Do you ever have long, involved conversations with either imaginary people, or those who you'd just love to confront with 'stuff', but never have the time, the courage, or the ability to do so in reality?
I've been doing this a lot recently, and I'm not sure whether it's in reaction to the stifling depression that I've been feeling for so long, or whether it's because I spend around 90% of my time either deeply asleep, or alone.
I'm not trying to be self-pitying here. My hubby is my full-time carer, and he does an amazing job of it too but, when I'm dead to the world (hubby insists that he has to remove the stake before I surface!), he spends his time, within hearing in the garden, either pottering around changing things, or chatting to one of his many friends who call around to keep him company.
When I'm awake, and hubby has helped me see to my bathroom, food , drink, and then medication needs, I tend to need some time alone, while I wait for my painkillers to kick in some. With that, I mostly need quiet, as the pain is unbearable enough but, with my ME, comes a sensitivity to noise, light, touch, & smell, and so I can't cope with anybody trying to have a conversation with me, until the pain has at least ebbed a little.
By the time this happens, hubby tends to have got stuck into something that needs doing in the garden, or somebody has turned up to visit with him, so I then either try to read my bible (which, I'm afraid at times, takes more concentration than I have the energy for) or, if I can only manage some light reading, I'll go to one of my beloved sci-fi or fantasy novels - or I'll try to do a little more of one of my crochet projects, if my hands let me.
Apart from any more food, drink, medicine and bathroom breaks I tend to spend the rest of my time alone which, to be honest, I quite like when I'm busy trying to fathom out something obscure (to me) in the scriptures I'm reading, or, if crocheting, some part of the pattern that makes no sense to me because, frankly, my brain plays me up something chronic when I'm tired and in pain - and, as that happens to be 24/7, as you may imagine, I tend not to be a very good conversationalist any more.
The strange thing about this, is that, when I'm writing or, should I say typing, there isn't so much of a restraint, as if not actually having to physically pronounce the words, gives me a little more energy to think about what I wish to say and, of course, I can take as much time as I need to when a word goes astray (or my spell-check let's me know that I'm not writing with any sense).
I think, of all the things that affect me most, especially since I became a serial ailment factory, it's the effect on my mind that is the worst thing to get me down.
For someone who has devoured words from the moment I was old enough to string a sentence together, this groping for the right one, whenever I try to have a conversation, is about as bad as it can be. I wouldn't mind if it were one of the more obscure ones that I loved to discover as a child, while reading through my mother's Collins English Dictionary, but it's the ordinary, everyday kind that seem to disappear, just as I need to use it to make sense of my topic of conversation. I've lost count of the talks with hubby that I've abandoned in frustration over these last few years, and I can't blame hubby for his own frustrations when our communication breaks down with me becoming upset, or angry at myself, or just feeling so down that I want to cry!
And that's yet another thing I do so sparingly!
I have a problem with my eyes, where the tear ducts don't work as well as they should, and this causes my eyes to be very sore most of the time and, with that soreness, if I do manage to shed real tears, it's like bathing my eyes in vinegar - not nice, very painful, and something to be avoided at all costs!
Ouch! I promised not to be self-pitying, and everything I've written seems to sound that way to me - but I honestly do try not to be that way, truly!
Anyway, getting back to the topic of my opening sentence, because of all the above, I'm either asleep when somebody calls to see me, or so out of it with pain, that I find it hard to sustain a decent conversation, without becoming so exhausted that I fall asleep, whether I have a visitor, or not!
So, through no fault of our own, I'm finding it a curse, as well as a blessing, that I'm on my own so much which, of course, doesn't help the depression any, either. The only way that I can fight this, I've found, is to have long, involved, and mostly incoherent, conversations with myself, so that I can vent some of this anger that catches me unawares!
It's such fun, not!
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