And so it goes, go round again

I am sitting at home, surrounded by chocolate and cups of tea, entertaining myself with The Sims II the little people are alive! ALIVE! Ahem. Sorry.

I did not go to work today.

For the past two weeks I've been experiencing so much anxiety and obsessive thinking that I rather feel like a complete loony mental freak stuck in a very tiny airtight box. I'm seriously bringing myself down.

Then this weekend I had a cold - nothing serious, but it knocked me out in a way fairly reminiscent of my post-viral fatigue thing (of 'ruined January and February' fame). As a result, when I woke up this morning feeling not only completely exhausted but also terrified of going near work, I made the sensible decision not to.

The fact that all of this co-incides with a change of job does not necessarily mean that the new job is to blame. On the contrary, when I'm enjoying this job, I really love it. I think what may be going on is that I've had too many stresses and shifts recently, including a very busy summer and a complete change of work situation, and all this stress has become the catalyst for a whole load of symptoms that I really don't need at this very busy time. Ah, the marvellously irritating paradox of stress-induced bipolar crap.

I'm hoping that a day off to get my head sorted out will help. If I'm more honest, though, it's been such an extreme and sudden reaction that I probably need the infernal drugs to pull me out of it. Lovely psychiatrist, who I was seeing earlier in the year, said that I could control my own medication for a few weeks if I found this happening again, so that's what I think I'm going to do. I have three weeks' supply of the usual stuff in my house, so I can start that and see if it makes any difference before I start having to see doctors and deal with all that awful rubbish again.

I'm irritated beyond the telling of it, because I was so very happy about how well I was doing, for months and months, without any medication at all. Still, I think I should be able to sort things out with a quick burst of the lighter medication, without having to go back on the evil 'you stay on this until the day you die of a toxic reaction' uber-drug. So that's something.

Meanwhile, I have only one thing left to say on this topic.

BLAH.

On an entirely different topic, I went to hear something called Kol Nidre at a synagogue last night. The Girl was introducing me to some of her Jewish culture - we decided Yom Kippur was as good a festival as any for this. Unfortunately, not only did the service last two hours, but we missed the first ten minutes and didn't get to hear Kol Nidre (which is apparently fantastic) at all. Instead we heard many prayers about sin. These were read in two languages and then sung. It was long. It was still interesting, but The Girl was a bit irritated by it all. For a Jewish person, she really doesn't like religion (except church, apparently, which she's all in favour of, in a very non-Christian way). Me, I'd quite like to see more of this synagogue thing. 'Twas interesting. It made up for Stoppard, which was also very long, and not nearly interesting enough. It was the weekend of long events.


Don't forget that I'm living inside the space where walls and floor meet...
- Kristin Hersh