No Parking! You'll Get A Duck In The Desert

The most ridiculous No Parking sign I've ever seen was in the middle of the desert in Kuwait. It appeared just after the war in Iraq in 2003 and was a bigger, more incongruous invasion in itself than the convoys of armoured vehicles rolling up through Basra. (It was also quite possibly more effective, but as Tony Blair is now a follower of this blog and Cherie is a hot-shot lawyer I won't go any further) Now, Kuwait is one big desert with one big city and one big highway strung out like a dusty washing line pegged with pylons and jingly trucks and the odd camel tethered off it. It runs like a single dusty scar from Iraq in the North to Saudi in the South and you know you're approaching the Iraqi border only as soon as two giant skeletons of destroyed satellite dishes loom eerily into view.(I could swear they swung round to follow me everytime I passed). Anyway, the point is that there was nothing apart from sand - grey sand, yellow sand, orange sand, sandy sand- for miles and miles. But in the military's makeshift Camp Fox, there must have been an over-zealous Sergeant Major and some rear-echelon-post-war boredom setting in and there it was one day: the No Parking sign.  There wasn't even a road let alone a kerb or a yellow line, and with a convoy of 15 tonne lorries behind me steaming out of Iraq laden with returning ammunition, the sign was only going to raise an eyebrow under a helmet before it got firmly flattened under a back wheel. Of course, being a military camp, it wasn't long before someone with a sense of humour and solid set of balls replaced it with one saying  'Don't Feed The Ducks'. Quite.

The point I'm making is that signs should be clear, unambiguous and relevant. If not, then they will be misunderstood, misinterpreted or even mocked. There will be frustration, confusion and unexpected consequences spiralling their way out of control through a knock-on of lives. If I'm not allowed to find a parking space in the desert then I'm going to look for a duck to feed instead. Human nature. We know that yet we never see it coming. Duck.

I really struggled with mixed signals.  Often because I didn't realise that they were mixed.  Take the 'No Parking. Pick Up and Set Down only' restriction flaunted outside hospitals, airports and places where you really, really need to stop. So I can't park but I can stop? Mum says categorically no; Dad says oh go on then..... Yes? No? Can I? Can't I? Where are my boundaries so I can make my choices?

(Thinking about it, 'No Parking. Pick Up and Set Down Only' might have been a better metaphor for my calamitous love life....have often wondered whether I've been completely oblivious to the fact that I've got a post-it note with words to that effect slapped on my forehead...)

For me, close relationships would often say one thing but do another; work would feel like it was stabbing me in the back, climbing over my dead body and then lying about it afterwards; chancing no-hopers employed a psychopathy of passive-aggressive confusion techniques to wangle a second date; even my dog would walk past the door and then piss on the carpet.  No one was being straight with me.  There was no clear message, no clear cues, no safe ground. Just a row of pesky ducks that shouldn't even be there trying to paddle on shifting sand.

The problem was that by the time my subconscious had been for a stroll, had a think and come back to the room having smugly worked out what was actually going on in the face of a mixed message, the three amigos, Control, Delete and Run would be sat in the front room. If I couldn't work out what was going on then I was going to decide what was going on. Control was in the house.  If Control couldn't work out what was going on then Delete would take over- pushing threatening people, feelings and emotions right out of my phonebook, out of my mind and out of my life. If that failed, then Run would clean up.

But Run was tired. Run had instigated no less than 6 job changes and 7 house moves in 7 years. Run was done. There had to be a better, more stable way of not recognising and not over-reacting to receiving mixed messages, to knowing that my subconscious was alerting me to something that my conscious mind hadn't yet processed.

In the end it was simple. Mindful. I needed to acknowledge how I was feeling; send a clear message to my brain thanking it for signalling that feeling; and then knowing that the emotion would pass, make the choice to leave the confusion in its own secure space, and return to the present moment. Park the confusion, without stopping there myself.  Pick it up, set it down, leave the duck in the desert.

 

Stop The Rain! The Rainbow's All Wrong...

Rainbow was wrong on many levels. Geoffrey should never have been allowed to play with Bungle, Zippy and George. Let alone Rod, Jane and Freddy.  But that's not the Rainbow I'm referring to here. 

Now it seems to me that Rainbows are a colourful explosion of complete confusion. Streaking across the sky announcing to the whole world that Sun and Rain have got all mixed up. They need a few moments to untangle themselves and throw a colourful smoke screen of a rainbow as a serious distraction technique hoping that all of us below will get caught way up high in lullabies and pots of gold. We're none the wiser whether it is meant to be sunny or rainy.  We don't even register the confusion.  We just smile and point at the rainbow.

