Changing the subject

There have been a couple of times recently where Tess and I have been discussing something and one of us has become overloaded or can't handle the subject matter and have asked to change the subject. Yesterday it was me, and I surprised myself a little just now by thinking it was a bit of a cop-out.

My reasoning then was that I was at work and getting wound up, which seems a sound motivation. We were talking about my frustration with waiting for assessment with the mental health team, having made the decision to accept the doctor's offer of anti-depressants to try and level me out. I considered that if I were already talking I don't think I'd need medicating and perhaps seeking some private treatment. It occurred to me that I couldn't afford any interim private counselling because of my restrictive budget, and that's when I started to feel really quite shit.

It comes back to the budget again, doesn't it? Damn. What have I already written about this? Oh, I see. Well, I can hardly read that without feeling the darkness descend and my mood drop again, so there's definite strong feeling involved in the subject. And here I am again, desperately wanting to change the subject.

I guess I find this reaction interesting because in a counselling environment it's often impossible to just "change the subject" when things get too hard to explore and, indeed, it's kind of the point. Explore the things that are difficult to face, process them and move on with action, understanding or a change in attitude. I guess that's hard to do now I'm feeling low; previously I'd have sat here at the blog and chipped away and sorted it out. Now it seems easier to run and hide than face it. Gah.

One of the reasons I'm loathe to explore this particular subject is because I simply don't want to think that my trip to Australia in October won't happen...

Actually... *runs and hides*

Do I need to go to the doctor?

Specifically, to get back on the anti-depressants? When I went for my chat about how low I was feeling I filled out the fantastic questionnaire and got a moderate-to-severe rating for my current bout of depression. She accepted my request for another referral to the mental health team and also offered me anti-depressants.

I declined at the time for a few reasons. I got a great sense of pride in ending years of anti-depressant use during my therapy a couple of years ago, and though it'd be nice to beat this episode without chemical intervention.

My brain has brought the subject up a couple of times in the past few days. I didn't really pay much attention until Kate said "Are you taking anything for it?" last night. My response, "Funnily enough, it's crossed my mind a couple of times recently," and set myself the task of exploring it further today.

Why has it jumped into my mind? I've had various mood swings recently. I think if I'd have started therapy straight away I'd perhaps be on a more even keel and wouldn't really be thinking about medication, but because I'm having to wait for the system to pick me up and process me I think I'm just in limbo, neither here nor there, quite possibly deteriorating while all this stuff in my head twists and turns and stagnates and confuses.

I guess it comes down to the benefits versus the drawbacks. In writing that down, I'm trying to think of the drawbacks and clutching at straws a little. Ah, ok. There's the slight dent to the self-esteem that comes with having chemical assistance to help me through this. I'd love to think that I'm the master of my mind but it appears otherwise.

The benefits seem clear: fewer mood swings, settling of sleep, perhaps a little cotton-wool around the mind. I'm concerned that it'll dumb me down but I'd like to think I'd notice if it were having anything other than a levelling effect on me.

The more I write about it here the more obvious it seems: There's no real reason why I shouldn't go back to medication and a few good reasons why I should.

*makes phone call*

All the defences have gone up

and all the best practice has fallen down. I'm a bit of a mess again, I'm fuzzy-headed, tired, comfort-eating and losing my grip on all the wonderful work I'd done during my counselling in summer 2008 and all the effort I'd made to improve myself subsequently. Parts of my brain are going "What a waste!" which is true to an extent, but I think it laid a foundation that helped me recognise the warning signs and mitigate the effect of this most recent downturn in mood. I must admit, I'm proud that I've caught it this time instead of spiralling out of control as has happened many times in the past, and I'm pleased that I managed to last two and a half years without prolonged emotional turmoil.

It still seems a shame that something so wonderful as meeting Miss Right has taken my brain, turned it upside-down, shaken it up and let bits fall out indiscriminately. I fear suppressed emotion is the culprit here, along with a heavy heart filled with loss and distance and absence. The time Tess and I had together was incredible and when she returned home my world fell apart; I felt real pain for the first time in years and it shattered me. Because it was so overwhelming I felt I had no choice but to suppress it and even then it leaked out quite often. Through the process of deciding to continue the relationship long-distance that pain transformed into, or was masked by, elation and excitement. I fear it's now taken the form of underlying pain of absence, and my ability to deal with that seems to be diminishing every day we are apart.

