Health Warning: not quite as positive as the last one, sorry

A strange thing has happened recently.

I mentioned in a previous post (Onwards and Upwards) that we’ve seen some progress – instead of the vast majority of time being red/severe there have been some amber/moderate days and even 5 hours of blissful green/migraine-free hours so far in 2015 (see previous post The Code for info on what these colours mean). Some weeks I’ve even reached the holy grail of 65% of the week on red and 35% of the week on amber (our current target).

This is good news and I should be happy.

But I’m not.

To be honest I’m a bit of an emotional wreck.

It took me a while to figure out why. My logical brain said I should be happy on the amber/moderate days but my emotions didn’t get the memo.

Then I started to do some digging around (a psychologist is never short of interesting material if they try to understand themselves even a tiny little bit!) and realised that the amber/moderate days were the first time in a very long time I’d had any head space to actually process any of what’s been going on over the last however long.

On red/severe it’s literally just a case of getting through the next minute or hour – it’s pure survival mode with no space for thinking or reflecting or processing anything, even if you did have the time or the brain power.

On amber/moderate days there’s just enough let up for your brain to start to process bits of what’s happening, how different life is now and how uncertain the future is.

And it’s totally overwhelming.

So when I think about it again with my *logical* brain, I guess it makes sense. On amber/moderate days, at least 8 months backlog of unprocessed raw grief and turmoil get dumped into the mix.

Marvellous.

Sitting in the dust

I was talking to a friend recently about when life gets tough (we weren’t talking about my situation in particular – this is a universal thing and we all go through difficulties and hardships at one time or another)

She said something that stuck with me:

“There’s a time for sitting in the dust” – for mourning your losses, for acknowledging the hurt and the pain and the sadness, for nursing your wounds and bandaging them up as best you can.

“And then there’s a time to stand” – to get back on your feet and find a way forward, however hard that might be.

There’ll come a time when I’m ready to stand again, but for now I think it’s time to do some sitting in the dust.

And if you want to find me, you might just have to come and sit in the dust with me.