Not tang-fastic, just sour

The wobble is proving more than just a wobble. More like an unbalanced decent into free fall if this keeps on going. Yesterday I felt bad and today, well, I just gave up. Mornings are fraught with the possibilities of anxiety and me acting on those anxieties.
It doesn't help that my sleep is a bit erratic so sometimes I end up oversleeping. Mostly it's because once I stay in bed beyond 5-10 minutes of turning the alarm off I get comfy, give up and nod off and then totally give up when I see the time. I had two things to do today but by mid-day I had given them up, one of them trying to go back to my old creative ways with regards to why I wasn't going to be there today. I have yet to see the reply. It wouldn't surprise me if they told me to go away and never bother them again. Actually, it would and it would upset me but I think that that sort of response is the type I fear, the type I actually expect. Or rather that black part of me expects.
It's what I expect no matter what I do or where I go. Whether it is football, going back to fitness or military I expect them to tell me to get lost as I'm a waste of space that isn't any use or any good at whatever it is that I am trying to do with them. 'Just fuck off will you?!'
My mind is always waiting for that to be bellowed. I think this explains my reticence to do things or participate in them. My inner narrative subconsciously thinks, 
'Why put yourself through it all? You know what will happen. You will fail, make a prat of yourself and though they may not say it they will think it.'
Is this the depression still or what's left over from it? I don't know anymore. 
The only thing I do know is that it is extremely tiring and wearing.
And if all of that wasn't enough, the 26th March is fast approaching. What would have been the 5th anniversary of my first marriage is coming at me when I'm feeling low. 
Great timing as ever.

I feel like the colour blue...

In the aftermath of the UK General Election I am feeling somewhat down. Not my usual down that is associated with that illness just a general sort of down. The result hasn't helped, what will happen to the already over-strained mental health services with them in charge keen of ever more cuts? but it seems to be more down to her not being here. I think it started with a dream that involved her as the TV played on with the in-coming Election results in the background early this morning. I had it on my mind to get to the gym and cinema to watch the new Avengers film. This morphed from thinking about going on my own to then considering going with her before I woke up and gradually realised that wasn't going to be possible. The result is now this residual feeling of miss and loss. I suppose it is some mark of the progress I have made without her that had this been months ago I would have been feeling even worse about it but as it is I'm feeling down, a little empty, yes but not in near despair as would have been more my previously usual reaction. Whenever the feeling of loss comes up or that feeling of dull ache crops up, especially today, I tend to browse dating sites in a superficial attempt to quiet it down. It rarely works and is no substitute for an all embracing hug but it seems to quell it for a few minutes or so. But that full ache comes back. That empty space of hers is sometimes so apparent and tangible that I don't know quite what to do with it or how to deal with its effects. It is getting better but the ache still lingers on as does my mind that always goes back to see what mistakes I made in the marriage. A fruitless task but something I struggle to stop especially on days like these.

Oh the sadness will never go...

So another Sunday, another run and another day of darkness and feeling empty inside. 
It took a lot of distractions to get rid of that nagging anxious feeling and a lot of distractions to rid that empty feeling of missing her. 
No matter how much time passes I wonder if I'm dome sort of inevitable path to my ultimate self destruction. Regardless of the odd side-road that I am sometimes diverted down that can fool me into a sense of losing that feeling I always seem to find myself back on this road. Seemingly.

...will never go away, baby it's here to stay

I say seemingly as I do and have generally pulled out of it. I do this by generally trying to just carry on and trying my best not to give in to that feeling, the voice that says, give up, stop. It is tempting and at times hard to resist as I have previously written about but having been there before I know that if I do give up and give in to that feeling and that voice I'll find it harder to get out and get going and the guilt that will follow will be crushing as I do have commitments. I hate it but sometimes it is very hard to resist. Very hard.

Me vs Me

My run almost didn't happen as I wasn't feeling it at all, the urge to get up and out wasn't there. I near enough forced myself out by reminding myself that a) no runs equal a chubbier me and b) it's been one month since I last started my new year runs and one month since tackling the hill that I mentioned in my last entry. That time on New Year's Day I struggled and ended up walking a section of it. This time I completed it and managed to keep on moving in a run/jog sort of manner. That effort seems to have leveled out my bad feelings and at the moment I feel ok. Not particularly up but thankfully not too far down either. Which after earlier on before the run is an improvement, of sorts.
Still, the way I am and the way I have been I'll take any improvement. comparing this year's entries to last year's is also a marked improvement. Though saying that Feb 2014 did almost culminate in another suicide attempt. Still, baby steps and it is so far, so good.
But, well it's all getting far too repetitive. Again.
At least the Super-Bowl is on later.

Wolverine Blues

Yesterday was a nice day in terms of wandering in and out of shops, buying a few nice things (Shop assistant at Forbidden Planet to me: Buying some Xmas gifts? Me: Yes, for me!) and getting things done that needed to be done.
It was an almost total reverse of Friday's feelings and I was at times quite happy, my mind racing. I've had this before and it sometimes feels like I'm exhausting these feelings of happiness only for them to run out on me when needed. 
Like today.
Today, I felt tired and worn. Again. In fact, it seemed to all hinge upon one thought of her entering my mind and laying out on bed, hoping to exercise later on, for those were my plans, but knowing deep down that I probably wouldn't. 
I then drifted in and out of sleep and each time I not only felt irritable and uncomfortable but thoughts of her ruled supreme. Each time they did I'd wake myself up on the verge of tears, the very act waking me up. 
I dreamt about her last night and that seems to have been the trigger for today. As soon as I thought back to it the effect did for me quick snap.
In the dream, I was trying to talk to her to say how much I missed her but every-time she had a boyfriend either with her or suddenly joining in to sit next to her un-moving. Sometimes, like today, I miss her so much it scares me. It's days like these that make me feel as though I'm living a life I shouldn't be, like I'm living a life that if it were in photographs  there would have a little space cut out where her place should be.
I know it's the time of year where it pinches much more acutely, her absence, but still it hurts. This isn't really great timing either as I had some good news re: my trip to London and a job interview. 
I got the job which is fab' but current black rules the roost and right now my past wants my time and it's proving very difficult to push it to the side.
Today I am totally bereft of her and it hurts.

