0520

I've put on a bit of weight during this episode - HT were right to ban egg banjos.  I have said before that I hate my body, and it's true - none of this "my body is a temple" lark in this house, oh no.  However, I have a reality gap - I still think of myself as slimmer.  When I'm depressed, I don't care what I eat, I just try to remember to do it.  My weight is one of the reasons I don't give up smoking - I daren't put any more on.  There are two other reasons - a. I enjoy it and b. I don't want to go manic, as I did last time.  So I carry on. 

The gloom is here, enveloping me again, like a dark mantle.  It's always bang on time and I am unable to recall a life without it.  I know I had a life, but where's it gone?  My world has shrunk to the kitchen and the bedroom, and I spend little enough time in the latter.  I love my bed - it's really comfortable and today I've got clean sheets, but it won't make me sleep.  I imagine that losing sleep will take its toll as I'm stressed out by it, and I am not good at stress nowadays.  Kate gave me a useful tip yesterday - not to say "I can't" but to say "I don't".  So, "I can't go to a morning meeting" becomes "I don't go to morning meetings".  It just shifts the control emphasis away from not being able to do things to choosing not to do things.  I have decided not to go to morning meetings anyway - I just can't face them, even when I'm well.

What has my life been about, I wonder?  I know it wasn't my fault, but I still feel I failed at the RAF because I was chucked out.  That was such a damaging experience for me.  I also lost my job on the acute psychiatric ward because of my illness.  Actually, I don't think I've said much about the ward - maybe next time.  Now I'm going to make a hot milk.