I had absolutely no idea that I was playing a dangerous game of emotional roulette with my very own rainbow until it was plucked out of the sky and dropped in my lap during a therapy session. There I was chatting away exploring some new mental avenue or other when I got zipped. Zipped shut by the psychologist.  She stopped me because what I was doing was recounting something quite traumatic as though I was telling a funny story to my mates in the pub. To anyone watching me with the sound off I was smiling and laughing and telling jokes.  To anyone listening without looking, this was serious stuff.
I was masking the deep-seated emotions and feelings with virtually the complete opposite outward cues.  My body language wasn't telling the truth.  Except how would anyone else ever know if I didn't even realise it myself?  I was completely out of kilter. It was like using a parasol to hide the rain, painting a unicorn to hide the stain.

This meant two things: firstly that for some reason on a subconscious level I believed that it wasn't safe to visibly show anything other than positive emotion; and secondly that I was regularly sending out the wrong message. No wonder I was having trouble feeling that I was being heard - I was all smiley faces and exclamation marks.  The question marks, capital letters and dot dot dots had all gone missing under a protective layer of body armour. I was actively asking people to misread and mishear me. I needed re-wiring, reconstituting, restoring- I needed a full-on factory reset! But first I wanted to explore this emotional infidelity in my life a little further.

The rainbow effect was different with my wardrobe which mainly seemed to be black and white with a hint of baby blue and pink thrown in for the softer days. Since I'd stopped working I was dressing according to how I felt each day- pyjamas mostly at the start, and then jeans and hoodies, and then prettier shirts and more expressive jewellery as I started to feel better.  But what I did notice was that I always put the same North Face body warmer and brown leather boots on to leave the house.  Keys and phone in the inside pocket. Zip. Left boot on. Zip. Right boot on Zip.  Zip, zip, zip.  Body armour on and ready to face the world. I felt strong, padded up and in control.  This got me thinking about how I used clothes over the years.  In the Army, uniform made me feel proud, smart (although generally under-ironed and hurriedly polished) and that I belonged; at school, uniform was the blissful protection from the pressure of having to keep up with the latest Naf Naf jacket or Nike Air trainers (although the brown knickers and straw hats left a lot to be desired); at work, I used clothes to put on the persona I needed for that day - dress and heels for difficult meetings, jeans for Fridays, jacket and big ring when interviewing.  I was using the rainbow of my wardrobe to empower myself.  On the outside.  The pattern was the same- I was giving an external message that did not match the inner one.  It denied and overrode it.  The shape-shifting, colour-changing rainbow was me.

And yet, if I think back to all the fancy dress parties I've ever been to - they have mostly been brilliant, the best.  A monumental display of people being more themselves than ever- using the adopted identity to exaggerate, explore and enjoy their own. Was this down to the simple fact that fancy dress was a conscious choice?  A conscious choice to have fun. No masking of inner emotion but actively tapping into it and exploding it outward instead. Ironically, I could learn a lot from fancy dress- it was exactly what it said on the tin, it sent clear messages to everyone around, and it was completely at one with its inhabitant having undiluted, unadulterated fun.  It also lived completely in the moment- I'd always end up leaving the key accessory of it behind that night never to be seen again. The hats, masks, wands they all walk (have you ever come home with your fancy dress outfit intact??)- they're not thinking about the next time, just this time.

So maybe I had got my rainbows all mixed up.  I needed to know when it was sunny and know when it was overcast, know when it was hammering it down with rain and when the fog was closing in, and keep them all separate.  I didn't need the roulette of a rainbow, I needed to feel and exude emotional clarity.  This was going to take work to identify my feelings accurately in the present moment and then have the courage to articulate them, to be me. To push the boundaries, and not be scared to leave parts of me behind.  Leave a mark. An echo.

Perhaps I could learn something from a clumsy brown bear, an incessant zip-faced chatterbox and a camp pink hippopotamus after all. They are exactly who they are, inside and out. And we seemed to love them. Up above the streets and houses...rainbow flying high.
Wrong?

When The Past Came Back Before Breakfast

The present must have slowed down considerably because the past suddenly came crashing into it one morning like a jumble of over-excited ghosts falling through the floorboards of the spirit world.  I woke up to find them scattered across my duvet arguing about what order they should be in-should they line up in chronological sequence or rank themselves by importance? March, April, May or benign, upsetting, disturbing, RRUUUU...N! I'm not sure it really mattered. I wished they'd hurry up so I could get my cup of tea, although it would make more sense to my logical mind if they did it chronologically. Once they'd jostled themselves into order I began to see exactly who they were.  They were 2006.  Arriving en masse and unannounced right that second, just as I woke up.

