It's an 'end of the rainbow' sort of deal

Teddy split up with me.

Except they didn't. Or they did. Or they chose not choosing, which is the same as choosing. And then they did.

They gave me lots of reasons and none. Some were impossibly short term, refering to events in three days: a day or two worth of [non]feeling, a chain of miscommunication across 24 hours, one morning where I didn't ask "how are you" when I was lost in isolation and fear. But it was also about months of them not feeling connected in the right way. They want me but they don't want me. They love me but they are not in love with me. It was about a day where they thought I wasn't in it any more, even though that had never waivered for me, and in thinking I wasn't in it, they walked away.  

I don't think they know. I think this is the decision they want. I think they haven't got their ducks in a row for why they want it. Maybe they'll tell me why when they work it out. 

On Sunday I drove home, aching and exhausted and imagining what might be possible in the future with the new things we'd learnt and shared about each other that weekend. By Monday night I was sobbing down the phone asking for reassurance they loved me ("I do" is not the same as "I love you. Of course I do. That hasn't changed" So I didn't stop crying at that answer). Tuesday I affirmed my commitment to the relationship - realising that it might need saying out loud, to break through the noise of not quite getting each other - and I asked them to do the same, and they couldn't. Wednesday I knew they'd decided. Wednesday night they spoke it. I was still blindsided. I didn't think what seemed inevitable would happen. Because I didn't want it.

Wednesday night they said it had to be the end of the relationship because "we can't come back from this conversation". And I'd been waiting to hear "I want to find a way forward" or "I want to keep talking it through because I want to make it work too" or "we can choose to move on from it". "We can't move on from this conversation" was a decision. A statement not an evaluation.

In the end, after fear and hesitation and holding myself in, I loved incautiously and openly and in all the ways I said I would never again.

I wasn't perfect. I am not perfect. I did things wrong. I missed needs. I tried to fix the things I did that hurt. But I was absolute in how I loved. And I was steady in my commitment. And my entire world has just gone bang and I can't remember what I normally do with the hours in the day.

I remember, from last time, it gets worse from here. Right now is shock. Gnawing grief and deep loss, that's the one I remember that wore me down.

 I have been working flat out for 4 years. 

I have been working, absolutely without cease, and always with a terror of financial ruin, and with the urgency of getting into a post before my research becomes outdated, for four years.

I have had jobs at 3 universities, and a job outside the academy for extra cash whilst continuing to work three roles in two universities, in the last 4 years.

I have submitted a thesis, passed a viva, published three articles, secured a book contract, co-authored another article currently at peer review, run from inception to completion two research projects, written a proposal for a new research project, in the last three years.

I have taught on 10 different modules at three different universities in the last three years.

I have willingly taken on a financially ruinous commute that eats at least 3 hours, typically 4 hours, of my day for the last two years.

I have submitted three job applications (min 6,000 words each) in the last month. I have marked 50 essays and have another 15 to go, and a batch of moderating) and spent 13 hours classroom teaching (not including prep and admin), more than 8 hours in tutorials, 5 hours in staff meetings, written one call for papers and one reference, in the last two weeks

I have worked every single day for the last 18 days. I will continue to work for at least the four days at which point I will take one day off and then go back into another ceaseless stretch.

I feel wretched all the time. I cry every single night. I have terrible dreams. I feel utterly, utterly overwhelmed. And I know I am still not doing enough.

 Had a fairly dreadful couple of weeks.  I'm still not sure if I was going through a downswing/having depression or had a particularly nasty virus or, most likely, both but today I woke up feeling OK.

Spent most of week of 16th Feb laying on sofa feeling knackered and, on Wednesday, dashing to uni campus for an emergency GP appointment because I couldn't catch my breathe.  Mystified GP concluded it was either weird virus causing breathlessness, or some peculiar presentation of asthma, either way I was prescribed an inhaler and used it frequently for about 4 days before symptoms tailed off.  The nurse who triaged me asked if it could be anxiety and I said I didn't feel anxious and she was happy with that but I really don't know if it was anxiety or not.  It wouldn't be the first time I've had all the symptoms of anxiety without consciously feeling stressed.

