an attack of the inadequacies. I don't know where it came from, but it is seriously demoralising.
I was on call for Lifeline last night and still on the phone at half past midnight while the smaller portion and Jazz slumbered blissfully. Jewel was helping me, and I had to fend her away from the phone at regular intervals. I do not think the sounds of either a purring or a complaining cat would have been positively received. A very sad call, but not a tragedy and I think the three of us (the caller, the telephone counsellor and I) came out the other side reasonably OK.
After the call I was over Jewel demanded some one-on-one time. She wanted to bat her acorn around the kitchen, and be applauded for same. And then she knocked it under the fridge. I flatly refused to even attempt to get it out for her and got her another one. Which she rejected emphatically. So she and I both retired to bed with the huffs.
This morning I was wearing my MS peer support hat. I rang a person I have been recently matched up with at 11, as previously arranged (by phone and by mail). The call went straight through to voice mail. I left a message saying I would ring back in half an hour. Through to voice mail again, so the new message said I would ring back at 12. Voice mail again. His phone was obviously not switched on, or he had been on the phone the whole time. So I left yet another message saying I would ring at the same time next week. Seriously frustrating. And of course I had to document both my attempts and eventual failure to get through.
In the middle of all that the phone rang. A person, also with MS, also providing peer support. She has been matched with someone in a heart breakingly difficult situation and wanted to talk it through.
Somehow I did those things, while simultaneously feeling an abject failure in every aspect of my own life. Very, very weird. The human psyche I mean. It is a grey day here and I am really, really hoping that a modicum of self confidence will emerge with the next rays of sunlight. And that I can go out to play in the garden again.
