5th January 2012 - It had to happen....

I was crashing through the new year at a rate of knots, happily observing my own rules about positivity, sorting the house out, facing everything I had to do - I was even going to do a blog about my mum (RIP) and face some issues I had surrounding our relationship (issues created by me, NOT Mum) using the blog as a kind of catharsism in the hope I could move forward and leave some of the mental pain behind. I was that confident and motivated. Last night I had a conversation with somebody, the person and the conversation details are not important (they could read this and I would hate to upset them) but I took their comment really badly, blew it out of proportion and way out of context and suddenly realised I was in for a crash.
Of course it arrived with force this morning, as soon as I opened my eyes the familiar grey cloud had positioned itself above me and was here certainly for the day and probably longer. I usually want to log into Twitter, look at doggy pics, catch up with my friends on there, joke, laugh, share ideas and eventually tear myself away, reluctantly, to get on with the day. Last night and this morning wasn't like that - I did a couple of half hearted tweets but couldn't muster anything interesting to say. Mindlessly, I looked at the TV, Jeremy Kyle, some guy who thinks he can sleep with any woman in the world, some black MP who said something apparently racist about white people, mindless, mindnumbing crap being fed into my brain - a one way diatribe of nonsense and I was just sitting there letting it happen.
Coffee. Fill in a 41 page form for council tax - being that I was an LGO for nearly 30 years I should have rattled it off in 15 minutes. It seemed to take hours.
Phil, in pain with his shoulder injury AND a wheelchair user, had to venture out to Tescos alone - I just couldn't do it. I would have rather eaten Baldricks biscuits if that was all there was in the house than be up there with hundreds of people all rushing about getting on with their lives. I feel like the whole world is a stage and I am the only audience member observing the show. Alone.
Phil bought me some really beautiful flowers for New Year. Dark red velvety roses, beautiful huge Lilys all wrapped in smokey grey voile - they are gorgeous. He was fitting a bulb in one of the uplighters this evening and as he brushed past the vase, the petals of one of my beautiful roses tumbled to the floor - all of them, like tears of sadness for its own demise. I was sad to watch it happen and bent down to pick up all the petals now scattered on the floor - a surreal kind of envy enveloped me - I too would like to cry - yeah, it's crap at the time, but you sure feel better afterwards. Unfortunately Duloxetine does not allow tears. Strictly forbidden. Instead, the emotion is stashed away somewhere until there is so much crammed inside your brain, the floodgates open for something ridiculous. The last thing that had me sobbing uncontrollably was a cat that had died in USA. I read it on Twitter. I didn't know the cat, had never seen it, the person who owned the cat wasn't even on my followers list. Still, that was enough to reduce me to tears, the point where I couldn't suppress any more - I need that again (not for another cat to die, of course) but something to open the floodgates so I can start to feel "normal" again.
Sometimes I am very grateful for the bubble that Duloxetine puts me in - I am untouchable, protected from this rough and tumble society, protected from any kind of badness that could befall me, protected from myself. But sometimes, like today, it is isolating, ostracising and a lonely place to be. How I long to be the confident, outgoing, fun loving person I was, instead of a broken empty shell. I feel ashamed of feeling this sorry for myself - one of my friends is seriously ill and I guess she wont be around for long - another was recently made homeless and yet another is in a very unhappy marriage. And here I am feeling sorry for myself - FOR WHAT?? (rhetorical, by the way)
I know this won't last forever, I've been through it a thousand times before but right now it feels like this is all there is. And for now, it is.