It isn't always summer

There are clouds today. Not just the big, white fluffy ones that herald one of those 'hide and seek with the sun' days:  these are serious, heavy grey thunderclouds, lowering with intent. I want to watch them... I want to see what they are actually bringing:  but I don't have either the physical or mental capability to do that.

It has been a while sine I added to this blog. It has also been a while since I wrote in my journal: because somewhere in the mess of confusion and upset and terror in my head, I have lost the ability to express myself coherently...

This is one of the things that most worries me. I am writing this in stages. between such intense periods of cognitive meltdown that I am actually afraid that I may be in the early stages of dementia. Oh - I have my 'Granny's Attic' memory function:  my store of endlessly useless random facts: but ask me what I did yesterday?  or my phone number? Doctor's name?  MY name?  I can go for weeks.. months, like this. Struggling to remember the important things - did I pay the bills that aren't automatically paid via my bank?  Did I remember to empty the washing machine, or is there a load of damp laundry from 3 days ago quietly festering in there?  Did I remember to take the food I actually managed to cook in my oven , out of said oven, and put the leftovers in the fridge or freezer?  or will I, as has happened more times than I want to recall, open the door to put something in to roast, and be met with the overpowering stench of rotten food, and a dish full of unpleasantness to have to deal with?

People look at me and assume, They assume that I am competent. That I know what I am doing. That I have a degree of intelligence. They have no idea how much of a struggle it is every day to maintain that semblance of ' normality',  That there are days that pass me by unremembered.. unnoticed. That I sometimes wake and have to check the television news not just for the day of the week, but for the month: the year. That I wake sometimes terrified that I have imagined huge chunks of my life and that THIS will be the day when I find out that so much of what I believe about my life, and about what I do and have done, is fantasy,

Travelling... travelling does the same to me as losing time. I don't know. How do I explain this without making myself sound ridiculously foolish as well as insane?

Years ago, I worked in my home town, for one of the largest public services. Then I found myself, due to a complicated and humiliating set of circumstances, having to move to live in another town maybe 50 or more miles away. I retained my job for a long time after the move, travelling by train, mostly: a journey that took usually 80 minutes or so.
   The difficulty was that I worked permanent night shifts, and because of the timing of transport, I would arrive back at my house, do the tasks I needed to in order to keep the place running as it should, fall into a restless 4 hour sleep, then crawl out of bed, hurting and exhausted to begin the journey back to work. Some days, I managed better than others: but I would often be sitting in my seat on the train as it rattled across the country, and be struck by the strangest and most unnerving feeling, of confusion and disorientation, utterly unsure, sometimes for the remainder of the journey, which way I was actually travelling.


     Perhaps that seems irrelevant here:  but I still have that sense of confusion and anxiety:  moments when I have no idea where I am: where I am going, Even who I am is unclear  Perhaps it is a little unusual to feel so.. disconnected?  to both my surroundings and my journey: To others it probably seems foolish, or mad:  but it is both familiar and 'normal' for me:  and while I do find it distressing and struggle to manage both the episodes and their aftermath, the most difficult thing about it for me is preventing others from seeing it in me.