How soon can a widow love again?

In today's Daily Mail, a widow writes that she started dating a new man 6 months after her husband died, that he moved in a year after her husband died and that they now have a baby daughter. She poses the question: how soon is too soon?

Unsurprising perhaps that the comments are strongly divided. Those in support point out that life is there to be lived and good for her that she is happy again. Amongst the supporters a few widows and people with experience of losing a loved one. Those who oppose the woman are frequently quite insulting. They claim she clearly did not love her husband very much, that she is only after sex, that if THEY lost their partner, they would have more respect and grieve for much longer. Blah blah blah.

I left a comment on the article because I was getting a bit sick of people with no experience claiming the moral high ground.

As a widow myself, I never fail to be disgusted by other widows who claim moral superiority because they have decided never to marry again. For them, being a widow is a way of life and anyone who falls in love with a new person clearly is not a 'real' widow and did not love their deceased partner as much as they loved theirs.

Well, that is just poppycock.

Frequently when I think of the past, it feels like it is an alternate universe, a parallel world, rather than a linear progression from my past up till the present day.

Rose Tyler sees The Doctor at Bad Wolf Bay

Often when I am in a place that meant a lot to JD and me, I feel like I am trying to *find* JD in there. (Girlfriend came up with this comparison for Dr Who fans: remember when Rose Tyler got stuck in a parallel universe but found a place where the wall between her universe and The Doctor's was so thin, she could feel his presence).
I am just wondering if that makes some kind of sense. JD is not in this world. And in this world, I am happy, very happy, with my new love. But I feel sad that I lost my "old world".

What I mean is that I struggle at times with the thought that I obviously wish JD had not died. But that would mean I would not be with my new love.

I guess it is a bit similar when a woman has kids with a man she ends up hating and divorcing. If you wish you never met this man, does that mean you wish you never had kids? I guess it doesn't. So how do you square being happy with something with wishing the thing that made the happiness possible had never happened?

I must add that Girlfriend is fabulous. As far as she is concerned, this is not an issue. Her idea is that if I am as happy with her, in the relationship, as I was with JD, then that is all she could ever ask. She does not ask me to be happy with my entire life as if JD and her death never happened. She understands that my life has a permanent 'stain' of sadness on it but that this does not relate to how I feel about her now.

So when are you ready for New Love? Of course there is no set time. And circumstances differ. JD was ill for so long that our relationship had completely changed. In the end I was more a parent than a partner. I think it is important not to think that you can only open yourself up to love again once you stop grieving for the one you lost. Because that will never happen. You will always miss the one you lost. You will always wish they had not died. Because if nothing else, their death brought you great sadness. And who would wish for sadness?

You should never look at things in the sense of 'replacing' your lost love. Merely adding a new love to your life.

I think the only thing you need in order to be ready for a new relationship is the ability to take the new person for who they are, not for a copy of who you lost. If you can do that, and your new love understands your sadness is related to the loss of your partner, not to the quality of your new relationship, then you are a long way towards happiness again.

Of course if you are with someone new and you keep thinking that it is a shame they are not the one you lost, you should not be in a relationship.

I miss JD every day and I wish she had not died. But not once have wished my new partner *was* JD. Because Girlfriend is a beautiful person in her own right. And she deserves that I see and treat her that way.

Keep Reading: "How soon can a widow love again?"

Coming up to two years

I have been moody for the past few weeks. Nothing in particular seems to bother me but I am just moody. And it seems that even though I can not point a direct finger at Jane, it is because it is That Week, That Month. In 2 days, it will be two years since Jane died.  And like last year, I am struck with a general moodiness. Low-level depression perhaps?

It is annoying to say the least. Because this is of course the time when I should be studying for my exams. But the past 3 weeks have been basically a waste of time with my concentration hitting a level I never knew I could sink to. And for someone with ADHD, that is saying something.

