Quicksand

Apart from the football score incident I thought I was doing okay. Not all singing and dancing okay, but getting out of bed and not crying all day okay. That was until yesterday. A "simple" phone call* and that was me done for. I was strolling along at my own pace with my little dog and suddenly it was like stepping in quicksand. I started to sink, I reached out for Tall's hand so he could help me out, but of course he isn't here to help. I tried my usual coping tactics, but the quicksand seemed to keep pulling me down. My sleep was disturbed by dreams where I ended up crying and I was woken by my own sobbing several times. 

This morning I have woken up still stuck, but I realise that the only way out is to not panic, try and lie flat and float and wait for help to come.  In the past Tall would hold me tight and I would sob, he would listen to my rants without offering an opinion unless I asked for it and he would pull me out. All I can do now it imagine his arms around me. 

*As the person who made the phone call doesn't read this blog and in fact neither he or his wife are friends on FB I am going to have a good rant here. There will be some readers who do know him, I hope they will keep my secret. 

Yesterday Mike C. called. The pretence was to ask how I was, but the conversation soon took a different direction. He started lecturing me on how I need to have a plan. How I need to talk to people about what I can do in the future to make money, I pointed out that I didn't have many friends, he said "no talk to other people, strangers online"! 
"You should rent out your house on AirBnB and live out of a suitcase."  
"You should do B&B and offer an evening meal at an extra cost." 
"You can't waste your time like I wasted four years."
Of course Mike, you wasted four years grieving for your wife and then decided that marrying a girl 37 years younger from a foreign country was the way to go. Even after marrying her you were so ill in 2016 that Tall had to rescue you and you lived here for a month while we tried to sort out your mental health and physical problems, your skin was so infected it smelt of death. Your married life consists of her working all day in a care home, you working all night driving taxis and her spending all her holidays and free time with her Thai and Filipino friends.  
"Next year all my pensions come through so we are thinking of changing direction. We're going to become foster carers with a private agency that pays much more than the local authority. It is £450 per child per week and you usual have to take two. Joy can earn more than working in the care home."
So the private agency takes money off the local authority and gives you some of it, keeping the rest for themselves. Does the private agency have slightly less rigourous  checks I wonder? It beggars belief, it really does.

So why did that conversation upset me so much? I don't know. It just left me feeling angry and even more alone. I suppose in the past Tall and I would have had a good moan together about his strangeness and now I can't talk to him and actually get an answer. 

Keep calm, lie flat and try to float.