difficult days

Some days are just HARD

~ Naomi ~ 3 Comments

Nothing specific has happened today. Well one or two things, but nothing of great significance (compared to Mum dying, anyway… I compare any challenges in my life to Mum dying, it’s a pretty effective tool for minimising any stress). The whole country feels somewhat unsettled after the EU referendum which certainly isn’t helping, and my Facebook feed is pretty unpleasant. It was noticeable in The Hut today that many members were more anxious and/or flat than normal. I had two appointments. Neither were bad, in fact they wer both pretty positive, but both contained things which are difficult to hear.

Nothing ‘bad’ has happened. Some days are just hard.

I’m tired, I’m not sleeping well at the moment. The sleeping tablets I’ve been off and on for the last 10 months (sleeping is hard when closing your eyes prompts images and memories of a very poorly Mum) aren’t cutting it right now. It takes ages to fall asleep and once I do, I wake up all night. It’s not ideal, and all day I just want to nap. I’m tired, and I don’t just mean sleep tired.

Life keeps throwing up challenges and sometimes they’re cope-able-with, sometimes they’re cope-able-with-a-bit-of-help, other times it can feel hopeless. Perhaps I’m not making any sense, but I’m not sure I understand myself right now or that I have the words to explain how I feel. I feel mute.

I miss Mum, that much is clear. I want nothing more than to run home into a Mum hug. I want my Mum to look after me, to help me through the difficult days. I want to text her when I’ve had a tough appointment, I want to let her know when good stuff happens, I want to ask her advice on which food containers to get for my cupboards. I want her to come into my room on the mornings when the world feels bleak and I’m unable to move, to bring me some cornflakes with skimmed milk and brazil nuts, to get my clothes out for me and remind me how to get dressed, just like she used to. I want to go into her room at 2am when I can’t stop crying, to sleep next to her in the big double bed, to feel safe.

I want to feel safe, anchored and ‘me’ again.

Difficult Days

~ Naomi ~ 3 Comments

I have a number of texts on my phone waiting for a response. Even more emails in my ‘flagged’ compartment waiting to be read/responded to. A few messages on, or in relation to, my blogs which I want or need to reply to. Some Facebook messages which have gone unanswered and fallen off the radar, and a few other messages on my phone or laptop which are floating in the back of my mind and I know need a response.

On top of that, I have a mental list of emails which need sending, meetings which need organising, people who I need to speak to, and forms I need to fill in. I have events to plan, my diary to attend to, the bathroom to clean, and boxes of uni stuff to sort. I am on top of my washing, which is a first.

There have been a number of difficult days recently, and I’m struggling to pull my thoughts together well enough to respond to things properly, so they get left. The lethal combination of Mum’s illness, a looming exam, and the change of living at home compared to living at uni, has lead to a few too many sleepless nights and anxious moments – I’m exhausted.

I feel like I’ve been buried in a hole, and every time I try to catch up, life moves on. Life is moving too fast for me and I can’t keep up the pace. As the days have gone on, more things have slipped: an email response here, a text there, a phone call that I really should have returned last week. Time in our house feels slow compared to the outside world and that only serves to slow me down further.

I will catch up, but it’s going to take time. My exam is tomorrow, so at least after that some revision time can be spent doing admin-y stuff, though I still have a dissertation to start, friends to see, and fresh air to breathe.

So this is a post to apologise to all those people who are missing a reply. I’m not ignoring you and it’s not personal, it’s just that some days all I manage to fit in is work, revision, and sleep. It’s also a post to let my regular followers know that there won’t be a HuffPo blog this week, because I just don’t have the time or the brain space (my brain is largely filled with the statistics exam content at the moment). Most of all, it’s a post to be honest, because I know that my social media presence is largely full of my happy, busy, life (which is my life most of the time!), but I also have difficult days and I feel they need to be included to. I’ve had a couple of messages asking for advice lately (and I will always prioritise these – so don’t be put off sending one if you feel the need to), which suggests that there are some people following me who are in a similar situation, and the last thing I want to do is paint a false picture of what living next to this crappy disease is really like.