YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin
Postings on this site are NOT by mental health professionals, rather the opinions & experiences of a community of regular people. If you feel like you are going to hurt yourself or others PLEASE call Suicide Prevention at 1-800-273-8255
Had a repeat of them last night. Got up at 4am and put on my headlamp and went for a run. Was a good release. Planning on climbing mountain Sunday so will see how the body goes.
I’m trying to pin point why my sleep has become to disturbed.
I did put on some NSDR meditation before bed last night to help calm the mind. It did send me off to sleep very well, it wasn’t till about 1am shit hit the fan.
Been doing self administered injections into my emergency exit as the bowel is playing up so maybe it’s linked. Anxious maybe.
The surgery is coming along but very slowly. I have a boss who is very impatient and unable to understand why people don't work 24/7. The sparky is a young guy who seems to drag the chain a bit. He had the balls to call me a MILF the other day. I almost knocked his teeth out of his head, joking or not - you don't say that. I am old enough to be his mother.
The stress of the moves, the rebuilding of the surgery, and my life have got to me a bit. I am making the time on Sunday to head for the hill. I am going with an old friend who has vast bush experience. We will head up the south side of Fanthams Peak and make our way around the mountain on a ridgeline I have only attempted once before. Going the opposite way to what I am used to, just to mix it up a bit. Plus, there are two geocaches I wish to collect along the way.
This week sleeping has been a horrid process. Getting off to sleep is doable. Staying asleep and in bed is a whole different topic. The Nightmares are Emmy award-winning.
I took a sedative the other night, thinking one might not do the trick I took two. I spend the next day incapable of opening my eyes all day. It was not worth it at all.
Headspace is ok as long as I stay in motion. Have got back into a running schedule and watching the stats improve. Some days I have to force myself onto the tail but once I put one foot in front of the other, I am good to go. There are miles of bush line on the back of the place I am living so that is good for the headspace. I have tried daytime runs and found I am way to in my own head for it. I really struggle with daytime running.
****Little Story****
Back in 1998-1999 I was dancing my life away in a pub, trying to suppress my demons. Every weekend I had this ability to drink and dance and still feel somewhat human the following days. One Saturday night I was on the dance floor wiggling like an idiot and pretending to know the words to some song, when this guy came up to me and started dancing beside me. He was known as Worm. Real name is Brad.
The morning after this night out Worm made it his mission to find me in the then small sleepy township of Taupo. There was a knock at my front door the following day and it was him, he tracked my house down. I screamed and shut the door in his face and from there on in it started a great friendship and attempt at a sexual one. I say attempt as I couldn't bring myself to be with him in a sexual way. Or anyone for that fact. He slept in the spare room if he did ever stay over. We did try once and I ran for the hills. I had come out of a relationship that the guy who had cheated and I was young, i was not one to trust nor allow anyone in really. Worm was different. He stuck around until I broke his heart and said I was moving to London to focus on work. Long story short I came back to NZ early. We never lived in the same towns; he drove three plus hours to see me every weekend in Taupo. He came to scoop me off the floor when I was drunk, pull me out from under the dinner table when I was so very past the point of drunk, stopped me climbing out windows when I was sleepwalking.
We kept in touch over the years, we called each other once a month for 20+ years to make sure we were both still alive There was a couple of years we never spoke as i was so buried in my work. He worked and still does as a professional shooter out of helicopters. He controls the pests over areas of NZ. By 30 he had two new hips, knees and ankle rebuilds due to jumping in and out of the choppers. Lost many friends in accidents in the hills and machines. I was there for his operations, every single one of them was done here in Taranaki. He lived a very simple life. Not a material person at all.
He knew ALL my family really well. My grandparents were so close to him. My mother loved him for some reason. I was not able mentally to sustain a healthy relationship in any way. He is the only living person that knew all my family and understood the dynamics of the family circle.
Brad is known as Worm as he just pops up anywhere. He will fly into a place and fly back out again. There is currently an author doing a book on his work with the NZ SAS.
Why am I typing all this? Because I am learning the older, I get the more I value a true unjudgmental friendship I have. It has stood the test of time, there has been no failures of communication in regard to each other's safety and how we both are. Until the other day....
I knew Worm was going into the bush, into a deep inland area a couple hours' drive from here. He keeps in touch of his location and from time to time will be out of range for hours or sometimes days due to remote locations here. The other night for some reason I lost it. I knew he was in a very dangerous area and i hadn't heard he was ok. 1am rolled around and no word, we were meant to be catching up that morning for coffee. I felt sick, then anger and then fear. I heard from him around 5am, he was safe and confused by my reaction and making his way back to township.
I knew he had problems with his Ute a couple of days before, which brought in thoughts that maybe he was stuck somewhere remote and unable to get help. I had all these things going through my head. It was like I was in a tailspin. When he knocked on the door and came in, I shut down. I was so withdrawn. The familiar fear was back, I was in fear of loss again. Fear of yet another loss in my life. Just when I am learning to open up and let people in, I run a mile the moment I feel this fear. I know everything comes to an end, that we all have our days on this earth not knowing when the last will be, but I can't stand the loss of one more person for whatever reason. We didn't really talk for four days as I didn't know how to explain how I felt. I said I can't do this; I can't do a friendship if I have to feel fear of loss. It was such a horrible thing to say after all these years. It really knocked him back a bit. It took me a while to try get it across to him how I felt. He is so used to not having someone care so much.
