Up In The Air

Last night I was thinking how that, at the moment, it really feels like everything in my life is coming together. This led me to think back to when did it fall apart to the point of needing to be put back together?

All the parts of my life had been thrown up in the air and were just there, floating about above me, banging in to each other, and just hovering with no particular order, rhyme, nor reason.

It's only on looking back now, with everything feeling like it has landed in to some kind of tangible shape, that I realise just how up in the air everything had been.

So when did that happen I started to think.

17th January 2010. I knew at the end of that year, that it had been a terrible twelve months, but I was still so in the midst of it all that I couldn't hold all of it together in one place.

On that date, I received the devastating and mind shattering news,  that a close friend has committed suicide. That is the first time I have written those words. She was my friend, and she took her own life. It still hurts and my eyes are prickled with the threat of tears as I write this now. I am sure I don't need to explain in any further detail, the emotional turmoil that followed in the massive shadow that is grief.

9th July 2010. Physical symptoms hit for the first time, in a big way and quite literally knocked me off my feet. I was given the life changing news that it might be M.S. That physical turmoil continued throughout the rest of the year, culminating in my diagnosis on 21st December.
As as result, the difficulties of 2010 did not, sadly, get left behind with a drunken chorus of Old Lang Syne, although not through want of trying!

2011 brought about a lot of changes and adjustments to life because of the M.S. I started a treatment (Copaxone), it didn't work. I moved house. I faced a redundancy and ill health retirement situation at work. I stopped doing the job I'd done for eight and a half years on 5th December, the same day that a family friend sadly lost his battle with M.S.

In two years, there had been two deaths, a life changing diagnosis, moving house and leaving my job. No wonder everything had felt up in the air for so long.

This year, 2012, I decided I needed some help in dealing with all of this, in order to stop the vicious cycle of thinking that I had gotten in to, before it spiralled in to my own self destruction.
I asked my doctor for help, perhaps a short course of CBT, I suggested. Sadly, a mental health history is akin to having a criminal record in such situations, and no help was available. As far as the NHS were concerned, here was someone with a history of mental health problems, but who was currently sane enough to be asking for help. Unfortunately funds do not stretch so far as to cover preventative measures.
Sink or swim time had come. I grabbed hold of the sides with both hands and started kicking fiercely, doing everything I could to be able to swim with the power of my own strength,
This is when I booked on to the mindfulness course, pursued ill health retirement (rather than redundancy); started a new treatment (Tysabri); began a numeracy course and applied for an Access [to Higher Education] course.
With all these things happening, my life is once again changing, but this time it is for the better.

The answer now as to where all this began, is glaringly obvious, but it is only now that it has all fallen in to place, that I can dare to look back and see just how difficult the last two years have been.

That was going to be the end of this post, right there. However, as I write this, I am sitting in a beer garden soaking up the sun and feeling full of hope and excitement for the future. I felt I had finished writing, put my iPod in and turned to face the sun.
The I realised, one massive part of my life is not mentioned in this post: The Boyfriend.
He isn't mentioned, and he should be. He isn't included in the above reflections because they were reflections on the bad in my life. However he should be mentioned now, because he has been there by my side, through all of it.
When we got together, in 2009, I was so ridiculously happy. I remember sitting on a bus and listening to 'One Day Like This' by Elbow, and just feeling so happy. The words reflected that happiness perfectly.
Since 2010 I have not listened to that song. I have heard it a few times in passing, but I have not really felt the words like I did on that bus in 2009.
Today, after writing most of this and listening to the iPod, I remembered that song. I put it on (repeat, of course) and for the first time in more than two years, I really felt the happiness again.

So, to The Boyfriend, if you read this, thank you for being there with me through the last two years and for still being here now. You make me just as happy as you did when we met, and here's to the next two years being focussed on us, just as the last two should have been.

I'll leave you with the lyrics of One Day Like This - by Elbow, as they really do sum up just how happy I feel right now, and how relieved I am to have shaken off the darkness that has been the last two years.

Drinking in the morning sun
Blinking in the morning sun
Shaking off the heavy one
Heavy like a loaded gun

What made me behave that way?
Using words I never say
I can only think it must be love
Oh, anyway, it's looking like a beautiful day

Someone tell me how I feel
It's silly wrong but vivid right
Oh, kiss me like the final meal
Yeah, kiss me like we die tonight

Cause holy cow, I love your eyes
And only now I see the light
Yeah, lying with me half-awake
Oh, anyway, it's looking like a beautiful day

When my face is chamois-creased
If you think I'll wink, I did
Laugh politely at repeats
Yeah, kiss me when my lips are thin

Cause holy cow, I love your eyes
And only now I see you like
Yeah, lying with me half-awake
Stumbling over what to say
Well, anyway, it's looking like a beautiful day

So throw those curtains wide!
One day like this a year'd see me right!