Two Weeks In The Life Of Minxy

I didn't realise it had been so long since my last post, and I was just as overwhelmed by the response from that one :)

Despite failing at returning to work, I have been doing my utmost to get myself better. To stop the feelings of anxiety and panic and to try and work through them to get myself back to normal (or as close to normal as I feel comfortable being! This has meant pushing myself to get out of the house, however uncomfortable that makes me. Going to the supermarket - which for some reason has become a huge source of anxiety for me and the biggest hurdle, being out on my own....no Hague, no Boo....just me alone.

I'm doing my best, I'm doing all of those things, just not quite as regularly as I need to, and not without feeling utterly on the edge. This WILL get better, I know it will, it's just a case of being patient, and doing what I can to get strong again.

So what else have I been up to? Here's a little photo guide to the last two weeks :)

Celebrating a Birthday.

Catching up with old friends, and meeting lovely new ones.

Looking after myself (my own interpretation)

Enjoying my stupid pets making me laugh

Sleeping too much, or struggling to get any at all :(

Hunting Ladybirds

Walking Boo

Exploring with my camera

 Trying Choccy Philly!

 Enjoying this beautiful Spring weather

So as you can see, I'm trying to keep busy and trying to get better. Onwards and upwards!

Overwhelmed

When you're not feeling great, you feel so very alone. That's how I felt yesterday when I posted my blog. Alone, helpless, a let down and a failure.

I honestly didn't expect anything more than a few virtual hugs as people got on with their own lives with their own problems. What I got was something amazing...

My friends and family, from all over the world, with friendships spanning both years and months reaching out to me. Some left lovely comments to let me know they were thinking of me, others took the time to send messages of support and love, and to share their experiences, simply to let me know things WILL get better.

Every single person who took the time to help me made me feel a million times better, every word helped to make me feel stronger, every drop of love and compassion typed through a computer may have made me cry - but they were humble tears, and I don't think I can even begin to thank you all as much as you deserve for what you did.

You may not have realised it, but you helped me beyond measure yesterday, and I appreciated it more than I can say.

xxx

Going Backwards

It's 6.12am on a Monday morning and I should be at work. I have spent the last fortnight doing my utmost to get my head straight, to stop the stressy, anxious feelings and have myself back to work today.

I've failed.

I wish I knew the reasons behind this backward step, I wish I knew why anxiety grips me when I contemplate returning to work. I WAS back at work, I was getting back into the swing of it, I was (just about) coping with the shifts and was getting to know my new workmates and making friends. Yet now I find myself going back to the days of feeling like I'm letting everyone down, the days of being in tears due to the sheer frustration of feeling so damn useless.

I'm still on my medication, even my sleep seems to be getting a bit better (earplugs FTW!), but I feel trapped inside my own head, trapped by my own inability to cope with the simplest task of just going to work in the morning.

If you have never suffered from a depressive illness, you're probably reading this and thinking "Oh pull yourself together for goodness sake", and I wish more than anything it was that easy. When you are trying to cope with a mental illness the effects are just as crushing as a physical ailment. This morning I literally could not get myself ready for work. I even got up early as I knew it would be a bit of a hurdle for me, but when you are still sitting in the bathroom after twenty minutes, telling yourself in so many different ways that you NEED to go to work, you NEED to at least get yourself dressed and the only achievement you manage is to reduce yourself to tears the barrier might as well be a brick wall rather than your own head.

I'm not sure why I'm sharing this, I'm in tears still as I type, wondering what it will take just to get me back to where I was a few short weeks ago. I want to be me, I want to be normal, I want my life back - but right now I feel like I have a mountain to climb, and despite having support, in reality only I can drag myself back up, a task that right now might as well be an actual mountain soaring over my head :(

Housekeeping

After the very scary Laptop Dying Incident of the last few weeks, I've had to look at my lazy attitude to backing things up.

Don't get me wrong, I DO back some things up, my photos for example. All are safely stored on an external hard drive as well as being backed up on the second drive on my laptop. I don't back anything else up regularly though, something I will most definitely be rectifying as soon as funds allow the purchase of a nice big 1TB hard drive.

When the laptop first died, I just presumed it was the charger again, but when that didn't work things got a bit scary and thoughts first started swirling round my head that I could lose everything on here. I'm sure it's a thought that most of us entertain at some point, but are comforted by "Oh it won't happen to me...." Now I know it might do and so I'm going to spend the day doing a bit of housekeeping. My old 80GB drive is nearing capacity (the 20GB of iTunes might have something to do with it) and so I'm going to go through all the old pictures on there and cull some, I'm a hoarder, always have been and I think it's time to say good bye to some truly astonishingly bad shots, such as these treasures.....

I don't think I'll miss any of them do you? With barely any memory left it's time to clean up my act I reckon, and stop hanging on to rubbish - one day I'll learn to apply this methodology to my life....but one step at a time eh? :)