it's been six months already

It appears that blogging keeps me sane. I don't like missing a day, it makes me panicky and stressed. This might not be entirely healthy. But I am off my Prozac which probably explains it.

I decided that I had to just come off it and see what happens. I can always start it again if I feel I need to and at least now I'm less worried about asking for more. But I like knowing that my feelings are all my own again and nothing is being fiddled with.

I think the blogging helps me to organise my thoughts in a way that I'd tried to do by writing them out before. But that never seemed to work for me, and I never seemed to be able to keep it up. This way, where I know people are reading what I'm thinking, encourages me to keep sharing.

I've had a couple of people get in touch to say that this blog is helpful to them in small ways and that fills me with joy. I know it's hard to keep going every day and I know it's hard to understand how other people are really feeling.

I think that being able to share some of the things that lead me to my way of thinking and what the procrastination really is can only helpful. My procrastination is the big curse of my life, but I'm much more aware of what it is and how it's actually a way of helping me. It's just a false friend and I need to learn to conquer it.

Because who needs a friend who helps you get into more trouble but makes you feel comfortable about getting there. Even if I never learn to "just do it" as some of those terrifying really organised people advocate, I do want to change and learn and grow. I'd love to at least get better at the whole organising thing!

The one thing I have noticed is that my sense of humour seems to be coming back to me. I use humour as a defence mechanism and always have done, but having not had a reason to just let loose and have fun I've not been just my usual self for ages.

And it's always when something comes back that you realise that it had gone in the first place. A bit like when I had my breakthrough at the end of last year and spent the night dancing around to very loud music (on my headphones). I realised that in the 6 months since I'd moved into that house this was the first time I'd blasted music and just danced.

I'm a dancer in my soul. I used to do ballet as a child and all the way through my teen years I danced in my bedroom, singing into a deodorant bottle pretending I was on stage in front of a massive audience. I still let loose and sang and danced whenever I had the house to myself right up until when I had madam. Then, obviously, I was never alone.

But I would put the music on my headphones as I walked her round for her afternoon nap in her pushchair when she was tiny. And I found myself dancing around the aisles of various shops mouthing the words only I could hear. In fact I'm doing chair dancing even as I type this!

And when she got big enough that I couldn't even have that headspace whilst she had an afternoon nap (and she stopped going in the buggy by the time she was 2) I danced at night when she was in bed, before I went mostly. I would put my headphones in and some slow songs on whilst I got ready for bed and then by the time I was upstairs and putting my pyjamas on I was on to the fast stuff and a quick dance before bed.

Sometimes that quick dance round my bedroom would last a couple of hours!

And then we moved house and somehow, with all the stress of moving and then himself coming home and then leaving again I lost that bit of myself too. All those little bits of yourself that you don't even know were the things that you needed to keep your sanity...

And I lost them. I lost my sense of fun, my music, my inner voice, my sleep patterns, my vague sense of cleanliness, my hope, my confidence. Just little bit by little bit. And I didn't even notice them going until they were lost. And I was in a café crying because I just didn't know how I was going to get through.

And then I was picked up by my friends, who hadn't known how bad it was. By the medical profession who helped me find that even keel again, by the Citizens Advice Bureau who showed me how to start. And by my parents who'd been worried but hadn't known how to approach me (I can be very stubborn).

So, as it is six months since I started on the road to being me again I guess it's time to start being me. No drugs. Just me.

Hello. How're you?