That weekend was my best friend, Becky's, hen do.  She's not into the pink wings hoopla, and we travelled up to her home town of Oxford to take over the pub she and her friends used to drink in as teenagers and get squiffy.  I was apprehensive about the entire thing but it turned out to be a lovely weekend and I felt I got to know my fellow bridesmaids which is nice ahead of her wedding in May.  It's a bit of an odd group as with the exception of 3 wives and girlfriends, I am the only outsider to join their friendship group since they were at school.  I went to a wedding of another couple from this group several years ago and was the only person at the wedding who wasn't either a family member of the bride and groom, or had gone to high school with them.  It's quite a compliment, and they are a lovely group, but it can feel a little strange setting foot in a group I've only been connected with for 12 years, when they have known each other for closer to 20 years.

Last week I continued to be utterly, utterly exhausted.  My parents visited on Tues and Weds and due to my teaching schedule at uni I only actually spent one day with them even though they were here for 2 nights.  It was nice and I didn't get aggro as I so often do around them.  

Thursday and Friday I was desperately sad, and slept for hours and hours across those two days and nights.  On Friday morning I realised that my building sadness over the last two weeks was due to a subconscious awareness that it should have been Lu's 30th birthday.  Instead, of course, her sister, mother, and friends, all experienced - to different degrees - that gnawing sense of pointless loss for the day.

It shouldn't have been this way.

And then I learnt that Leonard Nimoy had died and I went through the peculiar distanced grief which comes with the death of a celebrity you've had such a deep, life-long connection with.  Star Trek has shaped my imaginative world since I was god knows how old and watching Star Trek TOS on my brother's knee.  Spock is what Star Trek TOS is all about.  And Nimoy was Spock.  He put so much of himself into that character and raised the entire show above the realm of cheap sci fi into the force for good and hope and dreams I know it as today.  I adored his appearances in the Star Trek reboot-movies and I can't quite accommodate the idea he, and his special aura, are gone from our screens save for re-runs.

Saturday was hard too.  I was still exhausted, still feeling the paranoia and anxiety I associate with a particularly brutal downswing.  Forced myself out of the house to Asda which was very nearly the end of me.  Home again for the evening, sadness, introspection.

And then, this morning, I woke up before my alarm and didn't feel exhausted.  The fog has lifted and my brain can think.  I've been accepted to a conference in Ireland in June which may well make a lovely holiday (if I can get funding from the department to go!) and I cleaned the flat and tidied the detritus of a fortnight of inaction. And then I made dinner, wrote some emails...I came alive again.

And I remember why I get up in the morning and why I speak to other human beings and why life keeps on turning.

It's been an awful couple of weeks.  I want to weep for my past self, because I feel bruised from the sadness which has been following me around.  It hurts.  And it scares me every time it comes back, and every time it won't leave.

 Had a bit of a meltdown this week, ended up throwing myself on mercy of supervisor about the impending deadline (Monday) that I was definitely going to miss.  He took one look at me and said I should take a month off from PhD stuff and just focus on teaching (which right now is taking up 3 days of my week, oh my is it time consuming!) I'm not willing to flat out stop work on the thesis, but I am abandoning attempting to write anything for the next couple of weeks and just catch up on transcription.

I keep trying to do little things to remind myself how far I've come (like downloading a programme that counts the words in multiple word documents and discovering I've transcribed 242,000 words so far) but mostly I feel I've just taken on way too much this year.  I'm teaching which - based on feedback today after a lesson observation - I'm doing well, I'm organising a fortnightly seminar series with external speakers, I'm organising a big internal conference, I'm thesis-ing, I'm teaching on a Widening Participation programme, I'm still travelling around the country interviewing.  

It's a lot, by any standard.



Today would have been Lu's 29th birthday and it hasn't been as bad today as I feared - the beginning of the week was me bursting into tears a lot - I think lingering sense of grief and over-worked brain combined in emotional ways.  This morning I had Hepburn's I Quit stuck in my head.  I was boogying around my flat getting ready whilst singing, laughing, remembering jokes and singing to it when we were 14, then I left the flat and somehow my own silence overwhelmed me and I got a bit teary, then I smiled again remembering something else.  Her not reaching these birthdays brings things into sharp focus - I feel such a sense of loss - her loss, her family's loss, her friends' loss.  