It is not that I am distracted by thoughts of Jane all the time. Just that everything seems gray at the moment. I moved in with Girlfriend last month and it is lovely, but I am constantly finding fault with the place we live in. Mostly it feels too small for us. Or rather, for me. So this irritates me. The fact that there is not a lot of day light in the flat irritates me. The fact that we have to dry the laundry in the living room irritates me. The fact that the street is messy irritates me. The fact that the sun comes up in the morning irritates me.

Two years.

Jane in her fencing gear in 2008.

Sometimes I still can not grasp the idea that Jane is really never coming back. Of course I know this, I am not delusional. But perhaps this thought has been popping up more recently because my life is kind of back on track. I am living with a lovely, lovely lady with whom I hope to stay for years to come. I am working towards my degree. I have nice friends. And when I complete official forms, I no longer know for sure if I should be ticking the box for Widow when I am completing official documents (for the record, I do tick Widow because the other option is Single which I am most certainly not and apparently the law says you are a widow until you remarry).

Basically, after years of being a carer and then being a widow, I am now Me again: a totally unremarkable person with a totally unremarkable life. And yet I have had so much happen to me that nobody knows unless I specifically bring it up. None of the people I meet in this new life will know how it felt. How I felt. Who Jane was. She is just a story to many people in my 'new' life.

Until recently, when I thought about Jane, I would mostly think about the time she was ill and needed my care. I thought of the sadness of her illness, the heart-breaking times when she soiled herself in public and needed her wife to clean her up, both with tears in our eyes. Or the sadness I feel about not being able to ask her what she wanted in her last few days. The jealousy at other brain tumour patients who are more or less lucid until very shortly before their death. Basically, I have been dealing with the trauma of Jane's illness and her death.

Jane showing off her dry-land swimming skills in 2010.

I am not sure I have dealt with the loss of the Jane I married back in 2006. Not that it is a case of me missing Jane all the time with everything I do. But there is now space for missing the Jane she was, not the Jane she became. It is just that I have time to think about Jane and the things we did and that I will never hear her voice again. Or see her smile. Or laugh at her jokes. Or meet her university friends. Or berate her for procrastinating at university. Or ask her for help with my homework. I guess I am now sad about the loss of my best friend; the funny, witty, promising, sporty, deadpan, smart friend. The idea of Never Again is taking hold.

Never is a long time.

Jane with Bear asleep in the hospice.

This week, on the anniversary of her death, I will scatter Jane's ashes. I am keeping some of them, tucked away inside Bear, the teddy that was with Jane since she first went in to hospital in 2005. Unobtrusive, Bear will sit on a shelf somewhere. And I will set the rest of Jane free in a place that meant most to her. The place she credits with making her who she was. It will be only me and a couple of friends.

And when I come back home, Girlfriend will be waiting for me. We probably won't say much but she will hold me and I will cry. Cry for Jane, cry for my loss and cry because I am so lucky to have someone who understands that none of this in any way diminishes what she is to me: Friend, Partner... Future.

Keep Reading: "Coming up to two years"

My life is hard

OK, this is in Dutch and will be lost on most people. But after yesterday's blog post full of self-pity, I have been playing this song a lot to make me feel better. We all know people like this; people who constantly complain their life is soooo much harder than yours. Everything they do is difficult and a drama. I translated the lyrics but most of the fun lies in her performance. When she sings "Ik heb een heel zwaaaar leveeeen" it means: I have a life that is veeeerrrryyyy haaaard".



I have a very hard life
Yes, really very hard
Everything is very difficult for me

It is truly a very hard life for me
No, no, really, very hard
Life is simply incredibly hard for me

For me, nothing is ever just easy
So I am often tired
So many things are so difficult
That I just don't do them
And when I do do something
It is often not appreciated
And because of that
Many other things automatically go wrong too

I can often not help other people
Because I have some kind of pain somewhere
Which upsets me of course
Because I would love to be there
Of course I would prefer
To always be there for others
But they will just have to understand
That my life is really hard

I have a very hard life
Yes, really very hard
Difficult, difficult, difficult, difficult, difficult

It is truly a very hard life for me
No, no, really, very hard
Life is simply incredibly hard for me

