Splurge

This is fairly incoherent ramble stuff, with pitifully structured sentences collected into paragraphs which have no great rhyme nor reason for following on from the previous one. I realise it doesn't flow, but yeah...

Feeling a bit down. Not the foggy "the outside world is too much" depression, but just deflated. Flat.

Keep finding myself with eyes completely out of focus just staring into the distance. Mum (due to mentalism assorted I'm still living with the family, she is probably my primary carer in terms of technicalities) tapped me on the shoulder yesterday as she was concerned I was out of it. She thought I had read something horrific on the Internet and that is why, but actually I was just staring into the distance.

There's a beautiful magpie in the tree opposite, with something orange in its beak. Against the brilliant blue sky and the green of the tree, it makes an impact and has caught my attention. :)

Anyway, yeah, feeling a bit spaced out. Physically, I'm back to my normal achy self again thankfully and I am on day 9 of Life Sans Alcohol (bar communion wine, but 4 sips of that a week doesn't really add up to much). Mentally, resisting drinking is a big issue but I'm going to try to get through another week. Maybe. I really want a drink, but managing to only do the physical withdrawals and a few nights post-withdrawals would be, in my mind, a bit of a cop out.

Oh, it turns out I can still write depressing poetry if I feel like it. Not that anybody else is going to read it because it is a bit, errr, depressing and vastly melodramatic. And I can still sit in bed in the enveloping darkness the middle of the night sobbing.

It isn't flat like a medication flat, that "not able to feel" feeling. More just an absence of feelings. I'm not too depressed, I suppose I'm excited that my 2011 studying starts up in earnest at some point soon, I'm sleeping fairly well and it has been about 9am every day that I've got out of bed. Long day out tomorrow going to a few concerts in London and being in an anonymous place for a bit - I couldn't manage to live in London, but quite like the occasional day being out of this quiet, fairly boring part of the world.

I'm planning a break. Not until November, but a week away from the hustle and bustle which is my life. The wobble that was the end of studying in October last year is likely to be slightly larger this October - when I suddenly will not be a full-time student, and more a student waiting for results and trying to set about applying for post-grad stuff. Anyway, I'm not setting myself up to go into decline in November, but I am aware it is a distinctly precarious time in terms of my mental health (or lack of it). So a week away, doing a guided retreat. The thing with retreats is finding somewhere suitable. A place where I'll feel comfortable spending a week being just me, without any external distractions. A place which I will be able to get to via public transport from here, because it is important for me not to be always attached to one of my caring, amazingly patient, parents who are so bloody helpful they get on my nerves at times. (I am incredibly lucky to have my parents, I know that. Just as I'm trying to get away from the "slightly crazy me" and into the "adult me who can cope" they have a tendency to be on hand to drive me places, or take me places and it feels a bit like they are interfering a bit too much in my life).


Everything is on hold. I can't plan concerts for beyond the first week of February because I don't have my tutorial times yet. I can't agree to play for rehearsals that I have been asked to do, in case my tutorials are planned for the same time and I need to put my studying as the main priority of my year. So my diary is weirdly empty for after the 5th February. Then I'll have tutorials to fit in, I'll have weekly appointments with my study mentor to make sure I'm on track, I'll be able to plan concerts and say yes to meetings and rehearsals and everything. It feels like I'm holding my breath, having been breathing in for weeks, and have no real definite time scale before I can breathe out again. Apart from "some time in the next 4 weeks".

Yesterday afternoon I couldn't tell the time. I knew I needed to leave at ten to three, but couldn't translate that into a more useful language for my brain. I couldn't work out how long it was before this elusive time, whether I was going to be really late, or early, or what to the work things I needed to go and do. I hate that I have such a mental block with telling the time, especially as I have 8 clocks on my wall as I like the ticking noises. Damn stupid brain with its constant quirks and shortcomings. It is times like that when I feel so much like a failure, when my assorted "specific learning differences" (I hate those words, but they are the technical terms for things, at least they are better than "special needs"...) and my mentally interesting brain refuse to let me do fairly simple things.

I feel flat. Flat flat flat. It is like I'm waiting impatiently for things and I don't know quite how these things will turn out. Just got to keep going I suppose. And go on countryside walks when it isn't raining so heavily that the puddles are full of intertwining ripples and getting ever larger (which is why I had a day in on Friday instead of a day doing a few hours of walking).

Better go and play the piano for a bit before watching the television in a fairly paranoid way in case they used any embarrassing clips of me in the final edit of the programme. Ah the joys.




[See, I told you it was jumbled mumbling nonsense.]