Really, truly, madly...

It's Friday afternoon again and I pride myself on the fact that I still know which day of the week it is. Apparently I'm not so befuddled by my depression that I don't know that. I was a bit confused in the middle of the week, but those were muddled days and there wasn't much to make them stand out individually. The start and the end of the week are much easier to tell apart.

I'm not going to let myself get all excited because it's the weekend now. I've decided that it actually doesn't make one bit of difference with the rest of the week. I can act like it is the weekend in the middle of the week just as well. I have as few obligations then as I do on the weekends. 

There are the same amount of chores to do. The only difference is that on Sunday I don't get any mail and it's an official day of rest. I'll just make the middle of the week official days of rest too. That doesn't mean I won't achieve anything. It just means that I'll take the mental pressure off for myself. It will feel like I won't have to perform. 

One thing with a depression...once you've acknowledged it to yourself and the rest of the world, there's nothing you can do but wait it out. My medication has been increased and all I can do now is wait for it to start working and I have to be patient. The waiting is actually kind of boring because on top of that you can't get excited about anything. Nothing turns you on. You're just a bump on a log.

I'm lucky because once I realize that it's a depression I'm fighting, I immediately stop having all thoughts of self hatred. I have no destructive inner dialogue going on. All is silent. But it's the silence that's so boring because there's nothing. It's like I'm empty. 

I suppose it's better to be empty than have a self destructive inner dialogue. That's why I need to try and fill my time with other things. I need to keep my mind occupied for as far as that is possible. It's hard to concentrate on things in specific, but for little periods of time I am able to apply myself. The best things are taking naps, but you do get done sleeping at some point. 

I have to go and walk the dog. Surprisingly, the sun is shining. 

Ciao,

Nora

Throwing a spanner in the works...

I was going to spoil this post by telling you how depressed I am, but I've decided not to do that and for the duration of this night only to look at the bright side of life. I'm sure I can find some amazingly cheerful things to write about if I try hard enough. 

I'm not so depressed right now that I only see things in the colors gray and black. I'm sure there are some brighter colors lurking in the shadows and I will set my sight on them. There's some yellow and bright red and light green. Little dots of it and I will see what I can do with them. 

I can tell you that I'm drinking an excellent cup of coffee and no doubt that has influence on the state of my mind, good coffee making for a better mood. I've also got a pack of newly made cigarettes, so I'm all set. 

For a while anyway I'm comfortable, except that I have a dog breathing down my neck who wants impossible things from me. I'll just have to ignore him and get on with it.

I do have an awful pain in my bad shoulder and I woke up with that. I've tried to move it around to try and get whatever kink is in it out, but it hasn't helped yet. I may be coming down with a case of bursitis again. I will have to rub that sport's creme on it and hope it works. 

It's impossible not to be influenced by the quiet and peacefulness of the night. I can almost imagine that I don't live in town but in the solitude of the countryside. The suburbs are awfully silent at night. The only noises I hear are those in my own apartment and those are very minute. The clicking of the dog's tags being one of them and the loudest.

I'm reminded of the time I lived in a village of 600 souls in the middle of the mountains on a dead end road. It was a wonderful place to be. There was much quiet and solitude and company if you so desired. I have fond memories of the place. My kids were little there and had a fun childhood. 

I better not go down memory lane because I'm a product of my turbulent life. I have many sad memories as well and they come floating to the top along with the good ones. It's better to stay in the here and now and to not remember too much. That's a closed book and it has nothing to do with my life now. I'm a totally different person living a totally different life and nothing at all like I had imagined. 

Today my effort is going to be to get the mail out of the mailbox and to deal with it and to deal with the mail that's already lying on my desk. If I get that done I'll be satisfied. No doubt I'll also talk with my psychiatrist after the email I sent him about becoming depressed. I've also got to change my bed so I can look forward to clean sheets tonight after I've watched the thriller that's going to be on TV.

I think I'll take some pain medication for my shoulder as it's slowly becoming more sore. Going back to bed and resting it will be good for it. I just won't sleep on my side. It will be a bit tricky to walk the dog today. I'll have to use my other hand to hold the leash. The dog does pull.

I hope you'll all have a good day. It's going to be drizzly here, but not too cold. 

Ciao,

Nora

The weekday blues...