I am quite often forced to cancel
Appointments at the last minute
When people have already made dinner
But hey, I am just suddenly very tired
I feel they should just understand
That I have a very hard life
In their life, the tide is always high
And for me it is mostly low

Sometimes I am at the check-out
Where everything is "quick, quick, quick"
When I realise I have forgotten something
And I have to go all the way back
People have to wait, which they don't like
But at least it gives them the opportunity to see
How hard it is to be me

I have a very hard life
Yes, really very hard
Difficult, difficult, difficult, difficult, difficult

It is truly a very hard life for me
No, no, really, very hard
Life is simply incredibly hard for me

I really do take life as it comes
But quite often it simply does not come at all
And I just sit there waiting, which makes me really sad
Happiness comes free and easy to some people
I don't understand why God has distributed it so unevenly

And later, when I am on my death bed, and when I am in my grave
Then I'll think: It was so hard, I am glad it is over
And people will say in their eulogies: It is true
Life for that poor woman was incredibly hard

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Nearly two years

May is here. The month JD died. By the end of this month, it will be two years. I have heard many times that the second year is harder than the first one. That in the second year, you are no longer numb and that the real emptiness strikes, the real loss, the realisation that whatever you had planned for the future with your partner is really not going to happen.

My second year was not like that at all. I started (and struggled) through my university course, I worked, I loved, I reminisced, I cried, I missed and I celebrated. I keep waiting for the Real Grief to knock me out with a sledgehammer. I am not saying life has been easy but in some ways I expected this to be different. Harder perhaps? maybe it feels easier because at no point in the first year did I stop myself from crying. Anywhere. If I felt tears, I cried them. No matter where I was at the time. In Tesco, on the street, in the delicatessen down the road, on the train, in my car. There has never been any bottling up of emotions.

Sleepy JD on ski trip in 2006

Maybe that is why I did not have the Second Year Hit. I have however lately noticed a general low-level sadness creeping back in about things. Where I have been listening to Matchbox 20 and Crowded House, JD's favourite music. Not sure why or what it is supposed to make me feel. maybe it is one of those things that helps me feel that my past is still part of the present. Because nothing is the same. Girlfriend is a fair bit younger than me and likes different music than JD used to. So not much 90s music around my house. Mostly 80s (strangely enough). This is not a problem but it is....I don't know. I am just used to having 90s music around, even if I don't care much for it. I don't know how to explain it. MB20 played in Manchester last month and 2 of JD's friends went. I had wanted to go too but in reality, I only wanted to go because it would have reminded me of doing something I might have done with JD and her friends. I mean, I like MB20 enough but it would not normally be something I would pay lots of money for. I would have spent the entire time crying for JD, rather than actually listening to the music. So why did I want to go?

Maybe it is searching for something familiar around me. Because everything has changed.

Girlfriend and I have moved in together this week. That feels a bit weird. I am utterly sure about my feelings for Girlfriend and it is wonderful to live together; she makes me very happy indeed. But it feels weird to do things like that with someone who is not JD. I had to get used to that feeling. Settling down with someone who is not JD.

I wish there was a script that widows follow so I know that I am within the 'normal range'. Is it normal to want to keep some things that belonged to JD? or photos? I mean, everyone has pictures from their past, right? Or letters from friends they keep. Or souvenirs. So why does it feel weird to want to keep those things from my time with JD? Maybe the music is important to me because, due to having moved house a few times since JD's death, I have not go many physical things left. No ornaments in the house, no photos on the wall, no clothes. And nobody really to share memories with.

Last year I organised a fundraising gig for the hospice where JD died. This year, I have decided I am going to scatter the rest of her ashes on the day she died (some were scattered at Warwick University already).  I will scatter them in a place that was meaningful to her (and therefore to me).

At home a month before her death

One last thing... I wish that I could feel more sad when thinking of JD as she was before she was ill. Whenever I see pictures of healthy JD, I feel as if I am looking at my best friend who died, as opposed to someone I loved. I mean, I think of how sad it is that she is dead but I do not generally feel tears welling up. But when I think of JD when she was ill, I cry. Without fail. The thought of someone so young having gone through all that. Remembering how she was helpless. How that made her feel...It makes me incredibly sad, still. Physically sad. With tears and the lot. Does that mean I am over the actual loss of my wife and friend and am now just crying about the sadness of the illness process? Somehow I feel that that sadness will never diminish.

