Yesterday was one of those blah days where nothing feels like a good fit. I tried lots of approaches, none of which helped, and shrugged, headed to bed and figured I’d feel differently after a sleep. Well, I was right. I had intense nightmares, of the kind where you wake up and feel so distressed you want to throw up. The content lingers like you’ve watched a vivid, personal horror movie that’s burned images into your mind. It’s been awhile since they were an issue! This morning was meltdown territory as a result, panic and intense dread. I took a bath, read some book, wrote in my journal, and scraped myself together enough for my appointments. Today was admin appointments, getting stranded with a vehicle that needed engine oil, and having a blood test – STILL no bad reactions, even on a horrible day like this one! Did, however, re count my days when I got home and discover I’d done this one a couple of days early by accident and will have to repeat it. Sigh.

I saw a disability employment person and cried about how stressed I feel about my business at the moment, wondering if I should be pursuing employment instead. She ‘reassured’ me that I wasn’t passing up some wonderful opportunity – most people like me with an episodic illness are unable to find good work. We get casual, short term, poorly paid work, issues with workplace bullying, and more often than not – contracted volunteering. So if I’m going to not get paid (or paid well enough to survive) and lose my job every time my health wipes me out for a month – I might as well be running my networks and continuing to build my business. Right? The anxiety levels have been tremendously high about it lately, I think trying to get pregnant is sending me into panic mode a bit. It a hard road to walk sometimes. And a brutal reality to face what my openness about multiplicity and psychosis are costing me – and what they cost millions of other people. I hate this.

On the plus side, I’m continuing to clean the house up (it got a bit swamped over Christmas, plus I need to make room for a guest and also Rose moving in soon), keep the garden alive through the heat, and sort out food and meals.

I feel way better than I did this morning, but still ‘off’. unsettled and not myself. Haven’t settled into the new year yet. I don’t have a sense of being on firm footing. I’m picking up on other people’s feelings, seeing the world through many different eyes (but not ours) – perspectives of friends, authors of books or articles I’ve read, proponents of particular ideologies. I move between them feeling the clashes and contradictions like burning places in my mind. Hot and sparky. Then I feel myself move back from all of them and suddenly nothing seems real. I find myself walking outside of my home and looking at a tree thinking – ah, there it is. Reality. The thing beneath all the theories. I feel slightly swamped and detached at the same time. And oddly lonely. Part of me is waiting to find out if I’m pregnant and it’s impossible to feel much about that so I’m not feeling anything. Not even numb, just like I’m holding my breath. I can’t breathe or feel again until the cycle ends. Last month I actually felt pregnant some of the time. This time I don’t at all. I don’t even feel like I’m completely here. Man, these reactions are unpredictable!

Ticking away in the back of my head, as always is the book. There’s always more reasons not to write it than there are to write it. I feel like I’m slogging through a thicket of brambles each and every time I just sit down at a keyboard or notepad and work on it for an hour. I don’t want to put myself out there as some kind of leader. I don’t want to present myself as an expert or have people follow my advice. I am aware – like most people who deeply investigate a topic – of the truly mammoth amount of material I haven’t yet read, ideas I haven’t digested, communities I can’t possibly represent. I hate it. I can’t do justice to the field. The only thing that keeps me going is reading what’s already out there and realising how huge the gaps are and that even my pitiful efforts are an improvement on some of the rank dogma that is messing with people’s lives. But hells, it’s hard to remember that.

So, here’s to the weird days. The not recovered, not perfect, not trying to lead anyone anywhere days where despite feeling like my brain is not entirely in this dimension I’m still a decent and useful human being. The biggest crisis today wasn’t even mine, I’m a support person in the backdrop of someone else’s rough time. (we have an extra house guest on our couch for a bit) I’m still needed and still loved and we all half limp half dance along together I guess. Missing my friend Leanne like hell. Signing off from the Colony. (she would get that, we used to write. My place was the Colony and her’s was the Outpost. All the shorthand and in jokes that die with a friendship.) Just breathing.