Raw

I feel raw. I feel vulnerable, in a way I never really expected.

For a long time a tooth has been bugging me -  one of mine that is; not the errant molar of a neighbour for example. Today I had the offending article removed. I have been dreading it, absolutely dreading it. But as the day wore on that feeling has sublimated into a deep sense of vulnerability; a part of me that has died and is with me no more. Even though it was just a fucked tooth.

Oddly I was expecting to feel better and relieved a lot quicker, but the list of post-extraction requirements, and the repair time, are a great deal more onerous than I imagined. 

It's ridiculous really; right now there are children undergoing chemotherapy, facing cancer and loss of a more profound and painful kind. Why am I complaining?

It is because I am alone. 

No matter the procedure, the company of another makes all the difference. The presence of someone to assure and reassure. A hand to hold. An ear to hear. That is the sense of loss I feel. That, as parts of my body begin to falter (a trend that can only surely increase as the years inevitably and inexorably pass), life starts to diminish. Where once it began with a sense of promise in the flush of youth and opportunity, as purveyed through school and upbringing, it calcifies into missed opportunity and loneliness. Will the world get better? Will society ever really reject the oppression that is sold to us on a daily basis? Will technology save us?

Is this all there is?

I had a call yesterday from my GP having heard back from the ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) people at the Mental Health assessment unit in Bristol. They decided I couldn't qualify for an assessment because they felt I had an underlying anxiety disorder that would, one assumes, skew the results. Perhaps that's true. She was disappointed and asked me how i was doing; "I've been better I told her". 

I didn't have the heart to tell her the tooth.

Bad joke. What can she do? All there is locally is the CBT-peddling ATOS-partnering first port of call known as Positive Step, of whom I have mentioned before. They are the place everyone is sent that isn't an immediate danger or a severely afflicted soul. They are who you are meant to see if there is no one else, and there is no one else. 

The simple reality of a society where people are raised to be there for others is an illusion. Lucky are those that have that in their lives, but if we were to invest in so simple a means of support a great deal could be done. This is the simple free medicine of human contact that will do more for anxiety sufferers than a thousand pills potions and bandwagons like CBT (if it helps you, good luck to you, but it's not the be all and end all).

I guess it just costs too much to care.