Phoenix

Being dysregulated is such hard work. Having to navigate my ship of alters through stormy waters is exhausting.

Despite the fatigue I made it to choir last night. It was being held in a different room. A much smaller more cramped room. Thankfully the kind caretaker had set up the chairs and moved the heavy tables out of the way. I was expecting a quiet session as it’s the last one before half term but we had three new people turn up. I hadn’t even logged into the system so it was all a bit of a rush. One of the new people expressed her concerns as she was worried about having stay seated due to her health. It felt good to reassure her that there’s a few of us struggling with different health needs in the choir including myself. I reassured her that it’s ok to look after her needs and there’s no shame in sitting down in the standing parts. Ah to hear my own advice!

I do heed my own advice. It did take me a while. Thankfully we have a very compassionate group of singers and we do look out for each other’s needs.

Afterwards a small group of us headed to the pub. I had my half pint of cider but really struggled to keep my eyes open. I listened to builders and their music for eight hours straight yesterday. I also spent another wasted 50 minutes on the phone to my internet provider.

My internet woes have returned. The honeymoon period lasted three weeks! Then everything got worse again. Because the bloke in September messed up my account I couldn’t access anything. A month ago I put in a fault complaint and was told that there is nothing wrong. I couldn’t complain further because I couldn’t access anything. I finally channeled my anger and called them yesterday. It took 40 minutes to rectify access to my account. Then I asked about my lack of speed. He confirmed that all the cells in the local tower have been unexpectedly damaged and they are going to replace it! He pissed me off further by being very jolly and upbeat sang that at least I know now what the problem is. Well that doesn’t help me to study online with download speeds of 0.5!

So it was a very short visit to the pub. I was quite satisfied at how I’d held things together yesterday.

The tiredness of yesterday and not enough sleep led to a very fractious bunch of alters this morning. So when the work crew turned up at 8am and turned their music up loud enough to hear it over the drilling there was no holding angry parts back.

So we banged on the wall and swore loudly about the noise and time of the morning. One particular alter wanted to get dressed and storm over there. I wasn’t letting us go that far. I shut us away in the bedroom and cuddled the cat for an hour whilst gazing at the grey sky outside. Then I played piano for a while. I could feel the pure adrenaline of anger coursing through my body. It’s like tugging on the great wheel of a big ship in the worst storm trying to find the right path to calmer waters.

I know that lots of threads are feeding into this storm. Some issues I can reassure alters about and other threads I honestly can’t guarantee anything.

I was grateful that everything was quiet by 1pm. I had a nice bath and climbed into clean pyjamas. There’s been an absence of fireworks tonight for the first night in a week. Neesha has stayed by my side all day. She has decided to take over my recliner this evening and I’ve been relegated to the sofa! All my music practice is completed and I’m going to treat myself to quick play on Horizon Forbidden West before bed.

Praying for calmer waters tomorrow!

Phoenix