Sometimes you step outside of yourself

I've alluded to some pretty intense stuff going on at work. The last three weeks have been among the most testing - if not the most testing - I've ever had to deal with. There was the potential for the worst of all possible outcomes, amongst all sorts of other upheavals and uncertainties.

I'm not saying it's over yet, that particular scenario, but it feels like a critical point has been reached, and passed. I had to confront a rapidly-building crisis, and in doing so then I suppose I had to confront me, too.

It's touched a raw nerve in me. No, not touched it - poked it, prodded it, gripped it tight.

It has, I think, made me more aware, slightly more conscious, at least for now. More sober too, far more sober, but not far too sober. It feels like dust has been shaken in some of the darker recesses of my mind, to reveal something.

To reveal, erm, a thing. An I'm-not-sure-what. We'll call it a knot. But it's something, and it's there, this knot, and it needs to be untied. This knot feels as though it isn't just about the raw nerves that have been exposed over the last three weeks - it's about other things besides: recent events have perhaps served as a catalyst.

That knot was there last weekend when I went to visit my mother. It's been there for a long time, I think - and it needs to be untied.

I remember once, when I gave up drinking for a few years, there was a curious sense of unravelling in the first few months. Not in the sense of falling apart, but in the sense of things, feelings, long hidden - perhaps that I'd chosen to hide from - gradually revealing themselves again, sometimes in a subtle way, other times sledgehammer-subtle.

That, however, was when drinking had itself become an issue which needed to be addressed. That's not the case this time, I have no concerns in that respect, I'm in a different place. Yet still there's this knot, and it needs to be untied. Whether I address it in the same way - ie a lengthy period of sobriety - or via other means, I'm not sure. But it's there, and I don't think it'll be going away anytime soon, and I'm not content to leave it alone.