Letter number 40: Rumination

Dear Alexandra,

I talked to my therapist last week about rumination. Funnily enough it came up in a Podcast I was listening to today (the one that used to be our Podcast) but in a different context. The term comes from ruminate animals, like cows. They eat stuff, chew it, and it makes its way into their digestive system only to be regurgitated for further chewing. Chewing the cud. It’s a way of further breaking down difficult to digest food, reduce its surface area and enable it to work through the animal whilst maximising the nutrients they get from it.

So it’s a good analogy for the human thinking equivalent. Dredging up thoughts and working them through again, hoping to somehow find a way to rationalise the unrationalisable, to justify the unjustifiable. At its worse to re-live the feelings that surface when thinking those thoughts — it’s a cyclical process and I dare say that there probably are legitimate reasons to deploy such thinking strategies — trying to get over a loss is most definitely not one of them. There’s no nutrients to extract from re-working old hurts, just more pain.

I’ve found myself at least teetering on the brink of ruminating quite a bit over the last couple of days. I’ve been feeling hurt, wronged, resentful — and then disappointed in myself for lapsing into that pattern. I didn’t go too far down the rabbit-hole, but certainly far enough for Sherlock Bert to raise his head hopefully. “Just a quick look to see if she’s been streaming”, he suggests. “Maybe a look at Twitter.” I didn’t listen to him. That’s something, at least.

What prompted this line of thinking I’m not sure. I did hear Need You Now by Lady Antebellum on the radio earlier — I used to idly plot learning the chords so we could record a duet of it. Strange song for a couple to tackle, really. It would’ve been quite prophetic if we had. I do really like it though, it’s one of my not-particularly guilty pleasures. Maybe that brought you to mind in a melancholic frame of mind, and somewhere in my subconscious I needed a reminder that actually you treated me like absolute shit.

I do know that, subconscious. I don’t need to relive the feelings that went with it. Whether you’re streaming or not, whether there are exchanges between him and you on social media — it’s not really important to me, it doesn’t change anything. So I think that’s positive — I’m trying very hard to be patient with myself, it’s okay to have low days or low moments within days, and at least I can recognise the thought processes that lead that way and try to deploy tactics to limit their efficacy. But it is also frustrating to feel like I’m taking backward steps and regressing in my progress.

The surveys that precede both my therapist calls and the NHS webinars took a bit of a drop in the last week. The NHS one prompted a clinician to call me today just to check I was okay and not a risk to myself — which is at once alarming and comforting. I don’t think that I am, I talked openly with him despite being caught in the middle of a meeting at work (I obviously left the room!) — I do have dark thoughts, but they are fleeting and even at my lowest a few weeks ago hadn’t ever got close to planning anything or acting on them.

I’ve got plenty worth living for, and I can summon that truth quite readily when I hit a bump in the road. I talked about the things I’d been doing for myself, how I was finding the webinars and the CBT sessions organised through work — he sounded reassured, so I am too. I have in the past been worried about the extent of my dark thoughts, but hadn’t been recently whilst acknowledging that I’ve had a tough couple of weeks.

At work one of my peers is leaving, he’s been struggling with things a little (but has made an amazing impact, so it’s a real shame) — so we’re having a mini-restructure. It means a bit of a change of focus for me, but I think it will be okay. I am worried about it on some level, but I’ve been honest with my boss about that, he understands that I’m not operating at full capacity so might need help along the way and is ready to offer that.

Over the last few days I’ve been pretty lax on my diet — letting quite a few treats sneak in to the mix. I’m not too concerned about that, I’m still in good shape — and I do monitor my weight, it’s gone up a bit but still within comfortably green. I know that I can control that further down the line, and will probably start being more mindful again — maybe I just needed a bit of a treat and some comfort food.

My folks keep bringing boxes of food to me, which is at once patronising but incredibly sweet of them. My last HelloFresh box comes tomorrow, I’ve cancelled the subscription after as all my discounts have run out. They are really good, but too expensive at full price I think — particularly given they don’t do single person portions (I can understand why, the economies of scale probably don’t stack up to be able to do that for a price people would be prepared to pay).

The other idle ponderation I’ve been kicking around my head is a camper van — I even went to view and test drive one yesterday, it was lovely, and I wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t literally been ten minutes walk from my house. It had a fixed bed and a clever seating area you could slide out from the bed — a simpler set up to the one I bought before that was our van for festivaling. This one’s set up would’ve worked well for me, I think — and even with a plus one in future (whoa, steady on Optimistic Bert!).

