Thursday evening. In case you havent guessed, I am using this thread as a sort of journal and as a way to share my long road to recovery in the hope that perhaps someone else will read it and see that there is a road back even when the crisis blind us to it. One important thing to take away is how simply writing stuff, sometimes jumbled, helps me to get some things out of my head. If you read this please know that there is hope.
So, another day at work. Having been a teacher for twenty years, I find that as soon as that first class of kids fronts up, that I just go straight into that whole performance thing. I liken it to putting on an old comfortable pair of shoes. I hope that makes sense to you. Anyway work helps a lot because I feel needed and I feel that I am actually making a real contribution to the wider world. My last crisis coincided with Christmas and a long holiday, which I now think allowed me to spend a lot of time looking inward. And what I see, I dont always like.
I have stopped one of my meds. On doctors advice. That means no more serequel at night strangely it hasnt effected my sleep, as I expected it to. I have faithfully promised to stay on my current meds for at least 7 months. That means that round about July I might start trying again to come off them. I believe, rightly or wrongly, that I should be able to stand by myself without the meds. I think that the meds are a sort of artificial world. Yes my doctor says that I should think of me as having an illness and the meds as a way to combat the illness, but I guess Im a bit old fashioned about putting chemicals into my body. So we will see what happens in July.
I forgot to add the other day that my therapist likened my marriage as a way to boil a frog. You know that if you put a frog in boiling water it just jumps right out. But if you put it in normal water on the stove and slowly apply heat it will not jump out and instead be boiled to death. Not nice I know. But her point was that my ex did all these things to me and the kids while she was here, and I allowed her to. Things got really awful, but I still clung to the marriage, like a frog in hot water. It is only now that I am out of the relationship that I can see how destructive she was. The breakdown was not about me. Although I will admit that I am far from perfect. The breakdown was about her having her own issues.
So that is it for today. It has been a good day and I am starting to live for the future.