Much to my dismay, it is Monday morning again and it seems that the weekend flew by in no time at all. I sure as heck don't know what happened to it. It seemed it was Friday evening only just a very short time ago. I think the weekends are too short to enjoy properly and they ought to be three days long instead of two. 

As of now, I'm making Friday a weekend day also. I'll just have to ignore the fact that the domestic help will be here that day cleaning my apartment. If I just overlook that minor inconvenience, I should have no problem treating Fridays as a day off. It will be for the sake of my peace of mind that I do it. 

It would be better for my state of mind if I treated every day like a day off, but I don't think you can get away with that in real life. Responsibilities do have a way of piling up. Maybe if I approached them differently it would make a difference, but I have not yet found a way to do that. 

I would want to approach them lightheartedly with hardly any care. Really, that's all they need. I don't have to put so much serious effort into them. They are never matters of life or death, yet I act as if they are. I act like the load is heavier to bear than it really is. I need to lighten up. 

I need to have a weekend attitude during the week. In the weekends I do chores too, but somehow they seem to weigh less, as if they are not so very crucial and they are done easier. But then I've always liked the weekends better. Even when I still had my kids and they were home from school.

Weather wise it's actually going to be a nice day today with partial cloudy skies and enough sunshine. The temperature is going to be pleasant and I won't have to dress so warm. I can open the windows again after a cold night.

It will be the usual emotionally exhausting day with both my personal helper and the domestic help being here one after the other. I never look forward to that and I have to mentally prepare myself for it. I have to shore up my defenses to deal with it. I always look forward to the moment when everybody is gone again. 

I always feel like I survived that time and that the time spent alone after it is my reward for it. So, all I have to do is hang in there long enough and be patient and wait it out. Soon enough I will be by myself again, although it doesn't seem soon enough to me. Maybe I need to make a change in my arrangements. It may be time to rethink some things. 

I've got to go back to bed for a while and get some more sleep before the first person gets here. I do need a few hours more sleep. It's just becoming dawn. I could stay up now and start the day, but there's no sense in being up so early. I'd like to postpone the inevitable just a while longer.

It's time to take my medicines and have a glass of milk. The dog's been out back and he's sound asleep in the armchair. We should be all set for a few more hours. 

Have a good morning.

Ciao,

Nora

The pesky dog strikes again...

The dog has been out back three times already and still he wants to go outside again. I refuse to let him because I don't want to stand by the back door one more time and wait for him to get done with whatever he does in the dark out there. 

So I have to ignore him, even though he looks at me with pleading brown eyes that will melt your heart. I have to be tough, but it doesn't come easy. He's such a sweet little animal. I know that every move I make will give him hope. 

Needless to say, it's in the middle of the night and I've already slept my requisite hours for now. Because it's Saturday, I feel that I can be very careless and not worry about when I go back to bed and how late I will sleep this morning, but it will probably be just like any other day. 

It's just an illusion that the weekend days are different than the weekdays. It's all in my mind. I just have a sense of freedom that I actually can have during the week most of the time too, unless I have an appointment and those don't happen all that frequently. 

I must somehow gain the same sense of liberation during the week that I have on the weekends, except that I don't know yet how to do it. I always feel that the sword of Damocles hangs over me during the week and that anything at all can happen and I prepare for the worst, leaving my stomach tied up in knots a lot. 

I realize that I have to learn to relax more and to apply the techniques that I have learned in yoga more often. I do that quite a bit, but I think I forget to at some crucial moments. I think the nap that I take during the afternoon is the thing that helps me get through the day. If it weren't for that, I would carry a lot more stress with me. 

Absolutely nothing of interest at all was on TV last night, so I made it a short night and went to bed early. I very cozily laid under my warm duvet with the cover with little red roses on it and listened to the radio. The dog and the cat cavorted on the bed for a while before they settled down. 

They don't care if I'm lying in it. They just stumble right over me. I'm just an obstacle to get over that's in the way of them. They do, after a while, calm down and find their spot to lie down next to me. That's when I can go to sleep properly. 

We have nothing but cold and rainy weather to look forward to for a while. I'm not sure how I feel about this and I don't know if the weather is affecting my outlook. I don't mind that the temperatures are cool, but I think that I do miss the sunshine.

I'm looking forward to lying in bed and listening to the rain come down. To me that is the coziest sound. It is one of the pleasures of life. 

I hope you'll all have a good morning and a splendid day. 

