Dark Clouds and silver linings

It’s been a week. Well, 8 days and 12 hours. 8 days since the most painful experience of my life. Physically. Mentally.

I am not going to lie. It’s been difficult. More than difficult. I’m not naturally an optimistic person. I will happily help a friend, listen to them and, if I can, offer advice to help them see the light. But when it comes to myself, it’s like the heavy atmosphere before a thunder storm. Except it’s already pouring with rain, I drown and there is no lightening. Just darkness. And crushing thunder. I guess this is the depression stage of grief.

I wrote Surviving the Storms to help me process what happened. To help me remember it, and how amazing the people around me on the day were. Trying to remember the good in people, not just how utterly useless my body is at working. The response I have received from it has been totally overwhelming. Secondary to my process, it helped me tell you what was going on. Purely so I could avoid having to actually say the words out loud. “My heart tried to give up. 16 times. But I survived.” I still haven’t actually said it out loud to someone who didn’t already know. My family told everyone, or my blog did. I even told my work in an email because I knew the words wouldn’t form properly.

And that’s the problem. It’s 1 a.m. and I cannot sleep. Again. Martyn is sound asleep next to me. In the morning he will probably have a gentle word with me about not waking him to talk, and he would be right. I’ve already cried on him four times today. He, like everyone in our three-generation-household, have been my absolute rocks. If I need a sideways hug (I still can’t bear the pressure on my left side), I’ve got six people to choose from. Sometimes I steal a hug from all of them. If I need to talk, I’ve got six people to choose from in person and at least a dozen more on the end of the phone. If I need to cry, there are six people who will find me tissues and a glass of water to replace the lost fluid at the drop of a hat.

But it is a problem. I dread the day I run into someone who doesn’t know and I have to explain why I am not at work, going to the gym, haven’t gone back to the studio. Why I need to sit down after 5, 10 at most, minutes of standing. Why I can’t join them for drinks, or a walk. I’m scared of the response. I had a dream the other night that someone made a sarcastic comment about “just wanting to get out of doing year end work”. Let’s just say my response in the dream scared me so much I couldn’t get back to sleep. And so the anger stage is there. Not quite here, but ready to jump out. With a baseball bat. Apparently. (Note, I don’t own one. We’re safe).

Silver linings. The words Grandma Heather Beans said to me when I arrived home last Monday. “There’s always a silver lining”. Of course, she is right. It is a massive blessing that I knew I had the heart condition and had an Implantable cardioverter-defibrillator. But it’s difficult to remember that when I struggle to open the car door if we’re on a small slope. Or when I have to ask my 86 year old Grandma to make me a drink because I can’t lift the kettle if there’s more than one mug of water in it. I’m 31. Thirty-freaking-one. And yet at the moment I feel about 80. To be fair, that has got better. 8 days ago I felt 150 years old.

Oh, I found a silver lining.

Maybe I can see them.