If you can't join 'em....

So, here's what's happening in my head lately ( you've been longing to know I can tell!)
I've been sad and all kinds of stupid if the truth be known. In fact, I can't even begin to explain what is going on in my mind because every time I start to write I get on my own nerves and after sitting here for an hour or more whining and bleating on about all the woe and dear oh dears I delete it and tell myself to shut up for heavens sake.
I've been sad because my friends are all planning to meet up, this time in Canada...so many people going to this one and I am not. Poor little Nelly no mates, actually Helen Hellavalotta mates but doesn't want to keep flying across the world to see them to be more precise.
I love my friends, I do, flying to Boston, twice last year was such a big deal and so glorious but it pretty much wiped me out, all that angst and fretting, the sweating and heaving and the what if I die and leave my children without a mother or what if THEY die while I am away being all carefree and selfish? Dear life that's draining!
It IS such fun though, such laughter and joy, such undiluted happiness and pampering ( because there isn't anything more splendid and pampering to me than leaving a room untidy and coming back to find it spotless and your bed all clean and crisp and waiting for you to just get right back into it)
It's funny because when I suggest that maybe people come here...well, it is always met by such surprise and everyone says how they will have to save and plan and it would take a year or two and .... and then I sort of snicker because I wonder if my lovely friends have ever realised that ( come a little closer and I will whisper) guess what!
It's as far from here to there as it is from there to here and it costs the same to get there as it does to get here...
I KNOW.....incredible isn't it? I will grant you that once you get here it costs more and is much less satisfying in a value for money kind of way but I know stuff, I can wangle the whole do it for less thing, I am good at it.
Also, I know I bleat on about it but I am really REALLY afraid of flying and for some ridiculous reason, the more I do it, the more afraid I am, so having done it twice last year, once the year before...I'm just about as pukingly phobic as it is it possible to be right now.
So, I have been sad and wistful, wishing and trying so hard to get the hell over it, I have tried, seriously tried 4 times to book a flight anyway...and I can't.
I made the decision NOT to fly, to simply accept that I can't do it this time and I wrote that decision down here and I can't tell you what a relief that was, phew, big old gobs of breath in and a heavenly exhale of air out.
I have reached the stage now, having made the decision once and for all that any trips this year are not going to happen, where I can read about the plans and excitement my friends are feeling and just be excited for them without feeling like I am the poor relation.
However, who could not want to have some more of that fun.....I sat here yesterday chatting with H ( I know, should nip that in the bud pretty soon, he even talked back at one stage) and for heavens sake, what should I remember but I have friends HERE too...lovely ones and funny ones and even family, all of who would love to have some fun too. So, I started to email and message some of those glorious ladies and suggest that we have a trip right here! England, no planes or anything.... genius isn't it?
So far there appears to be great excitement, we are thinking of September because many of those who would love to come will need to save and make arrangements but just having a tentative plan is a happy thing.
It's incredible to me that I see my friends here so little, we are so close and yet we forget to meet up and catch up, real life gets in the way and weeks go by without us chatting or seeing each other, my sister lives 3 minutes away and I perhaps see her once a week, in passing, at church, that's ridiculous isn't it? So I plan to change all that and make it a priority to see my family and my friends and to try and make sure we remember how much we like each other.
I am also ( not sure when though, so far this week I have managed to talk myself out of it every day) going to go to the doctor and discuss whether I should go back on some kind of medication for a while. I don't think I have ever been as anxious as I am right now, I can have a panic attack, full blown hyperventilating, chest squeezing attacks that can last all day, a whole DAY...for no reason that I can think of. Nothing but the what ifs. Get ready to go to church...uncontrolled crying jag, alone in the front room at night...chest pains that feel so real I have called Sophie home so if I die she can ...she can um, what? watch me? Who knows why I make her come home, I just do. I have waited to see if I am just having a bad week and I am...one after the other, I don't want anymore thankyou.
I also don't want to take medication but sometimes I think it's a must. The alternative is to find a chinese man with needles and mean hands again ... nothing has ever helped as much as that acupuncture and acupressure, the clinic I went to originally has closed but there must be another one around here somewhere. That would be good for a few blog posts, last time was a laugh a minute if I recall, all in the name of blogging, I am quite willing to endure the pain and humiliation again, especially if the result is the same. The trouble is, meds are free, needles and what not, very not free, lots and lots of not free. Pttttthhhhhhh.
So, happy plans afoot, something to look forward to...always a marvellous thing. If you can't join 'em ..... copy 'em I say!