2006 was a long time ago- nearly ten years- but was clearly hauntingly significant and I was being forced to take a closer look. And before breakfast. This must be important. Just as I was starting to find my new voice, to feel the highs and lows of long-suppressed emotions, see the world in colour, hear the noises in the background and feel life flooding back, here came my unruly memory bubbling and effervescing to the surface like witch water summoned by divining rods. Something was freeing itself up inside my mind, there was suddenly more space, more acceptance and more room for the past to present itself to me, shake itself off, dust itself down and settle itself back to sleep.  My memories were picking themselves up off the floor where that messy filing cabinet had strewn them and were floating back up past me for a nod of acceptance before picking up a meaningful category, a label and a translucent folder on the way back down to their rightful place where they had like-minded friends, where they had context.

As I felt a little braver, I started to look a little closer at just who exactly had come to breakfast that morning. There was Random Nose Job, Iraq, Stonehenge and Social Chlaustrophobia all looking at me expectantly from the end of my bed.  There was nothing for it - I followed them into the kitchen, put the kettle on and once they were all sat comfortably round my big, wobbly, wooden table I took a deep breath and faced them all.

Random Nose Job had been a somewhat impulsive decision at the start of 2006 following the break-up of a reasonably significant yet limping 3-year relationship.  Most women would probably have settled for a hair cut and a makeover on reflection, but a nose job seemed to hit the spot for me.  So one quick Harley Street detour and credit card flash later, I had a less bumpy, slightly shorter schnoz and complete closure on my relationship. No regrets, still happy with the nose.  Drastic, but worthwhile.  Filed.

Iraq was an attention seeker.  He captivated me for six months in 2003 and then wanted me back again not for 6 but for 12 months in 2006.  A whole year.  Two back-to back tours.  Partly my fault as I volunteered for the first one, but still.  Long. The first six months was dominated by tense helicopter flights and travelling in the back of armoured vehicles while chaperoning the Press across both Basra and Baghdad.  Being on edge was normal, getting to the end of every journey lucky.  Six people I knew and worked with directly lost their lives that tour. But for the grace of God.  (Except now I don't much believe in Him). The second half of the year was mentally intense- running an Ops Room 24/7, executing the logistic drawdown of some of the most significant bases in Iraq, sleeping behind my desk on the floor, supporting convoys that had split and been attacked out on the ground, running a half-marathon in the desert with no training (because that was what we did). Brilliant, all of it.  No regrets but the intensity had fried my mind.  Filed. (With the caveat that I stop pushing myself to extremes and listen to the warning signs of Social Chlaustrophobia).

Stonehenge was one of the most ridiculous moments of my life and that must be saying something.  I was home on R&R for two weeks between Iraq tours and met up with some friends in London.  We were planning to head down to Stonehenge for the Summer Solstice.  Except, for some inexplicable reason, I suddenly needed to travel on my own, to drive myself- so I travelled all the way down there in the Audi A4 I never did like, on my own, driving behind the car with everyone else in.  I must have needed the separation. I drove into the carpark. And I panicked.  I couldn't do this.  I didn't stop.  I kept on driving, out the other side of the carpark, back onto the A303 and headed for the M3, M25 and Essex. Straight home. That was the first sign that something was wrong.  Except I chose not to acknowledge it, slept it off, and went back to Iraq the following week, got shot at on landing in Basra and slipped back into 'normality'. Only recently, a friend who was there told me that I had been completely paranoid in London that day- uneasy about being on a leafy Leytonestone suburbia street unarmed. Hmmmmm.  Filed in the warning-signs-not-to-ignore bucket for easy access in the future; remember to get a second  opinion on what I consider 'normal'.

Social Chlaustrophobia.  I can see now that it was having an intimate affair with Stonehenge and maybe even a threesome with Iraq as well but I just didn't quite recognise this at the time.  I met Social Chlaustrophobia  full-on at the end of 2006 when I returned from Iraq for good. Supermarkets were too much, too busy, too overwhelming and I would abandon my basket and leave.  Parties and gatherings were generally short-lived because I would either drink too much too fast and spend the night with the bathroom floor and the toilet bowl, or I would just decide to exit.  I would stop talking, put my glass down and just extract.  Walk out the door, on my own, self-sufficient, heading home.  Alone.  Even if I did manage to stay over at friends' houses, I couldn't make it past dawn.  I would wake early, get up and slip out of the house, leaving a note and an excuse of having to be somewhere else.  I couldn't be anywhere without Social Chlaustrophobia wanting more.
I know now that I have choices and I know now that I need boundaries, I also know that I need to feel safe at all times or I panic and run.  I know that I am more self-aware and more in control.  I can file Social Chlaustrophobia but knowing that he will always try it on. We can have coffee but nothing more.

I was expecting 2007 to come to lunch and then maybe 2008 to dinner. But just letting 2006 in for breakfast seemed to have been enough. My mind knew what it needed to do and just did it, because I let it.  Let the past in before breakfast and maybe, just maybe, it won't ruin your day, and will open up your future.

