In Blackest Night – Impatiently Waiting
Tunes blasting in my right ear, the sound of my surroundings in my left. Workmen milling about, hauling stuff in and out. The room was full when I arrived and it starts filling up even more. Stacks of boxes, computers, files, more boxes…my only company was my music.
I arrived at 11:40, five minutes early for my appointment. My anxiety was already running high. Gearing myself up to speak and open up to yet another person on this production line of support. I knew of the building but had never been inside – I have walked past it countless times. The shutters were down and immediately mine went up. What do I do? Where do I go? I hate alien situations…especially ones that inevitably alienate me.
I walk around the side and spot someone–an employee, I hope seeing as she has a lanyard on. I ask her where ‘Mind’ is and how to get in. She advises me the offices are being moved around–outside, the furniture stands guard as if emphasising her point. She walks me into what would be the reception area but is acting as a store room. She clears a chair for me and advises me that the person I am there to see is with someone else and she shouldn’t be long.
11:55 and I’m still waiting. The only person to acknowledge me is a workman who apologises for piling up yet more stuff in front of me.
12:04 and I’m still waiting. Not long after, a gentleman with a briefcase and luggage on wheels steps in and opens the door to my right. No one in there so he toddles on in search of somebody.
12:15 and the workman makes a joke about me being forgotten. I laugh and say I hope not but his comment tied in with my feeling of solitude and reinforced a notion that I tried to dismiss. After all, the place is in disarray–one would expect there to be an upheaval of schedules too.
12:20 and I try texting my wife to find ‘Emergency calls only’. Thankfully my Google Play Music is still working. To a degree. Fittingly, the songs that don’t fail to play and skip to the next are the ones I tend to shove on when I’m in my dark place. Coincidence or cosmic joke? Probably a bit of both.
After having searched for a network manually in the hope I get a tidbit of signal in order for my text to go I end up leaving the building at 12:24.
To the workmen who popped in with boxes and whatnot and then popped back out, I must’ve looked like a regular person sat in a waiting room. A scene we are all familiar with. I’m certainly no stranger to it. Although this was the first waiting room where I was the only thing on a seat with a pulse. Well, I say pulse…it was more like vibrations from a jackhammer. Every time I heard a door open I’d be on edge. This is it. Time to open up. Again.
While I may have looked calm and collected, my mind was anything but. How do I start? What do I tell her? Do I start at the beginning or give her something more recent? What if she looks at me in a way I perceive to be judgemental and shut down?
It took a lot of effort to attend this appointment. Today was already looking to be stressful – my Mind appointment and then a meeting in work. I had hopes that my first appointment would appease my racing mind and put me in a better place for the latter. Perhaps I invested too much stock in that notion because my anxiety is at the highest it’s been for a while and I just want to sleep. In my sleep, I have no accountabilities. Maybe I won’t wake up this time. Please, I just want to sleep it off.
Right now my head is pounding. A combination of the poor sleep last night along with the stress no doubt. That pinched never thing is back again and has been for a few days. It has been a huge factor in my sleep in all senses of it. I don’t stay up late like I normally would because I just want to sleep in the hope that the pain has eased or even gone by the time I wake up. I can’t get comfy when I’m lying in bed. I usually go to sleep on my right side but my shoulder feels like it’s popping and the pain surges up my neck and down my side. As a result of this bullshit, I tend to toss and turn and wake myself up in doing so thanks to the pain flares.
All I can hope is that the rest of the day goes better than the shitty start it has gotten off to.
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