Bad times

It's been 6 weeks now since I lost my mum and, well, it's really kicking in now.  I feel sad, distressed, distracted, and lost.  In the beginning there was important stuff to do, things to be seen to, and not a day went by without some official matter to be dealt with. But now, there is just an undescribable emptiness, and a sadness which is impossible to overcome. Only the love and support of faithful travelling companion, and our impending holiday, is getting me through it all.  But otherwise, over the past couple of weeks I've struggled to get through every day, and this week has been the most overwhelming one yet.  Every moment of every day, I am reminded of how much I miss my best friend.  Particularly when I've had a bad day. In the past I would have come home and she would have given me a big hug and made everything better.  I miss her so much, and getting on with life is turning out to be even more of a challenge than I'd ever imagined.   But that's not really surprising. For it's hard to lose a loved one, but to lose not only your mother but your best friend, whom you've spent your whole life with, is just too much to bear.

Wednesday was particularly difficult, with all the talk at work about arranging a Christmas night out. Regular readers of Random Ramblings will be aware that I struggle with the whole concept of Christmas at the best of times, so needless to say I just can't face the thought of it this year. And I don't do nights out anyway, least of all in a year when my world has fallen apart.  The inevitability of that time of year approaching was enough to tip me over the edge.  There is also one Christmas-related thing which I've been involved in for the last few years, which inevitably dominates (and arguably ruins) the lead-up to the 'festive season' but that is outwith my control,  And I know it's still 19 weeks away, but once you hit August and September then it's downhill all the way.  In past years I've written too much on here about how miserable the lead up to Christmas can be, so I've decided not to mention it so much this year.  And anyway, faithful travelling companion has a plan to get me through Christmas and I'm going with that.

At least I still have blogging to keep me going, so I am planning to publish some outstanding blog posts over at EuropeCrazy in the next week or so, including those long-overdue Eurovision reviews and some other stuff as well.