New Found Responsibilities

This is merely a post to get rid of some thoughts, built up in the midst of what has been a long week. The time is 02:33, a time I was used to years ago as I whiled away in the eeriness of a night shift. Being ill with the flu this week has knocked me out of a normal sleeping pattern, so here we are. Wide awake in the hour of the witches.

Being physically ill makes me mentally ill. Maybe not mentally ILL but certainly feeling much more down than I have been of late. From the outside, my 2016 could not have started any better. A promotion turning into a possible double promotion, getting involved in charity work, cricket club successes and new friendships. However, I also have a new, very private responsibility to protect those closest to me. After what happened last October, (of which I haven't documented as it's events are too harrowing), I still have fears of a repeat in the forefront of my mind. I have a responsibility now to not fall into old traps and manage my own illness responsibly, because those closest to me simply cannot take another collapse. Every now and then, those dark thoughts emerge, wanting to take over and drown out my life, but the words of Stephen Fry keep me afloat:

"Your mood is your own personal weather. Sometimes it rains, but the rain always passes to be replaced by sunshine."

I never used to have much affiliation with words and sentiments like these, but I can safely say that without them, I'd either be dead or in a psychiatric unit. As a patient I mean, because I now work in one myself. Surely one of the very few people in the world to have been an inpatient and a member of staff on the same acute psychiatric unit.

My thoughts are elsewhere really.