It's both remarkable and quite boring to see how the content of my blog has changed over the last year or so. Just scanning back down the page I see that I have just filled it with gripe after gripe about work.

I think perhaps, that signifies progress in some way; that I am less introspective and that my life recovered enough not to be wholly transfixed by itself. Now, its just obsessed with relating work problems.

Problems that remarkably, I have not let overwhelm me. To have not been dragged down by the stresses so far has startled me – but I'll not get ahead of myself and declare victory because I have been watching and observing. When you catch them from the corner of your eye you can see them there again - the demons have begun to stir slowly.
They are clever little bastards I'll grant them that – they know I am more aware of myself now and know what to look for and so they bide their time and have taken to harassing my defenses when I'm most vulnerable.

Only the other morning I awoke plagued with guilt over something I had dreamt I'd done(!) It's unsettling but thats not an unknown occurance but that was a few days after waking and then being kept from a peaceful lie-in by the guilt and anxieties about something else I had fixated upon and had to endeavor to rationalise and contain.

Both key signals that maybe I'm slipping backward of late.

I had known I wasn't entirely free of, shall we say 'eccentricities', after the last outbreak but they had lessened and I knew where the boundaries lay and how far I could push myself within these parameters. Lately though my comfort zone seems to be shrinking back at the edges.

That's how it starts; slowly, like a tide coming in. A bit closer, a bit closer and then before I know it I'm being washed from shore. Perhaps the very fact I 'think' I've done well these past five months or so to keep the stress under control isn't a good sign – maybe that despite now being able to concede that I am human and can suffer from stress, I'm not fully appreciating the depth of what I'm in at present.

If only I could have just the one demon, just the fiery, furious one. The one that is just rage and very few words. He has his uses, he can be channeled with care and put to good endeavor as spirit or drive. The one I'm almost scared to wish away.
The other shadows, the sniveling cowardly ones who like to jump me when I'm half awake or half asleep I can really live without. I don't want to go back to that torture – I like to be able to go about my life, I like to be able to think without repeating the same thoughts over and over until something worse comes along.

Maybe just maybe, I should have stuck at counseling just that little bit longer and found a way to make the process more productive - maybe if I had been more open and honest? Even in blogdom I skirt around the edges and witter on in a vague fashion. Is that, here in this most anonymous of outlets, just another sign of avoidance?
Maybe the trick is to be honest with myself first and believe me - I'd rather the smokescreens, a delusion or two and the blatant denials than lay myself out bare and all because I can't cope with how I measure up to my own expectations. Measures set too high and gauges too unforgiving.
Why do I always wish to hone and refine the characteristics that in essence make me less of a human being? Why is it always colder, more precise, more staged and unflappable. More intimidating and aloof, why not more caring, more expressive, more heartfelt? I think it is because emotions aren't neat and tidy; they require trust and sharing, having weaknesses whereas bitterness, paranoia, hatred and anger are the colours I'm more suited to wearing openly.

When I think about it and start writing it, is it less a case of recovery and more a case of slap up some wallpaper and you won't see the cracks just as it always has been?

Hopefully what I learnt about the nature of the beast will save me this time and that this will prove to be just a storm to be weathered as part of the healing process.

I wasn't certain if I wanted to post this. As if doing so was admitting to weakness – have I learnt nothing in the final analysis???

All these questions that I find when I start to write - Ignorance is bliss, even if it is blatant denial of the issues.