I'm feeling ....
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2003-10-22 - 11.30pm previous entry next entry Have had a weird day today, in some parts anyway. But first yesterday. Well actually I really didn't do much yesterday so there's not much to write about. I had this huge urge to sew yesterday, but the sewing machine is buried in the rubble of things in the small bedroom, and all my nappy (diaper) fabrics were mixed in with clothes and other stuff in the pile. It was some pile by the way! It was wall to wall, and higher than me!! So I couldn't just fling a few things off the top of it and find what I was looking for. I decided to do the right thing and start clearing it all up, so I spent all of yesterday afternoon sorting things and folding clothes into piles and stuff like that. I put a children's story tape on, that was fun. I like that. It makes me feel cosy, like it did when I was little. I listened to "The Secret of Terror Castle" (it's not that scary), and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Yay for a cosy afternoon! The only thing missing was rain and cold weather. But that came today. Anyway so that was my afternoon. It was more work than I thought and I only cleared about a quarter of the huge pile, and then I was all sleepy so I lay down in the pile and I pulled some fleece from my nappy fabric pile over me, and dozed off! Neil found me when he came home from work. He said I was just a little sleepy face peeping out of a huge pile of clothes and fabric! :) So I have recovered all my nappy-making fabrics. I discovered that when I neatly pile all my fleece fabric in one big folded pile, they are only a few inches shorter than I am!!!! I am five foot three. I have 22 different fleeces!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm sure this should be in my pre-preg diary but oh well. I had nooo idea I had amassed so much fleece! But I have loads of different colours now and the whole range of different fleece weights, including microfleece and windpro :) I love nappy-making, did I mention that recently?! Well I do. Absolutely love it. My other (non fleece) fabrics are in two big piles because if they were one pile they would fall over. And I have more coming in the post. *sigh* It's an obsession I tell you! A fun hobby for sure. I do make nappies out of the stuff, honestly! It doesn't just sit in piles! But I have lots of fabric. The problem is I do not know what to do about storage anymore. I have nothing big enough to contain all the fabric, and I don't want to just pile it up against the wall anymore, there's too much of it now. Hmmm. There is no point buying huge storage boxes because honestly there is way too much stuff even for several storage boxes, which would look horrible in my lovely spare bedroom anyway. Isn't this a thrilling dilemma for you all?! ;) Anyway I still haven't dug down deep enough to find my sewing machine so I'll have to wait till I've cleared up a bit more. I think I'll do that tomorrow. I did some laundry yesterday evening and today - the laundry cupboard was overflowing. Neil went to Alpha last night so I did a bit of housework and laundry and played Solitaire on the computer. I just realised our PC has solitaire (okay most PCs do but I didn't know that!), and it might be slightly boring at times but ohhh that game can be addictive! I just keep on starting a new game and before I know it time has flown by and my eyes are all boggly! I like winning and seeing the cards boing all over the screen. I'm a simple soul. My parents are home safely in France, and they got my baby cats back from the cattery - we all hate them going there, but they have to if my parents are ever going to visit us. I'm so glad they are home safe and that my boys are okay. They miaowed on the way home (they are not miaowy cats) and Paddy was trembling in his car box :( Poor boys. At least they won't have to face that again till next year sometime, although the place they go to is sooo nice for them, much nicer than the one they used to use occasionally in England. The next time I get to see my parents is for New Year now. Hopefully that'll roll around quickly. I miss Mummy already, even though I've spoken to her twice since they got home on Tuesday! I haven't phoned Judith yet. But I have Pilates with her on Friday. My hip is still a bit dodgy but it seems a bit better today, so hmmm. I hurt my wrist. I don't know how, but it hurts most when I use the computer (she says, bashing away at the keyboard!), especially the mouse - which of course I am using for games now that I have a PC. I hope I am not getting a strain from playing too many games!! But I don't think I've been playing them that much lately, so maybe it's to do with all the moving about for the carpets lately? But it only started hurting yesterday, and I'm sure I didn't do any heavy lifting at all that day. Today has been a bit weird. I have played Solitaire and spent an age online doing nothing constructive, and I have done laundry and tidied up a bit downstairs. I watched some TV. I took a bath and washed my hair and then blow-dried it afterwards which I never usually bother to do. It makes it all straight which I kind of like because my hair can't decide whether to curl or not, so sometimes I like it to just pick one, preferably straight, and do it properly, even if I have to give it a bit of help! This is pretty boring of me, isn't it? But anyway I felt okay this afternoon. I felt fairly okay about Cameron too. He hasn't been sitting so hard on my vital organs lately, I mean, it hasn't been hurting so much, physically, and I haven't felt so achy emotionally. And then we had therapy this evening - you know, of the parsnip variety - and that put me in a really really strange mood. It's not normal counselling at all, or anything remotely like bereavement counselling - we only talk about parsnips and our relationship (hope everyone still remembers what I mean by parsnips!). But it was really