Picking up

I was quite miserable in my last post, as I'm sure you could tell, and I stayed quite miserable for most of last week. By the second half of the weekend I was beginning to pick up and now I feel as though I'm actually making some progress. I still don't know why this most recent attack should be causing me more distress post-event than others, and why it continues to run through my head like a film clip on repeat, but it's gradually losing some of its intensity and I'm able to concentrate on others things a bit more. It's helped that I've had contact with friends, and also been reminded that I need to take some of the initiative in instigating some of this contact. I've seen several people over the past few days, and even though I haven't always been up to much it's been great to have company. Today's actually been one of those days when I haven't seen a soul and haven't actually stepped outside the house, but I've been okay with that and haven't felt lonely. In fact I've actually done a bit of reading for my course, which has also served to ease some of the panic about being so very behind again. I'm still behind, but I'm picking my way through the course material and slowly making my way towards where I should be up to.

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One thing that really didn't help my emotional state last week was the death of my step-dad's mother. She wasn't someone I knew particularly well, but she did feature in my life and it's always a shock when someone you know dies, even when it's half expected. She'd been ill for a while and I think that she was tired and pretty much ready to let go of life ... that doesn't make it any less sad though ... not really. It's her funeral on Wednesday, but it's in Woking, Surrey, so I won't be going (too far). I will be thinking about her though and praying for her. She was 94.

It takes a while to process death. A death also makes you consider the mortality of other people you love (as well as your own, but that's a fairly regular feature of my life anyway given the nature of my asthma), and this has also been the case over the past five days since Barbara died with the continued illness of another member of my family. This isn't to say that they're about to die ... it's just ... well, it's just where my thoughts are taking me ...

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A couple of other things have contributed to my emotional wobble, things that I won't delve into at the moment. For now though I'm coping a little better than I was and I'm relieved to be picking up and coming out of the other side of the misery. There were a couple of days there where I couldn't hold back the tears however hard I tried, and these days that's really not like me. Once I decided to give into them, rather than trying to push them away all the time, I began to pick up, and then I was given the boost of friendship and company too. Friends really are a tonic to the soul.

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The other thing I picked up the other day was my camera. I find that viewing the world through the lens makes me look at things differently and gives me a different persepective on the smaller aspects of life and the world. It makes me appreciate the detail again. It's ages since I put any photos up so here are a couple that I took the other day.

Autumn in Jesmond Dene

Robin Red Breast

Autumn in close up

I'll leave you with that for now.

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(By the way, for some reason adding photos messes with the format of my posts and seems to do away with clear paragraphs, which is why I've inserted the occasional full stop, otherwise it'd just look like there weren't any paragraphs at all.)