Well, hello blog. I almost forgot I had this little space of internet in which to vent my frustrations and thoughts. Since I last wrote here, I've had two children and done a degree, so while numerous blog posts have begun in my brain, they've never had time to translate into the written word. Then along came coronavirus, and suddenly, I - along with billions of others across the world - find myself in what would just a few short months ago, been an unimaginable position, one in which time is suddenly in abundance.
I've been obsessed with reading about coronavirus since initial reports started coming out in January of a strange virus in Wuhan. My anxiety levels about it have been very high, like many others, I've known this was coming. My partner has COPD, meaning he would be at high risk of complications (or death) if he were to catch it. This was what was predominantly occupying my thoughts over the previous months, I was constantly on at my partner to recognise his own status as a 'vulnerable person' in relation to covid-19, saying he must follow the government advice for this category of people once it was released. However for some strange reason (that I'm sure a psychologist could have fun trying to unpick), I never at any point considered myself to be vulnerable. Since the news that people with MS are also classed as vulnerable, this last week has been an emotional rollercoaster as a reality for which I was completely unprepared, despite months of obsessing about covid-19, began to become starkly clear.
On Sunday 15th March, our 6 year old son came down with a random fever, meaning with the advice as it was then, we had to isolate him for 7 days. On Monday 16th March, Boris Johnson gave a press release stating that if anyone in a household had symptoms (namely a fever and/or a new continuous cough), then all members of the household must isolate for 14 days, and that anyone over the age of 70, or with certain pre-existing health conditions, or who is pregnant, must, from this weekend, be 'particularly stringent with social distancing measures'. So in the space of 48 hours, I went from planning to be going out swimming with my kids, seeing family and friends, planning for school trips and events over easter, to being at home for the next 13 weeks. Once I realised MS was on the list of pre-existing conditions, the reality really began to sink in. That meant as a family of four, comprising of two vulnerable adults, a 6 year old and a 20 month old, we all had to stay home, and not see anyone else, not even our closest family. How do you explain that to such young children? That the grandparents they have seen once or twice a week, every week of their lives, they suddenly cannot see for at least 3 months? The thought of my children's inevitable emotional distress was too much to bear, and that evening I broke down in tears as the reality of all of this really hit home. I couldn't sleep at all that night, mainly worrying about what would happen to my MS if I could no longer receive my infusions were the healthcare system to collapse when it became overwhelmed by covid-19 cases.
It is now Thursday (I think? maybe it is Friday?....*checks calender*.... oh yeah, it is Friday) and after a very emotional week, I feel like I am finally turning a corner in terms of being able to maintain a positive outlook; I think a turning point for me in that was confirmation from my MS nurse that I would still be able to receive my tysabri infusions. It is a huge adjustment for all of us, and I've decided that I need to start blogging again to have some kind of outlet for my thoughts, that I previously would have been able to deal with in other ways. So expect to hear more from me in the coming weeks and months, as I go through the ups and downs of this very emotional rollercoaster that is self isolation as a family of four.
Showing posts with label NHS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NHS. Show all posts
Friday, 20 March 2020
Thursday, 2 August 2012
Infusions 4 & 5...."It's That Time Of The Month Again Dear"
Oh dear, it really has been a long time hasn't it. How am I ever going to become a world famous blogger with this level of posting?! (I jest, I jest. But still, sorry for not updating this a bit more regularly.)
So I believe I last posted after my third infusion. Things have been going really rather well since then, on the up and down scale of things.
The fourth infusion was very uneventful, apart from the usual tellings off about my blood pressure being too high, a fact I was quite disappointed with considering I had stopped smoking (since 8th June, thank you very much) and come off the birth control pill. I didn't see the MS nurse again at that one, and was the only patient in the room, so it really was a very quiet and mundane affair. Although I was kept alert by a very sharp pain in my arm where the cannula was. I couldn't move the arm at all even to turn a page on my magazine. As the boyfriend had dropped me off and gone off to do some chores, it did make it a bit of a boring and awkward one armed two hours.
The nurse couldn't explain why the pain was as it was, it was far beyond usual cannula pain - which once in is pretty much nil. The only thing done differently was some bloods were taken out of it first. She suggested that perhaps it was because they had only ever used that vein and to remind them to use the other arm next time.
I still had to wait the hour after, because apparently they have had a patient who had an allergic reaction during the sixth infusion. I should imagine the causes of this are still being looked in to, but while they are, it's still a two hour job for now.