Please Stop Talking, I've Left The Room

Looking back, part of what had caused my discomfort at work was the feeling of having a voice but just 'not being heard'. And one of the most pronounced symptoms of oddness post-breakdown was that I struggled with conversations: being talked around, being talked to, being talked at.  I couldn't stand 'chat'.

I'd never been able to do small talk and unless there was wit, banter, scandal or outrage involved I found it hard to wake up enough to participate. Waking myself up by suddenly lobbing an inappropriate conversational grenade was often an automatic, if slightly suicidal, tactic of last resort. And boring, monotonous, self-important people who droned on and on and on in front of me until I noticed the hairs on their chin, the stain on their trousers or the lack of suntan mark under their wedding ring, would cause me to slip into a catatonic trance with the will to live draining so far out of me that I'd actually give up and faint. But that was me.  This time it felt different.

I couldn't cope with having to concentrate, with anything coming into my brain that I would have to process and respond to.  The effort of concentration would make my forehead ache with intensity and streak pain through my watering right eye.  If someone was talking to me one-on-one I'd start to lose focus after about ten minutes with my side of the conversation gradually scaling itself back from that of a literate being to inanimate object through a declining sequence of formed sentences, truncated yes/no participation, nods and grunts and finally the fixed smile. By which point, I'd mentally left the room.

Just the pressure of someone else expecting something as simple and natural as conversation was too much. I needed space and intermittent company.  But how was I going to get company without conversation? How could I just 'borrow' a warm physical presence without the social expectation?    I needed someone I'd been married to for twenty years who moved around in the same space without even realising I was still there!  As you know, I went one better and Merlin the wizard dog is here to stay.

I made the mistake of suffering silently behind talk instead of doing something about it.  How simple would it have been to just stand up and excuse myself, to actually tell the other person how I was feeling and articulate what I needed- to go and do something else, to watch TV, to go for a walk, to have some quiet time.  Instead, I was letting myself slip further and further back into myself away from the conversation, dissociating so far that I was only superficially engaging while my mind had taken itself off to a mohito and sunlounger somewhere else entirely.  Somewhere quiet.  Somewhere it could hear itself- there were important messages coming through it needed to make sense of.

So why didn't I just stand up and ask for what I needed?  Close the conversation and give my mind the peace it craved? So easy- once you realise you can, and it's ok, and you don't need to wait for anyone else to empower you to give yourself what you need.  I had a voice, I just wasn't using it.  No wonder I wasn't being heard.

I started to talk more openly about what I was going through, which helped me to then ask for what I needed.  The psychologist helped me to realise that if I 'briefed' my friends and family, I would make things easier for everyone; if I realised what I needed myself then it was unacceptable to submit to an uncomfortable situation or environment by mentally dissociating. I started to experiment with articulating the unexpected, articulating how I am feeling in the present moment. I started to speak with a new voice, an honest one coming from a good place within.  And there it was, my voice, being heard.

Mind, Meds, Muscles and Mastication - Sorting Myself Out

Before embarking on a mental breakdown there are several important factors that you should consider.  It is a complex, unpredictable, unfathomable process which can have far-reaching implications not just on your mind and body but on your bank balance too. You may feel that you are literally throwing money at your very own black hole but mental breakdowns take commitment.  Yes, commitment. Commitment to getting better, to finding solutions, to trial and error along the way, to giving yourself time, to embracing mindfulness, to having to ask for what you need not what you think others want you to need, and most importantly, commitment to yourself. Yes, You.

Having been a certified (certifiable?) commitment-phobe for the best part of 38 years, this was new ground for me and to be approached with a quite considerable degree of trepidation. I'd packed my car to the gunnels and fled the village within 24 hours when the last bloke asked me to move in with him, leaving behind my favourite raincoat and half-finished book. Inconvenient but not worth the risk to freedom of going back. (There was more to it, like having only known him a few weeks and his pathological fear of daylight, but you get the picture!)

But, this time I took the plunge.  I was going to start by committing to myself and getting better the full-on, headlong, long-term, never-going-through-this-again way.  It involved some stiff conversations with myself and reprogramming to remove the gnawing, self-effacing guilt voice telling me that I should be shelving my problems with a quick fix, rushing back to work, papering over the cracks with industrial polyfilla and dealing with it all when I was ready. When I was ready, when I had more time, when I had finished my Masters degree, when I had more support, when, when, when, when....  Whatever.

I am working with a private psychologist to sort out my mind.  I'm 14 sessions in and probably have the same number again left to go before I will feel ready to pedal through life on my own again.  Worth every penny but the commitment required not to be underestimated.  I committed to a session once a week for six months, to preparing before and reflecting after each session, to riding the wave in between sessions, to embracing a mindfulness programme, to telling the truth.  Even the bits I was most ashamed of . Commitment to absolute honesty (with myself).

