annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary
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Wet, mainly
It hasn't been the greatest few days since I last wrote. I woke up on Friday morning and rushed to the loo. And again and again, several times. So, no accompanying ED to hospital. No doing anything in fact except sleeping, reading, going to the bathroom and feeling increasingly anxious. First day I didn't walk since mid September. Bloke went in my place, which I expect ED was happy about - she is probably his greatest fan. The op went OK, in that they kept going till all the kidney stones had been zapped into fragments by the laser, but it took over three hours, which was borderline OK for ED. In fact, she's still in hospital, still in the ESCU (enhanced surgical care unit) which is halfway between intensive care and a ward, with one to one staff/patient ratio and lots of monitoring. Infection, intravenous antibiotics. I wasn't allowed to visit until today - you have to wait 48 hours after an episode like that and you do, I can see that. But fucking hell it was hard. I haven't gone that long without seeing her for months and months - I go every day basically, though I do sometimes miss a day. I missed Thursday, thinking I'd be with her all day Friday, so it went to three days - I didn't like it.
Anyway, I saw her today and she wasn't great. She has a most expressive face, which is cause for gratitude, as it's easy to read. Down-turned mouth and frowning forehead. Pain relief relaxed the forehead but did nothing for the mouth. So I stayed for the afternoon, nipping out to buy a sandwich when her keyworker from the care home turned up, managing to catch almost the entirety of the torrential rain in the process.
I came back home before it got dark - the length of days seems to be stretching out so quickly all of a sudden - and did my second run. Second of the 'Couch to 5k' programme and as it happens, second in my life. My legs hurt, but not too much. I think I left it longer than was desirable but I couldn't run on Friday due to the shits and my friend M who has run a marathon said to leave it an extra day, so as not to jiggle my stomach about too much, which did seem like good advice. I ran round the inside of the field as it was daylight, four laps.
There was this thing on the ground I kept passing that I though was part of a lobster shell or something - it was raining again so my glasses got wet and had to go in my pocket and I couldn't see clearly. I didn't stop until on the last lap, I was doing the cool-down final walk so I paused to pick it up - it was a used tampon! For fuck's sake - I picked it up, only by the string and it had been lying in the pouring rain for a while but still - a fucking used tampon lying in the recreation ground where kids play. This is where I live - it's a shit hole. I threw it in the long grass by the hedge without thinking, just to get it out of my hands. Yuck.
This article is one of the best things about rape I have encountered in a long time, especially the video of the Ted Talk they give. I have never heard a man talking about raping someone before.
I am seriously considering going to the police about having been raped. It has dominated my life for too long. The belief that it was my fault, that my behaviour was to blame has proved impossible to shift apart from when I frame it in terms of what a reasonable person would do when confronted with an unconscious 19 year old girl. If the answer is to fuck them, then you are not a reasonable person. It is your fault - you did it, not her. But it is so impossibly hard to hold that thought and to remember that I might actually be an OK person, not a person who deserved what she got. I don't think they'd find him and prosecute him, but if they listened and took it seriously that would be a start.
And I'm fifteen minutes over the deadline for going to bed.
I am grateful for: our NHS; the people who marched on Saturday in defence of our NHS; the manager of the care home who visited ED this afternoon, bringing one of the other residents with her as staffing levels would have been too low otherwise, and for getting ED tickets to go and see Sam Bailey, a big-voiced ballad singer who won the X-factor a few years ago, who ED loved; that running app, which makes it so easy, just put your earphones on and press play; my big warm bed
Thank you for reading, if you have. Sweet dreams xx
12:58 a.m. - 06.03.17
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