Hello Darkness..

So, I'm up at 5am.. check my bank and work haven't paid my SSP. Now I'm panicking what that means and waiting for 9am so I can call and try to find out. I say try because getting a response from this company has never been easy. I tried to go part time a month or so back, but was told I hadn't been off long enough for them to consider it. Bewailing this fact to an online, American friend, who has been my closest support through all of this.. he told me about the situation in the US.. they get so many sick days and then they're out.. no government help. I felt pretty crappy.

I felt crappier still when he gently asked if it might not be better for me to work, rather than have so much time to sit and think. It upset me a lot. Only because I keep asking myself the same thing. I've worked since I was 16, in some form or another, alongside education. I've worked through some pretty bad lows where I've been pacing the office and lying down in the toilets unable to function (yay for being the only female in the building and having a room that is lockable and more hygienic than that sentence sounded). And shouldn't I keep doing so, rather than survive on what is essentially hand-outs? See, I thought time away from 'it all' would do me good, allow myself to find and then fix myself. Only it wasn't supposed to take this long, and it was supposed to be going a lot better than this.

I've had flashes, some really good weeks. Admittedly, I am better with a purpose: leafleting against the BNP, helping out with a homeless kitchen, demos and the like. I also sing with a band - we're not gigging yet, but writing and rehearsing (expect for most of May when I slumped and couldn't). I've learnt a lot about myself and I've done things I never thought I'd be able to, and am proud of. But I seem to have hit a block. Slowly the things that were giving me a purpose have dwindled, and I haven't had the impetus to seek out more. I am largely friendless, here, thanks to a nomadic lifestyle and a marriage that really excluded all else. My closest friendship seems to have become complicated, and awkward. Mental note: if your best friend is a boy, don't kiss him. I rely too much on online relationships, I know I do, and now I feel like those are being eroded too.

Everything I do takes so much effort, I panic if I have more than one thing to do a day. For example, I started going to church (that's a subject for another post) which is 11am on Sunday, but I also have band practise on Sunday.. usually 6-8pm.. I find it immensely hard to do both, even with so much time between. One appointment or activity can consume my whole day. Sustaining the ability to work consumed my whole life, until eventually I just couldn't hack it any more. But I feel incredibly guilty not working, and I constantly doubt my motives. I want to do something useful for 'the greater good' but have made no efforts as yet to work out how. I've considered long-term volunteering where I get a roof and board, but I'm scared to take that on while I'm still so flaky. I just want to do something where the reward is enough to get me out of bed on the bleak days. I suppose everyone wants that, shouldn't I just get on with things in the meantime? Especially as I have long-standing debts I need to sort out.

Problem is, I've been so busy trying to stabilise my financial situation I've lost sight of the bigger picture. I know I can't do this forever, but I just don't know what to do.

I'd quite like to stop crying, though.