Of course it's the doctor who controls the med stash and I'm taking the Sertraline 28 days at a time.  But it wasn't plain sailing having tried and rejected Citalopram  and Mirtazapine and finally finding a medication that worked.  For me.  Commitment to trial and error.

Inextricably linked with my struggling  mind, my body stopped me in my tracks.  And where in the past I had resorted to heavy physical exercise to quiet my  mind and elevate the endorphins, my body entertained me for a few weeks letting me run out in the April sun and then just closed me down.  I got 30 mins into a flat, riverside run and the silent pain was debilitating- consuming me through every fibre of every muscle.  I stopped twice and started again.  I stopped for good and walked back along the freshly-mown bank.  I've been seeing the same chiropractic since I had a riding injury aged 11 and booked straight in with him for a check-up.  I explained where my head was at and he understood instantly.  Through my back he released the pressure and allowed the surfeit of adrenalin to flood out of my saturated muscles.  Within half and hour I just wanted to put my head down and sleep as the recovery phase kicked in.  Within two days I felt taller, lighter, freer than ever before. Commitment to solutions from those who've helped you all your life.

Perhaps the most curious, and definitely the most bank-breaking one, was the dentist.  Over the course of the last year I had cracked two teeth, two big old masticators side by side, and spent 6 months, six sessions and a 4-figure sum on double root canal treatment.  I'd put it down to just one of those things but it wasn't characteristic of my teeth to let me down.  I told the dentist (again, someone who has treated me all my life) what I'd told the chiropractic about the last few months and he reacted in the same way.  Suddenly it all made sense to him as well.  The stress had been causing me to lock my jaw, grind my teeth at night and crack them.  Commitment to zero stress-related medical bills in the future!

Joking aside, what I had realised through the medical support I was receiving from all these brilliant, miracle-working people, who understood exactly what I needed, was not only how lucky I was to have them in my life at this crucial point, but also through the simple act of committing to myself how I may just have saved my life.  I hadn't realised the damage I had been doing to myself over a prolonged period of time. I have taken six months away from work  to rest, recuperate and reap the full benefits of therapy and self-re-discovery and I've learnt commitment.
Hello, Mr. Right, I'm almost ready!

Blue Rubber Gloves On The Yellow Brick Road

Starting the long drive that morning, I had no idea that it was the Yellow Brick Road I would be following stretching out all the way from Bedford to Cornwall like a magic lifeline reeling me in down a fast lane of motorways.  And no idea of the characters I was going to meet along the way- three of them having served in the Army, none of them knowing the other, and I was suddenly and unexpectedly to meet them all on the same day shortly prior to making one of the most significant spontaneous decisions of my life. An Officer, a Gentleman, a Locksmith and a Wizard. Turn off the sat nav, shed-squash the witch, get out the sparkly shoes, I was on the Yellow Brick Road!

The Officer. I pulled into what must have been almost the last Services on the M4 west and headed for the toilets, made it past Burger King but succumbed to a goody bag of promotional make-up waved under my nose by a salesman that made me smile in the foyer.  Normally I would have walked straight past but just stopping there for two minutes jolted me into a sliding doors moment and someone behind me suddenly shouted 'Sarah!'.  There were soldiers in uniform swarming ahead of me, probably having poured out of a hangover-steamed minibus with a standard issue lunch tray of untouched  still-frozen Ginster sausage rolls in brown paper bags under one of the back seats, in a desperate bid for fast-food freedom.  I didn't recognise any of them; they all seemed so young. Still made me smile nostalgically though. 'Sarah!'.  I turned, not really thinking that the shout was for me.  And there was the legend who had been my right hand man and troop Staff Sergeant in Iraq during the war in 2003 and who I hadn't seen for probably seven years.  I couldn't believe it.  He was on his way to Wales adventure training; I was on my way to Cornwall to view a puppy.  Sliding Doors.  It was a sign- I was on the right road with this puppy adventure.

The Gentleman.  The 'gentleman' swung in behind me in a carpark, tapped on my window, and informed me that once he'd seen my driving licence he'd need me to put on the rubber gloves.  Blue ones. The gloves worried me less than the driving licence- I couldn't remember quite how bad the photo on it was...
I'd made it to Cornwall and this was obviously what went on down there, hidden behind the innocent veneer of Eden Projects, Pasties and Polzeath Posh (ha!).
What was actually going on was that I was having a quick ID check to make sure I was who I said I was (who was that?)before being taken to see the litter of rather special Rhodesian Ridgeback pups which I would need rubber gloves to handle so that I didn't infect them with any Bedford bugs. What did you think I was talking about?
And then the next golden brick flashed in the sun- blue rubber gloves guy was ex-military too, had done Gulf War 1 and been out for a while, but nevertheless, what were the chances. What was going on today?  Was this puppy really meant to be!
I was there to view the tiny pup with the black collar and the 'pick me' eyes.  Having a laugh with another ex-military guy while both wearing blue rubber gloves was unexpected.  He was talking to me about hip dysplasia and dermoid sinus.  Had I done any research? What? No.  I had no idea what he was talking about, I just knew that it was a Rhodesian Ridgeback or nothing at all. Shame on me.  Something about his smile and his piss-taking was distracting me.  I paid the deposit without thinking, signed the contract in a fluster and wrote my post code wrong.  Shit.  Damn those rubber gloves.


