There is something really wonderful (and soothing) about lying in bed in the dark and hearing a cat – who used to have no home – push his way in through the door, nose around all of my stuff, and settle down to sleep in the wardrobe.
According to MindReader, he looks like “one of those seventeenth century portraits of the women with the big guts”.
When I was at university, I spent a lot of time by myself. A lot. I was a workaholic, and you can’t really read books about Foucault’s theories with your housemates in your room, so, by the time I got serious about studying, I was almost always on my own. Some of my friends treated university as a nine to five; I wasn’t very good at making boundaries and I was also extremely unproductive, so I used to study for twelve hours a day and probably only actually do about five hours’ work.
I didn’t think about time spent alone – or really time at all – then. Perhaps this was because I filled alone time with work, but I don’t think so. I wasn’t very anxious or neurotic, then. I would have episodes – one notable one where I thought I had alopoecia and threw out all of my shampoo – but most of the time I was none-mad. My housemates all moved home for various parts of the summer of 2005 and I spent most of that summer working full time in an office and living on my own. I didn’t really give this a lot of thought. I worked. I peed with the door open. I stayed up late doing blogging things. It was great.
In 2007, I moved in with some horrible housemates, and I think that I was so unhappy in my own skin, in my own house, with my own thoughts, that I actually forgot how to spend time on my own. Or, Time Alone became a stressful thing, because I would worry about my housemates.
And then when I became ill, time spent alone became even more stressful – because I had too much of it, and because I couldn’t do anything productive or enjoyable with it.
Even when I started getting better, I had become over-reliant on MindReader. Even his evenings out had to be scheduled around me and my plans. I would wander around our flat, eating the ingredients of meals instead of the meals themselves, turning all the lights on and leaving televisions on when I went to read in other rooms. Entire nights alone were even worse. More often than not, I simply wouldn’t go to sleep. I would have feelings close to panic. I would feel like if I died no one would know (it pains me to write this, such was the drama). A small, emotional part of my brain says that perhaps I felt that if I became ill again – and it did used to happen very suddenly, sometimes – there would be no one there to physically care for me, but a larger part of me knows it was just that I had forgotten how to be me. And such a large part of being me is what I do. I have baths. I light candles. I melt chocolate and eat it with a spoon. I devour books. I sing to myself. I ponder the seasons. But I had stopped doing all of this.
I used to hate being alone so much that I wouldn’t take into account some of the compromises you have to make when you spend all your time with someone else. I wouldn’t care what we watched on TV, so long as I wasn’t alone. Now, I still spend a signifcant amount of my free time with football on the television, but I take myself off into the bedroom to watch other things, or read books, or watch Benny (something I can do for an alarming amount of time, for I am simple).
I only really realised today how things have changed. They have changed gradually, of course, but some things helped to speed up those changes. Like being so busy that a Saturday in the house while it pours outside is so welcome. Feeling like I’m worth something and not just a sad girl with no job who waits for her boyfriend to come home is another. Having a cat helps with falling asleep alone more than I would like to admit. Having limited amount of time on the internet during the week does, too. Last year, I started to make lists of things I enjoyed and then did them. Now, I do them without thinking.
This morning, I woke up at nine (I went to sleep at ten pm. I know!). I got a coffee, my phone from downstairs, and collected Benny from the spare room where he’s taken to spending his mornings, and went back to bed and reacquainted myself with the internet. I took a pot of tea and a book into the bath. Then I got dressed and let Benny out, and read some blogs to the sountrack of My Head Is An Animal, a fabulous album by Of Monsters And Men. I had some lunch, watched Neighbours. And it is only now – 6pm – that I realised – hey. I’m actually 100% okay with this. I’m happy on my own. I’m comfortable on my own. I’m good company. MindReader is coming back in a few hours, and I’m looking forward to it, but I’m happy alone, too.
I just thought you should know.
And on a lighter note, here is Benny doing god knows what to my book on Saturday morning.
5 months ago
“How can I leave CFS alone when it won’t leave me alone?” I say to the woman.
“Billygean,” she says. “Is that true? Has it not left you alone?”
She has iron-grey hair shot through with pretty blonde highlights, and kind eyes. Her living room is full of polished wood, floor-to-ceiling windows and a scotch decanter sits on a table at the back of a room, like something out of a Wilde play.
“Yes,” I say, without thinking. “I need lots of sleep sometimes… and I have to pace…”
“Is that true?”
I shrug, frowning as I look at the coffee table. The only thing on it is an extremely large, flat bowl. I smile, inwardly, as I think of mine and MindReader’s cluttered living room.
