Today is a good day to live!

In the same vein as my ‘stream of consciousness’ posts, on my walk today I have taken pictures of the places that we used to visit or look at. A lot is all in my home county of Suffolk. I cannot move away at the moment so I am confronting them all head on. Further afield there is Colchester, Cambridge, Bury St Edmunds Abbey Gardens, Dunwich, Felixstowe, Attleborough, North Devon, Buckinghamshire etc etc et al. The end of my walk I end up in the same place, the cemetery. Not because of a morbid fascination but because there is peace here.

I feel as if I have turned a corner over the past few days, even though they have been tough. My head tells me to move on, but my heart is kicking and screaming and digging its nails in as we both move further apart from each other. I have walked around town today confident and upright, shoulders back and saying ‘Good Morning’ to everyone and generally bouncing along the pavement. The only trouble is that I keep thinking that this is not my natural state. I ask myself am I on a high? Am I being overbearing or boorish? Should I allow myself to be this happy? It’s an incredibly powerful feeling to be happy and confident again after so many years being lost, it can be overwhelming at times. It feels uncomfortable to be this happy and I do not know what to do with myself. I hope that these sort of hours and days of happiness become more frequent.

In health news. I continue to lose weight. I can do tricep rows at 38kgs, bicep curls at 26kgs and sit ups and push ups. Moving onto bench press next and I’m not even in a gym yet. I feel like I’m missing something if I can’t do at least 30 minutes weight training a day and I am walking at least 5000 steps or 2.5 miles a day. It’s normally about 10000 steps though! My waist is now at 34, my chest at about 43 and biceps at 14.5. A long way to go to my ideal weight and look, but I am changing shape. In short, I feel fucking great, in fact I’m in the best shape I have been in years! Shame it took a near death experience to kick start the lazy depressed fat slob into action! Football on Monday night and about 90 minutes before I took in some carbs for the first time. I felt completely different and I was actually sprinting all over the place.

I met my community health person today and didn’t recognise her without her mask on! A meeting with a psychologist very soon for my formulation plan. My mirtazapine is going down to 30mg but staying on the vensir and coming off the flupentixol. No more sleeping pills unfortunately, but there efficacy was waning somewhat anyway. Still waiting on the doctors report about my small brain anomaly…. that’s a small anomaly, not a small brain! I’m hoping in a strange way that there is something there to explain my past behaviour which is so frightening and foreign to me. I have expressed my genuine interest in becoming a peer support tutor and eventually a worker on the same wards that I have been on as a patient. It gives me hope that I can use my dreadful experience and recovery, to help others. It will give further meaning to my life.

So far it’s been a great day and I’ve got to go. I have another webinar to attend on CHIME. Once again, your support and comments have been extremely helpful in my recovery. I sincerely hope you have a great day as well.