The next four weeks went pretty well, although I did get a very noticeable slump when due for the next infusion. It kind of takes me a week or so to get back up to form after the infusion, and a week before it things are really rather rubbish, so I have two weeks in the middle where things are good. That is, if I am lucky enough not to have other factors come in to play, such as a period, hot weather, or an infection from a ridiculous bug bite - as has been the case this month. I sort of feel like I have been cheated out of my 'good spell' this month. It does make me feel pretty angry at times, but then I just figure there is no point in getting angry, because what is that going to achieve. A worsening of symptoms if I'm not careful, that's what!
I've always said one of the hardest things for me about this illness is the unpredictable nature of it. Well at least now it is predictable. I would rather have one fairly shit time every four weeks, that I can schedule in to the calendar and plan things around, than have a really shit time roughly every four months that takes weeks and weeks to recover from, with the possibility of not even recovering fully.
So this is definitely better.
It is also all about perspective. I think that how I feel the week before the infusion, is only ever as bad as a mild relapse. It tends to manifest in terms of reduced stamina for walking and standing, fatigue, vertigo and vision issues when I am tired (which obviously, when suffering from fatigue, is a bit more often than just at the end of the evening).
Between the fourth and fifth infusions, I definitely had some of the best days I've had since all this started. I was even able to manage on as little as seven hours sleep some days! This, for me, is nothing short of unheard of lately. I had got it down to an average of between ten and twelve a night, to be able to get through the next day without a nap. I also started going swimming, which is a really big deal for me. I felt so much better in the water, I could swim further than I could walk! I can't compare my ability to swim to how it was pre tysabri though because I haven't swum in years due to reasons other than MS (mainly the usual girly self confidence ones).
The fifth infusion in itself was much of the same. It was the first time I'd had one in the 'usual' place, because they were being done in what is meant to be the discharge lounge, because the lift had broken up to the outpatients neuro ward. It broke like over a year ago, but they didn't have the monies to fix it until the new financial year started in April, then they were fighting over where the infusions would go because the outpatients ward is too far from the main hospital if someone has a reaction, but the inpatient ward didn't have room. But this time the argument had been settled, and they have landed back in to where they always were, in the outpatient ward. This meant it was a lot more cramped. Instead of one big room, on the ground floor, sitting on my own, opposite an open door looking out at a tree.....it was in a room about a fifth of the size, with the three infusion chairs directly next to each other, looking towards a blue hospital curtain that divides off that bit of the corridor, behind which is the toilet. Details details, the drug still goes in the vein either way.
The MS nurse was there this time, so it was good to talk to her as I hadn't seen her for a few months. She reassured me that my new found love of swimming was a good thing. I had been slightly worried about the risk of infection, namely of the JC Virus. She said it is so unusual to get infected with it as an adult, it is usually something you either have or you don't by the time you are grown up (ha, I'm grown up!), apparently it's a 1 or 2 % chance of getting it. She said that there is a slightly increased risk of colds and things, but not a massive increase. I've only had one cold since I've had MS I think, and that was when I worked in an office where people think they are being gallant by coming in to work and sneezing their germs on to your keyboard.
My blood pressure was also down to ridiculously healthy levels, for the first time in years! So that made me happy. However at the end of the infusion, it had shot up to 167/90 or something along those lines, apparently it isn't an uncommon reaction for peoples BP to rise during it. I don't think it is simply 'whitecoatitis' though, because it really was a lot higher than when I arrived at the hospital when you'd think I'd have been more stressed if I was going to be stressed, and it was after I had been resting reading my book in a comfy chair for an hour.
I had a few days of the lovely boost feeling after. It is really quite strange, I suddenly feel like the days are so much longer. I think 'isn't it time for bed yet' not because I am tired, but because my mind simply isn't used to dealing with so much without a break for sleep! However, as I alluded to earlier, outside factors have come in to play and buggered me side ways a little.
**shut your eyes boys**
My periods are all over the place, since I stopped the pill. They are also a lot more heavy and painful - the reason I was on it in the first place, that and my crazy moods when I'm pre menstrual.
So this last week I have felt like my period is starting any minute, and it hasn't, which is really rather irritating, because it is taking up valuable time when I should be feeling good.
**okay you can open them again now**
We also had summer last week, I shouldn't complain because I know it was only for six days or something, which even by British summers is pretty darn short, but it was hot. I coped with it remarkably well for the first two days, but then whilst coping with it, I got bitten by a bug when lazying by the river and that promptly put at end to the feeling good.
I've had the hollow feeling in my entire legs that is usually present in only my thighs when I have bad PMT, or all over when I am having a relapse. I've also been very tired, we're talking fifteen hours on Monday night. I am hoping it is just a mixture of PMT, this weird bite (for which I am just finishing anti biotics), and the warmer weather.
