I woke to a blue, blue, sky; not so cold as usual but still frosty. Well when I say woke, I had actually woken at about five thirty and listened, in the dark, to the radio, radioing away about Brexit and elections and just as it was last night, my soul was dull. I had that ache of emptiness, of not feeling or wanting or anything really.
It has been a hard, hard, week. There have been moments which were wonderful, but when I pause, I just feel like staring and curling up and sleeping and not being here at all. I am still caught on that book I have read that says that the effects of medication are to create that very slowness and bluntness, that lack of feeling. I had been assuming that this was what depression was or maybe negative symptoms but to realize it could also be the effect of the drugs I have been on for the last thirty years; that brought me up short.
My biggest strongest yearning is to find those times when my heart is light and I can giggle; when thoughts dart in my head and I have words ready to scatter all around me and I am able to laugh and just bounce a bit. That wonderful joy of being alive. It is so rare for me; even more so at the moment. Imagine if I could find that? If I could regain, energy and joy and vigor! What would I do for that? That wonderful dream, that wonderful possibility?
I had to choose whether to take my medication voluntarily or not yesterday. apparently my T3 has expired and Dr X asked what I would like; voluntary medication or a DMP. I think he would like me to just agree and yet I cannot. So at some point a designated medical practitioner; employed by the very organization that employs me will come to assess me to see if they should insist on the medication.
This time I am maybe more determined to resist it and yet when I wittered about it on twitter and Wendy saw my wittering and dismay, she brought me back; reminded me that this slow whatever it is, is also a symptom of schizophrenia. Just as it is an effect of the drugs and that stopping the drugs would be no guarantee of a change in me, would send me back to the devils and things; which would be even worse.
In the mood I am in at the moment, it just made me so, so, terribly sad, as if there is no escape. That this experience is permanent. That there is no prospect of hope. I do not think I can come to terms with this reality.
I go to sleep as soon as I can nowadays; keep an eye out on the excuse that means that I can reasonably retreat to my bed without offending Wendy and there I feel some safety. I feel glad when Dash wakes me when he wriggles on the bed in the middle of the night, glad when it is two in the morning and I know I can lie alone and silent and not thinking, just lying there on my own staring into the darkness.
I somehow feel so guilty that I am somehow not coping. It seems to me that I do not have any right at all to be sad, that I should be getting on with life. At the same time it also seems like I am being self indulgent; wallowing in a way no one else is. I feel guilty because I do not feel sad about Dad. I do not think of him much at all but I feel pale and insubstantial, I feel delicate as though I might need to rush out of a work meeting, give up work, argue at work. Wendy says I was his son, that it is just five weeks since he died but it doesn’t seem to me that I have any right at all to be so seemingly pathetic about all this. I do not believe I should be upset, I do not feel I am allowed to be upset and in some ways I am not; except I do not feel anymore at all and I have lost the little energy I used to have.
Yet when I got up this morning I said ‘Good morning beautiful!’ in my text to Wendy, to let her know the coffee was on. Because she is beautiful and I am not paying her attention in the way that I should. My heart lifted slightly when she came down; all tousled. Out of the window we could see this blue cloudless sky.
The children had so much they needed to take to school today; their packed lunch bags, James’s stuff for his sleepover, his football; just bundles of stuff. Charlotte’s pokemon folder and tin. Their school bags hardly managed to fasten. The back seat was covered in coats and bags and gloves and they were in such a good mood. When they had finally got their seatbelts fastened; they chattered excitedly all the way to school and that made me smile.
And Dash, in the boot of the car, was wild; bouncing all over the place, shaking his head for his itchy ears. Getting more and more excited the closer we got to Ardmore.
Everything was covered in frost. The path where the mud had been churned up was crunchy and solid to stand on. The sun was still low in the sky; making the water amber. The sheep were still in the fields, the birds on the rocks at the seashore; black silhouettes, also still, apart from the occasional oddity splashing in the water or flying low along the shore line, or, if they were crows; hopping awkwardly amongst the seaweed.
Dash always gets over excited when his coat has been cut. He rushed along the path all over the place; much too far in front of us. Stopping stock still when the man with the huge bag of winkles on his shoulders came round the corner; waiting for me to put his lead on; rearing back in fright as the man walked by.
We were having a wonderful time; the sun, the pale moon, the blue sky, bird song, the warmth on our faces while at the same time there was the briskness of the frost in the air. We talked; wittered. Dash dashed around and we commented on how much more confident he was getting, how we needed to find some way of keeping him closer to us.
He rushed away up a path into the trees, ignoring our calls but a few minutes later galloped back to us at top speed, not noticing the barbed wire fence in his way which to our relief did not cut him but did twang loudly as he rushed through it.
Then, when we had reached the place of the small seaglass beach, he disappeared off away into the undergrowth; vanishing from view. After a few minutes of calling on him, I walked into the woods, getting my feet wet in the boggy bit, having brambles grab at my coat.
Walking round whin bushes and between saplings. There was not the slightest sound from him. I could hear Wendy calling faintly behind me, I could hear my shouts but not a sign or sound of Dash.
I came back and we decided that I would go back down the path to the big house as that was the direction he had disappeared in, while Wendy waited on the path at the place he disappeared from, in case he came back.
We heard gun shots as I walked along and both worried he had got into the field with the sheep.
After some time, I saw the brown ash of Dash disappear into some rhododendrons. I shouted on him but he paid no attention and I began to doubt I had actually seen him.
The other side of the bushes; where the road to the big house curved away, I found Dash the dog; rushing around sniffing delightedly at the ground. This time I managed to get him to stay, managed to get him on his lead but he was tugging all over the place; obsessed by this scent he had found.
The relief of finding him was huge and Wendy was only a little bit late in getting to see her friends and now Dash is at his lookout at home, I am typing and lying in the bed. I should be tidying but I am going to stop and do nothing.
Wendy keeps an eye on me all the time at the moment, worries that I am not in as good a place as I say I am. I am lucky in this, so lucky. Last night Charlotte hugged and hugged me before she went to bed and Wendy talked and her voice and her reason soothed but still I would so much love to sleep and sleep and sleep.
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