Some old coping mechanisms and behaviour embedded during the formative times of previous relationships have reared its head, all stuff that freaks me out and I resent deeply. This emotional turmoil has stirred up some old thoughts and fears that, in turn, have triggered other behaviours and emotional responses, causing quite a wash of overwhelming good and bad thoughts.

I'm having difficulty quieting my mind at present. As I've written recently it's one of the things my brain does to stop me thinking bad thoughts, and it was one of the little flags that popped up when I realised I was feeling low again. I've read a little about meditation and how to clear the mind and I'd like to work more on that. I tried it this morning after waking and got frustrated within about five minutes of failure. One of the keys is practice, so I'm not going to give up just like that because I can see the benefits of being able to clear my mind, particularly when trying to get to sleep or on waking and wanting to return to slumber.

I'm frustrated by many things at the moment. I'd write a list but they all seem insignificant individually, and I'm unsure as to whether my frustrations are justified or a reaction to my mood in general.

Most concerning is the switch back to comfort eating. Heavy, fatty, sweet and rubbish foods are the order of the day again, while energy drinks battle tiredness and make me feel human again. I'm dependent on the buzz acquired from eating crisps and fatty foods and it's doing my head in, not least because I'm putting on weight quite rapidly. I remember how I felt when people started commenting on how much weight I'd lost last year, how fantastic it was to have to bring my belt in another notch and how incredible my self-esteem was enhanced every time I put a "medium" t-shirt on and felt comfortable in it.

Now, I'm putting weight on again and I'm definitely noticing it. The rubbish food diet has been creeping in since around my birthday last year and I'd guess I've put a stone in weight back on, of the one and a half I lost last year. Fucksocks, I hate that.

I'd love to say that right here and now I'm going to be more responsible in my shopping habits, better at home-cooking food instead of relying on munchies and processed crap to see me through, and walk more. I can't really see it happening until I get my head sorted, but I know that doing all of that would make me feel better and improve my self-esteem a millionfold. I guess I just need to regain the motivation for going out and exploring my locality; unfortunately there's not many paths around here I haven't explored, particularly on this side of town, so to make the most of new paths I need to travel out of town and walk back or travel across town and explore the paths on that side. I have had little smatterings of interest in the charity too, which'll help introduce motivation, but I'd like to do it off my own back. I know that walking is good motivation for healthy eating and healthy eating is a good motivation for walking; I just need to get out of the habit of eating for comfort and sitting on my arse distracting myself instead of getting out there and enjoying my headspace.

I'm noting here that I just went to the shop and steered clear of the easy option of a crappy cheese, mayo and onion sandwich, diet coke and crisps and got sesame Ryvita, humus and low-fat soft cheese instead. I know damned well this stuff tastes better and is slightly better for you than that other crap, so I'd like to think that last night's culinary abomination was a watershed in my eating habits.

Lots more to say but I've run out of steam here. I do feel a little better for getting some of this stuff out and I may blog again today or tomorrow to allow some more stuff to escape.

Poh-suh-tih-vih-tee!

So yeah, I’ve got a fair amount going for me at the moment. Daughter is happy, settled at home, at school and in her social circle, the flat is comfortable and feels like a home, I’ve met a wonderful girl with the promise of a long-term future, and spring has sprung with flowers, bugs, buds on trees and, best of all, fair old bunches of sunshine blazing out of the sky.

I’ve already started topping-up my rather meagre tan having spent two whole days out walking in glorious sun. I’ve got my walking legs on: seven-day total 23.7 miles; twelve-day total 42 miles over four walks. I love it, especially the longer, more challenging distances. I’m hoping to do the Grand Union Canal from north to south through Milton Keynes at 12.3 miles, a walk to write-up for publication perhaps. I want to get to twenty miles with no aches, pains or blisters, then do another middle-distance walk the next day or so, then get myself doing two consecutive twenty-mile days. Then three days at twenty miles each. If I can manage that, I know I can do something a bit more challenging like the Ridgeway or my 100-mile fundraising walk to the sea.