Anyway, this is yet another directionless post. Which shows that I just don't know how this works. I guess I am just having a whole bunch of unguided thoughts about JD tumbling around my head at random moments.

Should I tell my university tutor? I struggle to concentrate at the moment and I know this is partly to blame but it feels like an excuse to use...


In her soft wind I will whisper
In her warm sun I will glisten
'till we see her once again
In a world without end

In her soft wind I will whisper
In her warm sun I will glisten
And I always will remember
In a world without end
She goes on

Keep Reading: "Nearly two years"

A widow's dilemma

When JD died, many people did not know what to say. Many people were very kind but many people kind of faded away. But everyone I knew at least got in touch and, for a while anyway, did their best to let me know that they were thinking of me or of JD and that they too were missing her. I understand that I was always gong to lose some friends and gain some unexpected new ones. I know that I may not have been as supportive as I could have been to some of my friends.

However...

Pretty soon I will be in the same place as a person who used to be a friend of JD and me but from who I have not heard a SINGLE WORD since the day JD died. Nothing. Apart from a Facebook message on the day of JD's death. But nothing since then. I don't even think this person came to JD's funeral.  If they did, I did not notice them. I genuinely can not remember seeing them.

Either way, it made me angry at the time. And it is making me a bit angry again now. Should I have contacted this person? I was not very close friends but still, we went on holiday together a few times.

How should I behave when I see this person again? Pretend all is well? Let them know I was/am very angry? Should I let it go after nearly 2 years? I do not care to re-kindle a friendship with this person so I am not looking to repair relationships. I am simply looking for suggestions as to how to approach this person.

Help?

Keep Reading: "A widow's dilemma"

Gay Paris

University is very stressful. So what can a girl do to relax? Indeed, a girl can take her lady to Paris. To celebrate our 1 year anniversary and her birthday, Girlfriend and I jetted off to the French capital for a well deserved break.

The weather was predicted to be a mixed bag so Girlfriend brought a pile of dresses and I brought my shorts. We managed to pack light so we only had hand luggage. A masterstroke from Girlfriend as it turned out. We sailed through customs and baggage collection (what with having no baggage to collect) and hopped on the train from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Montmartre where our hotel was. I had warned Girlfriend about the tiny Parisian hotel rooms and that it might not be as clean as she might like, with French cleanliness standards not always being the same as hers (or mine. or any other clean person, frankly). So we were very happy with our tiny but perfectly clean hotel room in Hotel Montmartre Jean Gabriel. I'd totally go there again. It was clean, cheap, close to the Metro on Place de Clichy.

Safely sheltered from the rain on the Rue Lepic.

On the first evening we walked through Montmarte towards the Sacre Coeur and Place du Tertre. It RAINED. It rained really hard so after 15 minutes, we were forced to have our first break and sit down safely at a Brasserie to shelter from the rain. It turned out to be the first of many, many glasses of wine that we consumed over 4 days. I think it is safe to say we were moderately pickled most of the time. We walked along the Rue Lepic, which I had read about on my handy TripAdviser app. It was supposed to be foodie heaven. And it certainly looked it. Fromagerie after Fromagerie. Fresh fish from all over France. A superb selection of meat at a variety of butchers and wine shops and brasseries galore. It made me wish I had rented a self-catering apartment so we could take it ALL home and just spend our time in Paris eating.

You can just make out the occipital bone

Anyway, it was all lovely. The next day we went underground to discover Les Catacombes. When the cemeteries in Paris ran out of space, they were cleared of 6 million bones. These bones were stored underground. And we can visit these vaults. AWESOME. Bones, bones, bones. Lots of skulls. I am sure I actually learned something about anatomy by staring at someone's skull or the neck of their femur. It was very educational. Right. And spooky.

