Facing Tuesday.

I’m scared, anxious and depressed. There now, I just admitted to being scared for all the world to read. Such an admission doesn’t come easily to somebody raised in the stiff upper lip tradition by people who still remembered the old days of Empire, but there you have it. And a psychologist might even tell me that while fear and anxiety are natural bedfellows in the same part of the brain, depression belongs in a different compartment. If such an august person did tell me that, I could attest to the fact that at least two parts of my brain are working well in tandem at the moment.

The fact is that I don’t want to face Tuesday on my own, but I’ll have to do it just as I’ve always faced everything of import on my own. I never minded before; in fact, I preferred it that way. This time is different; this time I feel the need of support such as I’ve never felt before.

And there’s one person I would like to have with me on Tuesday, but she isn’t available and never will be. I read some of our old correspondence tonight because I thought it might make me feel better. It didn’t. Being reminded of those green and pleasant days in a green and pleasant land only served to push my dolour further into the cold mud and slush that is currently covering our dear old Shire. What made matters worse was also being reminded of the gulf that was impossible to bridge and prevented any meaningful connection. ‘There is only one big difference between us,’ she wrote in one email… but I’m not going to tell you the rest.

I also watched a movie tonight which spoke to the bases of my fear and anxiety in such an apposite way that I was tempted to think it prophetic. I rejected the notion and ascribed the apparent coincidence to the neurotic tendency which has added itself to my personality traits over the past five years. I suspect it's here for the duration.

And I mentioned in my last post that I was seven short of a landmark. This is one of them, so there are six left. I assume Tuesday will determine whether there will be more posts and what direction they will take. Stay tuned if you like.