“It was true,” I say eventually.
“When?”
“Well, at least last spring… summer,” I say, “as I definitely overdid things then…”
She looks pointedly out of the window, at the black sky, dark, already, at 4.30pm. “So a minimum of three months ago.”
“Right.”
“The thing that strikes me,” she says, “is that you can’t ever really take ‘time’ out of the equation.”
“No.”
“So it’s about being reasonable isn’t it?” She makes a gesture she sometimes makes; of somebody treading a middle path, winding their way through the very centre of things.”So we don’t know what works and what doesn’t,” she says, “not really. So we do the best we can without being extreme or depriving ourselves.”
I smirk as I think of all the cakes I missed out on when I was gluten-free. All the embarrassment and the inconvenience and the worry. Giving gluten up on a mere presumption was not a reasonable thing to do. Deciding I had to meditate for an hour a day was not a reasonable thing to do, even if I was well for the duration of my meditation fling. I would probably have been well anyway; have been well since (and a lot less bored).
I think now of the pacing I do. Two days of activity, one day of rest. Religiously. I broke the rules in July and relapsed. But did I also break the rules at other times? Could that have been a coincidence? Would that even happen now anyway? July feels like a long time ago.
“So what would we do instead of two days on and a day off?”
I make a face. “I definitely do get some symptoms if I just do exactly as I please.”
“Right,” she nods. “But what if… what if your body needs a slower day every third day, but not a day that stops? And maybe your mind would enjoy that too?”
I feel like I have been living in a box and someone has just taken the walls down. I cannot imagine a life without pacing, even though, bizarrely, the point of pacing isn’t really to do what I do, but to aim to build up to a sustainable level of activity that I could do every day.
“So perhaps next week I will go to work as normal and then on my rest days, I could do small things?”
“Or medium-sized things,” she says, with a smile. She lifts her hands slightly, and then brings them to rest on her knees, like a primary-school teacher does before announcing lunchtime. “Now, Billygean,” she says. “Why is it that you might want to hang on to this?”
“This… illness?” I say, confused.
“Yes.”
“I don’t,” I say immediately. “Perhaps I’m institutionalised.”
“No no – I don’t mean that you want to be ill. Rather, that it is… who you are.”
“The illness?”
“The whole thing,” she says, adjusting a button on her blouse. “The illness, the recovery, the pacing.”
The recovery. She has touched a nerve. I open my mouth, thinking I may as well be honest. “I love to talk about recovery.”
“And why do you think that is?”
I look around the room, this safe room, with a beautiful real fire and a black Spaniel called Charlotte, where I can say anything I like. “It gives me self worth,” I say. I didn’t even know it did that, and yet, somehow, I know I have spoken the truth; the words seem to hang in the air in front of me. “And attention,” I add, for good measure. I think of all the blogs I’ve written here about recovery: how proud of been, the comments I’ve received, the interest, respect, even, that shows on people’s faces.
She nods, looking pleased. Like we’re finally getting somewhere. “And what kind of self worth did you have before you got ill?”
“Good,” I say. “I mean, it’s good, now, too.”
“What I’m saying, Billygean, is that you need to find a way. A way to be you again. Without this illness. Without this recovery. Just you. A lawyer, a friend, a girlfriend, a cat owner. But not a sick person. And not a well person who was sick. Just a person. Just – you.”
***
2 months ago.
I push MadFather in his wheelchair around Sainsbury’s. He broke his ankle before Christmas, in an alcohol-and-black-ice moment.
“This is annoying,” MadFather sings. “I cannot WAIT to put both shoes in again in February.”
“Ah, two shoes,” I say. “What a luxury.”
“It shouldn’t be,” MadFather says, shifting and reaching out for a fajita kit. “But it is. Mind you,” he says. “This is nothing compared to what you went through.”
“Huh?” I say, and for that moment, I have no idea what he is talking about .
“You didn’t wear shoes for eight months!” he says.
I smile. “Or day-clothes,” I say.
“No… You must tell me one day how you avoided going mad.”
“What I must tell you about,” I say, pushing him into the dairy aisle, “is all about our holiday we’re booking.”
***
Now.
“Exactly 27,” my Mum says at 13.34; the minute I was born.
“Hurrah!” I say.
I hold up my glass and, internally, toast myself. A daughter, a sister, an aunty, a lawyer, a bath-taker, a slow eater, a library-addict, a blogger, a Type A personality, a cat owner, a lawyer, a smiler. And I don’t think of the illness – or of recovery – once.