Anyway, this little push towards positivity reminds me that I looked at My Happy Book at for the first time in a while. I’ve not posted there since April 2010; a sign perhaps that things were stable enough to remove the requirement for reflection or that general apathy set in with the process. During a discussion with Mark about skills gained during therapy, reflection and introversion came up as perhaps the most important tools I gained.

The Happy Book was suggested to me a few years ago as a tool to reflect on the good things through the darkness. Nice work, Tracey. It’s something both Sophie and I have used to great effect, and going back to read it now is a wonderful thing, allowing me to empathise with my past self and see through this hazy fog I appear to have hanging over me. Coincidentally, I’ve been meaning to chronicle the roller-coaster that has been the past five months at I think, in starting to writing in the Happy Book again, it’d be good to duplicate a post here and there that looks at the recent past and the positive things that have happened. I intend to write in my Happy Book regularly again and I think that would be a good kick-start.

---

In mid-October 2010 something unusual happened. My landlady passed me a hand-written note that had been dropped through the letterbox. It was from someone at the Vale of Aylesbury Housing Trust, the people responsible for our social housing application, and said “Came to visit you about your housing application” with a name and number.

I’d been patiently checking the web site every two weeks as required. Check the web site, find suitable houses, express an interest and wait for offers. None were forthcoming and I’d become a little disenchanted with the whole process, simply because very few suitable properties were coming up and those that did were offered to people who’d been on the list for longer than us. Fair enough, really, this is how the process works.

When I saw the note my heart skipped a beat. I’d recently expressed an interest in three flats I thought were on either the new estate under construction on Moreton Road or those in the town centre, as I didn’t recognise the road name. I went to check the results on the web site and noted that one of the flats I’d marked was listed as “offered” and had our subscription date next to it. My heart didn’t just skip a beat, it tried to leap out of my chest and make a break for freedom. It couldn’t be, could it? It was too soon, other people deserved it more, we’ve got a roof over our head, I mean, whaaaaat? It was too much of a coincidence and I couldn’t help but get a little excited even, despite myself, telling daughter there was a miniscule possibility we’d been offered somewhere to live.

I called the Housing Trust and spoke to the person who’d left the note, who was rather coy about her reason for making an appointment to come and see me: “I’m just coming to talk to you about your application.” I could have pushed for more information but hey, don’t bite the hand that feeds you. A few days later she arrived and checked where we were living to make sure it matched our application, and told us the news: we were being offered a flat on the newly-built estate on Moreton Road. I felt like I was living in a fantasy world at this point, with a million fears and exultations fighting for space and attention in my brain. She made a further appointment for a viewing a few days later, and on the 3rd November daughter and I wandered up Moreton Road to the show-home, met the lady and was taken up to the new block of flats for a guided tour of our potential new home.

It all feels a bit surreal, recounting this; it’s almost like a movie shot in Vaseline-o-vision. An image just ran through my mind, coupled with a fair amount of emotion. After the lady had shown us around the flat, she looked at me and said “So, would you like to take it?” I was overwhelmed, to be honest. We’d only been on the list for about twelve weeks and to get offered somewhere so quickly was a shock. The idea of having to find funds for simple things like a fridge, washing machine, cooker, carpets and beds was frightening. The whole concept of taking on our own place, brand-new, empty, with so much to achieve to make it habitable was just plain scary. I’d been sleeping badly over the few days between the good news and the viewing so I was already pretty stressed-out. The image: I turned to Sophie and said “What do you think?” and she grinned and nodded at me. I accepted, and was elated and terrified at the same time. We signed the lease on the 3rd and I paid the first week’s rent on 4th November 2010.

What followed was quite, quite crazy. There was a fair amount of urgency involved in getting moved-in to the flat and out of the annexe else I’d be paying rent for two places at once, so I chatted to my landlady and arranged to move out the following weekend. Over the next ten days I saved like mad, packed up our whole life from Page Hill and, with the help of friends and family alike, moved it all across town and up two flights of stairs into the flat.

Tracey donated a sofa-bed, which I thought was a sofa and was wonderfully surprised to find out a few weeks later that no; it’s a sofa-bed. The move coincided with Barry moving-in with Tracey and he had a bunch of furniture, a big double mattress and duvet and some kitchen items to shift. Woowoo! That was a massive, massive help and they helped move everything back and forth. Splendid.