Oh that reminds me, I have to share this, because these things should be shared, please enjoy this brief interlude.................
****insert flashback music****
So, a few weeks ago, before this really hot weather, whilst we were still in Regular Rainy British Summer I had thought I was immune to the heat making MS worse phenomenon. I was having one of my 'I FEEL GREAT I CAN DO ANYTHING' days. I was with my friend in the jacuzzi (the best kind of exercise) and we got kicked out so they could, I dunno, add more chemicals to it or something. We decided to go in to the steam room. I had tried it once, for about ten seconds and vowed it wasn't for me. I never liked those things anyway, and I'd obviously read about heat and MS. However, being the superwoman that I clearly was, I was going to be fine to steam myself silly. And I was, for a few minutes. Then I sort of lost the ability to make coherent sentences come out my mouth. Not to worry I thought, I'll just get out of this steamy environment and cool down in the shower. This is what I did, where I promptly pooed myself a little bit.
Moral of the tale? If you think you are superwoman, you probably aren't. And don't go in the shower at the gym after me.
****insert back to present day music****
The next infusion is going to be three days late, so I'll have a few more days of feeling pants to wait if I get the pre infusion lull like the last two times. This is because I usually have it on a Tuesday, but because this is the six month one I have to see the neurologist too, and they only do that on a Friday. I can't have it the Friday before the Tuesday because it would be too soon apparently. So it should be due two weeks yesterday, but I'll be having it two weeks Friday instead.
After that one, I am going to tune my body so that all shitness happens at once, so that I get my two weeks feeling good. Oh yes I am.
You should have seen the look on the boyfriends face when he realised there were now two 'times of the month'.
So I believe I last posted after my third infusion. Things have been going really rather well since then, on the up and down scale of things.
The fourth infusion was very uneventful, apart from the usual tellings off about my blood pressure being too high, a fact I was quite disappointed with considering I had stopped smoking (since 8th June, thank you very much) and come off the birth control pill. I didn't see the MS nurse again at that one, and was the only patient in the room, so it really was a very quiet and mundane affair. Although I was kept alert by a very sharp pain in my arm where the cannula was. I couldn't move the arm at all even to turn a page on my magazine. As the boyfriend had dropped me off and gone off to do some chores, it did make it a bit of a boring and awkward one armed two hours.
The nurse couldn't explain why the pain was as it was, it was far beyond usual cannula pain - which once in is pretty much nil. The only thing done differently was some bloods were taken out of it first. She suggested that perhaps it was because they had only ever used that vein and to remind them to use the other arm next time.
I still had to wait the hour after, because apparently they have had a patient who had an allergic reaction during the sixth infusion. I should imagine the causes of this are still being looked in to, but while they are, it's still a two hour job for now.
The next four weeks went pretty well, although I did get a very noticeable slump when due for the next infusion. It kind of takes me a week or so to get back up to form after the infusion, and a week before it things are really rather rubbish, so I have two weeks in the middle where things are good. That is, if I am lucky enough not to have other factors come in to play, such as a period, hot weather, or an infection from a ridiculous bug bite - as has been the case this month. I sort of feel like I have been cheated out of my 'good spell' this month. It does make me feel pretty angry at times, but then I just figure there is no point in getting angry, because what is that going to achieve. A worsening of symptoms if I'm not careful, that's what!
I've always said one of the hardest things for me about this illness is the unpredictable nature of it. Well at least now it is predictable. I would rather have one fairly shit time every four weeks, that I can schedule in to the calendar and plan things around, than have a really shit time roughly every four months that takes weeks and weeks to recover from, with the possibility of not even recovering fully.
So this is definitely better.
It is also all about perspective. I think that how I feel the week before the infusion, is only ever as bad as a mild relapse. It tends to manifest in terms of reduced stamina for walking and standing, fatigue, vertigo and vision issues when I am tired (which obviously, when suffering from fatigue, is a bit more often than just at the end of the evening).
Between the fourth and fifth infusions, I definitely had some of the best days I've had since all this started. I was even able to manage on as little as seven hours sleep some days! This, for me, is nothing short of unheard of lately. I had got it down to an average of between ten and twelve a night, to be able to get through the next day without a nap. I also started going swimming, which is a really big deal for me. I felt so much better in the water, I could swim further than I could walk! I can't compare my ability to swim to how it was pre tysabri though because I haven't swum in years due to reasons other than MS (mainly the usual girly self confidence ones).
