I’d love to put some context around why I spent the afternoon crying in gutteral sobs on my bed... hyperventilating and desperately and mostly unsuccessfully pulling myself together so I could drive a vehicle to pick up kids from school...
But I can’t.
Today, I went back to work after a week off and I got shit done.
I have an in joke with someone about 'GSD' and we discuss how much or little is achieved in a day using this acronym.
This morning, my ’to do’ list was ticked off within work hours - including admin that I usually leave until not just the last minute, but often at least a week or a month after it’s due date.
I absolutely GSD!
I had even laughed out so loud at a joke that was texted to me the dogs came to see what all the fuss was about.
This morning was a great morning.
Then I had lunch, watched some tv and at about 2.50pm, shit got real.
I don't even know why.
Well, I have my suspicions.
I woke up today really sore in my shoulder and hip - nothing untoward, but as the day went on it ached and ached and it ached all the way through watching a new series I have started on Stan that I just know that Pete would have bloody loved.
So I began pressing on the sore bits of my body trying to make them less sore.
And it really only reiterated the pain. Actual physical pain where I had been feeling emotional pain.
And I completely fell apart: I am so sick of it hurting. I just want it all to stop hurting.
But it didn't. Instead it sent me into a complete and total panic attack.
Like back in the early days - teeth chattering, shivering cold, gutteral crying, aching body - when I go down, I like like to do it with all of the symptoms.
For 25 minutes I lay on the bed hyperventilating trying to work out who to call.
And that really only reiterated my situation. I have plenty of people I can call - could have called ... I mentally went through them and how all I would need to say was "can you please help me" and how every single one would have dropped everything to do that.
But none of those amazing friends, was my person ... a person who was only there for me.
So my brain went and doubled down on that. The whole "they'll help and they will be amazing and then they will go home to their husband or wife ..."
*my brain, when it gets in control of rubbish like this ... look out ... rational thought goes completely out the window ...*
So if I wasn’t willing to ask for help then I needed to do it myself. It took a while to get myself into a state to be able to do that.
I suspect this whole breakdown is my body's way of letting me know that its been holding itself together with the thinnest of threads for a while now ... today was just the day the threads that is holding me together, broke.
Its been a big few weeks:
Remote schooling has finished, I have kicked some massive goals at work, kids have gone back to school, we've bought a house, sport has gone back, I've had time away from work, I've had monumental meltdowns from teenagers displaying the worst of teenage back answering, I've had a child completely lose it with a panic attack, I've dealt with a birthday that subsequently led to a devastated child crying about how much he wanted his Dad to taste the ribs he cooked, I've had tantrums and tears and hosting of amazing children and massages that hurt and people asking me too many questions, and not enough questions and dismissing my fears completely out of hand ...
Some, or all, of that might have contributed to it.
Yesterday's mail definitely did as I found myself trawling through awful grief quotes to show how hopeless they made me feel and questioning what I do, and how I do it.
But that's just the bad bits - there was been so much fun also, laughing boys and happy children, and kids receiving awards, and doing things they never thought possible of themselves ... breakfast Espresso Martinis ... so much good.
So falling apart seems so useless and hopeless in light of the fact there have been so many good days. Perhaps even more good than hard.
But as I sobbed in the shower - having repeated "you're ok, you need to go get the kids" about 87 times to myself at 3.35pm; smiled at the teachers as they all greeted me happily and running away knowing I just simply couldn't respond similarly while picking up the kids way too late from school, shopping for dinner and ensuring we had milk and bread for breakfast tomorrow, instructed a child on how to make the dinner - I decided it was just all too much.
Today's complete soul crushing crying episode was simply my body and brain saying that this is all too much. It's too heavy. It is a load I cannot carry alone or any more. But it is a load that I know I have to. It is a load that despite being too heavy and me not being strong enough, I need to haul. It is a load that despite, today, being completely and utterly incapable of moving as I lay on the bed touching my twisted pelvis and wishing the pain all to go away, that irrespective of all of that, the load needs bearing.
I bore the load that I needed and had to, but it broke the bearer doing it. This is a pictorial representation of my inner self:
Tonight I begged my massage lady to come and help me. She will be here in the morning.
Tomorrow, I will get the kids off to school. Buy a coffee. Have a massage. Then I will go to work in the afternoon and set KPIs and plan events, and schedule posts and write media releases and no one at work (well, maybe those who I'm social media friends with!) will know anything other than I am back at work.
Because that is what I need to do.
I have a list 700 items long of the things I should and need to do to assist with all of this. I've read all the information. I've seen all the TEDtalks, I've read all the blogs, I've listened to all the podcasts ... I know what it is I need to do.
And therein lies the problem.
I am the only one who can fix it.
Me, the one lying on the bed unable to stop crying or sitting on the shower floor desperately trying to loosen my body (which I'm quite sure is simply reacting to the fact I have increased the physical load it needs to carry - thanks Covid Kilos) and who, at that point in time, spent a bit of time repeating out loud 'I can't ... I just can't ...' I am the one who has to change things.
I know this. And I think I am just simply refusing to do this easily because it is being forced upon, I am not choosing to do it.
But I also know that the utter and complete exhaustion I feel having had this episode means I am not going to be able to get out of bed early and go for a walk like I know I am meant to.
But I do know that I will be showered by the time I have a teleconference with my GP and we discuss this, and my massage lady arrives.
I should probably apologise to her on arrival that there is definitely going to be crying involved tomorrow.
The phsyical pain I know that is going to come from a massage that tries to realign my body that is twisted into the foetal position most nights around children and dogs in bed; and the emotional let down of the rearranging of these muscles - which are simply a representation of my brain.
While laughing today at the candles I had found and having someone suggest that I should buy four of them and undertaken the candle ritual suggested in yesterday's mail ...
Grief discussions took place. and I noted that I'm basically Mr Messy:
Smiling on the outside and a bloody shemozzle of scribbles behind it.
And I am yet to find a therapist who can do this for me:
Because all I can find is people telling me that all of this is just grief. It must be endure. Possibly forever. Inevitably alone.
How people think think these words are helpful, I'm yet to work out.
But right now, I have let all the hurt out. I have taken tables to stop my body hurting. I will try and get a good night's sleep (which is another contributing factor to all this I suspect), and I will get up tomorrow and see how it all goes having out some things into place to help myself.
Fuck grief is hard work...
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