3 days happy

Do I get a medal or something?
;)

How quickly a mood can change. Since my last post mine has improved dramatically. I guess it started when I heard some very, very happy news from a close friend of mine - the sort of news that made my cry happy tears (yes I know I cry at the drop of a hat these days but it really was that sort of news!).
And all of a sudden the world was a better place.

My boss let me go home half an hour early on Friday, just because it was quiet and it was Friday and... well, just because.

I went to the hairdresser yesterday morning and I am really happy with the result (my bad- to good-hair-days since the last haircut have been in the region of 30:1).

And yesterday evening my stepson arrived from SA and will be here for a month.

Those were the highlights but I'm convinced it was that astoundingly happy news from my friend that triggered off my happy feelings. And it feels really good to feel good.
I've had energy galore - got tons of stuff done yesterday including all the housework, and went shopping today in that same mall that I was bitching about last week, and I actually wanted to stay longer to do more shopping today - but poor Hubby had hayfever and the boy-child (although at 17 that nickname doesn't really fit so well anymore, especially since he now towers over me) looked like he'd had enough of trudging through shops for one day so I called it a day when we had almost everything I'd set out for.

Oh, and one more thing. After tossing the idea about for months I have finally made the decision to get myself a small motorcycle - for practical purposes, not just for fun, in case you were wondering. Making decisions is not necessarily my strong point and now that I've made one - one that I'm happy with - I feel like I have accomplished something.

I think we'll put up our Christmas tree tonight. Hubby decided he's tired of finding pine-needles in the house up till July so we've gone for an artificial one that has fibre-optic lights on it. Photos will follow shortly, no doubt.

So it looks like my Christmas Spirit didn't flee the country after all.
Yep, I'm three days happy, and counting.

freaking out just a little

On the one hand my mood -which has been wallowing in a black hole the last few weeks - is beginning to lift a bit. I'm starting to take an interest in things and even - despite my last post - started planning Christmas yesterday. That's right: lists have been started and cards have been sent. I was even clear-headed enough to wash some bedlinen in preparation for my Stepson's arrival on Saturday - which I am now eagerly anticipating, as opposed to feeling sweet bugger-all about anything - without too much muddleness of the head. That may not make a lot of sense to some of you but at times even the smallest task takes a really huge amount of mental effort from me.
So the fact that I've managed to get stuff done at all without feeling befuddled is a good thing, trust me.

But on the other hand it seems that in my not-so-clear-headed mood I have successfully managed to alienate myself from people I would have considered 'friends' at work. Well, maybe 'mates' is a better word than 'friends'. I feel like a total outsider - left out of the loop on virtually everything. Even work-related things, although this last is perhaps the thing that p*ssed me off in the first place and made me withdraw. The words 'overreaction' and 'over-sensitive' come to mind, but I have possibly not been able to deal with things as well as I should have - or at least as well as I once would have.
It makes coming to work every day really hard. I used to be part of 'the gang' but now I'm simply a shadow that hangs around, occasionally doing something useful. Ooh, that sounds terribly self-pitying, doesn't it? I hate self-pity. Everyone hates self-pity. Which is why hiding under the covers in bed all day sounds like a much better option. If I don't have to face all this, then I won't feel so bad about it, then there won't be self-pitying to be done... d'you catch my drift? My sister accused me of becoming a hermit not so long ago, but is that really such a bad thing? I just feel like a piece of driftwood that has been battered ceaselessly agains the rocks in a storm. And when one is hurting already, it doesn't take very much to make it worse. So I guess what I'm saying is, this piece of driftwood needs to be washed up on a beach somewhere to be still and dry for a while.

So what's stopping me from taking some time off? I guess it's because I don't want to admit to failure. When I came off my medication it was on the advice of my doctor, who said she felt that I'd be OK to just stop, as opposed to weaning off them. I had finished my cognitive therapy sessions a couple of months prior to that - the psychologist felt I was doing just fine. So admitting that I'm actually NOT doing OK doesn't sit well with me - it's like saying I couldn't hack it on my own and one thing I've always held dear is my independence; Now that I've put that in words I must admit it sounds like slightly skewed thinking; I mean, if someone I knew said these things to me my advice would be, "It's not that you've failed and it's not an independence thing; you don't have to do this alone." Trouble is I think I've had double standards for a very long time - one set of rules for everyone... except me. Learning to cut myself some slack is one of the hardest things I've ever attempted and I'm still not great at it.
I also don't have a lot of leave days due and the couple I do have I want to save for my trip home to SA next year. Which leaves me only one alternative: go back to the doctor and get her to book me off for a week or even two. Doctors don't like doing that though and I guess I'm afraid she's going to want to put me back on medication and I really don't want to go back on medication because it makes me drowsy... it sort of takes the edge off life which I suppose is sort of the point, but how am I ever going to learn to cope with it if I'm not really facing it?

Oh my, so many questions. Don't panic - most of them are rhetorical; I think I know the answers in my head, if not my heart. Sometimes it just takes a bit of spelling-out like this for me to make any sense of things.

Normal service (HA HA!) will resume shortly.

there's no avoiding it now

I've ignored it as long as I could but it's December now and the Christmas season is upon us whether we like it or not. My favourite pastime - shopping, in case you haven't been paying attention - is now simply an irritation until January.*

Even the simplest errand, like going to buy a couple of groceries, becomes a nightmare of screeching children, manic mothers and frightened fathers all determined to get their goodies before someone else does. We can't have little Timmy going without the latest action figure now, can we?! I swear these people would happily step on each others' heads in the fight to get there first.
Of course, in an attempt to fool everyone into believing it's the Happy season, the malls are populated with carrollers singing Joy to the World and whatnot...

I think I may get to a point where I enjoy Christmas. I'm almost sure I did last year - I guess I could go check my archives to see what my stance was a year ago. But this past weekend the only thing that made me not want to hurt people was when I caught someone in a Santa outfit... worn over a Grinch outfit.

Now that I could identify with.

And that's all I have to say on the subject. For now, anyway. If my family is lucky then this little outburst will have gotten all the bad stuff out of my system and I'll soon be rushing around like a madwoman decorating the tree and doing whatever I can to bring Christmas to the household.**

Of course it's possible they may then wish I were feeling as I do now instead. Apparently there is a limit to how many times teenagers can listen to the same Christmas CD in a month without losing their sense of humour.



* Can you blame me for being upset?
** I should probably mention here that I did buy a string of icicle lights to hang by our front door on Saturday when I went out to get milk.

friday fings

I'm supposed to be meeting up with some mates this evening for a few pints but to be honest I don't know if I'm in the mood for it.
It means leaving work at 4:15 (or so) to catch the train to be home by 5:20 (or so), which leaves me some time to make myself presentable* and have something to eat** before catching the 7:23pm train back into town to meet up with me mates around 8:15.
Sounds like an awful lot of effort for a pint, don't you think?

And if that's not enough here is a peek at the weather :

How they get 'partly sunny' when it's still dark out, I'm not sure, but you get the idea, and I don't imagine it'll be any warmer this evening.
Have I made enough excuses yet?
Can't I just rather go home as soon as I can possibly escape the office and go hide in my cocoon away from the cold and the noise and the big bad world?
Please?

* ... as opposed to the ogre who arrives home from work at the end of the day, having sent the perfectly-groomed woman I started out as to never-never land some time between lunch and the end of the day.
** I may even feed the husband and child while I'm at it.