It's all about me!

One of the things which was marvellous about our time in New Zealand (amongst a long list of things) was the amount of time I got to myself on a routine basis.

I am an introvert in the sense that my energy comes from time on my own. I like to be with people. I love meeting new people, sitting down with old friends for big chin wags, the occasional big party... I am very happy standing up in front of large numbers of people and speaking, leading, whatever... But if I don't get time on my own I break.

Husbink's work pattern in NZ meant that I had a lot of time to myself. I knitted. I baked. I read. I prayed. I cleaned. I thought. I wrote. I walked. I pottered. I cycled. I achieved.

I'm now at about the two month mark since we moved out of our house, started that last adventure and found ourselves back in the UK. In those two months, I've snatched an hour here, an hour there...but the cracks are more than beginning to show. Combine the lack of alone time with all the unknowns about the future and the like and I'm beginning to look like one hell of a crazy lady.

I don't like that this is the case. I don't mean I don't like that I'm going slightly mad, that should be obvious enough. What I mean is, I don't like that I have to be this "demanding". Husbink often makes jokes about me being high maintenance. The jokes relate to the whole preening aspect (my last hair cut was 9 months ago...I haven't bought shoes in about a year...my skincare routine is slapdash...) but in this respect, the alone time, the introversion, it is a very true statement. I really, really need it and if I don't get it, all kinds of hysterics ensue.

A few nights ago, we returned to Husbink's parent's after a few days in Scotland for Husbink's interview (we will not hear anything until March 26th at the earliest but it could be mid-end April). I thought the few days away would have boosted my coping ability a bit - I even had an hour and a half to myself while Husbink was at his interview. Instead it seems that that little taster of what I need was too much and I really shut down on return to a house with five people in it...the panic attack was barely below the surface and I really wasn't sure that my body could actually handle it. All I wanted to do, on a cold, wet, windy night, was sit in the garden by myself for hours and hours and hours. I've come out of it a little over the past few days and can hold conversations again. Just.

I feel desperately self-centred for being like this and it feels feeble to realise that one of the reasons I was so happy (and more to the point increasingly healthy (though clearly there were other things at play their too)) in NZ was all this time for me. How selfish can you get?!

I have managed to veer away from the impulse to run home to my mum (who I could then in no uncertain terms tell to leave me alone and only speak to me once a day) but it does feel like a very thin line I'm walking just now.