My Shrek moment.

After my rant here yesterday I felt much better. I often wonder in the days that follow whether I should delete those posts that were a flash in the pan, a very quick moment of anger or sadness soon forgotten. I have mostly decided to let them stay. Yesterday was actually important in that it reminded me of how awful life with Tall's illnesses could be sometimes. Even if I should never have felt the way I did, the fact is that I did. The paralysing panic that I felt so many mornings, evenings and nights, the panic only relenting once I was on my way to see how he was for myself. Of course I should have been more trusting of the medical staff, but unfortunately events the very first time Tall was admitted coloured my reactions for every other admission. That very first time Tall was in horrendous pain, he had asked for paracetamol and five hours later when I arrived for visiting he still hadn't had any. The line was drawn and I never trusted the system again. 

Today I miss Tall because we are in the middle of a storm. A fence panel has already been lost and the forecast is that the winds will be here for another ten hours, who knows what else might go. I miss having a second pair of hands and a second opinion. As I type it I realise that the Tall I miss is the Tall that was fit and healthy. The Tall from before 2017, the one that put decking down with me, the one who could cut the hedges and take part in life. I'm sad that Tall had to go through two years of not being the man he wanted to be. The frustration he felt would make him angry and he was often sad, although he wouldn't admit it, he always wanted be be seen as the optimist. As time passes I am able to see the multiple layers of my grief for what they are. As Shrek would say "Ogres are like onions. Onions have layers and ogres have layers." Grief is like an onion too.

December 8th

As I sit here, feeling anxious, I wonder what I can do to change things. Yesterday I abandoned my trolley of shopping at the checkouts because the till I was already at told me I had to go to another as he was closing. I had been there before it was announced and the queues for the two tills still open stretched up the aisles. I couldn't face it, I just wanted to come home. Things are really bad mentally at the moment.

Billy is playing hide and seek with the X-moose. 


I found six of them in the attic yesterday, one for each child and one for a very dear friend who died December 2002.


 

What have I been doing?

What a good question. 

I look around me and the house is a mess. I look in the fridge and there's nothing to eat, I haven't been food shopping in over a week. To be quite frank, I don't know what I have been doing.

I seem to spend my days sitting on the floor going through piles of things I should have sorted years ago. The dustbin is permanently half full and yet the cupboards, shelves and loft are still full. I find small mementos like a tram ticket from Blackpool and spend thirty minutes sobbing. Cards with Tall's handwriting, photographs meant for a passport and plane tickets. All very cathartic I'm sure, but I don't seem to be making any progress. Busy doing nothing, I only sit down to relax in the evening, when I realise I have left it too late to make a proper meal and find myself eating another sandwich.

The kitchen tap has started to drip, the panic grows with every "plop". The rain we have been getting has the gutter around the bay window overflowing, it clearly needs cleaning, the noise of the water on the window cill (sill) outside is like nails on a blackboard to my tattered nerves. The conservatory roof is leaking too, damaging the furniture I just put in there so that I could have an office space instead of a laptop on my lap. My anxiety increases with every new problem. 

Get someone to fix things? That would require me feeling safe. I know it it silly, but builders and the like make a mess. Even if it is just the packaging from the new part, they just leave it where it falls. I know it all sounds so silly. 

I am cross with myself for allowing things to get so bad. Just when I thought I was making progress, life has turned round and bitten me again. I know it is a cliche, but I need to win the lottery. Not a massive win, just enough to pay for the house to be altered and fixed the way I want it, while I rent somewhere else. Then enough to buy the new furniture to furnish it. Pipe dreams as I don't ever remember to buy a ticket.