All over for another year

It's that time of year that you see those members of your family whom you only see at Christmas, weddings or funerals.
I haven't seen Auntie J since last Christmas. She is a robust Scottish woman who is not actually a relative, but a friend of my mother's from her college days. She is tough: she survived a botched operation which means she will have dialysis for the rest of her life. As a secondary school teacher in inner city schools, now retired, she regales us with tales of boys masturbating in her lessons, of teachers and their affairs, of pupils attempting to burn the school down and of the manner in which she dealt with these occurrences; she told him if she caught him doing that again, she would cut it off and he wouldn't be able to play with it any more.
Although i tell her that i don't want to be a school teacher, she advises me that if i kiss ass (which she regrets she never could) i will get myself a nice job. I tell her i want to work in Higher Education and she tells me there's not enough of it to go round, and asks me what i do with myself of an evening.
I tell her that i write on my blog and she pauses and looks at me in which time i wonder if she knows what blogging is. Auntie J says that blogging is for lonely people and i do not disagree with her. She tells me i should teach myself music, and that i will never be alone if i can play. I insist that i have no ability for it, and she tells me that i am a talented and intelligent girl. She tells me that i look beautiful, like the madonna or the Mona Lisa. She repeats her many compliments and notes that people may say she has a big mouth, but she said nothing when i looked so terrible last year, and now i look the best she has ever seen me looking, and she just wanted to say it.

you know those cliches about 30-something women? They're all true (in my case)

Okay, I got really mad.
I stopped taking my anti-depressants on Friday (against my doctors advice). I figure if i start feeling like shite then i can always start taking them again. They work on a very slow-release basis, so nothing dramatic is going to happen. I've still got the twitching, the numerical dyslexia and the inability to concentrate/ believe that anything is of much consequence really. However i can feel my sex-drive creeping back. I didn't even notice it had gone to be honest (or didn't much care) until the last couple of days. It's really been making me laugh, i've been revelling in it. It's really funny.
Other shifts have taken place -mostly yesterday actually- both inside and outside my body. The mucus blockage in my head started to move on down (a little too much information perhaps?). I could hardly breath in the morning but then it all started to come out (gross!) and by the evening my voice had almost returned to normal. My eyeballs are no longer squeaking and if i take paracetamol i feel almost human. Fuck Prozac, paracetamol's where it's at. It's been relaxing me to a frightening degree. I have slept through the day for hours on end- i was too scared to do this before because i thought i was depressed.
Yoga helped too.
The other thing is that my old yoga teacher is coming back! It's ridiculous, but when she left i cried a river. I cried when someone told me she was leaving; i cried when she announced it in class; i cried all through her last class and when i read her goodbye letter. I'm crying now just thinking about it. At the time i thought that was perhaps an unhealthy attachment to someone who is not after all a friend. But her voice was encrypted in my mind, it gave instructions when she was not there and was one of the few constants in the previous seven years of my life.
Anyway.
Today i had a massive gorgeous sleep and when i woke up i did two things that have been eluding me - both technical and related to my story-telling project.
I feel like i'm unfolding and i know i am not depressed.

Mrs Angry

I'm so angry.
I'm so angry i could go around screaming and shouting and hitting things if there were anyone here to listen.
I'm angry with every fucking arsehole who's ever trampled all over my feelings; i'm angry for every job i didn't get that i know i could have done; i'm angry that i always blame myself and that any lack of achievement in my life is only really down to me; i'm angry that i'm taking drugs to make me deal with things more in the way that other people do; i'm angry that my head is full of snot, i feel like shit and i've felt like this intermittently over the last two years; i'm angry that i can't breath like every body else does and i have to breath into a fucking tube to check how badly my lungs are performing; i'm angry that there's no one to look after me when things get like this.
I sat here and i thought i wasn't even going to be able to cry. I sat here thinking that my eyes are dry and nothing's going to come out. My feelings have been plastered over, smoothed out so that they look nice, so they can be painted on, and no one will have to look at those cracks and lines any more.
You're not supposed to look into the cracks are you: because you might fall in.