Mark helped move boxes and bags while Kate sourced white goods on the internet. The first night we stayed in the flat, Sophie, her friend Katie and I had fish and chips and cans of fizzy drink on the sofa in the middle of the living room. Eventually we found a double-oven ceramic-hob cooker for free from Freecycle, and a wonderful washing machine on ebay which was a total fucking bargain. I found a tall fridge-freezer on ebay and Mark’s dad kindly drove his camper van over to this side of Northampton to collect it. Everything was wired in and the kitchen eventually took shape and became a fully-functioning unit.

The next few days are a blur. I worked, sorted stuff out for the flat, and slept. One major stumbling block to getting furniture in the right place and unpacking was that there were no carpets anywhere in the flat, just dusty concrete floors. After much to-ing and fro-ing I managed to get a reasonable quote for putting carpet down and accepted it instantly. Trying to pin down exactly when people were doing what was difficult and frustrating, leading to a constructive blog post about uncertainty. Finally the carpet went down, with daughter getting her surprise orange floor. Her reaction to this made me grin, having told her explicitly that the whole flat would be furnished with a light cream-coloured carpet. Having talked it through with my parents I thought “Why not?” and plumped for an orange section for her room only. I think she likes it!

Something to note here is that, along with having no carpet for the first week or so, the boiler was wired-in incorrectly so we had no heating for the first ten days. Considering this was the last two weeks of November and it was particularly wintery, it wasn't the nicest of welcomes to our new home but it really showed how privileged we are to have central heating.

Three weeks after we moved into the flat was my 35th birthday. I’d planned a wintery walk with a cracking view from Ivinghoe Beacon but unfortunately we were beset with snow and fog which made the trip pretty difficult and, with the fog blocking the wonderful views, pretty pointless. I hope to arrange to do it again once spring is in full bloom. I chilled out for the day and spent a lovely evening in the company of wonderful people at Tracey’s house bedecked with banners and balloons. Awesome! It’s been so long I can’t remember the last time I had banners and balloons for my birthday.

Two days later and a friend from Australia, who I knew via the internet and who’d been travelling around England visiting other internet friends for a few weeks, came to visit for the night. It was great to meet her and we had a lovely evening exchanging stories and experiences, checking out the town and going for dinner at Prezzo. We stayed up late chatting and eventually fell asleep, innocently enough sharing my bed, quite content.

The next morning and we awoke happy. Quite naturally, our fingers intertwined and we traced fingertips over fingers and palms in a slow digit-dance that was thoroughly intimate. Eventually, we kissed; I can remember almost every detail of that moment, like it’s etched in my mind. Here I am, three months, two weeks and about seven hours later with a wonderful girlfriend on the other side of the planet.

There’s a lot to fill in between then and now, of course. After lounging in bed for much of the morning we dragged ourselves out of the house and walked up to Stowe Landscape Gardens in a beautiful hoar frost. We held hands and she slipped on the ice and I showed her around Stowe. We ate chocolate muffins and granola on a bench in wonderful falling ice crystals and it was almost magical. We totally clicked the night before, the morning after and during the afternoon’s walking, and we arranged to meet up again. Just before Christmas and during heavy snow showers, we spent five whole days together before she went to Europe to visit friends and family for the Christmas and New Year breaks. This was wonderful; we had the chance to get to know each other properly, explore fully, and soak up the admiration we had for each other.

We looked forward to one last night together in London before she flew home at the end of her three month’s travelling. Eventually, this evolved into a couple of days, then a few days, then a week, then a nine-day road trip from the source of the River Thames to the sea. Events conspired to bring us together much sooner than we anticipated, and in the middle of January she spent a day travelling thousands of miles across Europe so we could spend the last three weeks of her visit together.

(As a side note, my brain is having severely cunty and suspicious thoughts about this whole process, and I’d quite like it to fuck off now thankyouverymuchly)

During the two weeks before the road trip she settled into our lives with very little disruption and made me very, very happy indeed. The trip itself was… just incredible. We lived in each other’s pockets and spent the whole ten days together. We saw some incredible sights and views, shared many gorgeous moments and really forged our love for each other. I will never, ever forget the wonderful time we had during that time away.

