Self control

Had a bit of a weird end to the day yesterday and was a bit baffled by my reaction, which resulted in a rather introspective pondering. I struggled to put it into words effectively yesterday so am updating in an attempt to get it to make a bit more sense.

When the LCT left I remember wondering how I was going to cope and get everything done. I was lucky in having a lot of support to give me time to work out how to make it all fit. I guess what I did was come up with a number of coping strategies, like writing things down in multiple places to try and make sure I remembered them. Even then it was really a case of making sure as many as possible of the "must do"s got done, and if I was lucky a few of the "Shoulds" and "Coulds" might get done... maybe... on a good day, downhill with a following wind.

I know that I have to make choices - for example I can't go to work, get to exercise classes, work with my horse AND have a clean house. Any three of the four can get done, but not all four. There just aren't enough hours in the day. So if one of those is a "must", something else has to give. (And sadly work is pretty much a must all of the time !).

But I guess overall it was about control. About staying in control. And yet there are times I feel utterly out of control. Maybe I exert more control (and less uncertainty) in some areas of my life because I can, to counter-balance areas where I can't. But my house is chaos - does this really show someone who is in control ?

What triggered all this contemplation ? I managed to forget something. Nothing major, not really a must have. But for some reason it really really got to me. I think there is something sitting on my shoulder telling me that if I can manage to forget something small that doesn't really matter, I can just as easily forget something that does matter. It was a little scary to realise how stressed it made me feel - and how much of a failure - in a somewhat out of proportion way :(

I really don't like that feeling of not being in control of what is about to happen. Somewhere in my head I have a pretty constant feeling of teetering on the edge of a cliff.

I think maybe one the triggers here was letting other people down - one of my major dislikes is people who say they are going to do something.... and then don't, and that's exactly what I did this evening :(

But its still quite scary how close under the surface all this still is.

Ghosts

Of course there are things that happened before the LCT. Many years and people I cared about. There was one particular person I cared a great deal about - it was one of those classic unrequited/unreturned feelings. That person hurt me badly - probably because I cared and they didn't, but I doubt I will ever know for sure why what happened happened.

For some reason I was convinced I didn't have a photo that actually showed this person. They weren't completely invisible, but the (few) photos I had were - well it was like that person was always looking away. In the meantime I'd kind of filled in the gaps. And of course many years have passed since I saw them "in the flesh" so the memory was fuzzy too. Needless to say the gaps, both visual and my "sense" of who they were, had been filled in positively. Not to excuse the behaviour that had been so very hurtful and so unecessary (and more than once).

Then this weekend I was trying to find some particular photos that meant digging into the older stuff. And all of a sudden there they are, looking straight at the camera. There was part of me that waited for that moment of shock and impact to hit me and......actually its a very ordinary person looking back at me.

I haven't seen this person for almost twenty years, so will probably never see them again. In some ways I guess I was still slightly haunted by what to me is unfinished business. But to be haunted you need a ghost. It feels like finding that photo put flesh on the ghost.