After midnight...

I went to sleep real early last night, it was still light outside, but I didn´t care. I was yawning and tired and ready to go to bed. I couldn´t think of a better place to be and all I could think about was how nice it would be to stretch out under the duvet and read my book. It had rained all evening, sometimes very fiercely, and I hoped it would keep on raining during the night. No such thing happened, though, and now it is only lightly cloudy, but it is still 20C outside and warm.

Needless to say. because I went to sleep so early, I woke up after midnight and was wide awake again. That´s when my sleeping pill stops working. I should say, my fall asleep pill, because that´s all it is. I won´t get real sleepy again now for a few hours and then go back to bed. You could say that I´ve had a long nap.

I googled my boots and found a picture of them, but they were the wrong color and didn´t look nearly as elegant as they are, so I´m not going to post it after all. Maybe I will take a photo of them when I get them tomorrow. I can take pictures of Tyke and Gandhi at the same time and post them too. You will finally get to see what Tyke looks like with his short haircut.

Every once in awhile a dark thought crosses my mind. It is like a dark cloud crossing in front of the sun. It only lasts for a minute and then it is gone again, but for that minute I am steeped in moroseness and I am reminded of what it is like to be depressed. I hope these dark thoughts are not harbingers of a depression and I´m trying to treat them lightly and not take them too seriously.

I do want to be alert to the signs, though, and not be taken unawares. They are increasing in occurrence and that´s what I want to prevent from happening. I may have them due to circumstances. I am the support system of my younger sister, who wants advice, but who will listen to none of it and keeps making the same mistakes over and over again, no matter how much input I give her. I´m now to the point where I want to withdraw my support and let her find her way on her own. This is a hard decision to make, though, but I´m disheartened enough to make it.

I never want my mental health to be dependent on that of other people´s. It can´t be so that I have to pay the price for the foolishness of other people´s actions. I´m sure that it´s not how it´s meant to be. I do think we should help each other, but when it stops being help and turns into an exercise in futility, you have to stop putting in the energy and the effort.

I don´t know if this is the cause of my dark thoughts. I may have them all on my own regardless of this. It may be that time of year when it is approaching autumn. The weather sure has been like it and the days are getting shorter, especially with the rainy days. I have to turn the lights on early in the apartment, gloomy as it is when the sun doesn´t shine.

Tyke has misplaced his tennis ball and I can´t find it anywhere. I have been on my hands and knees looking under all the furniture, but it has disappeared. I´ve been in every room. He keeps coming to me asking for it, but I have no idea where it is. It´s very frustrating and I hope he finds it himself, but he is as stumped as I am. He loves that ball and I should get some more.

I think it´s time to go back to bed. I´m ready now. I´ll get myself a glass of milk and be off.

Have a good morning when you get up.

Ciao,
Nora

Pedagogy.

My sister has a master's degree in pedagogy, which involves learning a lot of psychology, so you would expect her to have a lot of psychological insight and the understanding and diplomacy that comes with it.

She invited me for coffee this afternoon and the first thing she said to me, when she saw me, was that I did not look good. She said I looked all bent over and turned into myself. I tell you, that's not a great way to be greeted and not a very diplomatic way.

I explained to her what had happened to me yesterday and how I had coped with it and she agreed with me that I had a wire loose. She said that things had not been going well with me since she had gone to Greece. Now, that is her perception. She sees me so little that she does not see me on the days that everything is fine and when I am happy and I am functioning well.

She also said that the way my eyes looked, the expression in them, would discourage people to approach me, because they would wonder what was wrong with me. I assume that at that moment my eyes looked downcast and tired and I told her so and that they usually didn't look that way and that as a rule I am easily approachable and that I have good contact with people that is generally very upbeat.

I think my sister doesn't really see me, she only sees my disorder and looks for signs and proof of it everywhere. I don't want to be in a position where I constantly have to waylay her preconceived ideas about me and I have decided to put the relationship way far away on the back burner. I am constantly being hurt and disappointed by her attitude towards me, when I am being so extremely supportive of her when she needs me. When she sees me, she sees a worst case scenario, she doesn't see all the victories. In order to protect myself from her, I have to produce a large gap between us and it doesn't matter, because our relationship was one of one way traffic going from me to her and it was draining me.

Anyway, I had known this all along, but I am writing her off as someone who can be a member of my support team, which for now only includes all of you and the Exfactor and my SPN and the people and therapist in my ergo therapy group. So, I suppose the ergo therapy group continues to be important for now. I talked to the Exfactor this afternoon and he confirmed my conclusions about my sister and reinforced my choice on what to do about her.

I know I am a little bit screwed up right now, but my common sense hasn't left me completely and there are areas in my life about which I can make good decisions. My screwed upness is selective. Right now it involves my life with the computer and my identity with my blog. I do have to separate those two. I am not my blog, even though it feels like it is such a large part of me and my lifeline to the world. Yesterday I was mad with exhaustion. The lack of sleep and the awful many hours spent behind the computer made me get lost in an unreal world. I lost touch with reality and threatened to loose my identity.

Today I am just in awe of that happening and me being that vulnerable and knowing that I have to watch out for that. I must sleep when other people sleep and I must limit my time behind the computer when I am tired. I wish I had someone to watch over me, but I don't, so I have to do it myself and not go make unproductive phone calls. I must not panic and start to loose track of the big picture by getting lost in the details. I must have the wherewithal to survive a bad day, knowing that a good night's sleep clarifies a lot of the problems.

I will have a good talk with my SPN tomorrow and explain to her exactly what happened. How scared I was of losing my identity. I'm not scared anymore now. I realize the difference between me and my blog, we are two different entities, although the line is still very fine.

All, I can say is, thank goodness for my medication, where would I be without it?

Ciao...