VERY LUCKY MAN

This last couple of weeks has been an emotional rollercoaster. I came the closest I have come to believing that my life was over and not worth living.

I have gone from that to feeling excited that I can carry on for a while yet. I am totally astonished at the time to less people have shown me.

I am also totally astonished that I let a person  I have been friends with  4 to 3 years  hear me  me at my very worst I didn't just let players drop I really let everything out from the bottom my gut. One of the things that really surprised me was how much of that pain was to do with my disease. It has started to become very real. Not that it wasn't before but I was able to live much more independently and I was having to give up showing dogs because of it. I was absolutely brokenhearted. Much to my surprise she was still there on the end of the phone when all that pain had come out. She is only the fourth person in my life that has heard me in that state. She knows who she is and she knows how very grateful I am that she did not reject me at that point. She was there for me when it really counted and I feel all emotional now when I think about what she did for me. People, you have no idea how truly listening can save lives. As she herself said we make very strange friends but there is something that attaches us together and neither of us know what that is because we are very different with very different pasts. I think it is because I accept her and she accepts me as we are and we don't try and change each other. I was also blunt with her and told her that I am the man child and I will always be and some of what we have experienced which was unpleasant might well happen again because sometimes I cannot help the child part of me having the upper hand and that child is still terrified and un-trusting and always imagines the worst or imaginings something bad is being planned behind my back. I was just wondering whether I should be writing about this and I've decided that I should because this is a part of me that really causes me to feel ashamed of myself and I have found that by writing about the things that I find unacceptable about myself helps me come to peace with it. There are some damages that a child experiences that can never be fixed. They can however be lived with but it does make relationships difficult and that is why I am so very grateful for the friends I have in my life because I know how high maintenance I am and I can assure you there is no joke in me using that term high maintenance. I am not talking about money or close all boots or shoes or anything like that. I am just high maintenance as a person.

I also find being with people extremely tiring no matter how much I may love them and there are times when I cannot see them or speak to them on the telephone and when I do speak with them on the telephone I can speak sometimes for hours and when I see them I can sometimes see them all day long and other times just for an hour or so.

I cannot believe how lucky I am that I have friends who are willing to deal with this in order to be my friend. And as for having had a husband to nearly 33 years that just blows my mind.

The long and short of it is: I have a handler for any of my dogs but in this case it will be Megan and Megan will go on live with my handler next weekend. There is no secret I just feel it isn't right to mention who she is until she does. I really like this lady and so does John and with John like somebody I know I am not going to get screwed. But this lady and I have a particular talent we share and that makes us very special.

John will be coming to the shows with me after all. Having been adamant the years that he would never come to that general championship shows with me he has now changed his mind. (I know that somebody spoke with him and I will leave it at that. I haven't been told either by John or by the person I think spoke to him but that is what I believe happened.) I have always wanted John to be at the shows with me and not just because he can help me but I always felt uncomfortable when people asked me why he didn't come to the shows with me. Of course if he was still working full-time there is no way he could come.

I cannot believe that I will be able to carry on showing and that if Mary Grace gets made up it will be because I showed her although that does not count out the possibility of her having to be shown by somebody else on the day.

I really did not realise how scared I am about where my illness is going and by how much it hurts me that I cannot just show my dogs without all the paraphernalia, drugs, and the general shit it that it takes.  I am amazed I have lasted this long.

I am amazed at the comments that get left here, loving one's, healing ones, helpful ones, kind ones,. Just knowing how many people are out there rooting for me as astonishing as me. I am going to have to be strict with myself so that I can continue with my other gifts of knitwear design and the armed painting. Those letters and Yarm painters that have abandoned my page have done so because I write so little about it and I haven't been publishing photographs of what I've done. My actual friendship numbers have not dropped but the comments from my knitting community have all but disappeared and that is my fault because and I now know what my doctor meant about me being in denial. All I was actually able to do was keep my dogs groomed and washed. They caused a lot of pain and fatigue and left no room for anything else.

Once again I feel guilty for writing such a long post but I know that those interested enough in me to read them to the end and it is clear that they do from the comments they make.

I FEEL GUILTY FOR NEGLECTING MY SURVIVOR FOLLOWERS BUT PLEASE KNOW YOU CAN CONTAVT ME DRIECTLY IF NEED BE :- apso AT tantra-apso dot com

I will get back to the Colin that you are all used to but ever since my wedding much has happened that has been extremely stressful for me including the deterioration in my physical condition and I have been pretending that everything is okay when I was lying through my teeth even to my doctor who was astute enough to know that I was lying. Mind you I even full to her that I was not having a manic phase by stuffing myself full of  tranquillisers.  when I knew the mania was over I stopped the bills immediately and of course went into withdrawal and then my doctor did find out what I had been up to and guess what? Her reaction was just so loving and so kind and she understood why did it because she knew that my only experience of psychiatry was in the 70s and I was petrified of being locked up in a cell as if I were a prisoner and being held down while my pants were pulled down and I was injected with chlorpromazine. She told me then that that would never happen to me again not ever. She also made it clear that she did not consider me mentally ill at all. She just said that I had been under tremendous stress and it was bound to come out in some why and in my way it comes out with mania followed by depression. And indeed that is what happened. Now she has gone and I am slowly getting used to my new one. But anyhow that is quite enough. I just wanted you to know how wonderful life can be just when you thought it was over. And I cannot describe the feeling of finding out those people who love you people you didn't even know did.

I am very fortunate man.