Regulation

I asked a friend last night to write a blog as she hadn't in a long time and now take my own advice. As I'm sure the whole country knows, we have just had the summer holidays. Now I enjoy my kids being off,  enjoy being able to travel, love seeing friends and sitting in the sun. I relish experiencing new things as the kids get older and this year we have reached a stage where we can all ride a bike on the road.

But as someone who also struggles with my brain the summer holidays present another challenge. My therapist is on holiday to which means the ability to upload offload discuss how situations can or are being handled is not there. I usually see this as a chance to put into practise all the things I have  learnt over the previous months, I see it as a marker as to how well me myself and my others are getting on and co operating with each other. I like to see how well we can remain in the present and not be swallowed by past flashbacks or future anxiety.

For me summer holidays are like an assault course of challenges and usually I'm fit healthy trained and ready to go. However this summer I feel all I have done is fall on my face (quite literally). In the first week I fell of my bike and damaged my AC shoulder joint. The first week or so unable to dress myself or even sit/lay down in bed without help and realised my tool box didn't contain any familiar things to help fix anything. Prior to the summer I was already coping with tight carpel tunnel's in both hands and a trapped nerve in my right elbow. Both my knees are often painful from too much cleaning over the years. So with a  sling on the left arm and a right arm sometimes unable to pick up a cup of tea, two permanently numb fingers and numb painful hands at night found myself at a lost.

Even writing this all I want to do is hide and crawl into a hedge somewhere. Dramatic I know but have you ever seen a stray dog with a wound growling at the person trying to help it. Well that's the image that has continuously popped into my mind as Ive been driven around and missed swimming with the kids. In its place I have set myself goals to keep me from feeling like that dog. I've painted a flat, a van, learnt to fold washing one handed and I refused to stop working (with Carla, Zippy and P's help, thank you).

However about two weeks ago my brain and everyone in it crashed, everyone went silent and the looping of one line of a song took over. Almost as if thought fight or hope left. All that was left was the permanently repeating line of a song over and over. It physically at times made me want to puke as I went everywhere with a lump in my throat and what can only be described as claustrophobic wet suit of a 'tense body'. I couldn't remember anything and a strange nothing silence lived under the song. Life became a series of following plans for the day which were thankfully there as it was the holidays.

I'm two days now into the kids being at school and having some real time to allow my ever so tightly brain/body to start to unwind. Its  a required journey of filtering and organising and acknowledgement of all myself and everything each perspective has experienced. Today I have been able to put an image to the sick feeling and its that of Alice in Wonderland falling down the rabbit hole. The fall seems endless pictures, voices, and emotions all pop out for microseconds before you swirl into the next set of sensations. The spinning is slower than yesterday and there are at least microseconds of understanding (not just colours swirled into a brown mess).

I'm  grateful that I can even recognised an image to help me understand whats happening as a reference point, that is progress. I want to say thank you to lots of people/angels who have safely helped me physically manoeuvre through these last weeks and especially to Zippy and my mum. I know enough to know I have things in place and routine to calm the spinning down and get us all organised again. Big up the brain and all its intricate beauty, you are truly an incredible mass of vulnerabilities and big up to the body that carries it most of the time ever so well.