I've been off and on about this diet ever since I went back on it almost four weeks ago, but today? Is turning into a bit of a crisis negotiation. I'm really not quite sure what to do. I haven't broken the diet as of yet, but I am turning around in circles tonight.
Today started out fine, but for some reason after lunch...I drove back to work in something of a haze, and once I parked I just sat there in my car staring into space listening to Death Is The Road To Awe and not wanting to go anywhere. I just wanted to cry. I had no energy, and couldn't understand how I'd driven back to work, let alone how I could then get out of the car and go back to it. I did, after a fashion -- but I only lasted an hour. I couldn't concentrate. And a couple of times I had to go and sit down because I just couldn't bring myself to do anything. What disturbed me most, however, was when I went to the bathroom and started crying. It was for no reason that I could discern. The tears just started.
When I left, I went and sat in my car. I was too tired to drive, to begin with. And then I put on Abide With Me (it's a long story, somewhat, as to why I have a version of this on a CD in my car) and I just sat there with tears running down my face. I had more of an idea why that time -- it was simply because I was tired, and scared, and confused, and frustrated...and there was no-one there to care about it. I do live with my brother, but because of the shitstorm of problems he's having and the hand I played in turning my parents onto them over the weekend, he's not speaking with me. It reminds me of when I was in England and had no-one to turn to. Just...nobody who could just sit with me. I'm not a great talker, when it comes to my more confused states of mind, nor am I one for hugs and tears and small words of comfort. I'm more apt to respond to just sitting in the same room as another person while reading or watching television together. Just...silence, but not solitude. Peace, maybe. That's what calms me. Not having to be anything but myself, but not having to suffer to be alone to do it.
This is where the diet crisis comes in, although in the end it's larger than that anyway. I made a comment on facebook that I was home from work poorly and crying for no reason, and my mother ended up saying that I should come back to Australia and stay with her. And that hit me hard. Ever since I've arrived back in New Zealand, every time I've been upset I've thought back to Bunbury. I found that week to be so very soothing, after all that had happened at work and at home. Just...getting up. Zumba. Breakfast. Long, long walks in the warm seven o'clock air. Driving semi-aimlessly through lower Western Australia. Swimming in the ocean. Not caring about what was happening at work. Just...letting go. And doing it again...oh, God. I want to do it.
But there is the small matter of getting time off work. April is the cruellest month, when it comes to this; one pharmacist is away for a good chunk before and during Easter, and my boss is also gone after Easter for at least two weeks. But I started looking at flights and I keep thinking...
...okay, there's now a significant time delay in this post as I took note of the time and the fact that the cheapest flights I was finding in April sat uncomfortably well with what I knew of people's comings and goings in April. It's also Thursday night, meaning my boss would still be at work, so...I spoke to my mother briefly, then drove into work and spoke to my boss. I'm flying to Perth of the fifth of April and not coming back until the sixteenth. Effectively this means that my diet ends on the fourth. This...distresses me, but then it doesn't. When I drove home from work, I drove past the turnoff to my house and followed the road to its end. There, I drove onto the beach, parked, and walked down to the waterline.
The tide was out, but it was coming in. The sun was setting, the sky was clear, and it was pale orange and gold and a reddened blue against darkening shadow. It was an ending, a very clear one. But I am sitting here now with darkness outside my window and I know -- I know -- that the sun will rise tomorrow. And life will go on.
This diet has done some very good things for me, I can't deny it. I've learned a lot. But I think the time has finally come for me to accept that I can't go on like this anymore. I can't work, I can't sleep, I can't study. I have nothing left to me. The exhaustion of the last two weeks in particular...it's not sustainable. So, in the end? I will stay on the diet until the night before I leave. I've already booked a table for my brother and me at my favourite restaurant. Call it a late birthday dinner -- for him, for me. It's also on the road to the beach. But I've already let it go. The tide's coming in, and it will go out again. But we'll still be here.
I think that's just the way life is.
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