Twitching the night Away

I've had a slight twitch since January. I don't think anyone else can see it. It's just small muscular spasm, like the ones you get when you're just about to fall asleep. It only happens when i'm sitting or lying down. I asked the doctor if it's a side effect of the medication. She said it's more likely to be a side effect of the anxiety.
I haven't put my half a stone back on either.
Come on! Who's got my half a stone?? I need it back!
I also woke up running in the middle of the night last Sunday. I was peddling like mad. Like when you're at the bottom of a pool and you know you're running out of air.

Anyway, I'm finally going to London to see N and Dimitri. Back on Tuesday. Let you know if there's anything to report.

Clean

I was going to write about Skins (last night on E4) but i think i'll give it another chance and watch it again next week.
I've just come back from the Turkish Baths. It's two years since i last went- which is far too long. This time i went in the plunge pool twice. Normally i'm a complete wuss when it comes to being cold, but this time i loved the shock and the exhilaration of going from really hot to really cold. As i laid on a recliner in the first dry heat room, i felt the buzz my body reacting to the extremes. I found myself thinking that this was better than any buzz from alcohol, nicotine or other drugs (how thirty-something am I?)
When the buzz subsided i need the heat of the second dry heat room.
However liberated i like to think i am, i cannot help being disturbed by the nakedness of strangers. I kept my bikini on (until my final shower) but of course many women (mainly older women) are naturally naked. I wonder what the age is when you cease to give a fuck about other people seeing your snatch?
The next dry chamber is the hottest of all. I need to lay down on the stone which is covered by a towel. I put my head on the amazingly comfortable block of wood and give in to the heat below me. I remember the thing about living in the moment and i think about the intense heat located at the base of my spine and the relaxing effect it is having on my lower body. There's a similar but less intense feeling in the shoulders.
I repeated the whole process and drank lots of water.
For my final shower i used a lime and lavender body wash which smells fantastic. Then in the rest room, i used a complementary moisturiser which is pretty intoxicating. I reveled in the thought that i was almost certainly the best smelling woman in the room. Feeling heady with my own gorgeousness and the level of relaxation i don't move for about fifteen minutes (except to drink a smoothie).
I finally get dressed really, really slowly, toweling my hair and putting back each item of clothing carefully. I'm so clean, cleaner than i have been for the past two and a half years. I think about the last time i visited: November 2004.
I just bumped into him in the bar, it was my birthday celebration and i was enthusing drunkenly about how wonderful the Turkish Bath had been. Of course i said,
'You have to go, it's amazing'. To which he replied,
'Well someone would have to invite me, wouldn't they?'

I have steamed the last two and a half years out of my body and i'm ready to start again. Im clean, the cleanest i've been (Depeche Mode).
I drive home, and although i am all soft on the inside, i am bouncy and i do not feel the January cold, in fact i welcome it, and i listen to "The Second Coming" all the way home.

'S' is for spine

Almost a year ago (on the eve of my birthday) i was taken into hospital with a mystery virus. This was the kind of virus where you can't keep water down and keep losing consciousness. I kept blacking out and hitting my head on things. It wasn't nice.
Whilst i was in A&E, they x-rayed my chest to see if there was a problem with my lungs. I asked to look at the photo of the inside of my body, and discovered that i have an S shaped spine. I was extremely disappointed that none of my yoga teachers, lovers, or anyone i had ever been on holiday with, had ever noticed this about me.
A year later, i have decided maybe i have been a little unfair to those closest to me. Perhaps it hasn't been there that long, in which case, i should get it checked out.
I have never had back pain, but since the doctor told me i might need physiotherapy, i have suddenly become ridiculously aware of my back and of the exact location of each vertebrae and muscle. I feel ok standing up - almost automatically applying the principles of tadasana- but sitting down has become a minefield of self-criticism. I don't know how to hold myself: i feel uncomfortable in every position that i find myself in. I have exhausted myself by not allowing myself to sit naturally, and by making mental lists of things that i may or may not be able to do if this gets worse.
I have been veering from nausea - through imagining the worst, to the kind of compulsion one feels when put in danger; to run out immediately and do everything i ever wanted to do, as soon as is humanly possible.
I'm having another x-ray tomorrow. Lots of people have this thing and it's not a problem. I will be fine.
I have been trying to imagine someone massaging my back, patiently, consistently, over along period of time, until every one of those pieces goes back into line.