The Locksmith.  I'd excitedly posted on Facebook that morning that I was heading to Cornwall.  The phone rang. Unbelieveable. It was another ex-military legend who had been my right hand man in Iraq 2006.  He lived in Cornwall now and was working as a locksmith.  Not just any locksmith- this was Sir Fix -A -Lock himself with his van called Guinevere and his little dog Camelot (Lottie) on the front seat.  He was only minutes away from where I was stood in a sea of puppies and latex- did I fancy a brew? Stonehenge had nothing on my yellow bricks today. Wow.

The Wizard. I fell in love with the pup with the little black collar and the white star on his chest pretty much instantly.  I couldn't stop looking at him.  I wanted him to feel the same way about me ( I think he does now - especially around feed time).  I cuddled him against me as he nibbled my collar, my jewellery, my hair.  I didn't want to let him go.  I didn't want to leave either.  An overwhelming sensation of doing something which might seem a little mad but which was actually, completely, one hundred percent spot on.  Something just for me.  He didn't know it, but he was going to change my life for the better and make me smile everyday.  A dusting of Cornish magic, a majestic hunter, a helicopter that flew me safe in Iraq every day.  Merlin.  My little wizard. In my blue rubber gloves, at the end of the Yellow Brick Road.

Cleared For Takeoff (but not for landing): And By The Way 'Let go of my carats!'

I think it was Einstein who said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

It was a 3-3 Mexico-India draw which meant that things were no longer continental, they had gone global and I had a world-size, economy-class problem with flying.  Long haul flying specifically.  And I couldn't even blame an airline having spread-betted my way through the sky on BA, Jet, Virgin and even KLM. (Not even any decent air miles for being such a transatlantic tart either)

Every time I landed back in the UK after having been away with work I would be fine for the first 48 hours - sleeping, eating and the routine jetlag stuff would return to normal- and then, on day three, it would happen. The first and the last times were the worst; times two to five were scary but didn't stop me.  The first time was coming back from Mexico City in 2013.  I'd survived the half-pint measures of tequila over working lunches (largely due to an accommodatingly thirsty pot plant behind me), I'd survived having my suitcase opened and my underwear sniffed in every corner of the airport by the drugs squad and their dogs, I'd survived the inordinate amounts of melted cheese pouring their way over every food order, I hadn't been shaken out of the elevator by an earthquake despite the foreboding sign in the hotel lobby, and I hadn't been shot on the Paseo de la Reforma (the Champs Elysee meets Bronx of MC).

But waking up back in the UK, I couldn't breathe.  Well, I could but only in a really shallow, gaspy kind of a way that got worse when the bathroom steamed up.  I went to work and felt weird- distant and far away.  The open plan office didn't feel right and I parked myself in an office on my own for the day.  Big Anthony, my brilliant personal trainer, got the shock of his life when he suggested I do thirty wide-arm press-ups in the gym and instead I crumpled and threw my arms round him in tears. By the time I got home I was losing feeling in my hands and arms- pins and needles were seeping up my body.  I called a cab and ten minutes later was at A&E. It was getting exhausting looking after myself!!

I blamed the sudden altitude of Mexico City - flying straight in to 2000m.  But the oxygen levels in my blood were fine and a chest x-ray showed no clots.  Phew.  But in that case what was wrong with me?  I left with two inhalers- a brown one and a blue one. Variations on the same symptoms continued to occur for the next five long haul flights, dispelling the altitude theory, and with the breathing difficulties becoming less pronounced and instead a black hole starting to open up in my mind a little bigger each time.  When I flew back from India in February 2015, the black hole opened its cavernous jaws and swallowed me whole.

It was as though I was watching myself sliding and couldn't do anything about it.  I was just getting further and further away from myself. I couldn't get out of bed for a weekend. I was clumsy, laboured and in slow, slow motion.  And then of course Breakdown hit and the rest you know!

The disruption to my biorhythms seems to have been the trigger, building and building over the last two years and threw my normal coping mechanisms out of sync enough to destabilise me emotionally, physically and psychologically all at once.  Curious that it was always the return flight that got me as if coming back to the status quo was on some level terrifying.

What I was experiencing were anxiety attacks.  I was so busy worrying about what might be wrong with me that I'd overlooked worrying about the worry.  I didn't know what I was anxious about though as my body was starting to manifest physical symptoms of what my subconscious was feeling.  Confusing to say the least and frightening for someone who likes to know what's going on at all times!