We came back to earth with a bump, then, at the very end of January. During the time we spent together, we’d agreed it was just a fling, that neither of us wanted the complications or pain involved in a long-distance relationship. The day before she was due to leave, we visited Canterbury and spent the afternoon with some mutual friends. While we were eating lunch, it became very clear to me that I really didn’t want to let her go. I remember looking across at her while she laughed and joked with our friends and thinking how utterly natural it felt, how complete I was. I buried it, though, and stuck to our line of “just a fling”. For the rest of the trip, we were somewhat muted. We arrived at our final B&B – a stunning manor house not far from Heathrow – and sorted and re-packed bags and bathed and drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms, with an underlying sadness that it’d all be over the following morning.

When it came to dropping her at the airport, it’s all a bit of a blur. It seemed to happen so fast, and neither of us wanted to prolong the pain for too long. In the queue, we cried. Walking to the departure gate, we cried. As she walked through and waved and disappeared out of sight, we cried. As I composed myself, took a deep breath and walked towards the exit, I broke down and had to lean against a pillar for support, tears streaming down my face and sobs breaking, unstoppable, from my lungs. The drive home in hazy sunshine is a blur. Getting back to the flat with my bags and it being empty was heart-breaking and I cried again.

Man, I cried a lot that day and in subsequent days. I hurt awfully. I just couldn’t bear that it was over. There’s another blog post here, mainly to explore where all the pain went, when what happened below happened.

After consultation with internet friends and The Oracle - I mean Tracey who, incidentally, gave me the absolute best advice and is to be highly commended for her contribution - I decided to just go for it. GO FOR IT! Grab hold of love and don’t let go. The very thought makes me smile like a loon, and perhaps it’s that feeling I’ve lost in the haze – feel the fear and do it anyway.

So we threw caution to the wind, chucked pain in the bin and now we’re a couple, an item. I’m her boyfriend and she’s my girlfriend. We’ve talked about aspects of the future, about kids and marriage and all those things we need to know about if we’re going to invest all this emotive and committed energy into a person on the other side of the planet, but we’ve both had something of an emotional roller-coaster with shadows of depression and anxiety biting us on the backsides. On my side I have all of the above, then love, then distance, then love and distance, all on top of having an incredibly rubbish time at work. On her side she’s had exams, finishing school, travelling for three months, love, distance, love then distance, then university. It’s a lot for anyone to deal with, and it appears we were strong (or, politely, ignorant) together but perhaps a little helpless apart.

That latter point pleases me, actually; that we were strong together. It gives me another thing to hope for, to look forward to. And that’s where I think I’ve lost my way a little bit, where my last post about resentment stems from and where I’d like to think I could employ a little optimism to recover some of that, that positivity. I guess not having Tess here by my side makes it hard to absorb the love, difficult to feel appreciated, tough to put into context quite what I’ve got. The fact that the finality of our relationship, the “actually being together and spending the rest of our lives enjoying each other” part, isn’t set in stone and in fact is just a blur on a long and distant horizon isn’t helping my state of mind one bit, but that’ll come eventually and that’s not what this post is about.

My Happy Book. Happy memories, recording the good things that happen in my life, giving myself a chance to look back and reflect on the happy stuff and see that there is a point, that time flies and that life has a way of being good to you, even when you feel bad.

Resentment

Well, here's a hard post to write. I have some bubbling tensions that I need to address and see the positives as opposed to the negatives. It's particularly hard in this instance because I'm not sure I can actually achieve the projected end result, and there's an awful lot of sacrifice to be made in the meantime to achieve it. If I do, it'll be Totally Worth It but I'm struggling to see it.

In October I'm due to fly to Australia to spend four weeks with Tess, meet her family and take in where she comes from. This is very exciting for me; I've not flown or been abroad in years, I never really dreamed of going to Australia, let alone being given a guided tour by an Aussie, and to have that to aim for is just incredible. All this, and I get to spend a month with the girl of my dreams, getting to know her again, mind and body, the chance to fall in love all over again, to reaffirm why we're doing this.

