Turbulence

It's been a while since I last blogged and that is down to the fact that I am a complete muppeT sometimes...well, okay, quite a lot of the time really. In this particular instance however, I achieved PhD levels of stupidity, and managed to screw up several days as well...yay me... So, what did I do? Well I panicked, over-reacted, didn't investigate properly when my laptop began to have charging problems. I just assumed that there was a problem with the charger, or the battery or even the laptop itself. I did check the cables and plugs, but didn't see a problem, and when it just started charging again, I thought that there was clearly a problem with the laptop. Long story, short: I arranged for it to be picked up and resigned myself to a week without a laptop. Then, on Saturday, I came to charge my phone, only to realise that it wasn't charging either. At that point I went over to the wall socket, and low and behold, the plug was hanging out... I have no idea why it had been working on and off, and no idea how it came out (although my working hypothesis is to blame the cats who knocked a whole pile of books onto the cable which could have yanked it out). I am recognising my idiocy in not checking the plug more carefully, but I am also so relieved that I don't have to send my laptop away. Anyway, the embarrassment is lingering. Which is nice.

All the stress, and worry over the laptop had to go somewhere, and sadly it seems to have transformed into a lot of anger, frustration, and sadness. I have tried really hard over the weekend to be nice to myself, to take it easy, and not force things. I hoped that this would mean that the bad feelings lessened, and that I would be able to pick up my dissertation again today with a fresh state of mind. Yeah, it didn't work out like that. Right now, I am a bundle of turbulent emotion. Depending on the trigger I could easily cry, or lash out in anger, or just lose it completely. To make things even more tricky, I have A this week. So I can't take myself off to bed, and it is likely that I will have to deal with some tricky moments, without exploding. Normally, when I feel like this, I withdraw from people; but I can't withdraw from A, and I don't really want to. He's my son, and I love him. He doesn't deserve to suffer because of my illness. But the consequence of this is that I end up bottling things up and taking more stress on board than is helpful.

I really intended to crack on with my dissertation today, but for whatever reason, whether it's the emotions, or the fact that my 'flow' was disrupted by the issues last week, I found it almost impossible to do any work. I made myself carry on, and I have written 300 words. I'm pretending to be happy about it, but really I feel like a failure. I joke about being distracted by the tennis, but really I was so focused on trying to squeeze the words out that the TV may as well have been switched off. It didn't help that I seem to have forgotten some (rather important) information, which meant that I had to dig it out and read it again. Failures like that frustrate me, and I do get angry with myself. Which I guess doesn't help.

My mood wasn't helped by the fact that I was on the receiving end of some (relatively harmless but nonetheless unpleasant) comments on Twitter. I had no idea about these until I went on today, and just happened to check my 'interactions' as they're called. I'd made a rather innocuous jokey comment and someone had retweeted it, and all of a sudden total strangers are calling me names, making it clear that they had read my brief 'bio', and tailoring the insults to that...being called a retarded (I hate that word) c*nt (hate that word too) was a bit of a shock, and I know that I shouldn't care what people I don't even know think of me but, ow, it hurt! It really did. Especially as several of them were going back and forth in 'conversation' about how awful I am. It felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach and I really wish I hadn't seen those tweets. No matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to get rid of those insults, they keep going round my head, and I can't stop feeling crap. I see stuff on FB and Twitter which I don't like, it happens all the time, but I wouldn't go after the person, especially if I didn't know them. I can't understand why people do that.

I really just want to go up, get into bed, and be able to read/snuggle with the cats/listen to some music, and hopefully fall asleep earlier than I did last night. However, as I have A, this is not possible. For whatever reason my ability to cope with this is very limited. I am really hoping that the evening is peaceful, so that we can both get a decent night's sleep and wake up refreshed tomorrow morning. I have to believe that tomorrow will be better.

I have nice plans for tomorrow: I'm seeing K, my friend who has been through so much with me. I haven't seen her for a while, as she is working now. But she is on maternity leave (squeal, so excited for baby cuddles), and so we are meeting up tomorrow. I cannot wait. It has been way too long and the feeling of excitement is (thankfully) breaking through the grimness of my other emotions. I'm taking tomorrow away from the dissertation. Today was such a disaster and I'm meeting K for lunch, so I've decided to dedicate tomorrow to getting 'tasks' done - posting things, going to the library, shopping and so on. It takes the pressure off, and hopefully means that by Wednesday I will be feeling much better and more capable. In theory, I should be able to crack on with the dissertation on Wednesday and make lots of lovely progress. Fingers crossed anyway.

So that's me, at the moment... Not doing brilliantly, but still fighting. When I post this, I'm going to have a chat with A, see what he feels like doing, and try to make the most of the rest of today. Hopefully I'll be able to relax and let some of this stress and anger go. I don't like having it, and it will leave eventually. In the meantime, Molly cat is snoring, which has at least made me chuckle a little bit... that and the rather awesome cartoon of myself which I made earlier (yeah, I was trying everything to make myself feel better). I was going to upload it for you all to see but Blogger is being a pain and won't let me upload any pictures...ah well.. next time, I promise.................