Am I Old?

So how do you know if you are old or not?

Is it when you have a season ticket to the doctors as different bits go wrong or fall off each week?

Is it when a late night is 11pm and you pay the price for the next few days even though you didn't drink?

Is it when your jeans are no longer the comfiest items of clothing in your wardrobe?

Is it when you suddenly realise all the clothes you have bought in the last few months were from Marks and Spencers and not other younger high street brands?

Is it when you become horrified that the trousers you bought from M & S have elasticated waists?

Or is it when you realise you have tried to make a cup of tea in a glass sugar pot and the hot water has broken it?

Or what about when the bread won't fit in the fridge and milk doesn't belong in the oven?

Does it take just one of these to make you old? What if you can relate to 5 or more? What does that make me? Will organising a birthday party with some retro twists really make me feel young and back in the 80's again? Unlikely.

Please no. I'm not ready for knitting, tartan slippers, hot water bottles and horlicks.

Not yet anyway.

On plucking up the guts...

I have never been good with medical things. I was never ill as a child and so never went to the doctors. My lasting memory of the doctors as a child is a smelly, old man sitting in a swivel leather chair in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Not the image you would expect to see today.
I stopped going to the dentist for 9 years when I was about 18. It took this long for me to get unbearable toothache. I had one filling and one removed. I thought that was a good trade off for 9 years without the biannual stress. However that's probably not what the dentist thought. Valium was prescribed and nurses were there to hold me down for the injections. I felt physically sick from the trauma of this and have been regularly ever since. However, I still have borderline hysteria before sitting in the chair - the sweats, shakes and tears.

When I was expecting my midwife refused to take my blood. It took my husband to have a day off work and take me to the hospital maternity department. There would be a nurse, midwife and blood specialist there as well as him to hold me down. This was not looking good for a birth plan. Up to 34 weeks everything looked fine. Then my midwife tells me the baby is now breach and that they want to try to turn him for a natural birth. The consultant and 10 onlooking students could not get him to turn so they booked me for a c-section. This was not good. More planned medical things were going to happen. I was shaking and sweating so much when they tried to do the epidural that it took at least 7 attempts to get the needle in.
After they had extended the cut to get my 9lb 5oz baby boys head out they put an extra drip in my ankle while I couldn't feel anything.
My second child was a natural birth and again my midwife skipped some blood tests to reduce the trauma for me and baby.

All of these were medical issues I couldn't escape from. However last week I finally plucked up the courage to contact the doctor about how I feel. I sent a letter in with a friend as I breakdown whenever I try to talk to a doctor. They made the appointment and I was pleasantly surprised. The doctor was fabulous. She was calm and reassuring, understanding and helpful. Two years ago when I went with similar things I was told that it would just go away. Now someone has finally taken me seriously and told me I'm stressed and depressed. It feels such a relief to know there is someone who wants to help. I've never felt like this about the medical profession before. I fear there is worse to come in blood tests and counselling, but the relief is immense.

DOPEY

On How Do I Feel Today?

Why do I feel different every day? Some days I am really motivated and achieve lots of things I plan to do. Other days I hit rock bottom achieve nothing and just cry.What triggers a good day and a bad day?

Today is a bad day. I got my shopping this morning and did a bit of gardening. By lunchtime I'd had enough. It always seems to hit me about then. I sat down and ate my jacket potato. I then didn't want to get up or do anything. My motivation had gone. I was thinking. Always a bad sign when I stop and think. Nothing good ever comes of this.
Today I was thinking about Friday evening. I'm going out with other Mum's for a 40th birthday. That is not a good thought in itself. But why should this make me feel bad other than we're all getting older? I'll tell you why. I cannot go out in the evening without feeling ill.

It started a couple of years ago. I thought the first time that I'd had too much to drink, but it seems that isn't the case now. I then thought it was to do with eating out. But now that doesn't have to be the case either. The last time, I went to the cinema and was nowhere near food or alcohol. On one occasion I had to walk out of a restaurant leaving my husband eating his starter and main course on his own while I sat outside sobbing and feeling very sick.

It starts as a really hot feeling that works its way all over my body. I feel sick in my throat, yet I have never yet been sick. I can go lightheaded and need to sit down. I need water to drink and splash over me. I cannot work out what makes it happen. I have to loosen clothing. So now I wear the baggiest clothes I can to see if that helps. That looks really great when you want to dress up.
It has ruined two of my birthdays now. I haven't been out at New Year since it started. If I go to someones house I am fine. If I go out during the daytime I am fine.

So is it socialising, food, drink, or just going out in general? Is there a pressure on me to do something or be someone that I have only just started to experience? Am I now expecting to be ill and so becoming ill? Thinking about it certainly makes it worse. Or is it just that I am getting old and my body is falling apart?

What to expect next?

DOPEY

 

On Making Friends 3...

Off I trot to the local shopping centres, CV in hand. I'm looking for any full time work to get me some money. I buy the local newspapers. I look through all the job adds and apply for a couple of jobs. What do I want to do with my life? What career do I want?
I get an interview. My first ever interview. It's with a food manufacturing company in their laboratory, checking for bacteria and testing the food before it is passed onto quality control. I was petrified before the interview but something must have gone right as I was offered the job. The boss was horrible and kept disappearing to play squash with another manager. The other lab assistant was someone I had known from school. She had been in the year above, but a friend of my longest standing friend so I knew her a bit. What a relief.

What was the job like? I hated it. You had to test the workers hands for bacteria, but through interpreters. When there was a problem we had to retest to try and pass everything. How long did I last? 3 months. I left. I couldn't bear it. Not the people, even though the manager was obnoxious, I ignored him. It was the work, environment and atmosphere.

