verdant
30-01-16, 10:11
I am 55, male, within sight of possible early retirement - by a lot of people's standards, quite privileged - though my retirement plans are possible because I have lived alone most of my adult life so no children... no holidays either - holidaying alone upsets me. I also have a very modest lifestyle - bicycle as transport, wholefood vegan diet - which has also ensured good physical health, though I am only recently back from a detour into fish and cheese in my 40s that led to daily cake and soya custard and moderate obesity.
My retirement plans suddenly seem to be on the scrap heap.
I also spent almost nothing on my house - all I did was demolition work - never completed anything - so it is in a bad state - as well as being full of hoarded junk which I'm trying to make a start on.
It's the second time I've had to empty it - the last time was 20 years ago.
I have mild OCD - leaving the house is a half hour ritual of pointless checking - and often photographing and videoing whet I have done - and this has started to interfere with my work.
.. as has the recently increased anxiety as I start to deal with the state of my house - which in some ways parallels my dealing with the state I left my body in after about 10 years of excess food consumption ..
And as I am forced to "look down" - or back, one major new bit of suppressed history has emerged - the most difficult yet - as unlike the childhood sexual abuse and my mother's failing to deal with it when I was 9 years old, and the terribly destructive relationship in my 20s that continued as a destructive "friendship" into my 30s, this was something I did largely by myself - or rather didn't do, and the party concerned is no longer there to apologise to ...
I am reluctant to go down the medicinal route - Prozac seemed to help in my late 30s when I felt I had genuinely clinical depression ..
I have just started experimenting with propanolol (beta blocker) just before bedtime so that I can avoid heart-pounding anxiety to accompany the self-destructive stewing on the past when I twice wake needing a pee 3 hours and 6 hours later (I eat a vast amount of green veggies in the evening and am a middle-aged man) ..
So far it has been interesting - dramatic dreams - the latter part of the night still a bit of a mess in terms of sleep ...
... I have always had to have ambient music playing - the radio doesn't work so well - though since I'm learning a second language, all-night French radio drama has sometimes helped a bit ..
What I find most reassuring usually is real life spontaneous human voices - but (Paltalk) voice chat rooms tend not to attract the most balanced of people (witness my own presence there).
I have "come out" to my boss at work and it's a people -oriented workplace so they will help make time for me to get counselling ... taking the propanolol has made "mindfulness" exercises make sense to me - though as yet I can't tell when I will find a space - both physically or mentally/emotionally when they will be an option.
Perhaps when the weather warms up I will find somewhere in the countryside I can cycle to ... getting out on my bike has been one of the few times I can find a bit of quiet in my head - 20 years ago it was ironically several hours into an all-night rave ...
Mostly as I alluded to earlier it has always been about me running away from myself and the past - lots of abandoned enthusiasms .. and a constant craving for an impossible healing relationship which got me into trouble twice - and hurt others ...
Oh well ... probably a load of disconnected gobbledegook, but I wanted to get it down and posted - I have tended to avoid doing this sort of thing as almost everything is a trigger.
My retirement plans suddenly seem to be on the scrap heap.
I also spent almost nothing on my house - all I did was demolition work - never completed anything - so it is in a bad state - as well as being full of hoarded junk which I'm trying to make a start on.
It's the second time I've had to empty it - the last time was 20 years ago.
I have mild OCD - leaving the house is a half hour ritual of pointless checking - and often photographing and videoing whet I have done - and this has started to interfere with my work.
.. as has the recently increased anxiety as I start to deal with the state of my house - which in some ways parallels my dealing with the state I left my body in after about 10 years of excess food consumption ..
And as I am forced to "look down" - or back, one major new bit of suppressed history has emerged - the most difficult yet - as unlike the childhood sexual abuse and my mother's failing to deal with it when I was 9 years old, and the terribly destructive relationship in my 20s that continued as a destructive "friendship" into my 30s, this was something I did largely by myself - or rather didn't do, and the party concerned is no longer there to apologise to ...
I am reluctant to go down the medicinal route - Prozac seemed to help in my late 30s when I felt I had genuinely clinical depression ..
I have just started experimenting with propanolol (beta blocker) just before bedtime so that I can avoid heart-pounding anxiety to accompany the self-destructive stewing on the past when I twice wake needing a pee 3 hours and 6 hours later (I eat a vast amount of green veggies in the evening and am a middle-aged man) ..
So far it has been interesting - dramatic dreams - the latter part of the night still a bit of a mess in terms of sleep ...
... I have always had to have ambient music playing - the radio doesn't work so well - though since I'm learning a second language, all-night French radio drama has sometimes helped a bit ..
What I find most reassuring usually is real life spontaneous human voices - but (Paltalk) voice chat rooms tend not to attract the most balanced of people (witness my own presence there).
I have "come out" to my boss at work and it's a people -oriented workplace so they will help make time for me to get counselling ... taking the propanolol has made "mindfulness" exercises make sense to me - though as yet I can't tell when I will find a space - both physically or mentally/emotionally when they will be an option.
Perhaps when the weather warms up I will find somewhere in the countryside I can cycle to ... getting out on my bike has been one of the few times I can find a bit of quiet in my head - 20 years ago it was ironically several hours into an all-night rave ...
Mostly as I alluded to earlier it has always been about me running away from myself and the past - lots of abandoned enthusiasms .. and a constant craving for an impossible healing relationship which got me into trouble twice - and hurt others ...
Oh well ... probably a load of disconnected gobbledegook, but I wanted to get it down and posted - I have tended to avoid doing this sort of thing as almost everything is a trigger.