How was your 2012... this was mine

So, how was 2012 for me… good question, but me being me, there just isn’t a simple answer to it. The curates egg has nothing on my life over the last few years… neither does a roller coaster. They model their styles on my life. However… the current mood lives and breathes optimism and positivity… but lets not get ahead of ourselves, it wasn’t always thus.

As the year 2012 crawled malevolently over the horizon it looked set to top its predecessor for misery and despair… and to be fair.. made a damn good job of it to start with.

On January 1^st 2012 I was in a dark and lonely place, at the end of the previous year I had been diagnosed as having Diabetes2, had been made redundant and learned that my wife would never be well enough to rejoin the community, to come home, she was to be in hospital, or a home, for the rest of her life.

So, there was not a lot it seemed to look forward to.

I consider myself reasonably responsible, so I wrote to the building society to say I was worried that I would soon be unable to pay my monthly mortgage repayments, and asked if the was anything that could be done.

They were full of compassion, the curt response was simply write again when you are in real trouble.

How was my mood… I was having to sell the family home because I couldn’t afford to stay, which made me feel like a total failure… as I sat in the house all I could see was my wife having those awful fits and seizures that the Mental Health team didn’t think were worth them bothering with. I saw no hope of getting a new job, and once the house was on the market viewers were not impressed by our bookcases or decoration… so with a heavy heart I set out to redecorate top to toe… didn’t want to … hated doing it… but it had to be done.

At this time I was totally lacking energy, I couldn’t bring myself to do any cleaning… that had been true on and off for a few years in fact… couldn’t see the point of anything and was once again withdrawn and inward looking. My social life was again nil… I darent drive at night anyway because the oncoming lights were too tempting for me… yes, I was that low.

It was at this time things started to happen, things had got so bad I either had to give in totally or rise, phoenix like, from the ashes of my former life… and I didn’t care which.

At this time I was thinking of quitting the carer group I was working with… for two reasons. One is that I was totally hacked off because they were so ineffective, so luddite, so cowering and humble that they were, in my view, actively making things worse for carers. Also at this time a silly mistake of mine, tagging an email to a friend as well the management group… We all make mistakes… led to so much vitriol and stupidity by two particularly pathetic members of the group that it almost destroyed the group.

I was disappointed that the group seemed to want to bend over to appease these two twats… they didn’t mind that they were stopping us from doing any support work, and spent hours talking about how to most effectively grovel.

My counsellor at this point kept me going, and I had started to develop a much closer friendship with an individual I had met in the carer support groups over the previous years, this friendship inspired me and I was introduced to a brand new voluntary organisation, Labelled for young carers.

It was at this time I went to a ward round at the hospital and learned that my wife had vascular dementia and that deterioration would continue to be quite rapid. A later ward round brought the bland announcement that her life expectancy was seriously restricted…

During this period I was in my darkest moods, at my highest despair and simply had to take time away from the group or I would really have done something I would have regretted… had I survived…

I was however again writing to try to clear my mind… this time I wrote an article about Labelled and was fully adopted into the group… this was a turning point…

I started to get involved with the group, their youth and vitality grabbed me by bootlaces and pulled me away from the precipice… things were improving.

Things at Carers Action were getting no better, I gradually went back to the group, but the issue of the two twats was still paramount, we were still doing nothing…but I thought id stick with it, though doing as little as I could get away with.

Then a strange thing happened… I was painting the living room ceiling, the penultimate room on the agenda… I was hating doing it, I had loved the old decoration and now it was all just magnolia… when there was a knock on the front door.

Any excuse to stop painting, I would even have chatted tot the Jehovahs witnesses.. but I recognized one of the men at the door.. our old insurance agent, hadn’t seen him for 15 years or so… but didn’t know his friend. Anyway, in they came and we chatted, I explained about my wife, and why I was selling the house.

They other guy said he may be able to help… he was a financial advisor. To cut a long story short, he was able to buy out my three personal pensions, get me a 25% tax free lump sum and an immediate pension which was more than the sum of the three was projecting had I left them untouched until retirement. Add that to the DWP deciding to pay me a pension rather than unemployment benefits and I was able to pay off the mortgage, put a significant sum into a savings account, reduce my monthly outgoings by a huge amount and end up better off than I was when I was working.