But then, I’m not sure how much I’d use it — even when we had the van before, we called it Ludo after the Labyrinth character, it felt like an expensive indulgence that spent most of its time sitting idle. It cost me a lot in repairs, not to mention buying it, insuring it, taxing it. I’m starting to think maybe I should look at an option that could be a daily runner as well as a solution for the odd weekend away. But then I need to consider how often I’ll be able to do that with Sonic to think about too.

Idly I ponder whether he’d enjoy trips away in a van in a smaller travel cage — I think he probably would, but then is that really realistic? Probably not. I decided Impulsive Bert was driving the thoughts, and now isn’t really the time to be making rash decisions. I was honest with the couple selling the van, they were lovely and understood — they weren’t desperate to sell and had had other interest, and were appreciative of my thoughts on how they’d set it up.

It had solar panels driving the leisure batteries, no convoluted split charge system, no superfluous and unnecessarily complicated things. We barely used the sink/hob in Ludo — they were there so that he could be registered as a motor caravan and be cheaper to insure. I got some speculative quotes for this van just out of interest, it’s registered as a panel van, and it wasn’t very expensive. But now my mileage has reduced thanks to a shorter commute to work, a little more working from home and of course no relationship commuting, consolidating everything into one vehicle could be viable.

But anyway, you’d have long since expressed boredom at this subject — it’s a good job I’m not really writing to you! I think I’m looking for things to distract me, which is good — but I don’t particularly want to make an expensive mistake. Thinking about a flexible vehicle I can use for everything I might want to do is a much more sensible option — particularly if it makes transporting Sonic’s cage easier too if I wanted to take him to a bird-sitter if I do go away.

Decisions, decisions. Clearly I’m not ready to make them just yet! But I don’t really need a van with a cooker, sink etc. Having leisure batteries and probably solar charging would be good for keeping gadgets charged up if I was away for a few days or more. Somewhere comfortable to sleep, maybe even a heating option if I was being really luxurious. I don’t really need belted seats in the back although on occasion it’s handy to be able to give people lifts it’s not something I do that often.

I guess ruminating about the pros and cons of different vehicular considerations at least takes brain space away from ruminating about what happened to us. So that’s a good thing, even if I ultimately don’t really get any closer to making decisions. It would be nice to have the option to pop out to camper van type gatherings though, and of course events. The next camping one I have booked is S.’s gig in his field in September. I suppose I could just get a tent!

Ugh. Tents.

Maybe Aunty B. would lend me her van if I asked her, haha!

We’ve gone a week without contact again, which doesn’t feel so bad. It was last prompted by the mail-order puzzle thing that arrived for you unannounced, the box of stuff I sent you didn’t elicit contact as I mentioned. That’s okay. Your Mum hasn’t checked in for weeks now, which I’m fine with too. I think we’ve shared enough — there’s nothing more to say to her really beyond basically her telling me how you’re getting on, and whilst of course there’s still a part of me that wonders and cares, I do accept it’s not my business.

How you get through what you need to get through is down to you, and of course your Mum will hopefully be a support in that. I think latterly our contact wasn’t helping her to help you, it was just making her angry — not my intention. She needs to be on your side, have your back — that’s what Mums do. I do hope you’ve been able to be a little more honest with her even if not in a full disclosure kind of way, it will help you.

In other news, Hamilton have started selling tickets for new dates but I’ve heard nothing yet about the reschedule of the ones I already have. I’m still thinking just drawing a line under the idea and getting a refund if I can is the most sensible solution to the conundrum. I’m sure that will be an option, it will be easy enough to spin some kind of yarn about why I can’t make the new dates and require my money back if I were challenged on the request.

It is a pity, I would on some level love to see the show — but I’m quite resolved that I don’t think I’d be able to stomach sitting watching it next to you, it was one of our things as you rightly observed when you breezily assumed I’d take you to see it even after everything. So I don’t think that I’d really want to sit and watch it with someone else either for that reason. Part of me does petulantly not want to ‘reward’ you with the trip — either with me or by sending you the tickets to use with someone else.

I don’t think that’s all that unreasonable considering. This does feel like a randomly rambling letter. But you have been intruding in my thoughts a little more recently, and it is unsettling me. I can’t really blame you for that, they’re my thoughts and whilst I don’t seem to be able to halt the assault of them, I am at least calling them out and trying not to fixate on them. I’m sure it will pass in time. I hope so! Next therapy call is tomorrow, so I’m sure that will help too.

I hope you’re doing okay, Bert