Reflecting on coping in difficult times.



Suffering from anxiety/depression is hard when everything else in your life is Okay but when you are faced with something catastrophic, all you can do is keep going.

‘It’s seven o’clock and I’m sitting in front of the sealed window again. I can’t work out whether I’m inside or out. I’m looking into the room but somehow feel that I’m the one in isolation. I’m the one on view.
 Sunday evening and it’s time to leave. I wave to my grandson. He’s sitting on his dad’s knee, both motionless, both lethargic. My wife and daughter come through the forbidden door for a final hug and words of thanks.
“I’ll be back next Friday and I’ll ring each day to see how he’s doing.”
We all cling to each other, leaving many things unsaid.
The astronaut climbs through the airlock, unable to open the second hatch until the first one is sealed. Alone now in his spacesuit, his private thoughts entomb him. Alone now only his own crisp breathing accompanies him. He walks slowly down the sloping gantry.
 I pass through the first door and collect my coat. I wait for the first door to close before the second one can open. I walk down the sloping corridor with a sense of relief, a chance to return to a normal world; submerge myself in work. I walk down the sloping corridor feeling overwhelmed by guilt. I seem surplus to requirements but can’t help feeling that I am deserting them.
It’s been the same each week. I drive towards the motorway, thinking of the weekend’s events and planning for the week to come. Using day to day practicalities I drown the sensations. I feel too calm. I am emotionless until I hit the motorway slip road and put my foot down.
My car accelerates onto the motorway like a spaceship in re-entry mode. I am like an astronaut returning to earth. The pain appears from nowhere. I cry out; great sobbing tears, intense but short-lived. A cry of outrage, lost in the depths of space.

By the time I pass the Oldham junction I have folded and packed my emotions neatly away, like shirts in a suitcase. I have left the gravitational pull of the bone marrow unit. I have left my family for another week.’

From, ‘A Chance to Live’, by Richard Dunn.


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