Frustration

I do not have depression, I am frustrated... 

I have spent long periods of time over the last 7 years frustrated and angry, often I have felt that nothing was going my way.  I have felt utterly hopeless and as if nobody could understand me, it was almost like suddenly I spoke an alien language nobody understood. 

Every day was a struggle, muscles hurting and being in pain meant I was just stuck on this merry go round of pure frustration.  I felt like I had lost all strength inside me to move forward anymore because no matter how hard I tried nothing I did ever worked, over the past year for example I have made countless phone calls and may aswell have been speaking a different language for all the good it did me. 

The frustration was eating away at me and I believed I would die before anything ever got sorted.  There was just no way off my merry go round - it wasn't even bloody merry! 

I know life is easy for some, a complete breeze through each day.  Others find things hard, like me, you continue fighting the same battles each and every day losing every single time. You go to bed, only to lay awake feeling defeated, utterly hopeless, exhausted and actually a little depressed and frantically search for answers that you cannot find. 

My frustration that had been eating me up, had actually started to drive me completely insane, it occupied every waking moment, made me angry at people that didn't deserve my anger.  I wanted to scream at people and make them realise I was like this because I was fighting a battle, practically alone and against myself.  I was used to this feeling, my wife will tell me often I argue with myself! At this point even quitting was not an option.

Today, I sit here having got through this, possibly some of my darkest months have passed and I am sure just like my frustration at feeling sick with the heparin at the moment that plenty more even darker times await me but I can deal with it, I know at the moment I can deal with anything.  

Just like with inner demons you need to listen to how you feel and go with it, battling feelings like frustration and feelings of hopelessness in your head, especially at night only exaggerates them, you begin feeding them and they can then become out of control.  During the last couple of months, I have taken up Photography (I will touch on this at another time).  Photography has enabled me to focus, to get out of my own head, being in my head had become a little toxic because all I was doing was reliving my frustrations, going over and over them like a record which had become stuck, nothing was getting solved and I was losing all perspective.  I needed to have completely selfish me time totally disengaged from everyone and everything - self care. 

My dad has always wrote things down, little lists, you can always guarantee on a pad on their dining table will be something worked out, this way he solves things, he can look over things and it helps him as then he doesn't loose sleep.  Like my father, I suffer from broken sleep due to all manner of reasons - one of them due to worries. 

 I openly admit, I dwell on things but I know dwelling will not ever make me work through my frustration.  The truth is, anything you do will begin a positive upward cycle. The more trivial problems you work on, the easier everything seems.  I try and think of my hardest times - biopsies, cannulas, times in Apherisis they couldn't find veins and at the time I wanted to give up but I got through it all, I am standing here today, maybe a little jadded but I am a tougher cookie because of all of this.  I know I am strong, sometimes I just forget to remind myself.  My wife hates that I worry, hates that I fight and battle things like frustration as I cannot win, I need to find a new approach and I think moving forward focusing on completely selfish me time and trusting that I am strong enough will help me a great deal.