Ghost busting

Swallow all your tears my love, put on your new face
You can never win or lose if you don't run the race
                'Love My Way' Psychedelic Furs

Am not long back from a 70 minute walk. Go me! Actually, it's my fourth walk since Monday. Go me quadrupled!

I was walking quite a bit earlier in the year but wound up with a knee injury and then there was the month of massive flu, so it's been a while since I hit the road.  Pretty happy that I've been able to maintain most of that fitness even though I haven't been able to exercise for the last couple of months.  It's absolutely streets ahead of where I was a couple of years ago. Success!!

I did hit the wall ME wise yesterday after a big week of poorly husband and poorly cat and job applications and mind blowing self esteem concepts but in one of those kismet moments it's resulted in another breakthrough and it was all because I refused to give in to sooky Sandy and decided to self-hypno myself out of a self beating uppage dip instead.  I do find it a lot harder to stay positive when the ME is kicking. I bloody hate being tired and then I wind up in a 'how long am I going to have to put up with this shit' spiral and before you know it I am despairing of everything and hating myself with a passion and then hating myself more for allowing myself to drop into the spiral in the first place. You can see why I need to harden the hell up.

Chronic illness is a bitch and there's no getting away from it but all I can say is don't let it rob you of a second more of life than you have to. Actually that's not all I can say. I would also look for the gifts in it.  That's not the rantings of a nutter, that's the observation of somebody who has learned a lot about what matters in life from being chronically ill...in my case, most importantly, the amount of energy you waste with thoughts and beliefs and habits and people who are basically bullshit.  I don't think I would have learned that if I hadn't had nearly all the energy sucked out of me by ME and realised the bullshit was taking what little I had left. Would have preferred to learn it by reading a nice book, but hey ho, whatever works!

Anyway, was shattered most of yesterday and by the evening was letting Sandy-bashing slip past my lips (sorry, hypno-dude) and sliding down a bit into the spiral of wallowing sookiness.  This is where I start to think I may have actually learned something over the last few weeks because I wound up saying 'fuck this' and forced myself to sit down and self hypno. Success again!!

That wasn't the breakthough though...

While I was self hypnoing, my thoughts drifted off to a dear friend of mine, the bass man, who died four years ago. It's a long, long story but let's just say while I loved him, the last couple of years of his life in particular ripped us both to shreds and since he's died I have been haunted by what was done and said, what should have been done and said and how I should have done better, apparently. Because I'm always supposed to do better, aren't I? Apparently.

Grief is another bitch and it can really mess with your head and where the bass man is concerned the mess has been pretty fucking messy.  I honestly believe that most people do and act the best they can with what's put in front of them in life, but particularly when associated parties are no longer around it's easy to suck up the guilt and the blame...even if the guilt and blame are basically figments of your own tortured imagination.

Last night, in the middle of my self hypno, my thoughts drifted off to the bass man and something in me just broke and I said enough. Enough of carrying around real and perceived blame. Enough of the guilt for things that I shouldn't feel guilty about and can never, ever go back and change. And I let it all go.

I'll never forget him and I don't want to forget him but I can't carry the can for our mutual failings any more. It's too much. It's too much and I don't deserve the shit I have given myself dragging the can around for the last four years.

Game over.

I woke up this morning feeling like a ton of bricks had been taken from my shoulders and I swear looking in the mirror it's taken a couple of years off me too. That second bit could be the paranoid about ageing Sandy having a major delusion but either way, I'll take both.  I'm just happy that I seem to have finally reached a point where I can let this particular part of the past go.  I hope the bass man is happy too, wherever he is.