Struggle Within

Today is a struggle. I've had a few days off from a course I'm on and as I'm back on it tomorrow my usual responses are kicking in. I have and am enjoying the course but sometimes the lead up, whether it be this course or any other activity that needs me to leave my comfort area, can be a worrying time. This can entail either me generally worrying about the course, how will I do, what will happen, will I even get up on time? to just that general sort of blackness that can sometimes cover me at times like these. Today is one of those general black days where I am struggling to get motivated or do anything. I cancelled the gym as soon as I woke up as I had no energy for it. This might have been down to my heavy session yesterday which was the first one back after a week or two. But still, I used to be great for getting to the gym on consecutive days. Not no more it seems. I'll be lucky if I can get two days in a row now.
Today has been mostly watching a Regular Show marathon on the Cartoon Network, trying to get my course homework done and listening to Pink Floyd. All whilst sipping at brews and snacking some. What is  a little worrying to me is that I'm happy with this and could quite easily stay indoors doing the aforementioned, with maybe some video gaming or drawing thrown in and be quite content. I think I'm trying to sift between my day to day tasks, courses and the such like and my 'home life'. If I can get my head around them then tackling those same tasks becomes a little easier as I can and do tell myself that once this is done it's back home to music, comics, brews and bed, if I so wish.
I am also acutely aware that this isn't the sort of behavior that will get me or keep me in any sort of a relationship.  But so what? Are they the be all and end all of existence? Probably not though they are nice and comforting to be in. Still, that isn't a worry for me right now. 
The effects of the last one are something I'm still working through.
But today, for a change, that doesn't seem to be the driving force behind this all too familiar episode.
I'm slowly coming up with strategies to deal with it. Small ones, borne from experience, that do work. The most basic one is if I wake up and am having  a really bad one then it's watch and/or listen. This being a film, dvd, catch up TV and listen being music on my headphones as I lay in bed.
When it comes to doing stuff and having commitments then what I mentioned before, the if I do this today then I can go home and get to bed type ones seem to be working at the moment. I also broke from my usual norm and wrote to a friend during my episode last week and that did help. What my friend wrote back to me helped me focus and although getting up the next day was hard and I was still feeling the black I got up and out.
What's on my mind at the moment though is, will days like these become the norm? 
Are they the norm? And if so, can I just accept that and work around them using the above?
The way the last week or so has gone perhaps so. I don't think I have much of a choice in the matter. This illness is firmly entrenched.

Trapped by memories

Over the summer I got into another cartoon show. What few readers I have will recall my love for Adventure Time and in addition to that I also recently have gained much love for Regular Show. It is fab and I highly recommend it. 
On a recent show one of the characters spoke about his feelings regarding a former love.
It went like this:

Rigby: "She's not coming back dude, she's gone."

Mordecai: "Look, I know, all right, I know. It's just, I mean, I don't still have feelings for her but I do in a way. It's like this thing that's inside of me and it's always just sort of sitting there waiting around and sometimes I'll see something or I'll smell something and it makes me think of her even though I don't want to."

This pretty much sums up me and my situation with regards to my ex-wife. No matter how far I think I've come and how much time I think I've put between myself and that life something will invariably pop up and take me back. How long this will go on for I have no idea and I suspect that it will carry on for some time yet. I can't just pack away a 7 year relationship with all it's good, bad and in between moments to the back of my mind. 
It doesn't work like that as much as I wish it would sometimes.

The Second Great Depression

This time of year doesn't help and what makes it pinch that bit more is recalling a conversation and a moment we'd both had in a cafe at a Sainsbury's back in Xmas 2011. 
It was then that I really opened up to her regarding what was then the beginnings of my black. Suicidal feelings were starting to take hold and I thought it best if I was open with her. I remember the awful coconut hot chocolate we'd both had and the shortbread and it's left over crumbs, me pushing them around the plate and picking them up with my finger after I'd moistened it with my tongue. 
I also remember what she said, about how she'd be there for me and that she wasn't going anywhere too. When I think about it now either she was lying to me or she was lying to herself. I'm not sure which. Perhaps a mix of the two.
The girl who always did and strived to do the right thing that time ended up not. 
All that fuss she made about our vows and us writing them and reading them out to each other on our honeymoon and she couldn't even hold to the most basic one. 
In sickness and in health.
Perhaps she thought it was more a guideline rather than a rule and besides it surely didn't mean mental health? Perhaps that made it null and void?
Another year over and still no real end in sight.