Home again and crashing...

It has been a very long tiring week and I fear I am crashing both  emotionally and with the Chronic Fatigue, because of it.

I am now back home after 14 hours of travelling over the past 3 days, the reason for so much travelling is that I had to make an extra trip for Ann's funeral which was on Tuesday. The funeral was very well done, and a beautiful reflection on Ann's full life and the love she shared with so many friends and family. I found the wake harder than the funeral - there were a lot of people and I was expected to be involved in all that small chit chat with people I barely knew (I didn't know a lot of Ann's friends and have never been close to her family bar Judith).

Now that I am finally home and I am alone, I am starting to come apart after holding it together since Ann's death. I am physically exhausted and my body  is aching a lot, I know I have pushed myself to far this week physically and adding the emotional stress of it all I am not surprised that the Chronic Fatigue is hitting me hard today. I tried to take plenty of breaks and rest but I did do too much.

Emotionally I feel numb, too tired to feel much more. However at the same time I am uptight and anxious and I am just feeling generally negative at this moment. I feel disappointed in myself too considering how well I have been doing and how positive I have been despite the sad events.

I recognise that it is okay to feel this way and I just need to take some time and take gentle care of myself in the mean time. However I have this fear that now I am home I will settle back into some old habits of last year and just give in to the Chronic Fatigue and feeling down again. Don't get me wrong -  am glad to be home, to sleep in my own bed, to be able to follow sleeping routines and other healthy habits I have at home that are harder to follow when I am away. But I am scared of the bad habits I have here too, I am already overwhelmed by the amount that I need to do around the house and I am feeling dreadfully alone in having to handle getting it done.

Loss of Routine

So I am staying at my parents place until after the new year and I have been here one night and I am already ready to go home.

Dont get me wrong I love my Mum and step dad, they are good people. And my Mum tries to be supportive as she can of the DID but she doesnt completely get it. But she tries and she has been getting better. But my mum's house if full of clutter - piled high along hallways and in every room. There is no escaping it. I find that makes me stressed, my parents also live in a small country town where unless you drive at least 30mins there is no where to go. I dont have a license so I cant go for a drive and get a way for a while.

I also just cant keep my own routine here, my parents live differently, eat differently and generally their lifestyle choices are rather different. Its hard getting up in the morning and not having my usual choices available for breakfast. Or have all my tea things (sugar, kettle, mug, teaspoons) all set up in the corner ready for me to make my tea in the morning so I can function. These are small things but I find myself more stressed, more tired and just generally more unhappy. I love my parents and I cant explain it to them without upsetting my mum so I just live with it.

Routine and familiarity can be really important in making people feel more safe and less stressed. Our routines are what make things "normal" for us, provide us with a familiar base to work with every day. For me, my routines make functioning in the outside world easier. They help ground me after a bad night, and when I was really struggling with depression they helped me keep going because I didnt have to think I just followed what I knew.