weird. Neil looked tired when I picked him up from work, poor thing. When we got there, Cheryl said we both seem not like our normal selves. Which was true - Neil was tired and subdued therefore, and I just went weird as soon as we got in the door, I don't know why. We last saw Cheryl the day that Cameron died, so she knew about his death but we haven't seen her since. She asked how things had been for us, and from that moment on I was all empty inside and found the session difficult. She wasn't even asking about things to do with Cameron at that point, she was asking about general stuff and parsnips, and yet I got this huge sudden urge to cry. You know like if you feel really nauseous and you can't ignore it because it's so uncomfortable? It was almost like that, physically. I didn't have any reason behind it, I just felt like a good cry, like it was all of a sudden right behind my throat and eyeballs, even though I didn't need a reason for it. Well you know me, I didn't cry. Too horrid when other people are there. I went starey-into-the-distancey, which I tend to do if I don't want my feelings poking at me anymore and that is less uncomfortable because I feel more detached. Which is pretty silly because detached isn't good, and anyway it takes me quite a while to get attached again afterwards. I wish I was happy crying in front of people. I would have liked to express myself in that session. And maybe it would have been good for me to do so. So then the session was really difficult because I felt kind of detached and also was a bit negative about how things have been going in the parsnip department. I am having a huge downer about parsnips lately. I haven't felt like any since Cameron died and it is a big stressy thing that we're meant to be doing that hurts and isn't any fun at all :( I honestly feel like it will never get any better at the moment, which is making me unhappy. Cheryl is now quite concerned that it is STILL painful for me (as am I), so she suggested that I go to the doctor (or nurse) for an internal just to "check things out". This does not thrill me but I have to say I am quite relieved to be going to someone and saying, "Hey something isn't right and will you please give me your expert opinion?" I hope everything is normal though. But on the other hand if something wasn't, then at least I would have a valid reason for the pain. There must be SOME reason anyway. Painful parsnips isn't normal in the long run. So I need to make that appointment tomorrow. I would quite like to use this as an excuse to beg a referral to a gynacologist, for reassurance on the fertility side of things as well, but I still haven't registered with a local doctor and we are out of area for the doctor we are currently registered with, so he can't refer us. Poo. This means I need to change doctors and register with a new surgery, but that's such a huge faff, and besides, I have been at this surgery since I was 10 months old and I am really reluctant to leave :( I like my doctor (even though he was kind of clueless about M.E). And he knows me really well. I don't want to move!! So anyway, that's what I need to do. I think I will still go and see my current GP though. They have this fab system whereby you can only make an appointment for the day you want to go in, first come, first served. So if I phoned for an appointment tomorrow, that's when I'll have my appointment. It's so cool, and way better than waiting a WEEK for an appointment when they had the old system! I don't want to move to a surgery where that is the normal system, urgh. So hopefully I'll have my appointment tomorrow. Maybe. We'll see. Anyway, I told Cheryl all my feelings about parsnips and she was really nice about it. She said we were doing much better than we think. She said things are sure to be difficult when I am dealing with Cameron's death. She reminded me how positive I was about parsnips before he died, and how normal things were becoming for us in that area of our relationship, which is great. I had actually forgotten all of that, so it was good to be reminded. She did something that made me feel awful. She turned to Neil and said, "How are you coping with Cameron's death, Neil?" I feel such a horrible horrible person, because in my head I was screaming out such nasty thoughts. I was surprised at the strength of anger that nearly made me want to burst all of a sudden, just because she'd said something simple like that to Neil. I feel so ashamed about what was going through my head, but I'll say it anyway because it's part of the journey that I'm recording here, and because I don't want anyone being mislead into thinking I am nicer than I really am. My thoughts all screamed and shouted in my head angrily. I thought, "Stop asking him that!" I thought, "What would HE know about coping with Cameron's death?!" And I thought, "How dare you ask him when you obviously completely do NOT understand how much Cameron meant to me?! Cameron meant everything to me. Neil didn't know him at all. He only met him a couple of times. Stop asking Neil how he's coping in that sympathetic tone! What has he got to cope with?!" How horrible am I? That's not a question. I feel so yuck :( And it gets worse. Neil didn't immediately jump up and do what my mind yelled at him to do. He didn't say, "Oh I didn't really know him so I wouldn't know" or "It's not me that has to deal with it, it's Alice. She felt like Cameron was her own child." He didn't say those things at all, and I felt like he let me down, like he didn't stand up for me in some way. I know this is so wrong, but let me just get all this off my chest anyway and then I'll be done. He mumbled lots of stuff and said he felt detached from it really, and that if he allowed himself to think about Cameron's family or about how I was feeling about it, then he would feel very emotional, but he didn't dwell on it too much so he was dealing with it okay. Why do I feel so horrible about this? It feels like