well, I certainly wasn't ready for last week! After six weeks summer holiday, returning to work was hard. In fact it gets harder every year and this was by far the toughest.
Today was the first chance I have really had to think about where last week has gone, today was also the first chance I have had to take Ralph for a good long walk, I walk him for about half an hour in the mornings before I go to work, while it is light enough I try to walk him in the evenings, but the weather has been so miserable if I took him over the fields he and I would be covered in mud and soaked to the skin, but this morning the sun was shining and although everywhere was still soggy, he and I went for a good long walk over the fields and far far away!!
This gave us plenty of time to think....he seemed to be thinking about seeing if he could get away with eating another dogs poo and how many sticks he could wee up against, while I was thinking slightly more deeply.
The first two days back at school were teacher training days...for me they are terrifying, exhausting and overwhelming. Our school employ a lot of staff, and four or five times a year they are all crammed into a small hall, for many people its a fab time to chat to colleagues that they haven't seen in a while. This time we all met up in the hall and then some of us were sent elsewhere for different training.
Usually I manage to blend in, but horrifyingly there wasn't much chance of that this time.
Lists were put up on the board at the main entrance advising staff where they needed to be, so you find your name and then it tells you which meetings and training those at the top would like you to attend. Only my name wasn't big enough for me to read, and with half the work force crowded around the board I had to pick someone to look for my name and read my instructions out to me, not only is this humiliating and embarrassing, but as the buzz of everyone chatting starts to get to me, the smells of a freshly cleaned school and my full attention on holding it together and not bursting into tears...the information that was read out went in one ear and straight out of the other, not even stopping in my brain for a second for me to digest it!
So I latch on to my friends who help me find a seat and check I am ok. I sit beside my friend, the noise in the hall of everyone talking at the same time is deafening and disorientating, I cant hear what my friend is saying because my brain is screaming and something is telling me to run away, but then the meeting starts and everyone falls silent....perfect, I can feel my heart beat slowing and my muscles are less tense...and then there are those dreaded words......SO YOU CAN TALK ABOUT IT BETWEEN YOURSELVES FOR A FEW MINUTES......and suddenly I am swamped by noise again, I know that I have moved to perch on the front of the seat of my chair and I am franticly looking around for a way out of this din, I felt like someone had thrown a massive weighted blanket over my head and had parked me in the middle of a football stadium...if I stayed still I couldn't breath but if I tried to move I wouldn't be able too see where I was going and no-one would hear me shout over the noise.
This was a bit of a pattern for the first two days and I don't think I have ever felt so alone and different.
So, during my walk this morning I tried to figure it out, I hadn't been able to repress the memory at all so that makes me think that I have to work harder or deal with it, so I tried to deal with it. At first I had a few selfish tears and did the whole...what's the point?, no-body cares, no-one understands, I am the only person in the WHOLE world who has a hard time!!!......then I pulled myself together and when I started to replay in my mind the experiences of those two days, there were actually people who looked out for me, there were people who found a quiet five minutes to have a chat and there were people who understood what I was going through. Maybe there is a reason I couldn't repress the memory, maybe I am not supposed to! By the time I had come to this conclusion, we had already crossed the bridge over the river and were heading towards the train bridge, I realised that I hadn't noticed the bridge over the river, and I couldn't tell you if the fields full of hay had been cut and bailed yet. This really did upset me, those two days had been so important to me that I had missed what was in front of me, I had missed making new memories, I am not sure I had spoken two words to Ralph, except....NOOOO don't you dare eat that poo!!. When I got to the top of the train bridge I stopped and leaned on the railings, we were very high up and the wind was so strong it was making my ears ache, I purposefully paid attention to all the noises around me and the smells in the air, I looked down at Ralph and he was sitting beside me with his nose through the railings, he looked so funny trying to copy me, i ruffled his coat and we ran along the bridge to the other set of steps, Ralph loved it, it was so windy and I felt like a kid!!.....when I reached the bottom of the steps I had to smile as I realised I had just made a memory, its so easy to make happy memories, maybe sometimes the bad memories stay in our heads to remind us to make good ones!!
I am not sure about the kind of memories that will be made next week as I trundle off for a colonoscopy, but at least I will get a answer to the constant ache in my belly and as to why I don't seem to be able to eat many food anymore without rushing to the loo twenty minutes later, I miss my favourite foods... fruit, nuts and veg. So fingers crossed for Thursday, and lets hope it is a memory I can repress easily.
Speak soon xx
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