Life by increments

I’d love to tell you the story of the last three months – you know, start at the beginning, flesh out the middle, and take great pleasure in getting to the end. Sadly, it isn’t going to be as easy as that, not least because I’m not entirely convinced that the end is in sight.

Truth told, I’m not completely sure when it even started. That’s the thing about unravelling: it happens so silently, so slowly, and so subtly, that you really don’t have a cat in hell’s chance of spotting the first stitch getting picked unloose. The fact that it happens RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR NOSE is just your broken brain’s way of ADDING INSULT TO INJURY.

There I was, bowling along in my little life quite happily thank you very much. I’d moved in with Mr Awesome Thing Number Five, I’d started a new job, and I was making a whole lot of progress with that whole being alive thing that had proved so difficult for me in the past. Let’s not make any bones about it: life was good.

And then I was struck down by a severe and chronic case of AWAKENESS. In hindsight, maybe that’s where it started.

I’ve written about my propensity for insomnia before – many times before, in fact. Insomnia is as much a part of my life as the sun setting and it’s been that way for as long as I can remember. Which is really just to say that I’m not going to lay the current bout of the doomy gloomies entirely at its door. But you know, being awake for all but three hours a day FOR WEEKS AT A TIME hasn’t exactly helped matters.

And then there was the winter. Or, more accurately, there was the clocks going back.

If winter was nothing more than five months of shitty weather punctuated by the useful distraction that is Christmas that’d be just fine and dandy by me. It’s the shrinking hours of light – the getting up in the dark, pootling around all day in the dark, coming home in the dark, the fact that the WHOLE OF YOUR LIFE IS DARK – that does for me. Thing is, I can make things dark enough for myself. I don’t need the actual dark filling up the corners I didn’t manage to get to.

And then there was the fact that, and I’m loathe to say it, I miss my old life.

I can’t bring myself to write a whole paragraph about that one. It speaks for itself, doesn’t it? Basically what I’m talking about is nostalgia. Mostly it breaks my heart.

—-

I’m going to call time on this instalment – I’m finding it exhausting and I’m frustrated that my words ran out so soon.

I’m reminded that there were times in my life when I approached the EVERYTHING in increments. Out of bed. Kettle on. Cup of tea. Shower. Clean Pants. Endless trivial tasks, one after the other, and every one of them an achievement.

Life by increments.

It seemed so pointless to me at the time but, hey – it worked. There’s no reason that finding WeeGee and her voice can’t work that way too right? Little by little, step by step, bite by bite. After all. How else am I supposed to eat the elephant?

Stay tuned for the next exciting instalment of WeeGee losing herself and then spending AGES trying to find herself again…..

—–

Meanwhile in other news Frank Turner has a new album today which gives me the perfect excuse to indulge.

Nothing else to report today save that I love you all lots and lots. Like lots and lots of Jelly tots.

WeeGee xoxox