Today

Today hasn't been too bad. L came to see me earlier. She wanted to go out somewhere, and suggested we either go to a coffee shop and chat, or go for a walk in the local country park as it was a nice day, and suggested we take the dog. Since the dog was standing there looking at me as though he knew every word L had just said I said we had better take him. Cue much jumping and bouncing (from the dog, not me), with L making him more and more excited!

We walked around the country park for an hour or so and chatted a bit generally, and a bit about what I had written, and did a lot of throwing a tennis ball for the dog! Oh and the dog was stupid enough to run at a swan, who then got very angry and started to walk after us and we thought it was going to start chasing us and L was rather scared! My dog is pretty dumb. He is a cross between two types of sheepdog, and yet he is terrified of sheep. Cows petrify him even more, and he thinks horses are fairly scary too. He is usually scared of swans too, but seemingly not today.

I had the first performance of the play tonight. It went ok. Don't think the audience knew quite how to take it - it is pretty weird. There were a couple of slight issues with props being set in the wrong place - for my main scene everything was slightly too far upstage left, which doesn't sound like a big deal, but it made manoevring around it a bit difficult, and it also meant the lighting was ever so slightly off because of us being further stage left than we should have been. Plus a chair somehow wasn't struck before the last scene that should have been, and it nearly made me corpse - little things like that can really throw you. But it all went ok really - no major problems.

I have been basically offered the part of Miranda in an open air production of The Tempest (ie would you be available for the Shakespeare - I was thinking of you for Miranda), which would start rehearsing at the beginning of June, and the performances would be at the end of July, in various open air. I am not really sure about it. It would be great to do a lead in a Shakespeare play, but I am concerned about line learning given my concentration at the moment, and also I know how I have felt about the play I am doing at the moment, and I don't want to commit myself to something else that will stress me, and have me at every rehearsal wishing I wasn't there. Plus of course I am still having such strong suicidal thoughts, and so thinking a couple of months ahead is really difficult. I know people will say to go for it and that it would be a good thing for me to do etc, but I also need to take into consideration how stressed I have been by this play, and this is just a 1 act play - not a full length Shakespeare. I have a week or 2 to think about it before the read through/auditions, after which it will be cast.

I saw 2 tiny fox cubs playing last night on the way home from the theatre, just down the road from my house. They were so sweet - I want one! And then tonight on the way home from the theatre we saw a mink. I have never seen a wild mink before I don't think.

I am tired. Even though I haven't been that busy, I have been doing a lot for me, and I do feel like it is affecting me. I don't know if I am finding things so hard because of how low I am feeling, or if doing more is making me more tired and therefore making me feel worse. I have been thinking more about going back on anti depressants. Even though I have always had really bad patches I think that this time I have been lower for longer, and I think things like my memory and concentration have been more affected than usual. It has been so many weeks since I have been able to read a book for example, and when things are better for me I read so much, and so fast. I can't read at all at the moment. I just don't have the concentration. My sleep is very bad, and I suspect that isn't helping either my mood or my concentration. Feeling so terrible about my weight isn't helping either. This is the heaviest I have been for over 4 years, and I desperately want to lose weight but it just isn't happening. I suppose there are lots of things contributing to how low I am feeling, but I don't know how to change any of them, which just leads straight back into the suicidal thoughts. All of the things I wrote about what being well would mean to me just seem like a complete impossibility. They aren't what I am hoping for, because I can't imagine them ever happening. But I don't know what I am hoping for. Living feeling like this really doesn't feel like a possibility for me anymore, and I just can't imagine how things could ever change.