Along this odyssey…

SinceI last posted, I realise I am more shaken by the fraudster who tried to access my bank account than I thought. It’s a feeling of not being able to trust in the services we need because there are people who want to do harm and have the know-how to make attacks online. Thank God that my bank is very secure and act instantly.

Overthe last few weeks, I’ve been hearing my dog breathing. My dog who died. I’m not going insane, I’ve had auditory hallucinations before. Almost always it was a knocking at my front door.

I started hearing the breathing about three weeks ago. It was early morning, and I had awakened. It seemed normal to hear it and I drifted back to sleep. It was later that I remembered and wondered about it. I heard it again some days later, and now it seems like a usual occurance. Then I began to hear other sounds; my daughter walking on the landing. Last night I lay down to sleep and it seemed that there were several people in my home. I flinched as I heard someone walk in my room.

Now this has happened before in reality. And, of course, I have been married, and shared my home. This was not a memory. My whole body jolted with the alarm.

I am a synesthete. This means I experience colours as a taste, sounds as taste or colours. I am wondering if there is a connection with this. I know I am still grieving strongly for O’Driscoll. This is why I hear him breathing.

In the last few days I have noticed how frequently I find myself ready to write but have completely forgotten what I intended to write about. I go to the browser on my phone and have forgotten what I want to find.

I am also missing my daughter so much. It is fused with the grief of no longer being a needed, hands on mother. I am still a mother but to an accomplished, talented, wonderful young woman. I remember how I felt grief when she stopped breast feeding at one year old. I missed that deep connection, even though her physical closeness was not much altered.

I have found myself in another room, but I am not. I am at my desk as always.

I know that I become sleep deprived quite easily. And I am currently not sleeping well. I take sleep when it comes, or I might go for days without. I know how easily the mind is tricked by lack of sleep. There is my medicine as well. And now I have painkillers on board too. I feel pain in my shoulder often at night.

I see time as an arc. I see the year as a circle. I read words that are angry and in my mind is that person leaning out of the page toward me.

I experience the morning differently than later in the day. And time moves fastest in the evening. I long to sleep but it does not come so I write and research, I read and eat.

I need to write all this because this is a blog about my journey toward death. It does not come. I want to be honest.

I miss my sister so much. I long for my Dad’s company. I still cry about O’Driscoll.

Sometimes in the last week, I have wondered if I have a brain tumour. I wonder also whether the place in my brain where they operated is deteriorating. I have brain damage. How can they operate in a brain and not damage it?

The daybreak is here. The birds are quiet this morning.