What goes up...

What goes up... must come down, as I discovered to my cost yesterday. Having spent most of the day on Cloud 10, looking down at Cloud 9, I merrily made my way to Shoreditch to meet some old work colleagues for a good catch up. I was fine when I left work, but after an arduous but not out of the ordinary tube journey (Lord love the central line in rush hour) I started rapidly going downhill.

I found myself uncomfortable and upset, even though surrounded by good friends, and I began to fluctuate between feeling incredibly angry or really sad. I became irritable and tetchy, at times feeling like I couldn't breathe and at other times wanting to stand on the table and scream to that everyone in the pub would hear. I'm not sure what happened but I kept thinking about the miscarriage and our lost baby Beans, and also my uncle and my friend who I lost earlier this year.

Perhaps it was guilt at having experienced happiness earlier in the day, perhaps it was because I saw some pregnant people on the tube, perhaps it was because our due date is only about six weeks away now, perhaps it was because I always anticipated I would be heavily pregnant at our annual conference - which begins next week - and of course as life has worked out I am not even slightly pregnant... I don't have the answers, but the questions are certainly there and I'm sure my friends now have questions about my odd behaviour and why I left the pub so early and so abruptly. Hopefully they will understand - but then I still don't really understand myself.

I guess grief is a complicated thing, I know that from my experience as a bereavement counsellor. And some of the feelings I am experiencing now resonate with how I've felt in the past when I've been bereaved, and what my clients have told me about their losses. I have to accept it's going to be difficult. I have to remind myself of my blessings - the Boy is amazing and we had a brilliant chat last night when I got home, my relationships with my family and the Boy's couldn't be any better, I do have lovely friends and great colleagues, I enjoy my job, our flat is lovely, we have a lot of fun together - and yesterday's windfall means I am completely debt-free, bar the mortgage, for the first time in 15 years. Sometimes I wish my head ruled my heart - while life might be more boring, it would certainly be easier!