It wasn't until several sessions in to my therapy that something happened when I was just out and about in town that made me realise that these panic attacks after flying must have something to do with a significant part of me feeling  out of control.  Not out of control 'crazy' but more 'hurtling down life on the wrong path' out of control. Fundamentally not very happy, not very true to myself out of control.

I'd popped into a jeweller in town to get something valued and as soon as I pulled the box out of my inside pocket I started to feel hot, too hot under my gilet and behind the locked door that was now between me and the fresh air of the street.  The jeweller suggested that I leave the box there in the safe overnight as the Valuer wouldn't be there until the morning.  I couldn't breathe, I felt hot, I felt sick and I felt stifled.  Chlaustrophobic.  I wanted to run. Why?  I didn't feel in control.  Someone I didn't know, was holding something of great value to me and about to take it out of my possession which wasn't what I wanted.  Out of control.  Unlike the flights, I recognised it this time  though, recognised my body tripping 'fight or flight' mode telling me that the immediate world was suddenly a threat.  As I quickly and quietly suggested to the shop assistant that I would take time to think about it and come back another day, all I could actually hear as I stumbled to the door was my head screaming over and over again 'Let go, Let go, Let go of my carats!'. Panic punning- now?  Right this moment? Seriously?
At least my anxiety has a sense of humour.

Breaknecking - Knowing When to 'Buzz The Tower' (and when not to)

I'd done a lot of taking myself to bed over the last few weeks and was pretty sure I was almost lost forever (how is it 29 years since Top Gun?) but the second I started to feel better, I saw the green light and just went for it. Like a MIG in a tailspin. Flying so fast with absolutely no idea that I was going to need to eject from my own life and float back under a re-educated, more sustainable parachute.

I logged back on to my dormant runkeeper account, picked a new route to explore every day, entered a local 10km nine-weeks away and started clocking up the miles.  I started at 8km and built to 14km within the space of ten days.  None of this come-out-of-recovery-walk-jog-walk stuff. 

I swam length after hypnotic length in the outdoor pool at the gym and had to remind myself to get out after 50.

I threw my clunking brain into gear and chewed through Coriolanus and the 2500 word essay I needed to do for my English Masters, compressing two months' work into a week.  I wrote through the night, missed the deadline by 17 minutes and submitted it into the ether. Done.

I drove to Essex. I drove to the Lake District.  I drove to Cornwall and back in a day- a round-trip of 13 hours. What do you mean I should have broken the journey?

I tried to catch up with as many friends as possible.  I coffee'd, I lunched, I hen-partied, I musicalled, I even old-peoples'-home-visited. I just did it. Didn't cross my mind not to.

And I crashed. 

The problem with having been in the military is that you have no off-switch.  Living life at 100mph is perfectly normal, taking it up to 150mph on the Nurburgring might raise an eyebrow; driving home from Germany postings in a tax-free sports car at 120mph on the Autobahn is routine; flying through the Crossed Swords in Baghdad in a Puma helicopter merely an experimental detour; getting dumped out in the green zone in a cloud of diplomatic dust with only a mobile phone and a pistol because some guy called Tony Blair needs a lift, mildly inconvenient; pulling the duvet over your head when people trying to kill you are mortaring the f*** out of the compound you're in, mildly irritating.  That was life.  Fast. Fearless. Fun.

Except now I wasn't well and I needed to slow right down and listen to my mind and body.  I needed to just stop. Stop work, stop over-thinking, stop over-training, stop over-stretching myself in every area of my life.  I worked with the psychologist to understand 'pacing' and  set a reasonable scale of expectation and activity for myself.  I needed to find out what I could cope with, what were my tolerance levels - now and in the future?  I needed to understand what most people would understand by 'gentle exercise'.  That could be a 10km walk over a few hours in my mind- no, 12 minutes walking was apparently 'gentle'.  Wow- I needed to completely recalibrate.  I started to pull things out of my diary- not just because there was too much in there, but because I just couldn't manage.  I postponed, I cancelled, I prioritised, I streamlined, I left my trainers on the doormat. I found my parachute.

It sounds silly but I learnt the power of setting boundaries, reminding myself that I have choices and that I am in control.  I don't have to buzz the control tower every day to prove that I am....what?  It's ok, just to be me. No need for speed.

Scale Break - Monster on Mirtazapine

Pulling just-washed jeans up over my thighs is one of the worst things in the world; trying to do them up then squatting ten times to stretch them out is admittedly a bizarre ritual but one that at least usually gets both arse cheeks in where they should be. So when my favourite usually-loose-round-the-hips Ted Baker jeans only just met in the middle and there was a definite muffin-shape bulge spilling over the top one day, I stopped breathing.  Not that inverting my diaphragm was going to make an inch of difference to the situation, I was just hoping that by freezing in the moment I would somehow be able to quickly rewind and slowly restart back at a thinner, more jeans-friendly, me. 