We had a picnic int he park where we ate far too much cheese and drank far too much wine. And it was awesome. We saw the cemetery of Pere Lachaise, we saw the Eiffel Tower. In fact, we went to the top of the Eiffel Tower. I will tell you more about that on another day. We saw the Notre Dame and we hung a padlock on the Pont des Arts. Padlock? Yes.

There is a nice new tradition of locking a padlock to a bridge to symbolise your love and then throwing the keys in to the river. Only when you can find the key to your padlock can your love be broken. Being the ultimate romantic that I am, I prepared and bought two padlocks whilst still at home. I had our names engraved in them.  There are two bridges leading to the Ile de la Cite where you can attach your padlocks. The Pont de l’Archevêché is where the padlocks go for your passionate love. The Pont des Arts is where you put yours if it is for your committed love. When we got to the Pont des Arts (with the help of my satnav and even then I fucked it up a few times...) we attached the padlocks to the bridge and had a nice snog. We are so cheesy. Two American gay guys minced up to us and offered to take our picture. They had seen us kiss and clearly felt a gay-kinship. They told us they were on their honeymoon so there were hugs all-round and we left feeling very happy. about the world and love in general.

Of course there was much more that happened. Girlfriend ate snails for the first time. We went to the Louvre (but only to shelter from the rain), we visited Pere Lachaise Cemetery, we walked, we walked, we walked and we had a cheese & wine picnic in a random park. Yes, there was a lot of wine.

It was AWESOME.

Keep Reading: "Gay Paris"

Margaret Thatcher is dead.

Apparently we are only allowed to say nice things about the most hated politician in British history. When Glenda Jackson tries to add a note of discontent, she is met with howls of indignation. Go Glenda Jackson.

I am sock of people saying Thatcher was great for women. Yes she was the first female prime minister. But she hated feminism. And she did women a massive disservice. I agree something needed to be done about the power of the trade unions, but what she did still reverberates around the country now. Poverty, despair and heartache. I am not dancing on her grave but the outpouring of "she was great and to say anything else is disrespectful" makes me sick.

Keep Reading: "Margaret Thatcher is dead."

Medicalising Grief

This weekend, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a 30-minute programme about grieving. Or, more accurately, about using medication to 'treat' grief. The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM), written by the American Psychiatric Organisation now includes grieving as an abnormal mental state. This opens the door to pharmaceutical companies saying people need to be given medication to help them with their grieving.

In this world where we no longer accept anything other than perfect happiness, everything that stands in its way must be treated as soon as possible. Take a pill and it will all be better. And if an important medical text says that you have a DISORDER, then the threshold for prescribing that pill is severely lowered. The pharmaceutical industry stands to gain millions if all those grieving people were put on anti-depressants.

Grief makes you sad. Death makes you sad. That is not an illness. You have lost a person you loved. The sadness you feel about that is not depression. It is grief. Numbing that pain with medication that is designed for treating an illness, in my opinion, is wrong. You do not have an illness. Depression is often caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. It is an illness. It often has no particular event that causes it. People with a seemingly perfect life can be very depressed. Grief is caused by an event. It is caused by a loss. YOU WILL BE FEELING SAD! Duh. Apparently, according to this broadcast, people who experience a loss could fit the criteria for depression if they display symptoms of depression (sleeplessness, lack of appetite, poor concentration prolonged sadness) more than 2 months after the loss....2 MONTHS? Try a year.

My point is that profound sadness is not depression. If you treat your sadness with medication, you will not be able to fully 'go through the grief'. It will merely numb it for a while and hit you when you come off the pills. Because it is not an illness. It can not be cured. It is a reality you need to accept. You can not medicate it away. You can help yourself with grief therapy. And for some people, the grief is so all-consuming that they stop functioning as humans. In that case, medication might help. But that is not medication to 'cure' the grief. That is medication to help people function. Function so that they can address their loss and deal with the grief. If medication becomes the standard treatment for grief, people will never actually come to terms with their loss.

