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

 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.

You sit, in a worn down but well loved, lived in living room, you shout from there to the kitchen down the corridor.  The soul you feel most drawn to and most forgiven by shouts back to you; you laugh till you cry.

Text messages buzz, the doorbell rings, the landline dings; "I think I'm standing outside?"

The temperature rises as bodies pack into the insufficient but perfectly workable space.  The thrum of laughter, and smiles - smiling has a sound - and conversation drifts from the floor upwards, filling the whole room with a pleasant din, like a fog which envelops but also multiplies as it spreads.

It is tactile, and comfortable, and it is home.  

It is home.  Far more than 'home' was ever home.

All those idiosyncrasies which were shameful and hidden are jokes - shouted across the room.  All those insecurities which were poured over cease to exist.  Home.  This is what home feels like.

It's a knowledge that happens in the core of the bones and spreads outwards.  And then, suddenly and gradually, there has never been any doubt about where here is.

You catch yourself: just once in a while, standing there, amongst the din, smiling and feeling, even for a few precious moments, perfect contentment.

Home.




It is 11 days until I get to go home.  It is too long, and my retreat will be too short.

I really have missed you.

And tonight was brilliant.

I realised so much about us both, stuff that should have been obvious years ago, but perhaps it is only now that I am ready to see it.

I'm not in love with you any more.  And I'm not in love with her any more either.  Isn't that huge? Isn't that glorious?

For a while I thought my broken heart would always mean I was still in love with her.  But somehow, tonight, a little bit of me that was reflected back at me as I sat talking to you was the bit that showed me the truth;  no love.

I can't wait to see you again in February.  I'm sorry we've lost so much time over the past few years - I think a lot of it came from how she changed me; but I know there was a girl changing you too.  We've both arrived somewhere better.  I'm glad that we are in each others future.

You're the keeper of half my memories.  I forget how much I forget.  Then you tell someone a story about something I did, or something we did together and the little portraits you paint release memories I didn't know I had.  Sometimes the story is as new to me as the person you are telling it to - I wish my memory was better, I really do, but it is such a relief to know that you, and a few other people, are keeping close guardianship of my youthful excesses, my triumphs and the many and various ways in which we got to this point.