I have a confession to make. I have been hiding from the world for pretty much the last month and a half. This should come as no surprise since I haven’t added an entry for weeks.

This week I returned to work after about 5 weeks of isolation. I didn’t answer my phone, I limited emails to yes I am ok, sorry I missed your call. I lied to my boss and told him I was sick. Each day I would say to myself ‘tomorrow I am going to go to work’. I would wake up the next morning and decide not to go. I didn’t want to leave the house. My rent was late for January and February because I didn’t want to leave the house to mail the cheque. If I did leave the house I would only do so at night, this way people may not see me. I binged on ice cream, chips and cookies for 3 weeks and then didn’t eat a thing for 2 weeks because I became even more disgusted with myself. I made an appointment with my doctor to talk about what was going on, but I didn’t keep it. I became obsessed with knitting. It’s pretty much all I did for those 5 weeks. I knitted scarves, toys, a jumper for my mum.

I couldn’t tell you what triggered this episode. A combination of loneliness, rejection, job dissatisfaction and winter blues probably. The only thing that got me out of the house and back to work was embarrassment. I heard that people were starting to talk about me and my absence, but what upset me more was that I had let myself become so weak. It’s easy just to roll over and go back to sleep in the morning. It’s easy not to leave the house. Everybody has the blues and many people have the mean reds, but they deal with it and don’t give in. I gave in. I now struggle really hard everyday not to give in. It’s exhausting. All I want to do is be alone, but the isolation perpetuates the sad, lonely, hopeless feelings I have.

I know what I have to do, but lack the courage to implement it. I need to give myself a deadline and work towards it. The only way I will stick to the deadline is to buy my return ticket home. This is what I have to do.

I don’t like the person I have become, and I wonder if I will ever like myself again. Will returning home to family and friends be enough to restore my true self or will I be like this forever?

So I am working hard at trying to live. I will try and update regularly as that will mean that I will have to leave the house and do something to have anything worthwhile, or anything at all, to write about.