So. Still not great, but still plodding on. I now attend psychiatric day centres four times a week for 'activities'. Two (art and singing), at the old place, two (more art and knitting), at this new, nearer place. The rest of the time I walk, quite determinedly, on and on and on. Picking up wood. I will bury this fuck-awful house under a forest of beautiful driftwood.

I'm still on the waiting list for proper help. I was told the wait would be 4 - 6 weeks, but I assumed they meant 8 - 10, and I can't remember when I was told that anyway.

I hate that writing loses its ease when I'm like this. I know I have info to share about how to make it as unbad as possible, being like this, but everything gets knotted up inside and I just shy aware from it.

I notice I've said 'being like this' a couple of times - there's a big struggle over the vocab for mental health shite. I choose to call what happened to me in 2001-2 a breakdown, because that seems most apt. I was running along quite well (teacher, parent, partner, home owner), then things started to go wrong, then, overnight almost, I was broken and couldn't do any of it. I fell into a real mad place, where I saw the world through an unusual lens, a place I have kept myself out of ever since with a lot of good recovery care, hard work and determination. I find myself closer to it now, that mad place, than I have been ever since that time, and I am doing all I can to keep away.

And it's really really hard, the hardest thing I've ever done as it's calling me all the time. I just have to let go and I'll be there.

So I try and do the other letting go, the one I find through yoga and painting and walking and keeping myself in that world, away from the one with the pawn (anti-google spelling) and all that.