And in a completely unscientific opinion, I believe that if you do not come to terms with the loss, you will not be able to rebuild your life. It will hit you later on. And by then, you might think you are perfectly happy again and then it might actually lead to full-blown depression.

I grieved REALLY HARD for months. I cried whenever and wherever I wanted. In public, alone, in front of strangers, in front of friends. I did not hold back. I did not feel ashamed. I felt an all consuming sadness. Like a depressed person, I wasted hours, days, week in bed, staring at the wall, going through DVD box set after DVD box set. The difference? I knew WHY this was happening. There was a very clear reason. I had lost my wife. My life. My focus. Everything I thought my future was going to be was in tatters in front of me. I had 2 sessions of counselling and we decided that really, I just needed to do the grieving and that things would get better in time. And she was right. I strongly believe that diving head-first in to my grief, but with my eyes firmly on wanting to build a new life after I as done grieving, has made the pain much easier to live with.

I am not saying people should never use medication. Or that those who do are weak. My issue is with the premise that, as a starting point, grief should be treated as a mental disorder. This opens the door to pharmaceutical companies pressuring doctors to prescribe pills to people who really just need a shoulder to cry on. And it gives people false hope. That life will be better with pills, even though everything they loved has gone. That is simply not true.

Thankfully I am not the only one who thinks this is a dangerous direction. The Lancet, the world's foremost medical periodical, agrees with me and says it much more succinct that I ever can:

Medicalising grief, so that treatment is legitimized routinely with antidepressants, for example, is not only dangerously simplistic, but also flawed. The evidence base for treating recently bereaved people with standard antidepressant regimens is absent. In many people, grief may be a necessary response to bereavement that should not be suppressed or eliminated.

Building a life without the loved person who died cannot be expected to be quick, easy, or straightforward. Life cannot, nor should not, continue as normal. In a sense, a new life has to be created, and lived with.

For those who are grieving, doctors would do better to offer time, compassion, remembrance, and empathy, than pills.

The editorial is very much worth a read.

You can listen to the show here on BBC iPlayer until April 6th 2013: Medicalising Grief

Keep Reading: "Medicalising Grief"

A holiday of sorts!

My first practice placement for university has finished. I think I passed. I think I did well. I have found it all very educational and I have learned loads. About the human body of course but also about myself.

I need to amend my communication style. I talk too much. I talk too much about myself and I don't always listen enough. Not that I like talking about myself but I was under the impression that sharing personal anecdotes with patients improves the rapport you are building. I have learned that this is true (many patients have praised my communication style and genuine interest in them) but I need to learn better when to apply it and when to just listen. Very common experiences do not need me sharing mine. (e.g. when they have a broken leg, I do not need to tell them about my broken leg, but when they talk about losing their partner it can be very useful for them to know their nurse has had a similar experience)

The next hurdle is studying for my anatomy & physiology exam. There is a ridiculous amount of work involved in this. So much that I find myself paralysed as soon as I open the book. I am convinced I will never remember what is in the book and my brain says: Don't even bother. I am trying to find a way around this but I have not found it yet. I live in hope.

Flying above the clouds is always spectacular.

I have just returned from a trip to see The Family in Holland. It was a bit of a last-minute decision to go. I completely forgot I had 2 weeks 'holiday' from university so I thought it best to visit my grandmothers who are both poorly. Girlfriend came along as I can not imagine spending a whole week without her. Yes, I am admit that was indeed the main reason for her coming along. It was Girlfriend's first time on an aeroplane and the look on her face was worth every penny of the ticket price. I loved it. Shame it was only on a cheap EasyJet flight and not the nice AirFrance flight we have planned for next month.

Dad made filled squid
and seafood pasta.

I had made it clear I would be mostly visiting family during the 4 days we were there so she organised herself a couple of gigs in Amsterdam! Brilliant, now she is officially an international performer. We had a lovely time with my family. We were extremely well-fed by my mum & dad; had a lovely day with my sister and her kids and a most wonderful night in Amsterdam. I even caught up with a friend I had not seen for the best part of 15 years!

