This is a feeling I haven't had for a while. At least, not since last year and that was for something else. Though I suppose the feelings that come as a result are pretty similar. That feeling is one of being gutted. I feel totally gutted. I haven't had a feeling that close to this since that teacher I saw last year totally blanked me after getting to know each other and go out. Or as the kids call it these days, ghosting. That left me feeling bad and this recent news has done similar and then some. It was a job and though it started off with no much hope in mind by the middle of it I was pretty much there, relocated and doing the job. But now? Well, news came in that informed me that I didn't reach the required standard, whatever that means. I had some much hope tied up in that. So much so that I dared to dream. Ahh crap.
So far the summer has passed along nicely. Cricket, running, voluntary work and some sort of routine throughout the day, yeh. I have a half marathon to train and prepare for in Oct and a new job assessment coming up soon. Yet I still have little wobbles. I still yearn for the past a little and my nerves still threaten. But here I am. I'm still here and that has to count for something. I have to be mindful now and I do try and treat myself nicely and well and choose what I can and can't do. And if that means saying, no then so be it. The recovery has been long and slow but it is still ongoing. But I am still here.
An odd day, feel very bleh. Tired too. This grey scale weather is sapping me I think. Either that or it is accentuating what was already there. Feeling a bit 90s too, hence this tune below. Kinda matches everything today really.
So far so good, trundling along experiencing new things, trying to go to new things, meet people, new and old, living life and working at life as best I can, returning to whatever normal is. Though having had this mental illness for a few years normal for me is not feeling like I have to end it all. So it has been going ok. Some work, some sport- new and old- getting back into fitness. It all made me feel like, yes, I have surpassed that illness at last. Silly. I have had it since a teen, hitting me at various intervals both small and very big. So to think that was, as seems to be me, wildly optimistic, nah foolish. Still, you can't help it after such a dark period. But when you have a bad day it brings it all rushing back. I have had the odd bad day, a wobbly one as I have mentioned before and now I am trying hard to sort it with self-care. Going back to my usual promise routine. That being, if I have something to do of a day and it is a bad one tell myself if I get through it and do it by the end of it I can either purchase something I have been after, read in bed, or have some biscuits with a brew. Something like that. Nothing major, admittedly, but something to me. And so far, it has been working. It isn't a cure all but it smooths things over and gets me well, living I suppose. I still have major anxious moments and if really bad I will cancel but then I always did say 'yes' a bit too often to things and people so perhaps that isn't a bad thing. I do try to give notice unless I'm bad and then heck, we all get ill sometimes don't we?
Just for once it'd be nice if I didn't tie everything that I try, whether sport or an audition, into and in with my entire self worth and entire being. But it seems that I can't quite help myself. And as such I left my casting today feeling bloody awful, ready to fling myself into that deep dark mental cell to self flagellate. I don't think it went well at all, the casting and I felt gash for it and could quite easily imagine the director and the rest ripping the piss out of me and my 'performance'. It seemed so simple too yet in that minute or two in those two chances I was given I might as well not have bothered. The pre-dump of adrenaline before hand that hit out of the blue didn't help. Usually I'm pretty calm about these things but today, just before going boom! Hello near panic! Seeing a pal from previous drama plays help take my mind off it at least. After that staring out of the window and munching on the complimentary biscuits prior to my spot that feeling started to creep in and by the time I had done it and was out the building it was in with The Boss in my ears and off to browse to take my mind off the crap feeling that was my anxiety, depression and to try and stop my rapidly diminishing self worth. Anything that requires me to take some pressure seems to now cost me. Walking back to the train station I considered, not for the first time but for the first time in a while, jumping into the river. Hello suicidal tendency. It's been a while. If not for the girls in their summer clothes around Bristol I might have struggled even more. Still, it was a tasking battle and one I didn't used to get but it seems it is one I may have to get used to. Again. A day day last Monday, Friday and now today. They are trickling in. As long as it is only a trickle I suppose. I can't go back. I can't go through this again.
So far it has only been the odd day of grey, maybe once a week, maybe once or twice a fortnight. But sometimes I get those days of deepest night blue. Today is just such one of those days. Initially I had plans to go out for the day after work and enjoy a day out but as it got closer it became apparent that the excuses in my mind were starting to sound like the better option. No matter how hard I tried to bat them away they soon settled in. There will be highlights on the TV The tickets haven't arrived yet (They came eventually) You'll save some money It will be packed and full of people Thin final remark was the one that really did it for me. You see, years ago my anxiety with regards to crowds of people was always something of a going concern but I managed to get around it or just ignore it because it involved doing and going to something I really wanted to see. As in going to a concert or festival to see a band or bands. That was as a single person. After the divorce I think I had gotten used to being with someone when out and about so now going to a place full of people is a struggle. I have done it before but it takes a lot from me and within me to do it. Today wasn't one of those days where I managed to summon anything like close to that, however. Today has been a day of trying to settle enough to listen to music, sleep or just be without feeling like flying into a rage over stupid pointless insignificant things. The last time I felt like that was during a coming off of one meds to go onto another. So here I am again. Tired within, empty like an ice lolly that has had it's essence supped out leaving only colourless ice on a stick. Days like these make me feel just plain bloody awful. Where anxiety meets depression things get.... troublesome. I struggle to do anything or even think anything other than my own wretched existence and when that happens suicide isn't that far from my thoughts. This too shall pass this too shall pass this too shall pass
It hasn't been too bad a month. I have managed to secure myself a lill' part time job, get back to some sort of sleeping routine and take up a new sport that I was threatening to back in 2008 when a Bruce Springsteen gig seemed to put paid to it all. Well, that and various other weekend activities at that time. The new sport, cricket, has seen me travel through an area of the county that I haven't been in or through since my time with her. It has been 'interesting' to drive through those areas again and, this weekend gone, even more 'interesting' to pass through the town we used to live in together. I hadn't been there since 2012 and so to drive through it this past Saturday really opened up feelings of nostalgia in me, feelings I knew would come but still made me feel quite melancholic and backward looking still. The drive back even more so as I thought back to our times in that town, times together driving that road we had taken many times previous. It made me a little sad and, as I say, quite nostalgic but it didn't have the heavy effect I though it would. I expected a numbing feeling to overwhelm but it did not. Feelings about her were more in the reverse, looking back rather than full of regrets and wishes to be with her. Those feelings don't appear any more which I can only take as good thing and a sign of a progress that is continuing.
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