The fifth infusion in itself was much of the same. It was the first time I'd had one in the 'usual' place, because they were being done in what is meant to be the discharge lounge, because the lift had broken up to the outpatients neuro ward. It broke like over a year ago, but they didn't have the monies to fix it until the new financial year started in April, then they were fighting over where the infusions would go because the outpatients ward is too far from the main hospital if someone has a reaction, but the inpatient ward didn't have room. But this time the argument had been settled, and they have landed back in to where they always were, in the outpatient ward. This meant it was a lot more cramped. Instead of one big room, on the ground floor, sitting on my own, opposite an open door looking out at a tree.....it was in a room about a fifth of the size, with the three infusion chairs directly next to each other, looking towards a blue hospital curtain that divides off that bit of the corridor, behind which is the toilet. Details details, the drug still goes in the vein either way.
The MS nurse was there this time, so it was good to talk to her as I hadn't seen her for a few months. She reassured me that my new found love of swimming was a good thing. I had been slightly worried about the risk of infection, namely of the JC Virus. She said it is so unusual to get infected with it as an adult, it is usually something you either have or you don't by the time you are grown up (ha, I'm grown up!), apparently it's a 1 or 2 % chance of getting it. She said that there is a slightly increased risk of colds and things, but not a massive increase. I've only had one cold since I've had MS I think, and that was when I worked in an office where people think they are being gallant by coming in to work and sneezing their germs on to your keyboard.
My blood pressure was also down to ridiculously healthy levels, for the first time in years! So that made me happy. However at the end of the infusion, it had shot up to 167/90 or something along those lines, apparently it isn't an uncommon reaction for peoples BP to rise during it. I don't think it is simply 'whitecoatitis' though, because it really was a lot higher than when I arrived at the hospital when you'd think I'd have been more stressed if I was going to be stressed, and it was after I had been resting reading my book in a comfy chair for an hour.
I had a few days of the lovely boost feeling after. It is really quite strange, I suddenly feel like the days are so much longer. I think 'isn't it time for bed yet' not because I am tired, but because my mind simply isn't used to dealing with so much without a break for sleep! However, as I alluded to earlier, outside factors have come in to play and buggered me side ways a little.
**shut your eyes boys**
My periods are all over the place, since I stopped the pill. They are also a lot more heavy and painful - the reason I was on it in the first place, that and my crazy moods when I'm pre menstrual.
So this last week I have felt like my period is starting any minute, and it hasn't, which is really rather irritating, because it is taking up valuable time when I should be feeling good.
**okay you can open them again now**
We also had summer last week, I shouldn't complain because I know it was only for six days or something, which even by British summers is pretty darn short, but it was hot. I coped with it remarkably well for the first two days, but then whilst coping with it, I got bitten by a bug when lazying by the river and that promptly put at end to the feeling good.
I've had the hollow feeling in my entire legs that is usually present in only my thighs when I have bad PMT, or all over when I am having a relapse. I've also been very tired, we're talking fifteen hours on Monday night. I am hoping it is just a mixture of PMT, this weird bite (for which I am just finishing anti biotics), and the warmer weather.
Oh that reminds me, I have to share this, because these things should be shared, please enjoy this brief interlude.................
****insert flashback music****
So, a few weeks ago, before this really hot weather, whilst we were still in Regular Rainy British Summer I had thought I was immune to the heat making MS worse phenomenon. I was having one of my 'I FEEL GREAT I CAN DO ANYTHING' days. I was with my friend in the jacuzzi (the best kind of exercise) and we got kicked out so they could, I dunno, add more chemicals to it or something. We decided to go in to the steam room. I had tried it once, for about ten seconds and vowed it wasn't for me. I never liked those things anyway, and I'd obviously read about heat and MS. However, being the superwoman that I clearly was, I was going to be fine to steam myself silly. And I was, for a few minutes. Then I sort of lost the ability to make coherent sentences come out my mouth. Not to worry I thought, I'll just get out of this steamy environment and cool down in the shower. This is what I did, where I promptly pooed myself a little bit.
Moral of the tale? If you think you are superwoman, you probably aren't. And don't go in the shower at the gym after me.
****insert back to present day music****
The next infusion is going to be three days late, so I'll have a few more days of feeling pants to wait if I get the pre infusion lull like the last two times. This is because I usually have it on a Tuesday, but because this is the six month one I have to see the neurologist too, and they only do that on a Friday. I can't have it the Friday before the Tuesday because it would be too soon apparently. So it should be due two weeks yesterday, but I'll be having it two weeks Friday instead.
After that one, I am going to tune my body so that all shitness happens at once, so that I get my two weeks feeling good. Oh yes I am.
You should have seen the look on the boyfriends face when he realised there were now two 'times of the month'.
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
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!
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!
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