To quote the song Life is a Highway by Rascal Flatts
Life's like a road that you travel on
When there's one day here, and the next day gone Sometimes you bend, sometimes you stand Sometimes you turn your back to the wind
Eventually, after a little bit, we get to the chorus where it goes
Life is a highway
I wanna ride it all night long
There is a point to that bizarre opening and I fully blame my mind for having 50 different thoughts at once.
Well, I can comfortably tell you that after the last week, this is one highway that has gotten far too cluttered and chaotic, to the point that there are bloody traffic jams everywhere.
First of all, I now officially have a discharge date and as I sit back and type this on Sunday 25th June, I can say it's 5 days until my official discharge on Friday 30th June at 10 am.
Second of all, this week has been a wide range of emotions.
There were the random ah-ha moments as random comments from facilitators clicked some pieces into my mind. There was the moment when I fully intended on asking a question but then something else said about a different topic drove that out of my mind and clicked something into place that I never realised needed an answer. There was the moment I was upset by an example used and I had the presence of mind to ask for a different example to calm me down.
The one major moment of the week that really tore at me was an analogy that was used. Here is that analogy paraphrased:
There is a house that gets blown over in a storm. Imagine you are that house that gets blown over and the rubble is a complete mess and you're sifting through that wreckage trying to find answers. Most people when sifting through that rubble often look up as if to say "Why are you doing this to me?" The reality is that instead of looking up, you should be looking down because at the end of the day, while you might have a lot of mess to sort out, you still have the foundations on which to build on.
These words I know to be true; this analogy I know to be true but then it raised the most fundamental question of all, one which at this point in time, I am still trying to find an answer.
What do you do if you're looking at the foundations and you realise that they're cracked and on the verge of failing?
That unfortunately is the reality that I feel like I am currently facing.
In addition to that, over a 24-hour period (Thursday/Friday), I got hit in very quick succession with things I either knew were coming or came out of the complete blue. 1) An email that contained paperwork for me to fill out (this one I'll keep private but it's painful) 2) A call saying that our cat is unwell (probably a cold but better to be safe than sorry)
3) News that my beloved Grandfather had taken a turn and was currently in palliative care
To be hit with 1 thing is normal; 2 is a bit of a shock; but 3 in very quick succession, it knocked me out completely to the point that it was recommended for me to stay at the clinic all weekend where the nurses could keep an extra eye on me.
So yes, I've spent the whole weekend trying to do different things, trying to distract myself and take my mind off the chaos that is, but as I was laying on the bed today, I had a lot of questions:
1) Why is it that life has continued to kick me in the ar*e repeatedly? 2) When will this constant kicking come to a merciful stop and allow me the chance to genuinely rest?
The one thing though I came to realise very quickly is that the plan I had originally conceived has now fallen into pieces.
My plan was to be discharged on the 30th of June and when I woke up on the 1st of July, I can put behind me what has for the most part been a tough 6 months. I know there are some things I obviously can't put behind me and have to deal with but I do know that it would've been a psychological lift.
Instead, I now face the prospect of being on tenterhooks for most of the second half of the year and busy stressing about life choices.
Today though, as I was distracting myself from my emotions and trying to think about anything else but everything that was going on...my illogical mind was playing tricks on me. It kept telling me that I was very much alone at this moment in time and it wasn't wrong but despite doing everything I'd been told to do, I could not shake that thought.
This week, knowing it's my last week at this clinic is going to be hard. As much as I don't wish anyone to end up here, it has strangely come to be a safe place for me where I had full permission to fall apart and to try to actually rest and reload. I hope that I don't end up back in a clinic for mental health but in this last week, I'm actually in a sick and twisted way, dreading the prospect of leaving
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