Day 66 - Becalmed

It's not easy to say things to someone whom you love, that you know may hurt them, or which might be taken wrongly. However, as I have also noted in here before, I can be no less than honest, and for the last few days I have been struggling with a recurring thought.

Self-esteem is all important to someone who is fighting against something like stroke. It is very easy to get drawn deeper and deeper into a black hole of despair, especially as time passes and there seems to be little happening in certain areas. Cleo in my view was getting like this over the last few days. I sensed she was becoming resigned to certain things, and the result of that was a general lack of fighting spirit, and an acceptance of what was there, rather than a continued effort to drive oneself out of the "sameness" in which she found herself.

What didn't help either was the apparent negativity in both the home visits we have had the last couple of days from the care team: they seem to focus on what you CANNOT do, rather than what you can. I find this very frustrating, because in my view this is no way to support somebody, but rather shoots them down rather than building them up which is what they really need.

Anyway, after the care visit cleo needed a sleep before we went to physio, and I sat here agonising over what I knew I wanted to say to her, but not really knowing the best way. In the end when she woke we talked about what I felt was wrong in respect of her self-esteem and emotional well being. I explained that she had two choices: sit there and do little to keep her mind enthused, or attack each day with renewed vigour. How to do that? By not allowing herself to become stuck in a rut, and especially in relation to her personal pride in herself. Now of course when you are not well, and often tired, it's easy to drag on a pair of jogging bottoms and a tee-shirt every day, but what does that do for you? Very little I say!

It was as if the good ship cleo had become becalmed in the doldrums of rehabilitation and physiotherapy. I just needed to unfurl those sails and catch the wind in them again.

So, I suggested that she think about some other clothes, skirts, and blouses, things to make her feel more like cleo, than some sexless nothing, which was where she was headed. After a whole load of agonising and careful explaining she put on a skirt, and a nice jumper, and off to physio we went. Result: James immediately noticed she was wearing a skirt. Case proven I think.

We have agreed that she will do this regularly; get herself out of the jogging trousers and tee-shirts and get into some more feminine and "cleo-like" attire. I am going to hold her to this, and as we have nothing else to do tomorrow morning a little retail therapy won't go amiss. So it's off to the shops for some new clothes for cleo.

I am convinced that this will help her emotional state: feeling like cleo again rather than a victim, rather like she did when we went to dinner at our friend Alan's the other night.

Watch this space.

Becalmed

I am like a ship becalmed,
In a sea of emotion,
No driving force is here, because you are gone,
Elsewhere to blow your motive winds of power
Upon another.

This cannot be, it is my sails you should unfurl
With each sweet moment
I defy you to resist the power you hold
To move this human Marie Celeste
That now lays silent on the millpond sea.

And clever yet with all you do
Your trap is set, to seek one who,
Will Master be, and take the reins
To lead you cross the ocean plains
Out of the calm, into the stormy sea,
And back into the calm once more

paul knox