Between now and October, I'm saving. I'm tightening the belt. I'm paying off some debts and keeping the household running and trying to plough whatever's left over into a savings account to pay for transfers, tickets and spending money for the trip, and keep daughter in school lunches and clubs and weekend spending while I'm away. And here's where the resentment comes in: I feel like I'm sacrificing an awful lot to get the trip together when, still, I have no real concept of the long-term of our relationship. All I can see is October, November then home, and nothing afterwards.

The sacrifices, there're a few. I'm almost positive Sophie and I won't be having a holiday together this year. That generally costs between £100 and £350, takes place during the summer holidays and involves hiring a car and travelling around to the seaside, staying places and hitting the beach. We've done it a couple of times since she moved in and we've really, really enjoyed it. To think that this won't happen this year is pretty sad, not just for me but for her too. I'll have to make sure I've got some money to send her down to her grandparent's place for a week or so, so that at least she gets a break. The thought occurring that I won't have a holiday and can't afford to take a day off until October actually hurts, but I'll have to think about that at another time.

I'm not spending money on the flat. There are a few things that still need sorting, fixtures and fittings, curtains, a wardrobe for my room and lots of things for the kitchen. If I'm to hit the target for the trip, I find it so hard to justify spending anything on these things. It's tough because despite all the initial excitement behind moving in, getting ourselves set up and settling down into a home, that all feels like it's come to a shuddering halt and it's gutting. Daughter desperately wants curtains in her room, and for a good reason. I've just been putting it off because I know it's another £20 or £30 out of the budget and every time I justify spending money like that I know it's a step closer to not having enough money for the trip.

I'm restricting my social life. I've allowed an £11.30 a day food budget for Sophie and I, and that doesn't include any socialising. I've been asked out for a birthday dinner this weekend and my instant reaction was "I can't afford it". I knew moving into this flat that I'd have less money but with the help we get with rent we'd have lived reasonably comfortably and been able to do these things. Now with this proportion of income being put into savings, it just feels like we're giving a lot up.

If it was just me, I could probably cope. When the tightening of the belt starts to make a difference in Sophie's life, as it does with the holiday and in the amount of money I can slip into her hand on a regular basis, that's when it starts to become hard.

Perhaps I need to sit down and do my budget again to get my head around everything. I need to look at the specifics of my utility outgoings, how much I'm spending on food, factor in other savings for Sophie going away during the summer holidays and for socialising.

This is all off the back of a week of work to wallow in self-pity. I'm not proud of it, at all, and I'm £200 down thanks to that. Feels a bit like self-destruction to be honest.

Jesus, this is hard work. Why am I concentrating and dwelling on the negative things? Because they're bugging me, I guess. I wonder what I can do to get past them?

I definitely, definitely need a new job. Higher income means more money means more to spend and as just much into savings. Now why can't I motivate myself to get the fucking thing done?

It's going to be ok

Those words make me so sad. I so desperately crave someone I trust to tell me that. I just don't know if I believe it and, sitting here crying while writing, I hurt like mad.

I thought of this song earlier while watching Battlestar Galactica. Adama said "It's going to be ok" to his son, and I felt emotional and kept the words in my head to write about now the episode's finished. Strangely, when I went to Youtube to dig the video out and clicked the link, I was already flooding with tears even before the song had started. It's a strong reaction and no mistake, and I really do feel that. I want someone to take me in their arms, stroke my hair and tell me everything's going to be ok. I want to believe it, I want to know it's the case, but I'm so scared. Afraid of investing so much emotion into something that could well be insurmountable, scared of losing something before it's even really begun, scared of fucking things up, terrified of the pressure placed on me to make it work.

I tell my friends, my family and my daughter. I wear a ring, I am attached, I'm taken. I'm committed, faithful and loving. And every day virtually everything I do is done to distract myself from the pain I'm feeling at being apart from Tess and the fears I list above, and more.

I want to believe it's going to be ok, I truly do. Despite knowing I have Tess, and Sophie, and my friends, I just feel quite alone right now.

More uncertainy

and this time I'm not dealing with it as effectively as I'd like. This time, though, it's about something that's fundamentally important to my life and my future, and I think I'm justified in finding it difficult to handle.

