Category: General

Day off work to take my daughter to Malvern for a day of fencing training. Long day, out at 7am back at 7pm and 276 miles driven but its worth it. She’s amazing, when it was over she said she didn’t enjoy it and it was a bit of a waste of time, but I watched her, she joined in, never complained and kept smiling.

As you know today is Valentines day. Not that counts for much, I bought her a card and chocolates but really? Is that the best I can do?! My poor wife is exhausted because she works so hard. That just makes me feel even worse. I want more than anything to have romance, but she simply is too tired. Actually, as I type this she has fallen asleep on the sofa, we are watching Hawaii Five 0, which she enjoys but, as every night, having worked hard at work and shopping and cooking and cleaning and and and….

I have to sort myself out, I am in and out of bad and ok days, more bad than anything else but this is helping. I can’t kick the worry and feeling of desperation.

Woke up desperate, managed to get up and get to work, but hell why did I bother. Everyone irritated the hell out of me, nothing I touched worked. My patients was so short I could have killed someone. Had a huge rant at a couple of staff over nothing and eventually walked out and came home. Hid behind my laptop pretending to work, kept my mouth shut and went to bed as early as I possibly could.

Part of sorting my life, is also getting fit once and for all. As you may have read I have problems with my knees so I decided to try an exercise bike, so I ordered one in the January sales.
Finally today I got the exercise bike set up, which was an effort in its own right. Really not sure now and that is the problem with battling depression and anxiety. I have been really fired up about finding something that would take the strain off my knee whilst helping me out.

Right now I am terrified, in fact so much so that I locked myself in the downstairs loo and cried. But anyway family around and I am sure they are thinking just another fad that will be a waste of money, so I have to prove them wrong.

First Go – Holy mother of god! I just managed 2km which took me about 4 minutes with no resistance on the wheel before I thought I was going to faint!

 

One of the hardest things to explain is the loneliness, the isolation one can feel, even when surrounded by people.
We had a gathering recently, a lovely day, family, friends, fun, laughter, everything I thrive on. I am never happier than when I have a house full of people enjoying themselves and playing “mine host”, but towards the end of the day I just wanted to curl up and be left alone. I can’t really explain it and there is no reason for it that I can see, it can be a birthday, a party, even Christmas. The house can be busy, music playing, people chatting, drinks flowing. Yet I can be sat on the outside looking in, not really involved, disjointed even.
Surrounded by people yet not knowing what is going on. Not really focussing on anything in-particular. I have and do escape into another room, or take refuge in the bathroom. When things really get bad, the bathroom is the best place because you can wash your face to try and hide the tears. It’s ridiculous, how can you be in a room full of people you know, yet feel like you don’t belong?

The day started the night before, really couldn’t settle, mind would not turn off. As a result my sleep was even less than usual. My wife got up at 6am to take the eldest into work, came home, back out again at 7:00 to drop our daughter at training and even went back to get her at 9:30 to pick her up. During all of this I stayed in bed, unable to get going. The feeling of guilt, making it even harder to emerge.

Eventually I emerged, had to things to do, places to go, people coming! Actually people coming is the key. Family here, Sunday lunch/dinner. In short the key is turned and hey presto, Nigel is Nigel