So I signed on. Luckily for only 6 weeks. I spent my time visiting shopping centres again and scouring the newspapers. I got another interview. This time in a video shop. It was small with a staff of only 4. I would be part time but it was work. Within a few months I was made full time and given the opportunity to be on the experienced crew training new staff and opening a new flagship store in Lakeside. I enjoyed the work, but couldn't fit in with the team as well as I did in the smaller store.
I missed my friends and got into my head that someone else was taking them from me and taking my job. I could never warm to her. Was I jealous or insecure? Not sure. I did this for 3 months and then moved back to my original store.
I started applying for assistant manager posts. I must have come through the worst of things. I wanted more responsibility, more money and was actually enjoying my job. I was socialising with the rest of the team. I got a promotion to another store and fitted in well. I loved my job. I got married and things were looking great.

Only to find that they started closing the stores down. They were not renewing the leases as they were expiring.  Uncertainty crept in again. I didn't want to start again. I was finally happy and wanted the feeling to last forever. I didn't want to have to deal with change again. What was I to do? Where was I to go?


BASHFUL

On making friends 2...

Oh no. You are 18 and leave school. Some of your friends go to university in a remote part of the country. Some go off to work. As decisive as ever, I head off to college in London and stay living at home. But what does this mean. Yet again I have no friends with me. I have to start all over again.

As I travel to London on the train on the first day, panic sets in. Where am I going? Who will be there? What will they be like? I arrive at the college and find my way to a room filled with lots of new faces to take in. They're all chatting away as if they have known each other for years. Maybe they have. I find a seat. A group of girls start talking to me immediately. Was I comfortable with this? Probably not. I wasn't ready for that kind of interaction. As a lecturer comes in, the room settles as he explains what the day entails.After a very long hour, I head off to pay my grant to the admin team. I am alone again. Lost in a sea of unusual people and strange surroundings.

It is lunchtime and the group of girls from earlier are heading out to explore Leicester Square and what it has to offer. I tag along, feeling uneasy and an outsider. They are all chatting about where they come from and what they want to do. I answer direct questions and listen. That's what I'm good at. I watch people and listen to things around me.

The afternoon brings more of the same. Finding out timetables and where rooms are. Now this I can handle. Sitting in silence and listening. However, my life will change again during this afternoon. My course has been changed and I'm now only doing part of what I want to do. Part has been cut. What do I do? I make a quick exit after we finish to avoid having to talk to the others. I make my way home pondering my options.

Decision made. The next day I go back to college and quit. Was it the easy option? Was it just the change in course that made me give up my college opportunity? Or was it just too daunting to make new friends again? I start looking for work. I had worked in Woolworths at weekends for nearly 4 years and got extra shifts to get myself money. But I needed full time work. This meant applications, interviews, meeting new people and interacting with them.

I hadn't changed since school. Making friends hadn't got easier over those few years. How long will it take until this simple process becomes second nature? Should I have a label? Would I feature somewhere on the autistic spectrum if tested now or back then? Would it have helped me? Who knows?

BASHFUL 

On making friends...

It's 30 years ago. You are at school. You have trouble making friends. You get lonely. You live with it. You get on with your life in your own special way. People pick on you because you are "different"; you are an easy target.
What did anyone do about it? Absolutely nothing. You remained a shy person, not mixing well with new people.
What happens today? Tests are done. You are observed. Your parents worry that you might have x, y or z. Where did the shyness come from? Is it hereditary?


In my case I found making friends one of the hardest things to do. I was far happier with my head in a book or playing on my Atari games console/BBC B/Atari ST/PC as I grew up. Did I want to make friends? No, not really.
I had a couple of very close friends at primary school. I was happy and enjoyed school. I did well and moved onto Grammar School - without my close friends.
Does making new friends get harder as you get older? I say it does. Nearly 20 people from my primary school went with me to secondary school, but none of them were my close friends. They split us amongst the 6 new classes so that we didn't stick together as a group. It was supposed to help us make new friends. Did this help me? No way. By now I am scared. I am slow to get into the new classroom on the first day and find the other 2 girls from primary school had sat together, and I don't blame them. You would think that a Grammar School would be full of like minded individuals who were there for the study and not to become bitches of the century. It seems I was wrong there.

I went through the first 3 years of senior school without a true friend. I was always the third member of a group. And whoever said "three's a crowd" was so damn right. It just doesn't work. In each year I was in a different three. The other two would meet up after school and at weekends and I wouldn't get invited. Why? Was I that freaky? I was called names and laughed at.
Why is it all the bitches are good at sport? I was hopeless at sport and so ridiculed constantly. I was last to be picked for teams. This to me was some form of psychological bullying. They were saying to me that I was useless and they were never going to be friends with me. So there I was guaranteed to be excluded from the "it crowd" for the rest of my school days. Being good at maths or chemistry just wasn't cool.

It was only when we moved into the fourth year - current year 10 - that I finally fell into a friendship that has lasted 25 years and is still going strong. She had been through the same sorts of things at senior school and always been on the outside of a group. She had been persecuted and called names that you would think 14 year olds knew nothing about back then.

I know this is part of growing up, but are children allowed the same naivety that we were 30 years ago? Would it have helped either of us to have been called "autistic" or have "aspergers syndrome"? Probably not.
Does it help now? As a parent, it answers questions, but does it really benefit the child. I hope so. Will it help them make new friends? I doubt it.


BASHFUL