I have just come back from a great trip out to see my boyfriend while he worked in Wisconsin. He works and I wait for him to get back to the hotel. While it is very nice to putter and work out and watch cable tv, I very much miss working. I miss having a purpose, a pursuit of my own.

From 2018 - spring of 2022, I worked from home for our business. I did scheduling and billing. I spent most days just sitting in the quiet waiting for the phone to ring. And it did ring often, but the calls were never about anything that let me use my skills. Winters killed me. Dark way too early and cold. The house has old, original windows that do not stop the wind at all. So I don't dress up, I dress in bundled layers, until I can't stand it one more minute and I walk over and hit the thermostat up a little higher. 

Now it is November, the beginning of the end of my summer sun. We have been trying to walk most afternoons when the day is at its warmest. Soon it will be too chilly and windy to walk outside and I will be stuck on a treadmill. While I am grateful to have the machine, it is very tedious to walk on it, even while listening to a great book series. 

While on social media this past week, I came upon a meme that stated, "Retirement age is 67. Life expectancy is 76. Work for 50 years to maybe enjoy 9? Start enjoying life now! No one is guaranteed a tomorrow!"  

The main part that hit me is to "maybe enjoy 9." I feel really stuck. I can do anything I want and I don't know what I want to do. The only thing I can't do is get a intown 9-5 job as I will often travel with my boyfriend. Having a job would be an easy way to kill a few hours each day and have a little fun. I feel whiney and underwhelmed. 

I am bored and dark days are coming. Every night, I take the meds that should help me get through another winter. 

TRIGGER WARNING
I have a favorite book series that I love listening to on Audible. It is the Frida Klein series by Nicci French. The main character is a Psychoanalyst and she seems to get her life intermingled with London's murderers and the local Police. It is a wonderful well planned and executed book series. Most of the books are 10 or 11 hours long so I can spend a lot of drive time or dreadmill time being entertained. Through all of the books there have been grisly situations that are very real and very scary. Somehow, I make it through unscathed.

Until, yesterday with the new book Thursday's Child. Ugh, children are the worst horror stories to get involved with, but this on in the few chapters I could make it through is about the rapes of young teen girls. And the main character divulging her own rape. The young girl tells Frida that she woke up and her bedroom was eerily silent and still. She knew something was wrong, but couldn't move and couldn't breathe. She wanted to turn on the light to make the dark go away, but she lay there paralyzed. Then she was attacked. She lays there waiting to be killed. 

I had to stop listening and buy the next book in the series to shake this one out of my damn head as this is one of my biggest fears, that far too often gets caught in that bipolar trains of thoughts that loops in my brain far too many nights. For me its the laying there with my eyes closed waiting and praying I am wrong and that no one is in my room. I don't want to open my eyes and see a face within inches of my own. Like a child, I want to pretend that if I keep my eyes closed then nothing bad is going to happen. At which point my heart is pounding so hard that I begin to believe that it is someone else's heartbeat beating right above my face. I try and figure out if I can feel any breathe or if I just hear it. And I wait. I damn near give myself a heart attack in the waiting and not knowing. Then, when I just can't stand one more minute of waiting to be raped and killed, I open my eyes. Wide open, really fast. 

So far, there has never been anyone there. Just me, my heart beat bursting out of my chest, sweat, panic, anxiety, and a sick sense of feeling I deserve a fate like this. I don't know why I feel this could be a reality of my life. I don't know why I wait in the dark to die, but I do. This is a part of my sickness. This is one of bipolar thinking loops that turns into a panic attack, that once started cannot be stopped by self-talk, deep belly breathing, counting 5 things, or anxiety meds. 

The only thing that stops this loop, is to get up and turn on the light. I have to be so very brave. Braver like the last time. I have to open my eyes, push back the covers and reach up for the light. Then crawl back into bed, stuff pillows behind my back and stay awake until I can't stop sleep from taking over. Some nights, there is no sleep. Not until the sun has risen. When my partner is home, I don't turn on the light, I just scoot back until I am hovering next to him and that comfort is my touch stone to safety. I will lay there, still frantically caught in the fear, but the touch is enough to give me a reality check that I am going to be alright. 

In the newest book, the main characters lover has been killed. His throat slit. His body washed up in The Thames River. Hopefully his murder will help me forget the previous book. 

Yesterday I started hearing this faint beeping sound, like from a cell phone or alarm clock. It would stop at odd intervals so I would hear it, start to walk around the house and then it would stop and not start again for a completely random ass number of minutes. 

I went downstairs to see if I could find the beeping noise. No such luck. I knew getting any sleep was going to be horrible if I did not find this beeping before bedtime. 

My daughter came out of her room and I told her about the beeping. She walked with me to try to find it. As we got closer to the front door, she stated that it sounded like the noise was coming from outside. We opened the door and damn if there wasn't someone on a jackhammer down the road rap-tap-tapping on the concrete.

Problem solved.

Just another example of me walking around hearing noises. Happy this time it wasn't imaginary.