My next post was going to be about the “middle bit”. At the time of writing this, I am in week 15 of a slowly decreasing headache. So, before I keep going, I wanted to be clear about a few things.
The biggest, and the subject of this post is ‘gratitude’. And of course, being grateful.
Grateful, so grateful
The first and possibly most important thing is that though everything I’m talking about is a bit difficult, but I’m not actually in a terrible place. There is no yardstick for this stuff, no comparisons that I can use. I’m not even going to talk about how pancreatitis was an eleven, while this is… Because its a whole other level of pain.
It’s not… Exactly anything you can put on a scale. But, there’s something else that’s hard to quantify, and that’s the fact that I don’t know people that know me.
Some of them know me really well. Some of them are in my diary as people that are people I trust and I am safe with. But… There is a *big* but.
I am struggling to trust people right now.
One of the things thast I’ll keep revisiting is that I have other mental health problems, and to be honest, a lot of people that know me know that if there’s one thing that can be said about me is that I’m very reserved if I don’t trust people easily. I am friendly, cordial, but I don’t like being touched, and I certainly don’t like being put in certain situations. I was in a place, before all this happened, that I was learning to be more confident, but, right now? I’m not.
But there’s this gratitude that I’ve still got the chance to do the things I do. And I’m grateful, of course, for various things. Some of it has been the people that have reached out to talk to me. It’s been really lonely for our family, in some ways. Not that I talk much anyway, but in the last 15 weeks, I’ve barely spoken to anyone. I’ve struggled to keep up with various things, I’ve stopped others.
Nanowrimo….that was just strange. I don’t really want to touch on everything that’s caused it to be strange, really, but I do want to be clear on a few things. It has been really hard, and my 20th, and last year really is going to be where I end it. Not because of what happened, but because after 20 years, it’s probably a position that someone else can take over now. And as far as I can tell, there will be checks in places that make it more reasonable to hand it over without potentially knowing the person that is taking over. And I’m grateful for the chance to have worked with them or all this time. Many of my books wouldn’t have existed without Nanowrimo, and I’ll no doubt pick up when I’m better.
And most of all I’m grateful that the people around me are great. I mean, really great. One friend told me that it was ok, I’d get to know them all over again, and that I know I’m able to do that because we’re already friends.
And on top of all of this, I’m grateful for my family – we barely talked about all of it at Christmas, and my partner, daughter and son have been absolutely amazing for the last few weeks, and filling in for the bits I’m pointing out as ‘loneliness’. And it could have been worse – while we can’t rule out that this is the start of something that might change my life, we can at least rule out a lot of the sinister stuff, and my family have supported me through all of that. I’m lucky – it could have been a brain haemorrhage or stroke, or a tumour, but it’s not. It’s not great not absolutely knowing what it is, but we are at least somewhere with it – which is Status Migrainosus
Very glad to still have you here. And making it to 20 years as a municipal liaison was one heck of an achievement, and I totally agree it also feels like the right time to step down. 21 years doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?