A day of mental turmoil...

...like none experienced since 30th January.

Today was a complete mindfuck in so many ways, it just beggars belief. In the end, at about 14h30 I had to get on a bike to try and clear my head. Cycling is about the only way I currently have to free/clear my mind of conflicting/competing thoughts and emotions, probably because there is nobody that I could/would ask/use to hear me out. I am too emotionally charged these days and too proud/stubborn to open that side of me to those close to me because I would become a blubbering mess in front of that person.

It all started just after 8am. I slept later than usual because I could, there was no school lunch to be made due to the holiday, I didn't want to do the long group MTB ride because I struggled yesterday and felt that a day off the bikes would do me good, and I only got to sleep just after midnight because I was waiting/hoping to see if a certain someone was going to contact me.

As it was, she did. Just after 8am this morning. I'm lying in bed, coffee cup in hand, browsing the WWW and my phone pings. You have one new Whatsapp message. Okay, I get quite a few of those per day, at all hours. I open the phone, and was more than pleasantly surprised and happy to see who it was from.

There is someone whom I have grown quite fond of in recent days. Strangely, we haven't said more than perhaps a dozen words in each other's company, yet have swapped messages on almost a daily basis for a couple of weeks. We first met at our shared walking club, Sedgefield Striders, a few months ago, when she rejoined after having recently relocated back to Sedgefield but never swapped more than greetings.

I made a complete ass of myself a couple of weeks ago when, at our monthly club braai, I finished braaing my meat, wandered over to the table I was sitting at to find her sitting in what I thought was "my" chair. I had hung my grey jersey over the back of the chair to mark it as "mine" when I went to braai the meat. When I got back to "my" seat, she was sitting in it. Seeing the honey-blonde hair, I threw out a witty comment like Papa Bear from Goldilocks did, "Who's been sitting in my seat, and is still sitting in it?" and I got greeted with an incredulous stare as if to say "WTF are you talking about?" but she pleasantly said something to the effect of "I think you're mistaken". It was then that I realized I had walked one table too far from where my jersey was actually hanging over my empty chair. She too had a grey jersey hanging over her chair. I sheepishly apologised and slunk off to sit where I was supposed to. No doubt she thought there was/is something wrong with me.

Fast forward a few weeks......On the Wednesday following a walk on the previous Saturday, I sent her a message and asked her if she would like to go out for coffee, a drink, or dinner sometime. I had been going to ask her in person on the Wednesday, but fate conspired to keep her elsewhere, so I couldn't resist any longer and sent her the message that night. I got a lukewarm response, understandable after "braai-gate", but kept in touch. We friended each other on social media, as people do these days, and have swapped comments and emoticons at each other's photos and postings.

But where are my manners? My parents taught me that it is rude to call a lady "she" and I apologise. For the sake of this posting, and future reference, we shall call her "LOMA". It is an acronym I picked up many years ago when I lived in Durban. The editor of The Natal Mercury coined the term as reference to his lady friend, and means "Lady Of My Acquaintance".


Anyway, I digress.....back to this morning.....coffee in bed/phone pings/surprise...


LOMA sent me a Good Morning message, perhaps in response to a FB posting of mine the night before which said "One text from the right person can change your whole mood", but perhaps also to let me know that all was well with her on her drive to Pretoria to visit her son. That message changed my mood from "Wonder what I'm going to do today" to "HELLO!!" and an elevated pulse. It was a simple message but it kick-started the day like a mule on crack kicking a bucket into next week.

That, unknown to me then, was the start of the turmoil in my head and from there it was downhill like a rock down a mineshaft....

As any of my regular blog readers know, my M is in a local care facility for people with Alzheimer's/dementia, and I visit her a couple of times a week. It is my duty and I carry it out as faithfully as I can.

Again, as you may have read earlier in my recent ramblings, things are not going too well with M, and I believe her mind is failing her at a more rapid rate than just a couple of months ago. She now takes a split second to realise who I am, and I think it won't be too long before she forgets altogether. I am one of a handful of people that M remembers by name. Right now, I think I may be the only one she will remember without being prompted. It's a horrible disease and destroys not only the afflicted person, but also those around them who have to watch the person deteriorate.

My visits are always spent chatting, or rather listening to M chatter in the manner of a dementia sufferer. She switches from subject to subject every few seconds, often not even finishing one sentence before starting on another subject. Mostly we sit at a large table in the facility where there are also a number of other patients staring into puzzles or art projects, but now and then we go for a walk. The end of the visit is always hard, more so on me I believe as M's memory doesn't allow her to dwell on a subject or instance for anything longer than a few seconds at most, so she quite quickly forgets that I was there. In fact, I can walk out of the room, wait five seconds before walking back in, and she will believe I have just arrived. When I left this morning though, there was, for the first time, a confused look on her face as if to ask where I was going and why wasn't she going with me.

It hit me like a hammer blow to the back of my head. I left the facility as fast as I could without showing my distress, then sat in the car and bawled my eyes out like I did the first day I left her there at the end of January.

Once I got home, my mind started playing tricks on me. A number of people, since 1st February, have told me to make a new life for myself, in all respects. A close female friend even suggested that that should include a new relationship. There have been a few hiccups since that day, but I figured I was getting on top of things. Now I'm starting to wonder.

I've started doing things differently, being (I think) more open and friendly in my approach to people, listening to stacks more music than I had been before 30th January, have ridden my bikes longer and harder than ever because I now have the time to do so, have opened myself to new experiences I wouldn't have thought about before that date, and have even considered whether a new relationship should form part of that "new life". To be completely honest, I had decided to let life take its course and if a relationship is on the cards for me, then so be it and I will evaluate it as it happens but be totally transparent with whomever becomes the LOMA.

Because we haven't spoken face to face since starting to swap messages like friends/companions, and because I've posted quite a few entries to this blog over the last couple of weeks and shared them all on FB, I have assumed that LOMA is aware of my situation. The horrible truth is that I don't know if she is. I don't know if she reads my blog. I think she does because of a specific comment that someone anonymously left one day, but again, I can't say for certain that it was her.

I wanted us to get together to talk openly before now, but fate has conspired to make that not the case. I'm fearing for the worst, fearing that it might destroy any kind of relationship (in whatever form) we may have going forward. If it does, I will be devastated, not so much for myself but for LOMA, as she would be the one wronged by my situation and the fondness I think she feels from me.

Hence my emotional turmoil today.

By the time I went for my bike ride to clear my head, I had gone through just about every possible scenario that could happen in this situation and I was driving myself nuts. I was snippy to anyone that tried to talk to me, I was emotional to the point that I couldn't answer my mom properly without swallowing the lump in my throat when she asked whether everything was okay with M.

I had to get out of the house just to get away from the voices in my head and the ride did me good for a while. Right now though, after midnight again, and I'm going through that same turmoil. As the saying goes, "I'm bricking myself". I don't know what to expect the next time I communicate with LOMA as this entry, if she reads my blog, may be the first time she fully understands my situation. I know she met M at Striders at the beginning of the year, but I don't know if she has the full picture.

I'm about to post this entry and share it to FB, so I might just find out in the morning.






Look after yourselves out there, folks...be kind to each other...