I’m not dead

I’ve just got some stuff going on.  I’m back from holiday, but everything is weird.  I’m really, really tired.  I didn’t expect to feel like this.

My hair smells like the sea

I’m in Ireland this week. Today I went to the beaches of my childhood, including one where I fell down a cliff (I still bear the scars). I climbed rocks, did pirouettes in the sand and collected shells.

It was raining on and off, and was very windy. But I walked along the beach with no cares. My hair is a tangled mess and it smells like the sea. I feel years younger.

Forget myself

Work is almost over; I finish tomorrow. I really wanted to make a stealthy getaway but because someone else is leaving too they’ve suggested a pub trip, but everyone is only going because J is leaving, and I feel like a bit of a reject. At least with my stealthy getaway plan it didn’t matter if nobody was bothered to fare me well.

I was so excited about the potential my freedom had to offer that I’ve overdone everything. I have forgotten myself in all this. I was so eager to finish that I kept filling up my future time to distract me from the fact that I still had work to do. And I thought that by filling up my future time I would feel less down. But now I’ve got too much and I feel stressed and trapped. I don’t even think that my strategy will work, because I know I need to feel down and get it out of my system; I have lots of thinking to do and I really have neglected my mental health as well as my physical health over the last 2 months.

I just want to disappear for a while to try and work out what’s going on in my head. Everything is so confusing.

Brain freeze

Remember when you were a kid and drank your milkshake too quickly? And you got a major headache because it was so cold? Remember how your brain used to go fuzzy? That’s what my brain has been like for days.

I only have 2.5 days left here. But I have so much to do, and it’s impossible to get motivated. I’m too tired to think in a straight line and I know I have to write two reports but all that I can think of is the weird dream I had last night, where I tried to leave work on my last day but work turned into a department store and I was arrested for trying to steal a bra from our web manager (who is a man)… I have no idea.

Anyway, point is, I need to do work but can’t. I know the next 2 days will be horribly stressful if I don’t make a start now, but that threat isn’t enough to kick my brain into action.

I’m just too tired for this, and the prospect of rest isn’t even on the cards now because next week I’m off to Ireland for 5 days because I promised my parents, then I have a few days off then my friends from France are coming to visit and I feel obliged to hang out with them because they’ve come all this way, then I have another few days then I promised I’d go home to see my sister before she goes to China for 6 months… so by the time I actually get a rest it will be almost August. And then I’ll have to start thinking about my PhD more seriously and planning my research.

I know it’s my own fault because the prospect of being alone with my useless, neurotic brain is too terrifying – so I keep putting things in my diary to keep me occupied, but really I think a few weeks with just myself is probably what I need. Too late now though. I’m doomed.

Oxygen

It’s like there is none.

I feel like I can’t breathe and my chest is getting tighter and tighter every time I try to inhale.

I’m overwhelmed with confusion and I don’t know why. I feel nauseous and I just want to cry but I can’t. My head is spinning with a million words all jumbled together and I can’t make sense of anything.

I’ve tried sleeping, and not sleeping; eating and not eating. I’ve tried going outside, coming back in, lying down, standing up, walking round in circles… Nothing is clearing my head. It’s been a long time since I felt like this.

It’s like the last two years of therapy have been for nothing and I’m back where I started. I haven’t felt this bad since I just started medication. I don’t know where this has come from and I can’t deal with it.

I can’t fix it

I’ve become hyper neurotic and I sent P a message telling him that I didn’t know if I did the right thing by sending him a confessional. He responded saying that he hadn’t read it because he was too worn out to deal with anything right now. So, I guess I might have done the wrong thing.

I replied to him saying that it wasn’t important, and that he could just ignore it. I said I’d leave him alone to get on top of things and that I hoped he was ok and that he felt better soon, and that if he needed any help he could always ask me.

He hasn’t responded to that. Not that I really expected him to because he sounded really down. So it’s out of my control now. I can’t fix things and it’s driving me crazy.

I know I just have to let it go, and that things will either resolve or not. It’s hard though. Especially when I feel like I’m at fault and that I have so much to make up for. And I care a lot about him and I know he’s really down at the minute and I just want to help. I want things to be ok. But it’s not within my power to do that. I have to let the bad things happen; I can’t fix the world.

What have I done?

I need a time machine. 

Failing that I need a shovel to dig myself a giant hole.  Or I could find a cave to hide in.

After my minor epiphany yesterday – about my expectations and why I have such issues dealing with departures from them – I sent P a groveling email. Not really groveling, but after our conversation on Saturday evening I felt like I had to get it off my chest. I basically explained to him what I had written about here. It all came out like a verbal brain volcano. In hindsight it was (is) mortifying, but I really just had to get the words out of my head before they grew arms and legs.

I’ve not heard anything back from him and I don’t know if I should expect to. Should I just ignore him now? But if I ignore him he might think that I’m being petulant… But I’m really embarrassed for having to admit my faults and I don’t really want to be faced with them again. I just want him to say it’s ok. And that I’m forgiven. Perhaps that will be my chance for a clean slate.

But I don’t know – is wanting him to say that just another sign of my twisted expectations? Or is that normal? What should I expect? Did I do the wrong thing in the first place? I hope not – I felt like I owed him an explanation, but maybe he didn’t want it. Oh gosh, what have I done?

Why do things have to be so complicated? When did it get so hard just to be a friend?

5 days left

This is my work diary for the week. It is special for three reasons:

1. I hardly have any meetings
2. I have a meeting in our Edinburgh office on Tuesday morning which means I can ‘work from home’
3. See Friday…..

On second thoughts…

… am I like Carrie Bradshaw? Gorgeousness and creativity aside, I’ve been watching Sex and the City today (nothing better to do) and noticing a remarkable number of similarities between me and dear Carrie.

When EBF and I used to play the “which … character are you” we always decided I was Monica from Friends and Miranda from Sex and the City. I had no reason to suspect that had changed. But when I was watching SATC I remember EBF saying to me not long before we ‘split up’ that she thought I had become more of a Carrie; I was becoming neurotic and suspicious of everyone. I still had my hard-hearted-Miranda-ness, but the neuroticism was taking over. I hadn’t really thought about it til today.

Once that thought was planted, I recalled another conversation with some old uni mates in April that I was “definitely a Rachel”. This to me is the oddest thing ever – I never would have thought of myself as a Rachel. But my friends said that where I used to be hard-hearted, I was softer now. I was human, even if it meant I had these giant flaws. Also I lost a lot of my intellect because of the medication I have to take (it makes my brain slow down) and I act pretty ditsy most of the time – so I’m a Rachel then.

I’ve been watching the first series of SATC where Carrie is going out with Mr Big. When I watched it the first time round (many years ago) I thought Carrie was a moron for being so insecure. Now I’m that moron. I empathise with everything she thinks. Funny how things change. I just wish that I could stop the character carousel somewhere familiar so I could start getting on with my life.

I think I know why

I’m window gazing again, listening to Arvo Paert, and thinking about why I keep ending up in this situation.

I think I know why my expectations are warped.

I’ve never put me first. I always put other people before me; always have and probably always will. I’m a martyr. I have a victim complex. But I hate it. The fact I can’t value or respect myself has left me trapped in a pit of self-loathing and I can’t get out. I want someone to put me first, because then I have value. If someone puts me first – above themselves – then I have a measure of how much/ little I can value myself.

So I think the moral is that I need to learn to respect myself, and not look for it in other people. But my question is this: where the bloody hell do I start?