It’s Been A Week

Today was HARD. I think the fact that he’s buried in the garden makes it so much worse for me…I can’t get over the unfairness of this. I’m still raging angry at whoever did it.

I miss you so much wee guy.

I Always Hated Running But Now Feel Compelled To Do It

I am obsessed with losing weight, getting toned, improving my body and have been for 28 years! Everyone who knows me says I’m too thin but I always think I look fat. I think it’s actually because my muscles need toned. I do believe I have to lose some fat, off some parts of my body but I also feel that I would lose it if I had a regular exercise program to tone up my body.

Since the cat died I’ve felt like I had to keep moving, working, punishing myself almost….I think it’s a throwback to my self-abusing days.

Because of my phobia. the day I get my kit on and go out running will be a momentous one.

I’m Feeling Better

Notwithstanding the fact that I’m grieving, I feel better generally because I’m back on Tegretol; or is it that I’m back on Multivitamins? I have more energy, feel less depressed, sensitive and lonely and have a more positive outlook again.

Thank goodness…

The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook By Edmund J. Bourne

I’ve just ordered this book, which all 20 Amazon customers who reviewed it gave a maximum 5 score, although, reading them, I suspect a good few are written by the publisher (you know, the one-line, rather dry, academic-sounding praise from “A Customer”)! You can buy the paperback version new from Amazon Marketplace.

You can buy the new 4th Edition from Play.com for £13.49 delivered free.

I ordered mine from Pickabook who sell it for £10.64 plus £2.50 UK delivery but offer free delivery on orders over £15.

I’ll let you know what I think of it when I get a chance.

I Can’t Believe..

…someone killed my wee cat. It’s so fucken unfair. I’m so sad and so angry….It keeps coming back to me all over again every five minutes…like being hit on the head with a 2 by 4.

It’s not right that people who kill cats on the roads don’t have to report it, like they do with dogs. Cats aren’t expendable. When you kill a cat with your hopeless driving, you’re leaving a family wondering where their pet is and why it hasn’t come home. The bastard who killed my cat has left an elderly woman with no company now. And the bastard just drove off, left the cat lying in the middle of the road, dying. That isn’t fucken right.

Had it not happened right outside the house, we might never have known what happened to the cat. All the wee soul’s dishes, toys and food he never got to eat are lying in my bedroom. I can’t bear to look at them.

The Milk Of Human Kindness As My Cat Gets Killed By A Car Driver

I lost one of my cats to kidney disease about 11 years ago and after many months of swearing I would never get another cat because the pain when they go is too great, I decided I just had too much love for my one remaining cat and got a 5 month old kitten whose owner no longer wanted him. S. was like no other cat I had ever had, very independent, came to humans on his terms only and he could be extremely hyper-active, often attacking my other cat, whom I still have, out of sheer frustration. He was a very difficult pet, no two ways about it, but he had something that made him very special and easy to love and I adored him, as I do all my cats.

At that time, I lived in a flat and S. wasn’t able to get out as the local roads were way too dangerous but he hated being a housecat and never settled to it. I knew this was unfair on him and after a couple of years I reluctantly came to the conclusion that I was going to have to part with him, to improve his quality of life, although it would break my heart to lose him.

We always said that S. had “special needs” and I thought he was autistic! But seriously, his behaviour could be so wild that we wondered of he had suffered brain damage at some point in his short life before he came to us. He was a handful and then some and I knew that he would have to go to someone who was as daft about cats as I was; someone who would see past this to the wee soul inside. Long story short, my Aunt took him and he lived with her for 8 years, until he was knocked down and killed late last night by a fuckwit bastard driver whom I hope develops a severe and intractable case of genital shingles and suffers enormously as a result and that just for starters. I had to scrub the wee soul’s blood off the pavement as we can’t bear to walk past it every day….I wish the bastard who killed him could have been involved in the aftermath of what (s)he did; could see the pain it has caused.