I met Tess, the girl of my dreams. She's all I've ever wanted in a partner, and she likes me too! Awesome! Except, yeah, damn, she lives on the other side of the bloody world doesn't she? She's at the start of a three-year degree isn't she?

We were both overloaded after our whirlwind romance, separation and decision to continue with a long-distance relationship. With Tess finishing three months of travel, going home for a month then starting university, I suggested we put discussions about the future, visas, immigration, deferring courses and scholarships on hold for a few weeks so she could settle in and get her bearings at uni and start her new life before having to plan another one. It felt good doing this because I knew it was the right thing for her and I wanted to relieve some of the pressure she was feeling so she could focus on settling-in to uni.

Unfortunately, and somewhat selfishly, I'm finding the uncertainty about our future probably the most difficult thing I deal with on a day-to-day basis. I knew the upkeep of a long-distance relationship would be difficult but it'd be considerably easier if we had a vision to work towards, a clear and concise road-map to us being together in the future.

Last time I balanced my uncertainty out with a list of things I'm certain about. All I have at the moment is a month in Australia at the end of October this year and after that, nothing. Just unbridled fears about how tighter immigration policy here, for both students and qualified skilled workers, will effect her ability to come over at any point. That we'll really struggle to get enough money together to finance her visa applications. That if she wants to come and study here we'll have to win the lottery or find a fully-funded scholarship. That even on a last-resort spouse visa we'd have to prove we could survive without state help, where at the moment daughter and I are claiming housing and council tax benefits and literally could not survive without them. That life will simply get in the way and one of us will change our minds and the other will be forced to live out their worst fears realised. Blah blah negative blah.

I feel shit writing all this out for a couple of reasons: first that I should just be able to put these things to the back of my mind and talk them through with Tess at the end of the month, and second that I appear to be acting monstrously negatively when I don't really want to.

I know, that first statement contains "should" - why "should" I be able to stop thinking about something important to me? I guess I'd just like to be able to flip a switch and put all these fears and concerns about uncertainty behind me until such time as I'm ready to deal with them, but it's not that easy at all.

I'll ask myself how I feel about all this later but for now I'm shattered so I think I'm going to nap.

I went for a walk yesterday

and spent a fair amount of the walk talking to myself. I felt a little mental doing so but it proved beneficial and I came to a number of conclusions and realisations that I’d like to record here.

I usually use walking for headspace. Room for my thoughts and background cognitive processes to work through things I’m thinking about. Recently I’ve been listening to music on my headphones while walking, usually to drown out road noise or the howl of the wind, but it only occurred to me recently that this might be taking away this background processing and removing that benefit from my walking. Yesterday I didn’t take my earphones as it was supposed to be a client walk for the charity, but I’m glad I didn’t take them.

I made a point of talking out loud to myself because, as useful as it is to let my head do this work in the background, I’m afraid I’ve been recently afflicted with an old coping mechanism I’d managed to shift around the time of my last therapy – a musical head. To distract my brain and stop me thinking about things I don’t want to think about, my brain plays music, usually a loop or phrase or lyric, over and over. This is particularly apparent when I wake up as it usually grabs my head and prevents me from getting back to sleep. Strange that it’s there instantly I wake up, and it’s something I’d like to get rid of. In fact, I have a mind-map of things I want to discuss, and it’s worth me checking everything’s on there because maybe that’ll allow me to accept I’ve got the list and I’ll get to everything when I need to, and maybe quiet my mind a little.

Anyway, the talking-to-myself and its conclusions:

1. Tess is not Andrea

Seems obvious, doesn’t it. Thanks to a bunch of stuff that’s happened to me in the past, my brain keeps asking me really challenging questions about Tess, suspecting her of being up to no good or manipulating me. I don’t want to think these things because it seems really unfair on her, and me, and our new relationship, but I decided it’s just my brain trying to protect me based on old events and old defence mechanisms, and that I’m in charge of how I feel now.

I decided there and then that I can only base my opinion of Tess on her behaviour now and in the future, not on what’s happened to me in the distant past. This in much the same way Tess has kindly taken me for who I am and tried to get over things that happened in the past to let me in.

