Flags of Maastricht Images number 1.

It’’s 2:30 am now and I am awake, but not quite, so I may lie down on the sofa any minute, so you have been forewarned. If I suddenly disappear, that is where I am and that may be sooner than later, because I am making a hell of a lot of spelling mistakes in this sentence. Wow, it took me some time to set that straight, I am sleep drunk again. “Who, me officer? No, I can find my way home just fine! As long as I am following that marching band over there!”

Okay, it’s 4 o’clock now and I slept some more on the sofa, Silly me for having tried to type those sentences above when I was in the state I was in. I just had to fix some more mistakes in them after I thought I had gotten them right before.

I apparently gave some people the idea that I was taking a sabbatical from this blog and that was not my intention at all. I am taking a little sabbatical from life, but I am keeping the blog going as usual. I need it to keep my thoughts going straight, what would I do without this blog, people? I look forward to writing it ever day and it is the perfect way for me to spend the early hours of the morning.

Yesterday I had a perfectly lazy day, although that had not been my intention to start with. I had thought I was going to be very active and do all sorts of things, but as the day took shape, I realized that I wanted to do less and less and I ended up doing hardly anything at all and it felt good.

I washed my face and didn’t apply any make up and walked the dog with a naked face and I didn’t care. Then I cleaned up the kitchen and hung up the laundry to dry and from that point forward I did nothing more strenuous than walk the dog one more time. I hung out on the sofa and drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and thought shallow thoughts about very unimportant things. I petted the dog and watched the cats be goofy and ate when I felt like it.

In the meantime, Eduard had gone to the library and to the grocery store one more time and he brought back a hefty book for me about Mongolia. He said it was because I had written about being a Mongol and maybe I would like to know more about it. Only Eduard would think of something like that. It is quite an impressive book and I took it to bed with me last night and fell asleep reading about the early Mongols and how their clan system worked in the olden days of the Khans.

But I totally wasted my day and it felt so good. I napped in the afternoon and I figured that this was a good thing and that I was catching up on all of my lost sleep. I wasn’t worried about not being able to sleep during the night, I just assumed that I would and I was right. I went to bed at nine o’clock and went out like a light. Taking the Oxazepam with the Temazepam works, even though I did get up briefly and tried to write this blog. Old habits die hard.

I now see the sensibility of getting a good night’s sleep. It is exciting to be up in the middle of the night, but it is better to spend it sleeping and to store up energy.

When I was living by myself briefly, I had a heck of a time falling asleep at night and I always took sleeping pills. I always felt very lonely in my bed all by myself. That changed when Eduard came into my life and then I didn’t need the sleeping pills anymore. It was so nice to have a beloved body next to me in bed and to go to sleep that way and to wake up with him beside me. I couldn’t believe my luck and he was always toasty warm, like a little oven to crawl up against and be warm with. Eduard was truly God sent.

I started taking the sleeping pills in the hospital, when going to sleep was murderous and couldn’t be done any other way. We would sit in the patient’s living room together and wait for the pills to work and then drowsily walk off to our individual bedrooms to try and get a good night’s sleep. Sometimes the pills didn’t work and we would get up during the night, something which was strictly forbidden, and we would be chased back to bed when found out, but for as long as it lasted, we would sit in the living room and smoke cigarettes and drink tea.

I became manic in the hospital, except that I had no idea what was happening to me as my diagnosis had not been discussed with me as I was under observation. I went from being completely depressed to being completely happy. I did all sorts of things that I considered very funny, but that now looking back were probably quite a nuisance for the nurses there. I thought I was quite a hilarious person and wanted everybody to have a good time, including all the depressed people. I was actually quite obnoxious at times, that much I know now, and also dysphoric and I picked fights with people whom I did not like. Boy, what a handful I was.

Sometimes, at night, we wouldn’t take our sleep medication right away, and sit up and tell each other horror stories and extremely bad jokes or we would sing and dance and pretty much turn the place upside down. The night nurse was way at the other end of the corridor watching TV and I don’t know how much of it she was aware of and how much of it she let us get away with. I know that when things really got out of hand, she did show up and told us to take our pills and to go to bed, but she was only one and we were many.

After four months of being in the hospital came the day when they told me that I would have to go home. I took this really hard. At the time I was not hypo manic anymore and I didn’t want to leave. I was afraid to leave the hospital and to go out into the real world, but they were afraid that I would never be able to anymore if I didn’t. That I would become a institutionalized person. I became very angry and aggressive and broke some things and they had quite a struggle calming me down. I was lucky that they didn’t put me in solitary confinement. After that, my spirit was broken and I was a meek as a lamb and they didn’t have any problems with me anymore. A month later I left. Some time after that I made my first suicide attempt.

This is too morose. I started off telling you about my sleeping problems and end up here. Let’s talk about something else all together now.

That summer, I discovered wild flowers and everywhere I went it seemed they grew. Eduard and I went for long walks in the countryside and I picked wildflowers to my heart’s contend. I couldn’t believe the abundance of them and filled vases of them to put in our room at the student house. When they started to droop, I hung them upside down to dry and we had many bouquets of dried wild flowers.
Coming from California, where you don’t have this abundance of wild flowers, this was a very magical thing to me. I couldn’t believe that these things just grew in all the fields here and that I could pick them in any color.

We also did a lot of photography that summer and Eduard taught me how to develop my own pictures. That was a magical process. I took close up pictures of tree bark and sheep’s wool on barbed wire and wild flowers, of course. I was great watching the images come up in the developer and knowing when to take them out to let them dry. We don’t do that anymore now, especially not now that we have the digital camera. It will become a lost art.

Speaking of photographs, I have to pick out some images to put here. Let’s see what it will be today…

I got sidetracked giving the dog fresh water and the cats their food while I went to get a cup of coffee. The cats patiently waited in the kitchen for somebody to come and fill their food dishes. Not a peep out of them, not even Toby this time. There was enough milk, but that isn’t what they wanted. They like Felix Seafood flavor best now, so that is what we have been buying and yesterday they had a herring and so did Jesker. Jesker also like cornflakes with lowfat milk and if I ask him, “Do you want cornflakes?” he walks to the kitchen ready for some. He can’t quite believe his luck when I give him some. He looks at me like he is thinking, “Are these really for me?” Yes, I know, we spoil the animals.

Okay, that’s it for me for today. I have no more words in me. I am going to read other people’s blogs now. So cheerio and good day and all that. Ciao to you…