annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary
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Baby you can drive my car
There's a campaign at the moment about removing the stigma of mental illness, including an ad on the telly about asking people known to be bonkers how they're feeling. One of the old guys at art class asked me that today, after I'd fled in tears fifteen minutes into the class last week. I wasn't quite as smooth as the guy in the ad, in fact gibbered nonsensically until I remembered his line. 'Good days and bad days. Thanks for asking.' Calm, non-manic, friendly smile. Didn't attempt that, just kept my head down and shut the fuck up. Did manage to make eye contact and grin later, in between speed painting piles of liquorice allsorts:
I'm not going to recount the whole tedious saga of my order with BT for a phone, broadband and TV package, due on Dec 13th originally and still not completed. The guy who installed the broadband back in December didn't sign off on the job and the TV couldn't be installed until I had broadband, which they refused to accept I had, until Sunday, at which point they cut me off. In retrospect, my mistake was being polite, friendly even. Nobody wants to work in a call centre when they grow up and they're not the ones who made the mess, so why give them a hard time? But nothing got done until I said I was cancelling the deal. Then, miraculously, the internet was restored without an engineer's visit, an option countless BT people had assured me was not physically possible, and they're coming to do the telly tomorrow, despite not having anyone free till Feb 6th.
It was just the wrong time for me to lose the internet without advance warning. I was already in some kind of shock about ED's prognosis, and grieving I guess. Not looking for isolation and loss of distraction. Still, one day of despair following one day of too much self-medication is not that bad in the scheme of things.
ED phoned and was all chirpy and full of herself about what she'd achieved in one day, but at that point I just flinched from the noise and didn't really listen. Just felt miffed that she hadn't even asked how I was.
YD called later, saying she was getting tickets for us all for the Paralympics, which feels like a good thing to do, especially if she's going to be team leader instead of me. I told her I was heart-broken about her sister and she said, 'Yeah...' and something in the softness of way she said yeah was a balm on my jagged soul.
And last night when I was in bed, it just ended. I knew again that I could and would go on (which I had seriously doubted), and I will take the next pile of shit that life throws at me and plod on through and grab whatever joy I can muster, and that I was back out of The Pit. For fuck's sake.
But while I was in The Pit, people were there, reaching down hands that I couldn't see at the time, but can now.
Having fellow recoverer K in my life is brilliant. Very pragmatic and comfortable, as well as interesting. Having done the group together for almost two years, we are already quite intimate but don't know each other's stories. Today we discovered that we've both studied astrology - man it's been a long time since that happened.
Grateful for: weathering the storm; feeling the love; my doc and acupuncturist who have both changed appts for me today; a new Leonard Cohen album; and for Len himself, giving growing old a good name.
Sweet dreams, sweetie pies xx
10:24 p.m. - 31.01.12
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