Yes!

I had a letter from work today. They're paying me for the entire duration of my (three week) sick leave. That's definately a prayer answered.

As for returning to work, I have mixed feelings. Although not great circumstances, I have certainly enjoyed my leave. It's been great to spend all this time with Tommy, just watching how he gets on with his day. While I certainly feel ready to go back, and am even going a little stir crazy sitting around the house all day, I will miss this extra time I've been spending with him.

Happy birthday to me!

And a blinding day it has been!

You may recall a while back I mentioned having signed up for this. Well, the past two days have been amazing and it is just getting better and better. I started out really having to drag myself out of the house but the moment I got in there something clicked and I was feeling much better. Well I've been getting better and better since. I have an action plan, I know what I need to heal, and how to get it. I'm gonna get what I can from the rest of the weekend (which I trust will be A LOT!) and then attack on Monday. I still have another week off work and I'm going to use it!

My next counseling appointment wasn't supposed to be until Tuesday. But it occurred to me, that if I was in a similar state to after the last appointment, there wouldn't be much use in me going to Living Free. So I changed it. For last night.

I knew that this was going to be the make or break appointment. Either nothing would happen or something would click. Well, a click was probably the furthest thing that could've happened.

We studied from this. Which is all very well, but I thought counselling was about talking, and analysing, and pulling apart to gain a greater understanding (correct me if I'm wrong). After about half an hour of poorly read pages (and not a single scripture), I got up the courage to say that I needed to talk about what happened that weekend. And so I started. After barely two minutes I was interrupted. I tried to carry on but had no chance. And so gave up and just sat and nodded and smiled in the appropriate places. For another hour and a half. Half of it was read twice because the counsellor would go off on a tangent and not remember where she'd left the text. I also found her too willing to share personal information about herself without encouragement from me. I didn't think counsellors were supposed to do that?

By half way through I'd decided that this wasn't working and had made up my mind to request a new counsellor. When I spoke to Yuri afterwards (he was somewhat panicked - thinking something bad had happened to me. I don't think he expected death by poor reading) he said he'd been talking to his leader (the husband of my leader), who said my leader was so unimpressed with the first appointment (she sat and 'held my hand') that she was going to try and change my counsellor anyways. She just thought she'd have time to do it without bothering me. She didn't bank on me changing the appointment to one so soon.

On the plus side, it has given me an idea of the form I want my counselling to take and where I don't want to go with it all.

I find, that the trouble with caramel snack-a-jacks is that once I start eating them I can never stop. They're just so not filling.

So, I had my first counselling session yesterday and it was disgustingly horribly hideous. Yes, I expected it to be. But, my expectations clearly weren't in line with what happened. I would've liked to talk more, instead of listen. I know it was more of an introduction than anything, but I don't feel the introductions got off on the right foot.

The appointment came through this morning. It's for Sunday afternoon.

Anyone who's had to put up with me this week would probably think this would make me happy. No, until Yui calmed me down I was as good as panicking. Now I know when I'll have to deal.

I couldn't wait any longer and so got Yuri to call and find out when my appointment might be. I'm not sure whether it's worse not knowing when the appointment might be or knowing that it 'might be early next week'. Early next week I have to go back to my doctor and explain why I need another week off work and why, despite the fact that I may well need it, still refuse to take any medicine.

I did briefly speak to the co-ordinator as well. I'm not sure how much benefit I got from the conversation, but I can see that it was designed to reassure me. I was given a scripture to read - and knew at once what it was. It was the one Beth passed along two days ago. Jeremiah 29: 11-13. While at surface I understand what is being said when people direct me to this place, I can't help feeling there's a something else that I'm failing to get. I must be missing something in all this.

Please bear with me - these next few entries are bound to be very fragmented and will probably not make sense. I'd forgive anyone for deciding to get out now.

I wonder how long it should take for a counseling appointment to come through. I returned the forms on Tuesday evening. This isn't NHS (otherwise I wouldn't even be asking).

The thing is, I can't help getting worried about it. What if they won't be able to help me? The form practically had be justifying why I needed counseling. It makes me worried that I'll be judged as not enough in need.

I think what's worse is that I can't talk about it in the meantime. I guess it's not that I can't talk about it - I'm sure I could go and tell practically anyone I'd want to. This one goes two ways. If I speak to most people, I'd end up in an institute quicker than you could get an ambulance here. The other side is that the people I need to talk to most seem to be under instruction not to talk to me about it until my counseling is well under way. And in the meantime, here's me stuck in the middle of all this red tape and fear, churning on the inside.

And just so this makes sense, I went through a rather traumatic experience at the weekend which resulted in me being detained under the Mental Health Act (hence the fear of being institutionalized), although mental health certainly wasn't the reason I should've been detained.

I could scream. None of this makes sense, even to me and it's a sad thing that in all of this, the only place I can start to get things off my chest is here. And I really didn't want to muddy the tone of this blog.

I'm getting up the courage to blog.

This isn't going to be easy.

On the weekend I bought a rather nice pair of linen trousers.

Only I'd forgotten how scratchy linen is and how easily it creases.

We spent this afternoon researching into the next place to live. Shepherd's Bush and Hamersmith were up for judgement, picked for being close to church (but not within hideously expensive Notting Hill - oh we wish!) and also that it's easy to get to work from either.

Shepherd's Bush was a no - lack of shops and generally a bit too downcast for me (although Tommy was impressed with the large number of McDonald's).

Hammersmith, however, I loved. Shops, coffee, erm... more shops. Yeah, that'll do for me. Doesn't take much to keep this gal quiet.

Next project, to make sure we can actually afford it.

A friend told me about this. It's probably a good thing that Yuri's only just gotten in because it'd been on repeat for the best part of an hour. Oops.

They're playing in London again in June. Oh how I wish I had the money for tickets, but at £35 a piece it's a little beyond our price range. Well ok, maybe more than a little. Will have to settle for a new cd instead.