Ciao,

Nora

No chickens crossing the street...

It's early in the morning and any time now the sun is going to come up. It will not be the spectacular sight I make it out to be. It will slowly get light and there will not be musical accompaniment as there would be in a documentary narrated by David Attenborough. It will be a very understated event. An every day occurrence.

On top of that, it is foggy now and it will be cloudy later, so you can well imagine that it will not look like I am on the Serengeti Plains. Today will be just a bad weather day in the Netherlands in July. We're stuck under a low pressure system. 

It would be nice if life were accompanied by a permanent appropriate soundtrack, but there is no such thing, although I guess people with iPods would disagree with that. Maybe it would become somewhat nerve wrecking after a while if every experience were set to music, even if it was the music of your choice. 

I would need a lot of Baroque, for instance. Lots of Bach. That would fit my life best. For me no highly dramatic, sweeping movements by Mahler. That would be way too emotional. I would only go as far as Vivaldi for the bigger events. 

Let's face it, though. There are no really big events in my life anymore. They're all well behind me. All I have left now is the preciseness of every day predictability and the false sense of control that I try to keep over it. 

I say it is a false sense because you rarely can control all the events in your life. You are always left vulnerable because you're a human being and part of a whole. You'd have to be a recluse not to be exposed to that. 

***

I watched a fun thriller last night. It was called 'Sherlock' and yes, there was a Dr Watson, but it played in the present time and there was no question of time travel. There had never been another Sherlock Holmes. I was a bit skeptical at first, but it turned out to be a brilliant episode and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope there's another episode on soon because I'll be watching it with pleasure. 

***

Yesterday was a shitty day. I was in a state of depression practically all day. It didn't lift until the evening, like it usually does when the day is over. I don't know what to make of it and I don't know what the cause of it is. I'll blame it on the weather for lack of a better reason. 

I do so intensely dislike my moods and the eternal shifts in them that I find unpredictable. I always try to find the reason, but it is not always obvious and when I think I have found it, it very often doesn't turn out to be the right one. 

All I can hope for is a shift toward a better mood and that this doesn't take too long. I do feel like a puppet on a string. 

***

I must go back to bed. I've got some sleeping left to do. Today should be a quite ordinary day without surprises in it. I've got to do some chores, but nothing spectacular. There is going to be rain and it should be a good day to read. 

Have a good day, all of you.

Ciao,

Nora

Exit - stage right.

I'm waiting for the dog to wake up so we can go for our evening stroll around the fields. It's not raining now, so it would be the perfect opportunity. There is a brisk wind blowing, but I've put some strong hairspray on my hair that's hurricane proof, so I have nothing to worry about. 

The dog is snoring in the armchair, but I know that just as easily he can wake up any moment. It's just a nap he's taking. I know he has to go out because he hasn't eaten his dinner yet. He only does that after he has been aired properly. He does have his steady habits. 

I've taken a nap, so I'm in good shape. I was doing less well before I took it and that is because I was woken up prematurely by my personal helper this morning. I wasn't done sleeping yet.

I had set the alarm clock, but had shut it off and turned over for some more sleep. I was taken by surprise when she rang the intercom. It took two cups of coffee for me to become enthused about being up, but I was approachable and not grumpy. I just didn't move and talk at a great speed right away. 

I've got a decent outfit on and I will try to wear it as long as possible this week. I must try to keep it clean. It's very warm and comfortable and it looks good and those are my main concerns.

I was wearing something yesterday that looked okay, but it made my flabby stomach stick out and that won't do at all. I had to keep trying to remember to tighten my muscles and of course I didn't. That made me look like a saggy old woman, unless you only looked at me selectively. 

I'm very critical of how other people look, so I assume they in turn are critical of how I look. Or maybe it is the other way around. I don't know which comes first, the chicken or the egg. I'm sure I have some sort of complex. 

I watched 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' on YouTube. I had never seen that movie, although I tried to watch it once on an airplane very unsuccessfully. I'm going to watch 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' next. I can see how a person could get completely hooked on these movies. It's especially interesting to see the actors get older with each one. 

I have to wake up the dog and take him for a walk. At the rate he is sleeping, we're never going to go anywhere. I still have to eat dinner and watch the news. There will be no thriller on tonight. Too bad, but there's that movie. 

I hope you'll all have a good evening.

Ciao, 

Nora