I like to set myself targets and goals. I think it’s important for me to have a focus and to feel like I’m doing and achieving something. Some targets are daily ones like ‘get dressed’ or ‘shower’ or ‘meditate’ and then there are the ones that are one offs. Like the one I have in mind for this weekend. I’m (hopefully) going to a BBQ for my friend’s birthday and I’m planning on driving myself there and back. I haven’t managed something on this scale since August 2010 but part of me feels it’s time to try.
I actually wanted to attempt this goal in April and meet my friends at a coffee shop. That didn’t even nearly happen as I was too poorly to even be a passenger in a car that day, let alone be the driver. So I shall attempt it again. (And then again and again and again and again until I am a fully fledged independent adult once more, even if only for an hour or so every six months!)
This time last year I completed Operation Ice Cream and since then I’ve managed an outing to Sainbury’s on my own to get some emergency rations of the chocolate variety.
This, though, is a whole different kettle of fish my friends. It’s socialising. Properly. Not just swapping polite pleasantries with a shop attendant. It’s sitting outside in temperatures that will possibly make the fatigue and malaise worse or, on the other hand, that’ll leave me feeling cold to my bones for hours afterwards. It’s eating food that may not agree with me. It’s driving further. It’s keeping up appearances. It’s mixing with people who I’ve never met and who don’t know my story, or my situation, or why I might be sat there with my eyes closed and doing weird breathing exercises to help get me through. And then it’s driving home again afterwards!
How hard can it be?! Ha! Wish me luck.
M.E. myself and I 