I rushed to the full-length mirror hoping that its unhung balancing act on the bookcase would work in my favour.  Instead it was reflecting widescreen.  I rushed to the bathroom scales hoping that the layer of dust they'd been gathering would be enough to plead poor calibration.  I tried 'best of three'. Wideload - every time. I had never seen such big numbers under my big feet.

I had been on Mirtazapine for two weeks now and the soporific sedation was bliss compared to the headaches and insomnia beforehand.  But whatever it was altering in my brain to calm it down was simultaneously slowing everything else in my body and causing it to swell up like Violet Beauregard on speed.  I experimented with running, I experimented with barely eating for two days and still the weight crept up.  I was uncontrollably inflating. I was a monster on mirtazapine.  Not good for a need-to-control-everything freak like me.

The doctor seemed unsurprised when I explained the involuntary inflation of 6.6kg in 2 weeks and the mirtazapine monster.  I needed the meds that also made me thinner - so that I could fit into my TB jeans and maybe not be single for the rest of my life -did he have any of those (meds, not the jeans)? He set me up with Sertraline -I had dated and ditched both Citalopram and Mirtazapine ('psycho' and 'feeder') within the space of the last six weeks. It's not me, it's you- you're wasting my time.

I ditched the mirtazapine, experimented with low carb, high protein, full fat eating, and started to notch up the running miles.  Back in the jeans.  With a belt.

Emergency Break- A&E (Headcase Checking In...)

The 'thump, thump, thump', started in the Hilton coffee shop in Milton Keynes.  It had nothing to do with the number of roundabouts, giant cycle paths and distribution centres navigated on the way there.  It had something to do with the old bloke unfortunately resembling Stalker 69, sitting opposite me in the foyer; it had somewhat more to do with meeting work before I was ready.

Having now been on sick leave for a month, I was being 'formalised' under the  sickness at work policy.  I'd never taken a day off sick in my life (not even a pretend one) and here I was with a virtually fablonned biff chit (aka laminated sick note) meeting with the Unit Head to discuss stress risk assessments and occupational health formalities.  Unfamiliar territory. Thump. Discussion moving on to return to work date. Thump Thump. Discussion moving on to likely organisational changes. Thump, thump, thump. How did I feel about all of this? Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, get me the thump out of here.

I drove home badly.  Wrong lanes on roundabouts, I wasn't seeing the colours on the traffic lights, I was completely disorientated.  I pulled into Tesco's after missing the turning twice because I couldn't find my usual reference points.  There was a pharmacy there that the doctor thought might sell Melatonin supplements to help with the circadian rhythm balancing.  I came out with Montmorency Cherry which was apparently close and may help my body with producing melatonin. Might do the trick- every little helps, right?  I got back into my car. There was another Stalker 69 in the van parked opposite me eating his lunch.  My heart rate went through the roof and I remember gasping out loud completely involuntarily. Stalker 69. He was everywhere.  Why?  Was this paranoia?

Thump, thump, thump.  The pressure in my head increased steadily over the next two days. My right eye was watering and I just wanted to lie absolutely still.  Except I couldn't sleep.  I'd flipped from over-sleeping thirteen hours at night and three hours in the afternoon to feeling wired.  Absolutely wired as though I could run and run and run or lift the heaviest weights possible in the gym.  Lying down made the thumping worse so I sat up, made cups of tea, raided the fridge, tried to read, iplayered everything, googled stress symptoms a million times  on a hundred different sites and was glad when it finally started to get light.

I thought someone was going to kidnap me.  I locked the door and locked down.  Paranoia?
I thought if I went to sleep I wasn't going to wake up.  Thump, thump, thump.  Paranoia.

And then I started to cry.  And cry.  And cry.  And cry.  I cried for fifteen hours straight without stopping.  The pressure in my head was so intense I thought my brain was going to explode out of my skull.  There was constant, jabbering white noise playing on a fast forward loop inside my head and the only way of getting it to lighten up at all was to 'tune in' to it.  I couldn't eat without wanting to be sick.  Thump, jabber jabber jabber, thump thump, jabber jabber jabber, thump, thump, thump.
Someone bought me a ticket to A&E.  I checked in with all my baggage.

No brain tumour, no bleed.  Acute stress that wasn't going to get better unless I took strong medication and rested. Ok.  I'd gone cold turkey on the Citalopram and tried to do this myself; I'd got it wrong.  I left A&E, still crying like the boiler that bursts in the flat above, and started on the Mirtazapine.  I left my baggage on the carousel and checked out- perhaps the bomb disposal unit would kindly blow it up for me later. Thump, thump, BOOM.