So going back to when I got out of hospital after being told that I needed to rest and recharge. At first I was just relieved to be out of there, I'd only been in overnight but I was already fed up of being treated as though I'd ended up there deliberately. I was trying to suppress my panic attacks but I just felt so upset. How dare they? They knew nothing about me, as I wasn't particularly up to talking, I wasn't up for anything. The only things they knew about me was what they had read in my medical notes, all be it a very big set of notes. Honestly they can put them on the end of the bed and I'd be catapulted off into the carpark. Hmmm maybe they should have done that. I will discuss that in another post, my notes that is not my need to be catapulted into the air like Gonzo. I was crying my eyes out so much that in the end they called my mum in to console me and wait with me until I could be discharged by the consultant, who would hopefully be a bit more understanding and have some answers up his sleave. Well he was slightly more useful. It helped that I could open my eyes and was more conscious by then so that I could talk properly and get my story across. He sent the psychologist (or was it a psychiatrist, I can never tell the difference) that I mentioned in the post 'where it began' and after explaining the events of the past few months again him and the consultant agreed that it was just my body telling me to slow down and get plenty of rest.
And so I did, well there was little else that I could do, I was tired all the time. I told myself that if that's what my body wanted then that's what it would get; surely then I would start to feel human again. If you want to sing the song from Beauty and the Beast you may. I thought that if I got plenty of sleep now then come September I could go back to college and that thought made things more bareable.
Because I'd left my flat in such a hurry the day after the ball I'd still got some things down there so at the weekend my parents drove me down there. I wasn't completely up to going but it was the last date before I had to hand in my keys, so pretty much had to. Whilst there I thought that I'd go and see a friend and go to the cinema as we hadn't had the chance the week before. I knew that it was quite a lot to ask but I thought it's a 3 and a half hour car journey, which I would be sat down for and I can try and sleep and also I would be sitting at the cinema and for the car journey home. Well who knew sitting is also no good for you!!
The journey down I managed to sleep a bit but I have never been the best at travelling long distances in cars. I used to get really bad car sicknesses and yet Mum and Dad would insist on holidays to Scotland, which is about a 6 hour drive if not more. Although I let them off because Scotland is stunning and I used to love horse riding up there. Once we got there we had to clear my flat, well room, as I lived in student halls, which is an experience in itself. I had more stuff to pack than I thought. It was a good thing I hadn't tried to get it all back on the train with me, although my pillow and blanket might have been useful but who knows where I would have ended up. So there was a few trips back and to to the car and then we headed into town. I had about a 5 minute walk to meet my friend and then 10 minutes to the cinema, it's not a lot but it was more than I'd walked all week and I was feeling tired from packing. I was quite relieved to sit down for a few hours in the cinema although I did think that being in a darkened room might not help so I told my friend to nudge me if I started snoring.
On our walk to the cinema my friend was telling me about how he'd been asked to help out on the show that I would have been stagemanaging that week. I wanted to hear about it but at the same time it was painful to hear. In theatre the show really does go on. I just grinned and bared it because of course I was interested, the show had been my bubble for a while but now I was I was outside that bubble and it hurt. Now in absolutely no way am I saying that my friend was mean to say this, after all I had asked and quite simply he doesn't have a mean bone in his body and can always be relied upon to brighten your day. I wanted to go back to college as soon as possible, I missed it so much. Does that make me strange? Well I don't really care if it does. They say "that you should do what you love" and that when "something that you enjoy doing becomes a career then you are blessed." Or something like that I will have to try and find the quote again. That is however exactly how I felt about stagemanaging.
The film ended and fortunately I hadn't fallen asleep, luckily Transformers had enough action to keep me from being a social embarrassment but I was feeling very tired. By the time I walked back to the car I was swaying like a drunken sailor (yes I was singing it in my head, then and now) and my legs were aching so much I felt like I was walking on hot sand. I flung myself into the car in an exhausted heap. We had only gone about half an hour though when my legs were in agony, I thought I was going to throw up from the pain. We stopped at the next services and I tried to stretch my legs out but each step just made me wince in pain. I just wanted to get home and get back to my bed so I took some painkillers and sat in the front seat so that I could have a bit more legroom. It felt like the longest car journey ever, longer even than all those trips to Scotland and I sobbed the whole way. My bed that night felt like a sanctuary and so itg g would become one.
So what did I gain from this? Other than more quality time with my bed of course. Although I was horrendously tired I was actually quite positive. I knew that there was a reason why I felt that way. I'd simply overdone it. Even by normal standards that's a long day. What was clear to me was that I was right to have left when I did, I could very easily had had a nasty accident during the fit up (when you put all the set and equipment together for a show) or could have been responsible for someone else having an accident. The last thing that you want is to have steel deck fall on top of you, that stuff is heavy. Or fall from a tallescope (very big ladder on wheels with a cage at the top.)
What was even more clear to me was that I was determined to get back there and if that meant taking to my bed for the next few weeks then so be it. My body was telling me to rest and the psychologist and consultant at the hospital had told me to rest, so I rest I would.
I wanted to cover a bit more in this post but I feel that's a good place to end. Hindsight is a marvellous thing, I'd remembered far more about that day than I thought. So stay tuned for my next post.
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