Wishing Well

This past Monday I had a little lapse. It had all started well enough but after browsing in some shops, looking for something but generally just nosing around I started to think back to when me and her used to shop. It was probably because a shop that I was in was one we did actually shop together in, only the once but it still brought to life a previously dormant memory. And as that memory came and went I saw other couples shopping together and the memory became stronger. Even leaving the shop didn't help and as I began to slowly trudge around the shopping centre I could almost see me and her walking around shopping as we had done those four years ago in my mind's eyes. As it happened I briefly wished that I could forgo everything just to go back and start again with her. 

Couldn't I? Please?

'Memories haunt me like a curse'

After that I felt myself draining away and it wasn't until I started my day’s activities that I forgot it all. It seems the only way I can keep it at bay. 

Still.

Wishes. I wish, I wish, I wish. If there was a wishing well it would surely have run dry by now. Would I really want to go back? Probably not. Even if that magical reality came true all it would do is reset the clock. All I’d be doing is rewinding the film, playing it over and over, enjoying the scenes time and again. But sooner or later the film has to stop, it has to reach it’s ending, it's conclusion no matter how painful or sad it is. With Xmas shopping now in full flow, the sight of couples and families shopping is difficult to endure and no matter who hard I wish I’ll never be able to rewind the film. Because right now and I'm sure in time to come I will want to rewind my film.

Today is a bad day.

'Let me hide under the sheets...'

So Why So Sad?

So why so sad?

So sang the Manics and when you disclose the issue of black to some they sometimes ask a similar question. ‘So what’s making you depressed then? What’s causing the depression? What have you got to be depressed about?’ I myself when answering tend to shrug my shoulders and say, I dunno. 

Because I really don’t know. I see my black’s origins like a pie chart, a certain percentage of this may have contributed followed by a larger percentage of that. Ultimately I don’t know why I am depressed, it could be combination of actual events, a lack of positive mental attitude (though that’s more the symptom now rather than the cause, I think) or a lack of those feel good chemicals in my melon of a head.

Depression to some though seems to be more a feeling than an illness. The word is bandied around so much in our language, (I’m a bit down and depressed today) that when you tell some that you have it they see it more of a temporary passing feeling than the knock you on your botty illness that it is. Imagine if there was an illness associated with the word happiness. ‘I’ve got happiness. Have you? What have you got to be happy about then?’  Adjectives and illnesses cause confusion. And they annoy me as I have to answer the same flipping question everytime I let slip about the black!

Song of the day: Manic Street Preachers, So why so sad?

Blue is the colour...

Blue. It’s a colour, it’s a (sort of) film genre and add an ‘s’ and it’s a music one too. When it comes to describing how you feel it can sum it up quite well, feeling blue. But when it goes beyond the simple, feeling a bit blue after listening to some Alice in Chains, watching ‘Warhorse’,  watching my team lose again, etc and carries on for days, weeks and beyond, is it the blues then? Hello depression my old friend. This is when blue melds into black because although rarely stated that is the colour of depression. It’s also something I’ll be calling it from now on.

Black.

I’ve had it and currently have it at the moment. It started (officially) at the start of the year although I suppose if I think about it it started long before that, maybe last Oct/Nov time? Looking back it was the  way I felt about everything or rather didn’t feel about everything. I was starting to feel numb to it all. Confidence ebbs away, not a big wash out it just slowly ebbs like a tiny leak in your mind and along with it goes your hopes and aspirations and any sense of a future doing anything. Before you know it that get up and go that keeps you on your toes or even keeps you out of bed of a morning has quite simply done one. You’d try and find it but you just feel too damn tired and low to even try. Small fears become magnified too; kinda like looking at an ant under a microscope, without it it’s a small tiny ant you’d normally ignore. However, under magnification it looks huge, frightening and something that could easily overwhelm you. And that’s the effects of black. I remember going to bed of a night, quite late and sliding under the covers with a sense of fear fear of the future (or lack thereof) fear of what I was going to do and a fear of meeting the very next day. My mind was constructing its own prison and parole was nowhere near in sight. Suicide cropped up in my thoughts and one day attempting to kill myself, to my mind, seemed like the most natural thing to do. I didn’t and I haven’t yet but the thoughts are still there. I knew something had to give when out driving back in Jan. I was listening to Pink and her song, ‘Don’t let me get me’, and as I was listening I kept thinking how the lyrics were practically describing my thoughts and my life as it was, ‘don’t wanna be my friend no more I wanna be somebody else.’ It was as Rik Mayall has been saying of late, Bang on. Coming home and listening to more music and feeling as though my world was crumbling around me I told my then wife and she had me go to the Doctors. My black had officially begun and been recognized.

Today's song choice: Pink! Don't let me get me