Well....
Once again, I find I have been very bad at keeping this up to date.Unlike Brock, Ellipse or LeTempest, I'm not fluent with words. And I find myself more comfortable being behind the lense of a camera happily snapping away than I do updating my blog.
I am far too self critical, and can be "my own worst enemy" some may say, and they'd be right. And people that know me well enough will be sitting here nodding away to those words! I hold myself back so much by caring too much about what others may think of me, instead of just going ahead and doing what ever it is and saying "sod the lot of you if you don't like it"! Whoa, how I would love to throw caution to the wind and let my hair down once in a while and go with the flow, but to be honest, that scares the hell out of me too much...
Having a potentially life threatening illness over the past 9 or 10 months has changed me, how could it not? Things that used to be top of my virtual priority list have now overnight, slipped down or have gone off the list completely. I now appreciate so much more in life than I did, and I have learnt that family and friends mean more to me than anything else, because without their help, love and support, I have very little.
This year really has thrown some huge challenges my way, and I have tried to deal with them in the best way I can. Unfortunately, I haven't dealt with them as well as I thought I had. And it is now apparent that I instinctively just got my head down, put blinkers on, surrounded my hurting heart with protective amour and went back to work. Getting back very quickly into the routine of sleep, eat, work without really addressing the problems I needed to in order to heal and get well again. So now, it has come back and well and truly bitten me in the bum in a way I cannot ignore!
In this past week, I have experienced my first panic attack, had such vivid and frightening nightmares where I was so afraid to close my eyes to fall back to sleep, had uncontrolable bouts of crying and sheer exhaustion to name but a few.
I have been signed off work by my Doctor with acute depression for the next 2 or 3 weeks to start with. This gives me a second chance to get my life back on track, and I am grabbing it with both hands tightly. I know this journey is going to be painful, and occasionally I will try and go down the comfort zone road.. but I have to go forward down that scarey unknown road in order do this, or I will spend the rest of my days suffering from depression. And a very close friend of mine told me recently that depression only stays around if you ignore it, and I have no plans to do that this time around!
I'll keep you posted......