Checking In. Moving on.

Hi Guys

Apologies to anyone who has been trying to follow this blog - 'cause there ain't been a lot to follow recently. I stopped blogging because I started to feel a bit of a fraud, trying to write an honest blog about living with a diagnosis of schizophrenia but keeping my identity under wraps.

However, for what it is worth, here is how I have coped recently - pretty well, if I say so myself. I do still get stressed, but have pinned a lot of my problems down as having their origins in low self-esteem, so have been working on that (through a self-help book). It is hard going at times, I am constantly having to remind myself that I am as good as anyone else, which should be easy and basic but actually involves a lot of effort because I have been putting myself down for a long time.

I am benefitting from five free mornings a week - Toddler is now at play school, and loving it. He is so sweet - I let him sit next to me in the car on the way home and he always asks 'Had a good day at work?'. I say yes, and he says, 'I had a good day at school too'.

It makes me feel good that he considers my writing to be work. I make sure that I do write when he is at school, and I am about thirty thousand words into my memoir now. I am writing other stuff too, but I want to complete the memoir - I need to lay it to rest before I can move on properly.

The other children are doing well too - I always find this time of year hard because of all the bugs around. I hate it when they are ill. But, touch wood, as they get older they get stronger.

The puppy is growing nicely. She is seven months now and still rather destructive - she chews and guzzles anything she can find around the house. She destroyed a copy of a Wendy Cope poetry book recently, that I had bought for the kids and which the author had signed. That was really annoying. But on the plus side, she is so soft and furry to cuddle and so completely non-judgemental - therapy in puppy form. And the walks are just great - I need to tramp for over an hour to feel the full benefit of a walk and she is more than happy to keep me company.

As for the mental health side of things, the exercise helps to keep me positive and relaxed. Most of the time I am fine. Occasionally I become stressed and if this stops me sleeping and if the lack of sleep continues for a few days, then I can get close to the edge. But I tend not to worry so much about tipping over it. I have survived a lot of trauma in the last ten years and not succumbed - maybe it is time to put the spectre of the Hospital firmly behind me now, while ackowledging that I am not immune to the effects of worry and insecurity and that I need to concentrate on methods to help me cope with that.

I tend to talk too much, and not listen properly - mostly this is a manifestation of nerves, and it is something I really need to address in my dealings with other people. It shows how it is possible to change though - in the last twenty years I have gone from someone who could not say boo to a goose to someone with verbal diarrhoea. I just have to keep changing, and try to make sure that the changes are for the better. In another twenty years I may be someone special!

Anyway, enough for now. I will try to start blogging regularly again. I have missed it, this sense that I am shouting into a well, but hoping that someone out there will hear some of the noise I am making, and somehow benefit. x x