The thick (and the thin) of it.

A whole month without a post. A whole month of thinking about writing and not knowing what to say or being undecided about what to reveal. I don’t want to bore you to death. This blogging thing is HARD.

So, where the bejeezus am I?

It feels like a test.

I’m staring at two weeks without my girls and without the structure and grounding they bring to my life. Like a wobbly pre-schooler without stabilisers I’m racing down a hill, out of control, knowing that bush at the end is going to get me. But I think, this time, that I can try to swerve and miss the worst of the fall; escape with a few bumps and bruises rather than a broken nose. I hesitantly think that I’m far enough away from wanting to die that I can do things to avoid catastrophe. This time.

Some of this is about being able to think straight (er) now I’m further away from the centrifugal pull of annihilation. (*Admires sentence*) The drugs are working, damn them. (Thank you Dr Sharma.) And mindfulness is helping a little too: I’m trying to step back and notice what I’m feeling, to recognise it is just a feeling, and that, because it is a feeling it’s not part of me; I can choose not to get sucked in. It doesn’t work most of the time but, occasionally, it does; enough to make me pay attention in mindfulness each Tuesday, anyway. And, yes, I have to acknowledge through gritted teeth that nutrition (and weight) play a part as well. Lovely food psychiatrist noticed at my CPA that I dissociate far less and am more present in conversations. It’s great that he thinks I’m more of a person now but I hate the fact I have to admit being heavier makes my mind work better. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it.

I know I’m feeling better. I can even say it now. I’m planning small things like a new colour scheme for the dining room and a few days in London seeing my brother with the girls at the end of August. I’m actually going to research the best car insurance deal this year rather than letting the automatic renewal take care of it. I can think beyond this day, this week and — almost — this month. It’s not always comfortable, but I can do it without the world crashing down on me. This is a million miles away from waking up every morning wondering if it would be the day I died.

But before I break out the gin and start believing in unicorns I have to admit that this comes at a cost. *Deep sigh* It’s the food stuff.

I’ve lost weight; quite a bit. I’m not eating solids apart from ice lollies (and even I know they don’t really count). I’m getting more palpitations. My blood pressure has dropped. Sometimes I’m dizzy. It’s the way back to where I was this time last year when I was on the ward. But it’s the price I have to pay for feeling a little less broken.

I don’t seem to be able to have both. Not really sure where to go from here.

Art and cats. Cats and art

When there’s nothing else to talk about, there’s always cats.

I’ve given up worrying about being seen as a crazy cat lady. I am a crazy cat lady. And if you were lucky enough to be a part of my beautiful cats’ lives, then you’d be a crazy cat lady (or gentleman) too.

Here are three of my beauties: Truby, Tolly and Thursday. Tate likes to do her own thing, but I’m sure she’ll appear somewhere in this post. They keep me going. They allow me to be part of their world and, to my honour, treat me as one of them. They groom me (that’s code for lick my face), they keep me in line with the odd bat of the paw when I’m not reacting to their meows fast enough and they expect me to understand their language, their ways, what makes them happy and their fears. I am an honorary cat.

Throughout everything they are there. When it’s just me in the house, they keep me company. When I wake from a nightmare in the small hours, they lift sleepy heads and stretch out a paw. When I come home from therapy with my head turned inside out they sit next to me. After weighing they wind round my legs and lounge on my lap. When I can’t even find the words for Twitter, they’re there. They help me not to feel alone.

Here’s Tate. Sleeping like a human. In fact she gets quite huffy if you don’t leave the bed open and ready for her.

Usually when I write a post I start with some idea of what I want to say. It’s a hang-over from work, I guess; I always have a plan for everything I write for business. But this time? I don’t.

I want to try and explain what’s been going on in art therapy, but I don’t have a clear picture of where my thinking is: picture a deep, muddy hole filled with murky water – that’s my mind right now. In fact I’ve had some almost unbearably honest conversations in therapy so there hasn’t been any art because I haven’t needed any prompting. But here are a few pictures that I haven’t shared before:

[Tate has just, very kindly, brought me a live little vole to play with. I used my (luckily empty) gin glass to catch it, slid an envelope underneath to act as a base, and gently let it out into the hedge outside. If cats can shrug, then Tate shrugged and sat in a box.]

I’ve been thinking as I’ve been writing, (and vole catching), looking for the thing I’m trying to say.

I think it centres around making a decision about whether I accept I am relapsing or not. But that’s a whole ‘nother post.

In the meantime, how could you resist this invitation to play?

 

Thank you for listening.

 

 

Art therapy #3. With art and a lot of baggage

It’s been a weird week which meant a lot of things were going round in my head today, all to do with the stupid body.

Pretty sure I’ve mentioned how ridiculous it is that we have bodies; that we’re trapped in these flesh and blood prisons that cause so much pain. You can argue the opposite but it won’t change my mind. I have always been at war with the body. With its inadequacies and its disobedience. It’s determination to do its own thing regardless of what I want. 

Anyway, over the weekend I realised that I was going to have to haul the body to see a GP because the burns on my arm were looking grim. I’m carefully not looking at you right now; I’ve seen all the expressions there are. Yes, I did it myself. Yes, it’s a stupid thing to do, I know that. But sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps me feeling human and anchors me here in the world. Usually I dress the burns myself and I’m pretty good at it but these were deep and (I hope you’re not eating right now) the dead skin was getting smelly. So I, very very reluctantly, made an appointment with a random GP because my GP doesn’t work on Mondays. 

It wasn’t too bad. She didn’t judge and – believe me – professionals can be surprisingly quick to judge. Still horrible though and I felt extremely small. Antibiotics, swabs and a proper nurse-done dressing that gives me the arm of a michelin man. So that was on my mind.

And then yesterday I had my monthly appointment with the food psychiatrist. I like him. He’s human. He talks to me as though I am a competent person who just happens to have some hang-ups around eating. As a result, I trust him. Even though that trust has led me to do some hugely stressful things. 

His view: I’m balancing on a point that just about keeps the body going, keeps hot food almost on the agenda and is unsustainable. 

My view: I’m managing to hold a weight that feels ridiculously enormous and elephant like to me. It’s not – very very not – the weight I believe must exist where I feel comfortable. Very not. Very very not. 

We ended up having an almost philosophical conversation about the value of a piece of toast, in public, at lunchtime. Toast. I ask you. And, as usual with the Hugh-man, I ended up agreeing to try something as ‘an experiment’ that otherwise I would rather cut my nose off before trying. 

So this is a long way round to saying that food and weight was on my mind. Although not on my mind when I made the first sweep of charcoal on the pristine paper. 

I think it’s a set of scales and the range, the gaping range, between where I am and where I think would feel better. And the pressures pushing in different directions plus the markers counting out the moves between one and the other. Chalk and charcoal and graphite and dust later and I felt a bit better. 

Until Sarah pointed out that what she saw was not the markers of measurement but the bars of a prison. 

Still thinking about that.