This off course was a huge relief.

I took to retirement readily. Now I knew I wasn’t going to have to move or get a new job, I was able to devote myself to voluntary work and make a play for the Chair of Carers Action.

All this time, with the encouragement and support I was getting, I was growing stronger, still missing my wife terribly, still grieving daily and still sleeping badly, if at all, but generally I had accepted things and was starting to live again.

As the year progressed my association with Labelled developed, their support helped to develop my self esteem… I started to believe.. I took a more positive role in Carers Action again, chaired a number of meetings.

Then on a personal level, the autumn brought some fantastic developments, I joined an on line carer support group, feel I was quickly accepted and have been told that my positive approach and encouragement had inspired a lot of the members, I have become firm friends with so many of them, so many new friends world wide, and so much encouragement and support. It makes me feel good about myself again.

I have other friends, online, who I have known for ages, their stories make me feel very humble, nobody should go through what they have gone through, and are going through, yet despite it all we are good friends, and these people still have time to care for and support others… they have been real inspirations to me, have helped me keep going and my heart bleeds for their situations.

I love all of these people, they bring me comfort and support, they bring me affection and real friendship. I am honoured to be trusted to share their stories and to call myself their friends.

Even more, my ramblings in this blog brought me a message from an individual who had been my closest friend in our scuffling days, and we hadn’t met since around 1977… but through this blog we got in touch, met for coffee, and now meet weekly… to crown it, we also traced another dear friend from those days, and we all now meet regularly…back in the day we drank copious amounts of Newcastle Brown Ale, talked of wine women and song.. nowadays we drink varying amounts of coffee, discuss our ailments and have to stand periodically to relieve the knee cramps!!! But the friendship is deep and unaltered.

I have also renewed another dear friendship, from maybe 10 years ago, which is now flourishing and will I hope continue for many more years…

So, as I leave 2012, I have become Chair of Carers Action, which we have kick started into a proactive organisation genuinely supporting carers, I am co-CEO of Labelled and am fully devoted to both groups, as well as now working on a host of projects with the LPT (Leicester Partnership Trust) the Mental Health Service locally.

I am getting real fulfilment from this voluntary work, although I am doing long hours, I welcome everyone, I am really thriving and revelling in the work, and developing friendships within all of the delivery services.

I am so thrilled to have forged these wonderful friendships through the on line support group and hope to develop them through the year, the renewed friendships, all of them, have made me feel young again. One of my biggest regrets in life is losing touch with people who meant a lot to me, in the last two years I have been privileged to have rekindled 6 of these old friendships, in each case, the conversations seemed to more or less carry on from where we had left it all those years earlier.

The guys at Labelled… well, they were the catalyst… without their support and encouragement I would not have really started on the journey I have been on this year.

So, my resolution, once things sorted out, was to finish all the work in the house, make it mine, and to start a new life, on my own, in the new year… 11 days in, it seems to be going so well.

However good I feel about it though, I am still racked with guilt knowing that I am going on, developing, happy while my dear wife sits in a twilight zone between life and death unaware of what is happening around her. I still feel the loneliness of loss, strangely more so when I am with her than at other times… and the anguish of seeing her in this dreadful unsympathetic tragic condition. Believe me, it hurts more than I can say… but what I do know is that were it me in that state I would want her to make a new life. I believe I am doing the right thing… but it is not easy, it is emotionally tearing me up, but thanks to the wonderful support and friendship I am now honoured to share, I am getting through it and am now doing pretty well in life.

I have referred to many people in this piece, I have not named names because I may miss one… I believe everyone who knows me and reads this will know where I am referring to them.. though at least one I know wont believe I feel that strongly about her…

Let me say, I have two friends left who have come through all of this with me, have always been there for me, have been the best friends a guy could have… and now I also have so many wonderful new friends, and wonderful re-found friends, that I feel rich beyond measure.

To everyone who has supported me and encouraged me through this turbulent year, I offer my sincere and unqualified thanks and respect… I may not tell you to your faces how much I thank you and love you… but I do.

So, 2013 starts with a positive mind set and looks like being a good year for me… you may disagree, but I think I deserve a good year now.