I've decided to pursue private therapy at same clinic I went to previously here in Brighton and have an assessment appointment next week on Friday.  The following Monday I finally have my ultrasound guided steroid injection - I'm properly worried for potential pain after last time's agony but I also have cautious hope it could either resolve issue, or reveal a structural issue which can be resolved in another way.  My supervisor recently had 3 slipped discs and upon hearing I was also awaiting treatment to resolve chronic pain redoubled his entreaty that I take a break.  God I hope this injection fixes it - I'll even take steroid flare again if it subsides to no pain.

So, life.  Painful and sad and odd, but sometimes still beautiful - like the tiny break in the cloud today with sunshine crashing down around the pouring rain.

I was 15 the first time I experienced a bout of depression.  In its course, it cost me my friends and my confidence.  Every bout since has, one way or another, cost me something too.

I 'realised' when I was 15 there was no point in anything, so I stopped talking and doing much of anything.  It all just felt....pointless.  My friends begged to know what was wrong, then they bargained with me to reveal my secret, then they got angry at me.  When I 'came out' of it, as it were, they asked again.  'Nothing to tell', I said - I felt like my realisation was too awful to share, too absolutely true (like in the Radiohead video!) so I kept it to myself.   This made my friends more angry.  And then, one day, they cornered me, all 4 of them.  And they yelled at me; said I was paranoid and selfish and annoying and worthless and demanded I apologised to them for being those things and upsetting them.  I refused, cried, shook and just asked for them to accept the absent answer.  But they couldn't, or wouldn't accept that, so they stopped being my friends and for a while I had no friends at all.  And that was kind of crap. 

I feel like every conflict which has ever arisen between me and those around me as a result of my lurching in and out of depressive periods in the 11 years since then has merely been a more subtle, refined version of that argument.  In essence, it's always about the same things; my inability to answer, my being awful to be around during those times, their frustration, and our mutual miscommunication.


These days manic periods provide me with the feeling I am managing to make connections, build bridges and improve my lot.  Frequently, in the cold light of day/non-mania, I realise I am just as socially ineffective during these periods and surely more annoying as I dominate conversations and babble away, laughing at my own jokes and interrupting everyone who tries to make a comment.  Predictably, this recognition of who I have been over the past few days/weeks brings with it renewed despair and depression.


This Sunday gone I felt it all falling away from me again, just like it did that very first lonely, disorientating time when I was 15, and in fear and panic I deleted my livejournal (for the first time in it's 7 year history, I might add) and my facebook account.  It may not have been the best way forward - socially - and these may not be permanent changes, but in the frantic anxiety of the moment it was, and remains, the right decision.  A couple of people have passed on messages that some people were worried about my sudden disappearance which, thoughtlessly, I didn't consider or anticipate and for causing that concern I apologise.  Right now, I need to run a little.

My rat, my other rat,Dangerous Beans, the one who climbed into my hood and licked my hair when I got home in floods of tears at 2am on the morning of the 1st November after making the decision to have her sister, Hampork, put to sleep had to follow Hampork today.

On Thursday night I took her to the vets for what I thought was conjuncitivitus, the vet said it wasn't but that her breathing was raspy and she may have an infection and I took her home with some antibiotics to give twice daily.  On Saturday night I scrutinised her face as in a glance it looked a little swollen, couldn't see anything much so concluded it was just a trick of the light.  Last night she had a very clear and very large swelling on her jaw.  It looked and felt exactly like the abscesses which Hampork had had.

I took her to the vets this morning.  The vet said, given her sister's history and the fact she has got worse since being on antibiotics meant there was nothing to be done.  He proposed she was put to sleep immediately, before she began to suffer.

I have to do the very best for my girls.  Heartbreaking as it is to see her go from healthy to....that in the space of a few days, it was the right decision.

Of course, none of that makes it any easier.  I got home to an empty cage.  I have nobody to cuddle, nobody to give me little rat kisses and chirp in my ear.  I have nobody to grieve with.  I have no warm furry welcome when I get home at night.  Nobody to fall asleep on my tummy as we watch tv and squeak grumpily at me when I move to get a drink or go to the loo.

This has been one of the worst years of my life.  Everything fell apart utterly on November the 28th last year and it's been one thing after another since then.  But through it all I've had the unconditional and absolute love of my two little ratties.  And now they are gone.

I can't imagine how things could get worse.  Form suggests that, somehow, they will.