself, who ever myself is these days as I seem to be a little lost.

Read my blog from 2 years ago today – 3/05/13 – Avoiding stir crazy

It never ceases to amaze me how fast and how easily my days pass, if I had been asked what I thought would be my reaction to this type of life, well I would have expected me to be fine for the first few months, then crazy from then on. I know from the tweets and comments that it is something that those who are not housebound are most surprised by, that I can actually be content with my life as it is. They are not alone, I have questioned it constantly…..