I buried him in my Aunt’s garden this morning. I just can’t believe he’s gone. I saw him every day, several times a day and he came and lived with me (under his own steam!) when my Aunt was on holiday. He just appeared at the door and came in and lay in front of our fire. When I last saw him yesterday, he was looking particularly cute with his big eyes staring at me over the duvet as he settled down to bed for the night. I loved him like he was still my own and….we’ve been breaking our hearts all day.

I’ll continue this sorry tale tomorrow if I can as, aside from the grief, two important things came out of this sad event……

My aunt saw him from her bedroom window at 4.30AM and went out to him. She was so distressed seeing him like that and she couldn’t bring herself to lift him, so she flagged down a passing motorist, who happened to be a woman who had just come from dropping someone off so she was in her pyjamas and so was my aunt. Anyway, the woman very kindly helped my Aunt to bring the cat into the garden and lay him in the shed. Later, we were sitting down to dinner when a car drew up outside the house and a woman got out carrying a small bunch of flowers. It was the woman who stopped to help just calling to see how my Aunt was and make sure she had someone with her. How kind is that? I know this woman is one of Jehovah’s Witnesses and I don’t know if her faith prompted her to act so kindly, but whatever it was, bless her. You know, this is the kind of thing I would do, but, so few other people would and it’s always nice to see how decent humans can be.

The other thing that came of this is that I’ve finally started exercising again. I had to work my arse off all day the day it happened, I have no idea why, anger maybe……and I’ve carried on since in the form of exercise.

I won’t name the town this happened in, but it was between 11.00PM on Saturday 18th May and 1.30AM Sunday 19th May beside the fire station on Argyll Street, just before Walkers and the D General Hospital. If it was you who did this, I hope you lose something precious to you the same way one day.

I Feel Like Screaming.

But in Cyberspace, no-one can hear you scream…..

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Addendum: For some reason, more people have viewed this post than almost any other on my blog. And yet, not one of them left a comment. You see what I mean about people? They hear you in “Cyberspace” alright. They just don’t give a damn.

I reached out recently to a few bloggers with agoraphobia and anxiety disorders and not a single one of them reciprocated with even a poxy “me too” on my blog. I suppose they expect me to be a groupie and just hang around their blogs all the time, leaving supportive comments. Of course they do. Otherwise they would have made a tiny effort and left a comment, any comment!, on my blog. That’s what people who are worth the effort do, generally.

The only reason I’m moaning about this is because I’m not feeling myself just now…..But that doesn’t make it any less true. And no, you can’t comment now. You can just pass on by like you did before.

Vegetarian Bacon….

OMFG! I just had some and ……I’ve died and gone to heaven.

Bacon was always my desert island food and, having been a veggie for 15 months now, I really, really missed it something bad. And then, one day, one of the people in the shelter told me she had bought me some meat-free bacon!!!!

NOM…

Tegretol And Feeling Suicidal

I’ve been on the anti-convulsant medication carbamazepine (Tegretol) for about 4 years. I was prescribed it for rampant anxiety and mood swings when I had to be taken off the beta-blocker propranolol because of asthma, had been on every anti-depressant and anxiolytic known to medicine and my GP figured maybe this was worth a try. I hate taking it because of one of the side effects, and I’ve tried to come off it a couple of times over the years.

I stopped taking it again around 6 weeks ago and, since then my anxiety has gone through the roof and I’ve become very depressed for the first time in ages. I’ve also felt lonely (NOT like me at all and what prompted me to go the no more panic forum the night they banned me), I’ve been hyper-sensitive, slept more and had much less energy. When I started to seriously consider the practicalities of hanging myself last night (f***k’s sake) I decided it was time to do something drastic because, for me, now, suicide is no longer an option.

So, after talking to my partner and having her confirm that my feelings have worsened since I stopped the drug, I’ve gone back onto the Tegretol……again.

Cerys Edwards

People are finding this blog by typing www.cerysedwards.co.uk into Google. Why don’t they just type it into the address bar and they’ll be taken straight to the site???

Her site is here BTW and it’s an important site to visit, so GO, now:

http://www.cerysedwards.co.uk