My main emotion was relief...

...this week and gratitude that I had some me-time. I badly needed to take stock, relax and rest. The day after my last entry I picked up a lot. Helped by (at last) getting the birthday card and letter from my son.

What is clear is that I still have a pronounced bipolar tendency, or at the very least, cyclothymia. My moods have a tendency to dominate my life, and no-one could say that I neglect my health in any way. I'm doing all the right things. Still my moods have a tendency to take charge of me rather than the other way around. Thank God for my spiritual life. Sometimes it is all I have that is effective against the mood demon. Sometimes I'm left clinging to it like a piece of driftwood in a stormy sea.

Anxiety over work issues looms large at the moment. That's clear from reading the last few blog entries and seeing what a preoccupation it is. Work as I think I said before, is a trigger. It triggers the recollection of all I have missed through these years of debilitating mental illness, which in turn sets off feelings of inadequacy, uselessness, incompetence, inferiority and...crippling shyness. Morrissey's line 'No I've never had a job because I'm too shy' could have been written about me. I lack a normal sense of being protected by my skin. Other people scare me and threaten me just by existing in that separate but parallel way they have. No wonder I ended up escaping into mania.

Not that I'm about to let any of that make me give up on it. Only by persistence can I come to terms with the work demon and convert it into a friend or at least neutralise it. I'll keep on keeping on. Nothing worth having ever comes easy. Besides I have the perspective of maturity. That's a gift that the passing years have brought. I am basically cognizant of just how incredibly fortunate and blessed I am. I have led a charmed life...to come back from some of the places I have been to not only intact but whole and healthy is testimony to that. To have work issues is a high-class problem for someone who has been repeatedly locked up, who has totally lost her mind on countless occasions, endangering myself and possibly others.

Above all I am grateful for the presence in my life of a Higher Power.

There's been so much to tell this week. I almost have pressure of speech trying to somehow get it out. My inner life is so overwhelming sometimes. Even that is a privilege in a way. There's such a richness of experience inside me that others don't necessarily know about. When I share at my OA group I feel like an outsider, never really fitting in and not by any means sure I even fit the description of 'compulsive overeater'. But I'm inclined to accept that and even celebrate it. My only fear is that others will be annoyed at my presence in the group. After all that wouldn't be a new experience for me. In one way I'm most at home in groups (more than pairs for instance!) In another I have a history of challenging them without necessarily even realising it.

Take care dear readers...thank you whoever makes it to this blog. It's the literary equivalent of a sketchy overgrown footpath that the Ramblers Association are trying to keep open. Hardly a main road then! Love, Zoe.