Now it is back to work. But good times are ahead. Girlfriend and are going to Paris in 2 weeks. And when we return, we will start looking for a place for us to live together. Neither of us is finding living in different houses much fun anymore. Nice as our respective housemates may be, we just really want our own place, with our own stuff and our own future to build. I am all giddy and excited about this. I have been gathering all the things I own from my current house. More and more things are vanishing from the shared kitchen in to a box that has my stuff in it. When I have left, the girls here will realise that just about half of the things in the house actually belonged to me!!

There are some Jane-related things happening in my brain right now that are fodder for another blog post. But I think it is only fair that I discuss them with girlfriend first...

Keep Reading: "A holiday of sorts!"

This is ridiculous: Love is threatening my future.

I have been with Girlfriend for nearly a year now. Just writing that makes me giddy.

Love is the result of a difficult chemical reaction that happens in your brain. it affects your entire body. Everyone knows the problems of being in love:

Lack of concentration
Obsessing about the other person
Loss of appetite
Feeling sick
Bad sleep

First, here is a mini chemistry lesson.

New relationships go through three stages: Lust, Attraction and Attachment. Each of these stages have their own hormones that wreak havoc with your normal emotions.  Lust is driven by Testosterone and Oestrogens. Attraction is fueled by Adrenaline, Dopamine and Serotonin. And when you move in to the Attachment phase, it is mostly Oxytocin and Vasopressin.

The Attraction phase is when you can not think of anything else but the other person. Not surprising since high levels of Dopamine are associated with heightened attention, short-term memory, hyperactivity, sleeplessness and goal-oriented behavior. Does that sound like AD(H)D to anyone???? But recently, scientists have discovered that people in the Attachment phase have the same low levels of Seratonin in their blood as those with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

So it makes perfect sense that all I can think of is HER. I can not concentrate on university work. I can not think of ANYTHING else than of how many hours before I see her again. And if there is the remotest chance of not seeing her at all during a day, I will just go to her house and steal a kiss on the doorstep and go home again (we do live on the same street so this is easy).

But seriously people, I would really like to move on from this. I have a university degree to think of. It is hard enough to make that work with having AD(H)D killing my concentration. But having something else on top of that to distract me even more is just impossible. I sacrifice work time to be with HER. I can not stop checking my phone if there is a message during my shifts at the hospital. I am unable to sleep unless I have seen HER. I can not look at HER with my brain going funny. It physically hurts when I think of the fact that we do not yet live together and that it won't be for a few months until we can be together on a permanent basis.

I am researching, I stray on the the DFS and IKEA websites and pretend I am looking at furniture for our new house. I spend hours looking at houses online that we *could* rent. Every stupid, trite love song suddenly has become deep and meaningful.

Don't get me wrong: I am not saying this love is better than anyone else's. I know everyone feels like this when they are in love. Or at least, they SHOULD feel like this. For a while anyway. But I just can not move away from it. I would like to be able to say: I am going to work for a few hours and then see HER. It is hard enough when I am not in love but having the promise of seeing HER ahead of me makes it impossible to get anything done.

So, here is a request to my hormones: I get it. my feelings for Girlfriend are SERIOUS. I am properly attracted to her. So can I now please move on to the Attachment phase. The one that releases Oxytocin, aka the cuddle hormone. Ironically, Oxytocin is released after orgasms and strengthens the bond between two people. So perhaps the best way to get to the Attachment phase as soon as possible is to have a lot of sex and release a lot of Oxytocin; the hormone that makes it possible to just sit next to her and do homework, instead of sitting next to her and just wanting to melt into one entity, one body and be closer than humanly possible.

Thank you very much on behalf of all the future patients who would really like for me to have concentrated harder at University.

Finally, if you think I am just moaning and should get on with things, watch this fascinating film about people in love, who are put in an MRI scanner whilst thinking about the person they love. Just thinking of their lovers changes their brain function and hormone balance.




PS: Yes, this entire blog post was just another excuse to think about HER for an hour and still feel like I have done something productive.

Keep Reading: "This is ridiculous: Love is threatening my future."