It has been a couple of days of a surprising kind of fettling, the kind you do without quite realising you were. Inside fettling perhaps
Sharing in case anyone else here experiences something similar years on in their own recovery and wonders if they are normal
Had an eye test with an optician, first one in years and years bc well BD, PTSD and pandemic. They recommended varifocals. Which was going to be staggeringly expensive. And I felt that I could not make a decision to save my life. It was a triggering feeling, not even sure why tbh. So, as we do with those transferable skills from our trip through Hell, I used the rule of 3. Told them I needed time to think and would come back the next day. Slept on it.....and decided then that my current life didn’t need varifocals as I was quite content to use two different glasses for different tasks....and that spending £600 on a solution I didn’t feel committed to didn’t work for me either. So I got there.....ended up with a £100 set of new reading glasses instead...but it was odd to see how I can still freeze in indecision over such a simple thing and to hear that snarky critical inner voice (you all know the one lol) wake up and start shouting at me.
Little car was ready to pick up on Thursday. I knew I felt uneasy; I could feel it physically but again wasn’t sure why. I needed to get a train for a 50 minute journey to where little car was, a local town I/we used to spend time in. All went well....lovely men came to preen their mechanics feathers as they showed me their work...one did the welding, another whispered to the electrics, another had sorted out the immobiliser....it was a den of classic car geeks and they stood together waving me off as I drove away
But, belatedly en route, I realised why I felt uneasy....it was my first time on a train since I threw up on my shoes unable to board one in idk 2019?...a train that took me right through the countryside stations where we used to live....to a town where I used to pick up my h from his office and go via when I was working in London. It was like a memory trip
But you know what? I did it and it didn’t hurt. Felt slightly spacy, as if that old life was far away and a different person, but it didn’t hurt. Or make me throw up on my shoes which was good bc I was wearing some particularly snazzy ones
And then Friday was my mother’s 80th birthday so I drove up to see her in the place where my old life blew up, just over an hour away from my new home, having not driven at all for months by this point. Those of you with experience of loved ones with dementia will, I suspect, know that it always hurts to see them regardless of how any visit goes. It is never ‘nice’ or ‘normal’ imho, just somewhere on a sliding scale of ok vs not ok. And I could not help but think of how I wished her birthday were being celebrated as it would have been before her life and mine imploded, how much I yearned to be able to be the daughter I was with the mother I had. And on the drive I noticed that, although I am no longer in the grip of PTSD, that residue of anxiety does not take much to prod awake. Had I remembered a cake knife? Should I wear a mask? Would she recognise me? Was all this birthday stuff just nonsensical folderol when someone’s dementia is so advanced? Would the car be ok? And what if it broke down again? Endless anxiety blips popping up having to be swatted down......its exhausting to live with such a noisy uncertain head isn’t it? But again, I did it. And again the kindness of others helped. My uncle came although he hates seeing her like this. The staff who know her well now and see her as a person still. That little glimmer when we locked eyes and her eyes smiled and I knew she knew who I was, just for a moment. A moment when she looked at my masked uncle, who sounds so much like a louder version of my dad and has his eyes, tilted her head like an inquisitive bird and then giggled at him. And my own ability to be calmly cheerful when she started throwing things like an exasperated toddler and make jokes about being able to save the cake from sailing across the room. (For a frail creature, my mum has a surprisingly good throwing arm....all those muscles honed from years of nursing I suspect
)
So, today, I feel rather proud of myself. Much left still to fettle but I did good these last few days. And it is rather nice to feel proud of myself again
How comforting it is to me now to know that I tried my best even when it wasn’t very good, that I kept going, that I did everything in my power to honour and respect my loved ones even when it was hard, that I have allowed other good folks to show up in my life, that I have accepted help when I needed it, that my own dark places did not eat me entirely. I feel like a little tiny hero in my own life tbh....and I have not felt like that before. That is not nothing in the course of a life. Oh, and that snazzy shoes matter again
Off to a local charity plant sale shortly, set up in a small arboretum a couple of minutes from my new home. A couple coming to pick up a big filing cabinet I no longer need. Uncle coming for brunch on Monday. Another chum coming to visit next week. Work and to do stuff and plans and schemes and company.....I actually have a working diary again with stuff in it, remarkable.....and Gracie is bombing around the house like Usain Bolt to remind me that I have been awol for the last couple of days so she needs cat ‘Me’ time today when I will do weeding and she will do pouncing on invisible things with a chirruping commentary until we are both exhausted and curl up for the evening with a good book and a glass of wine!
Life is nothing like it was tbh, but it’s good enough, more than good enough in many ways
It gets better, my friends, it really does get better......
T: 18 M: 12 (at BD) No kids.
H diagnosed with severe depression Oct 15. BD May 16. OW since April 16, maybe earlier. Silent vanisher mostly.
Divorced April 18. XH married ow 6 weeks later.
"Option A is not available so I need to kick the s**t out of Option B" Sheryl Sandberg
Author
Topic: 
Fettling