jealousy, like intense angry raging jealousy. I feel hateful that Neil got attention over "coping" with Cameron's death, while I sat there in the chair outside of the short conversation that seemed to me to last hours, like it would never end. I wanted to run out of the room and my legs were twitchy responding to the urge in my head. I felt so awful, like something bad got into my insides and it burned and burned and hurt like a sharp spike in my stomach and chest, and I wanted to scream and cry at the two of them and generally lose it completely before running dramatically out of the room and giving the door a good old teenage slam and sob in the corridor. The urge was overwhelming. Urgh. But obviously I'm grown-up so I didn't. I went starey-into-the-distancey, far enough so that I tuned out what they were saying. I feel so bad, and I really didn't expect all those feelings. Except actually now I think about it, I remember something similar the day Cameron died and we saw Cheryl. I couldn't find the right words to tell her what had happened so I looked at Neil and he told her our page boy died this morning. She said how sad it was that Cam had died. Neil said I was finding it hard. She looked right at him and said it must be hard for BOTH of us. My mind went, "Um, NO actually, you might have got the impression that we knew Cameron equally since he was our page boy, but Cameron was MINE, and Neil just got to meet him after he'd been MINE for years in my heart. He just MET him. He didn't LOVE him. He has no idea." I do not know why this should be making me so angry and so mean in my thoughts. But it does. When people don't understand how much he meant to me, or when they mistakenly offer heartfelt sympathy to someone else who genuinely never knew Cameron that well while I am in the same room feeling like I lost a part of my body in a painful way... But I know that's so mean, because I am not the only one hurting over his death. Everyone who knew Cam must be feeling terrible that he is gone, even if they didn't know him well, and they all need permission to grieve or whatever, to express their feelings or thoughts about it at least. I shouldn't be so selfish and hog all the attention. That's just horrible, and I disgust myself with the way I am thinking. But it's anger that I can't seem to predict or control, and it makes my ribs shake so that my breathing quivers, and I want to do one of those tribal screams, the type that must make a person go completely hoarse for a week (!!!). I feel like it's swallowed down in my throat, as uncomfortable as a hard lump of something that hasn't gone all the way down to my stomach. The feeling becomes unbearable when anyone doesn't understand in any way, or in unknowingly insensitive in any way. I feel like a time bomb today, like a nice-ish person with something really nasty inside that could jump out and hurt someone at any second, and I have no idea and no control over when. When I feel that angry and that unbearable I even think I want to lash out and hurt someone. Admitting that scares me. And I'm ashamed. I don't know what to think about it at all really. I am not like that. But it seems that sometimes, at the moment, I am. Yuck. So that was my weird day. Cheryl did say a lot of helpful sympathetic things to me about Cameron's death, and she said she could see how deeply it was affecting me by how I was in myself this evening. Good. I am glad she noticed. I am so horrible :( But Neil and I communicate so brilliantly, so after I sat all silent in the car on the way home, we had a talk about it all for over an hour. I told him how I'd felt when Cheryl asked him about how he was coping. I asked him if he thought I was being insensitive to his feelings about Cam, because I suddenly worried that I had been so self-focused that I might have missed HIS needs in it all. He said no, he didn't have any needs. He said he felt bad for me and for Cam's family, and sad that he died, but he didn't really know him. He said when Cheryl asked him how he was coping, he had thought, "What would I know?!" although he didn't say that aloud. I told him that's exactly what I thought about him too. I asked him why he didn't "stick up for me" and tell Cheryl just how much Cam had meant to me and just how little he himself had known Cam in comparison. He said he thought he had - he'd told Cheryl it was harder for me because I was really close to him. I must have been away in the distance by that point because I don't remember it. He is so lovely - he was so nice about the things that I told him, and about my horrible thoughts. He said my thoughts were understandable. He said anger was part of grief and maybe this is actually a part of my grief over Cameron? I didn't think of that. I still feel not right about my thoughts and the extent of my anger, but hmmm, I will keep that in mind. I have felt like crying a lot this evening, but it has come with a lot of tummy ache and burny chest which seemed to get worse the nearer I got to tears, so I felt afraid to let it go. I feel quite a bit better at the moment, just achy in my chest now, and much less emotional-feeling. When I was driving to pick Neil up from work I had the radio on, and there was a song playing - I don't know who by but it's a popular chart song anyway. I don't know many of the words but it's something like, "Baby you're all I need, when you're lying here in my arms. It's taking some time to believe, we're in heaven". Something like that. It's a sweet song. I sing along to things in the car without much thinking about whether I'm singing or not, and it was only when I came to a traffic jam on the bridge that I had a moment to listen to what I was singing. Which was this, without even thinking about it: "Cammie you're all I want. I wish you were here in my arms. It's taking some time to believe, you're in heaven..." |
Recent entries..... Cameron's first anniversary - 2004-09-24 |
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