Basket of birthday bathbombs
I am a person who says ‘yes’ to things too often, and, as a result, there is a financial advisor sitting in my living room. It’s part of a scheme run for lawyers by my work.
“So,” FinancialAdvisor says, his light-reactive glasses looking just like sunglasses in my bright living room. “What’s your rent?”
“Well,” I say, as Benny swaggers into the living room and jumps straight on the man’s lap. “Um, sorry about him. He can be a little overly familiar.”
“Don’t worry, I have three dogs,” FinancialAdvisor says, as a clump of orange hair floats off Benny’s back and lands on FinancialAdvisor’s suit.
“So, I know what my rent is,” I say, “but my boyfriend and I just pay a sum into the joint account each month which covers rent, food, bills, car insurance, petrol, pet food…”
“Right,” he says, and I write the figure down for him.
We also deduct my Big Four fixed personal costs: iPhone bill, contact lens payments, interest on overdraft and commuting train tickets.
“And so there is this sum,” he says, pointing to his notebook, “left after those outgoings.”
“Right,” I say, quite surprised by the number. There is NEVER that sum in my account.
“And so you said you’ve been struggling to pay off your overdraft OR save,” FinancialAdvisor says as I cringe internally. He doesn’t have to be so blunt.
“Right,” I say, as Benny gets off FinancialAdvisor’s lap and starts to climb into his laptop bag. “Sorry about him.”
“So, what I mean is,” FinancialAdvisor says, ignoring Benny. “Where does the majority of your expendable income go? Meals? Socialising? Petrol?”
“Shops,” I say quietly.
“Shops?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of shops? Food?”
“No. Shops with… nice things in,” I say feebly.
“Nice things?” The man winces as Benny leaps out of the laptop bag and onto the top of the chair. Benny heaves a sigh and settles down, casually dangling a large paw on FinancialAdvisor’s shoulder.
“Yes.”
“So…” he starts writing in his pad. “Clothing?”
“Anything.”
“So over the last six months, what have you spent the most on?”
“Bath stuff.”
“Right.”
“Oh and fragrance oils… Candles. A few tops. Tights. Bags. Duvet sets. Bowls. A new mop head. Hand warmers. That kind of thing. Oh,” I say, looking across the room. “I got those lovely candle jars before The Pier went bust. Two for one!”
“Wow. So really, everything, then?” FinancialAdvisor says, and I see him scrawl candle jars??? on his pad.
“Yes,” I say.
“And so can I ask – what is the aim of this session. What is the number one reason you consulted me today?”
“Um…” I say. “It said in the leaflet I would get thirty pounds of Debenhams vouchers?”
The chaps over at Oo Shirts are offering one of my readers two t-shirts with anything you like on them. I don’t normally go in for giveaways but I thought this was a really nice one as you effectively get to choose what it is. I of course could inflict a Billygean.co.uk: your number one source for colonoscopy chat t-shirt on you, but I don’t think anyone wants that.
The two t-shirts must have the same design on them and be shipped to the same address. Other than that, they can be different sizes, colours and styles. The winner will be required to provide a short review of the t-shirt that I can put on here once you’ve received it.
The winner will be able to design their t-shirts at the design lab. There are some very cool designs. And you can put ANYTHING YOU LIKE. ON A T-SHIRT. Even images! How cool is that!
To enter:
Leave a comment below.
For an extra entry, tweet about this competition providing a link to it. As long as you put @Billygean in the tweet I should see it, unless you’re protected in which case ask me to follow and I will.
For an extra entry, share this post on Facebook (and show me you’ve done so)
For a final entry, suggest a new name for Benny.
So that’s four possible ways to enter.
Rather than choose the best Benny name, I will pick a winner at random at 9pm January 1st 2012.
Good luck!
Thanks for bearing with me while I have issues with my archives. I am sorry if you received hundreds of emails today.
There are about fifty more archived entries to upload, but I’ll do those next week.
I don’t usually ever advertise on this site, but…
If you like cupcakes… MindReader’sSister (who is every bit as lovely as MindReader) makes cupcakes for a living. They are absolutely beautiful. I was going to choose just one image and then let you flick through her pictures yourself, but then I got carried away, and so, 16 photos follow, but I bet you’ll look at every one.
She is Midlands-based, but if you’re further afield I’m sure something could be worked out. If you’re mad like me and have had/do have dietary requirements, she is very good, listens, and understands using separate spoons.
Her website is here.
Her phone number is 07968784076.
Her email address is info at the classic cake company dot co dot uk.
You can order via her website (which is also her Facebook page), or I am sure she will see if you leave a comment here.
