Book challenge #5

I was challenged by a friend via their blog with something that’s been doing the rounds: publish seven covers of books that I love; no explanation or reviews, just a picture of the cover. This can be interpreted as book covers that I love, or covers of books that I love. I've gone for the former as I think it's more interesting. So here are book covers I indelibly remember, though I love the books too! No surprise that all are from my childhood and adolescence, and I have gone for the cover I remember at the expense of a high quality image.

I’m meant to challenge someone else each day. So if you’re reading this, I’m challenging YOU.

Book challenge #4

I was challenged by a friend via their blog with something that’s been doing the rounds: publish seven covers of books that I love; no explanation or reviews, just a picture of the cover. This can be interpreted as book covers that I love, or covers of books that I love. I've gone for the former as I think it's more interesting. So here are book covers I indelibly remember, though I love the books too! No surprise that all are from my childhood and adolescence, and I have gone for the cover I remember at the expense of a high quality image.

I’m meant to challenge someone else each day. So if you’re reading this, I’m challenging YOU.

Book challenge #3

I was challenged by a friend via their blog with something that’s been doing the rounds: publish seven covers of books that I love; no explanation or reviews, just a picture of the cover. This can be interpreted as book covers that I love, or covers of books that I love. I've gone for the former as I think it's more interesting. So here are book covers I indelibly remember, though I love the books too! No surprise that all are from my childhood and adolescence, and I have gone for the cover I remember at the expense of a high quality image.

I’m meant to challenge someone else each day. So if you’re reading this, I’m challenging YOU.

Book challenge #2

I was challenged by a friend via their blog with something that’s been doing the rounds: publish seven covers of books that I love; no explanation or reviews, just a picture of the cover. This can be interpreted as book covers that I love, or covers of books that I love. I've gone for the former as I think it's more interesting. So here are book covers I indelibly remember, though I love the books too! No surprise that all are from my childhood and adolescence, and I have gone for the cover I remember at the expense of a high quality image.

I’m meant to challenge someone else each day. So if you’re reading this, I’m challenging YOU.

Book cover challenge #1

I was challenged by a friend via their blog with something that’s been doing the rounds: publish seven covers of books that I love; no explanation or reviews, just a picture of the cover. This can be interpreted as book covers that I love, or covers of books that I love. I've gone for the former as I think it's more interesting. So here are book covers I indelibly remember, though I love the books too! No surprise that all are from my childhood and adolescence, and I have gone for the cover I remember at the expense of a high quality image.

I’m meant to challenge someone else each day. So if you’re reading this, I’m challenging YOU.

Emotional whiplash

A rufous-tailed hummingbird

A few days off, using up annual leave, should have been relaxing, doing some chores, the kind of things you leave until you can't leave them anymore, but most of the time sitting around catching up on TV, reading books and sleeping in. But life didn't work out that way. Instead it started to move very fast, rather than the slow days I had planned.

When things happen so quickly, they not only fail to sink in, you find them difficult to comprehend. The head often can't process the events, but the heart can, the metaphorical heart that is. Where thoughts are running through your head, tumbling from one to the next in a spiral, trying to work out what has just happened or is happening, emotions are quietly leading on from each other, but at such a rate that it gives you, what I call, emotional whiplash. That has been my past few days or so.

Not only is life moving fast, but my heart is as well. It's like the beat of the hummingbirds' wings I saw on holiday in Costa Rica; their wings move so fast you can't see them and I can not only hear the hum of the wings and my heart, but see it; my vision can judder with each heartbeat, it's that powerful. Basically, my anxiety is ramping up as well, just what I didn't want when I'm trying to hold on to that holiday feeling. It's especially frustrating as the stress at work is about to increase for the start of term.

The cause is something that has been a long time coming and something I was given ample time to get used to, but it's happening all at once. We're moving. Our place had only been on the market less than a week and on one of my days off, we had a viewing, with me wrangling the visitors' kids. A day later, we had an offer. We then went on a second viewing of a property which is almost perfect for us, in location, room size and design, with the added bonus of a wonderful garden complete with fruit trees and a grape vine. Our offer on it has been accepted. In just over a week, we have put our property on the market, sold it and basically bought a property, mortgage notwithstanding. If life continues at this pace, we'll be moving in a couple of months at most. Not near enough time to prepare, physically and mentally, hence the emotional whiplash.

But I'm trying to put my CBT spin on it, that it's exciting, grown-up and a positive thing, which it clearly is. But tell that to the hummingbird in my chest, the large blue morpho butterflies in my stomach and to continue the Costa Rican metaphors, the howler monkeys in my brain, trying to drown out all other thoughts. They wake me up as well, just like on holiday, acting like a cruel alarm clock. I had panic attacks when I moved here for the first few weeks, waking my brother up in the middle of the night, the first time I've lived anywhere other than my childhood home, that I remember at least. Anyway, I'm keeping it under control, for now. I just have to deal with the uncertainty, or certainty to be more accurate. Anxiety thrives on it. Maintaining continuity is key. I can handle it. I just have to keep telling myself that!

Brain fog

The frog equivalent of fog

Or as I like to call it, my brain frog. Brain fog is a technical term, doctors use it to describe the feeling when you're trying to use your brain, but it's harder than usual: the mental equivalent of trying to walk through mud, or, as it says, thinking through a dense fog. Many of us experience brain fog without even realising it. When you're exhausted, drunk or hungover, you will have gone through brain fog. For me, it's when my vestibular problem hits, when the vertigo is so bad I can't think straight. My concentration is shot, that includes with my eyes, it takes a few more moments for something to sink in and, for me, it manifests the most when I speak. My brain frog is a literal frog in my throat, robbing me of my usual powers of speech. I can be a Mrs Malaprop at the best of times, but it gets worse when the brain fog manifests. My vocabulary gets more limited and the words just won't come out, or the wrong words do, usually ones that are very similar. That's why I call it my brain frog because, when I try to describe it to someone when I'm living with it, I invariably tend to say frog instead of fog.

For someone who reads a lot and prides themselves over their use of words, it's frustrating. For someone who usually thinks nineteen to the dozen and has a quick mind, it's horrible. For someone who's trying to write this blog post, it's almost impossible and takes ten times as long. Of all the symptoms of vertigo and the consequences, such as the lack of sleep which doesn't help in itself, the balance problems, the motion sickness, the nausea and the energy it saps from you just getting through the day, the brain fog is the worst as it makes you feel like you're not yourself anymore. It can last for hours and sometimes days, even after the main spinning sensations have gone, leaving you feeling hopeless.

There are ways of dealing with it, not least taking it easier, going slower, triple checking what you're doing, making notes and creating reminders. I rely on muscle memory, especially when I'm getting around, remembering routes, room numbers and people's names. So don't take it personally if I get your name wrong or don't say it at all. Mostly, you have to be kinder to yourself, like me forgiving myself for the little mistakes my anxiety usually berates me over and over again with and managing your own expectations of yourself. Chronic illness is difficult if you remember how you were before; you have to accept the fact that person is gone. So I have befriended my brain frog and have even become amused by it. It's a funny friend and one that is here to stay.