Cloud Cuckoo Land

I haven’t been able to write anything for months because i was trying to work out what happened and didnt know where to start. I was in (what i thought was) a lovely big fluffy cloud but it turned out to be a fantasy and none of it was what it seemed. Somehow id conned myself in almost every aspect of my personal life. Its strange but alcohol gave me the answer (not because i was using it to cover up anything) it was all due to an (another) ME symptom that i didn’t yet know about.

There were things that didn’t add up. Firstly … i hadn’t had a drink for months (because ME makes me hyper sensitive to so many things and alcohol is one of them) then suddenly i was drinking as much as i liked and never got drunk and no hang overs (what am i complaining about!). My new man thought he’d met a goddess – not just for this reason (obviously!) …. but he thought it was great that a ‘girl’ could match him drink for drink and never get drunk no matter how much he fed me (and i was vigorously tested i can tell you!). I felt really proud (proud!?!) that i could handle it for a few days then after a few weeks i started to think there must be something wrong but what on earth could it be??? Apart from the damage it must be doing to my liver  it wasn’t the kind of lifestyle id ever wanted. There was no possible reason why my de-sensitisation (is that a word) to alcohol should indicate a problem … was there?

Things changed dramatically at exactly the same time as i started to drink one drink and feel drunk again. I went on holiday with some very lovely girlfriends and I’m going to quote the part of the post i wrote that started to ring bells for me ……  “Alcohol seemed to have a much greater affect on me than when I’m at home.”  About 3 months after i wrote that sentence i re read it and thought that it was a weird thing to say and so i started to investigate. Investigations didn’t take long to be completed because i asked Michelle (my Occupational Therapist) on her next visit a few days later and she reminded me that i had been in a very stressful time (my ex of 7 years, and love of my life, having just left me and then starting a relationship with a new guy which was really full on from the first second of meeting without having a chance to get over the last relationship … plus everything else that was going on).  Michelle told me that stress causes one (especially ‘one’ with ME) to have adrenaline spikes – the higher the stress the more adrenaline is sent into ones body and it was the adrenaline that was almost definitely stopping me from getting drunk (or realising that i hadnt thought through anything properly. In hindsight i can see that as soon as i was away from home (on holiday), and the new relationship, i destressed (so the adrenaline spikes stopped) and so a glass of wine or one Mojito started to have its usual affect on me and i could once again get quite tipsy on one drink. I realised a lot of things on that holiday and knew i had to change things drastically when i got home. Little did i realise just how drastically things were going to change without me doing a thing! Id really like to know the medical explanation so if anyone reading this knows why adrenaline stops you getting drunk please comment below.

I got married on the 13th of October 2011 (the love of my lifes birthday) and its a long complicated story (you wouldn’t expect anything less from me surely) but the short version is …… i managed to totally kid myself that i was over Jon and because of a few coincidences and acts of fate i picked up the phone to Jon, thinking i was answering it to my son, and as soon as i realised who it was everything changed for me and i started to wonder if i had made a mistake and if i WAS really over him. He’d come to the same conclusion and had made some personal vows and started to talk to a relationship counsellor and convinced me that he loved me, wanted to spend his life with me …. so that’s what we are doing … and its lovely. Just normal. Calm sometimes, fraught sometimes, stressy sometimes, extremely funny and chilled lots of times, loads of love and laughter and ups and downs but its real and I’m not living on a fluffy cloud any more and I’m happier than I’ve ever been.

I’ll write a bit more in a couple of days but i was urged into restarting my blog by my good friend Karin and so i felt if i could just get the first words out then maybe it would be OK – feel the fear and do it anyway … i couldn’t do it before because i didn’t know how to explain what happened and, after all the things id said in my last couple of posts, be able to make it sound believable. It happened, it felt real at the time and here i am …. declaring my undying love for Mr Storey! I love you Jon. Thank you for everything.

Its our 5 ‘monthiversary’ tomorrow and I’m really happy and not delirious any more. It seems the big fluffy cloud i was living on was actually cloud cuckoo land.