Break before breakdown

This is something I'm still learning about. When I'm focused I don't take breaks. I can end up in a place obsessed by the swirl of my thoughts about the present reality and whatever work I've got my head in.

It's been one of the learning experiences in the course on mental health and self managment I get from the university of life.

I drive myself hard, sometimes without noticing. In the end I end up getting crazy. I'm at reduced capacity because of the eating disorder but I still continue to burn calories thinking, reading and writing. I take little care of my needs, instead focusing on a goal or a problem. I become obsessed but I get to throughly know whatever has my attention.

In all of this I'm very sad inside. It's not hopelessness per se but what comes from needing joy and excitement, thrill and adventure, pleasure and frivolity but attempting to forgoe those things for something which I percieve may give me a more lasting sense of unsadness.

I am so tired of life it's barely worth trying to convey because words alone fail to express the magnitude of the hole inside me which I seek to fill in so many ways though they never permanetly satiate the void. Its hunger seems limitless, devouring every fleeting joy to bring me back to the endless ennui.

Two years ago I made a New Years Resolution. Get a life. The way I work it's not surprising I run the risk of a breakdown so often. I don't have much of a life.

Life and other things were getting to a head and I've not been self monitoring well. I had a bad crash, a microbreakdown in my vernacular, where I plummeted quickly into the safety of my cave, shuit away as much as possible from the world. I stopped working for a day but after the third day I realised I needed a couple more.

I'm on the fifth and last day today. I'm exhausted but I feel at peace. I'm sitting here in one of my favourite spots under a tree in my local park. apart from writing this I'm at peace. If only for a moment. Tomorrow I return to my life and all the crap.

Had I continued to maintain my pace of life living it without these little breaks I would be in a much worse place now. What's happened to me over the last few days hasn't been a peaceful meditative retreat but it has been a period of solace and contemplation.

I hope this moment of recharge is enough. I have a lot to deal with which I'm not getting on with. I'm glad of this short moment of serenity which I'm feeling now. Guinness and skunk are such great healers.