Brad has had two relationships since I left for London all those years ago and both women left him because he was unable to get over me, both told him to go be with me. We both knew that wasn't going to happen. He threw himself into the bush life, he walked the hills and flew around the islands killing everything that needed to be removed. He became a true NZ bushman. Many weeks ago, now he saw my ex-husband stalking me in the car and approached him, a warning was given and Joe backed right down and i haven't seen him since, other than the one time on that walkway a couple of weeks ago. Worm has lived Taranaki all these years and never settled down, not even during the two past relationships, we have come full circle.
I am learning that my emotions are far more complex now as I go through the divorce.
There are habits I have formed over the years that are now being pointed out to me as unhealthy and concerning. I have such great fear of not being good enough. So bad now that my dreams repeat it time and time again. I can't go to bed at night unless my house is clean and tidy. Dishes done, floors clean and washing ready for the morning. It is all control I know.
The cooking I love to do so much stopped in the last six months of my marriage. Now I am cooking every night and making meal plans again.
Sometimes I feel my bad habits are showing more than my good!
I have been tempted to have a glass of wine with friends and can't bring myself to let the liquid touch my lips. Yet I am happy to take a sedative to sleep! Donya tried to get me to have a glass a wine a couple of weeks ago and I just couldn't. I was unable to explain why.
So, there is my little observation of myself of the last couple of weeks. I feel so dam tired and in need of going bush.
Back to the surgery to unload some things.
Will do some photos for you all this weekend of the climb.
Hugs to all.
Here's a book that may be of interest, and you may have heard of the author?
I thought about it after your current post and and your earlier one on possum control.
She struggles with the same conundrums... (conundra?)
“In Hedgehogs, Killing and Kindness, anthropologist Laura McLauchlan describes her fieldwork in the UK and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Her description is deeply personal, as she writes about the emotional strain of spending months caring for injured hedgehogs in the UK, then subsequently setting traps for them with amateur conservationists in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The book is made particularly thought-provoking by McLauchlan's awareness of her perspective as a pākehā (non-Māori, settler-descended New Zealander). This allows her to critique aspects of dominant conservation culture, starting with the acknowledgement that it is indeed a culture, not a self-evident truth.”
Mental Fairy wrote: ↑December 12th, 2024, 4:51 pm
I can't do a friendship if I have to feel fear of loss.
Gia, I'm a bit worried about you since you seem to need danger in your life and at the same time it weighs on you. The excitement of an unconventional action man like "Worm" seems addictive and exclusive, and it draws you in.
No disrespect to him, but he reminds me in a way of an artist I knew and admired in my early twenties: very intense and larger than life and even though he was giving and generous, and not toxic or manipulative in an obvious way, everything around him became tainted by his strong personality. I ended up feeling he sucked the air out of the room, supplanting my own thoughts. But it was exciting at the time and there was always drama and stories to tell.
The constancy of an uneventful conventional existence can be oppressingly boring but I have come to appreciate some of its benefits. Nothing is spinning around out there, and if there is any turmoil it's mostly inside my own head. One day can mostly resemble the next, and I can carve out space for little hikes and doing creative stuff without upending routines and the seasonal work, though it's OK to not always do the dishes. I know this is not how you see life. Hugs.
"Most people are other people" — Oscar Wilde "Those who dream of the possible will suffer the greatest disillusion" — Fernando Pessoa
I also find it interesting I welcome aspects of dangerous hobbies. I think all the years in search and rescue makes me think differently in a way. I do accept I put myself in danger when I step onto the mountain, however years and years of training has trained me to think about the worst case scenarios and taking all the precautions I can to avoid them.
I’ve been climbing since the age of 15 and many times faced my own possible ending both on and off the hill. However, without it I don’t feel like I can clear my head. Hence why I took up running.
I feel like I tease the reaper at times. Just to check in with myself.
It is Monday. It feels like one Monday after the next keeps rolling around and nothing changes.
Today i woke very tearful. For the last few days i have been feeling verbally trapped, unable to really communicate how i am feeling. My thoughts are very up and down. This morning i woke and had a good cry. I think i knew what was coming when i picked up my phone.
I was a few weeks overdue my tests i am meant to do every three months. Reluctantly i went in a couple of weeks ago and samples were taken of skin. However, i postponed my blood work. Not sure why, bury my head in the sand i think. My results came in over the weekend and found i am incredibly low in white cells and confirmed Leukopenia, and anemia. My red blood count was way way way to high, which will explain a few things. The fatigue is really quite something.
Awaiting news from Oncology about what to do.
Yesterday was spent on the mountain. I was going to attempt summit, however i saw the clouds and did some math and thought it better i do the Lake Dive loop track. It is a 6-8 hour hike from hell! I have done this hike before with Donya, anticlockwise. Let me confirm that clockwise is no better. Both directions kill the legs and the pride when you fall in the same river twice! My itch to do the trail the opposite way is now squashed and i pledge to never return to that trail for as long as i am of this mortal world! I found at times i was mentally putting to much pressure on myself on the hike, at times i wanted to just throw up, scream or just sit down and give up. I didn't really want to accept i didn't want to be there yesterday. I was pushing myself so hard to just get out of the bush, yet a part of me wanted to sit and surrender to the elements.
My headspace has ongoing echos of negative thoughts. Work in progress.
There's no need to push yourself, especially with anemia. There's nothing to prove.
Just getting out to enjoy the beautiful NZ surroundings you have is enough.