I’m not sure it’s as simple as just saying it, though, and I’d like to look in more detail at these out-dated defences and see what I can do with them because while they still exist in this form, they have the potential to sabotage good things.

2. It’s not as fast and scary as I think it is, and I’ve been integral to the Big Things we’ve discussed

For example, we’ve talked about the future, marriage, kids, the whole works. This has freaked me out a little because I’ve not really been aware where it’s come from, but I managed to put it into context while I was walking and talking.

We first kissed three months ago today; a quarter of a year. We spent almost a whole month in each other’s pockets, bonding, loving, exploring, everything. We had massive highs and crazy lows, we travelled and explored together and just plain got along.

I thought that everything’s happened really quickly but it hasn’t. Looking back, I know there were instances during our time together where I wanted to have her forever, where I’d marry her, where my brain told me we’d make really good babies. I told her I thought I was falling in love with her first; she made a somewhat-sideways joke about marriage and I told her if we were still together in five years I’d be her husband; and when talking about kids I was frank enough to offer my positive thoughts.

Mark said something to me on Friday that got me thinking. He said that he and Kate got together and moved in together quite quickly and that meant he thought there was a danger of them ultimately wanting different things of having vastly different values that meant the relationship might not work. He said that the time and distance we have gives us the opportunity to discover what we both want without the pressures of living together.

Fortunately it appears Tess and I want similar things from life, and I’m more than comfortable that discussions about them appear to have happened rather early-on in our relationship, not least because I, myself, instigated some of them! I suppose it makes sense – if we are to invest ourselves, our life and chastity in someone thousands of miles away, we’d best be sure we’re heading in the same direction. It’s comforting to know that we are.

3. It’ll be up to three years until we’re together

This is something I’ve skirted around because I haven’t wanted to believe it. I’ve focused purely on the idea that Tess could be here in a year and not really thought about the possibility it could be three times that. It is, however, something I’ll have to come to accept: regardless of what happens, what good or bad luck we have, how much we save or how immigration treats us, it could be up to three years until Tess and I are together. If it happens sooner than that, great, but it’s time to accept it.

One tough thing that’s making it hard to accept is that, after I visit Tess and her family in October I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen next. We’ve decided to put off talking about visas and other trips and possibilities until the end of this month to give both of us time to think, to let Tess settle into university and basically give us some breathing space. I have to admit, though, that the uncertainty about the future is something I’m finding very hard to cope with, perhaps one of the hardest things at the moment. I’d like to have everything laid out, planned out, a timeline and options and choices and positives and negatives. But there is a big benefit to waiting: it takes some of the pressure off Tess while she’s trying to get used to her new life at university.

So yes, it’ll be up to three years. I’ll be 38, she’ll be 22, Sophie’ll be *faints* 17 and will have a fucking driving licence! It’s not the end of the world, but it certainly feels hard to put into context without knowing what’s happening between now and then, so I look forward to getting it sorted out at the end of the month.

4. Moving-in together straight away isn’t necessarily a bad thing

Because it’s not straight away, is it? My fear here was based on my two previous experiences in moving in with girls straight away – with Andrea it was kind of foisted on my, my kindness was taken advantage of and she turned out to be properly mental. With Cheryl we’d met briefly and had a chance to get to know each other better online before she moved in, but she was properly depressed, entirely not the person I thought she was and really didn’t fit with my lifestyle at all.

With Tess, we’re going to have the next up-to-three-years to be sure we’re both heading in the right direction before we move in together. I’d written elsewhere that moving-in together so soon after we first met felt dangerous based on past experience, but this isn’t past experience, this is the new, the right-now, and if I’m honest I’d overcome my fears to let her move in this moment because I know it’d work, and even if it didn’t we’d talk about it and try to understand why, and try to fix it. This is so far outside past situations I don’t know why I’ve applied old thoughts to it at all, but it’s wonderful to talk it through and get to the good stuff because it definitely seems clearer now.

Yeah, big stuff. I feel better for covering it, even though the process was a little odd. I’m not sure what progress was made in some areas, but in others it’s nice to see that I can have these little realisations while jabbering with myself. It’s also comforting to know that given the opportunity to talk to someone I still have the ability to focus on, and work through, issues I have and reach conclusions. Bring on the new therapy, that’s what I say!