Unmedicated.

For reasons I won't go into, a few days ago I stopped the pills I had been taking. Whilst I didn't consider them 'a cure', I had been noticing that since beginning them a few months ago I had had less outbursts of frustration and anger and tears.

This mix of having the drug fully out of my system by now, and the return of chronic backpain since last week, has led to a relapse back into the above. Yesterday included abruptly pulling over in the car and walking down a main motorway, headed for the nearest sidestreet, to escape the circular argument I was having.

Whilst the day was punctuated with moments and outings and friends that broke the tension and provided distraction, the storm inside me continued to rage. When we returned home my irritability rose back to its high level again. I tried to strike a deal. My partner wanted me to stop shouting at her, and I wanted her to stop talking at me. Her afterthoughts kept coming, so I sought refuge on the couch for about half an hour.

Painkillers and exhaustion led me to drift off for part of that, and afterwards I returned to the bedroom and we slept.

After a sleep in this morning and phonecalls and appointments to arrange an end to my pain, I tried to lay low (literally), but almost everything my partner said to me set me off.

About 20minutes ago she left me. No, not for good. For the rest of the evening to just us some time apart.

Although the space is something I thought I had wanted at the beginning of the day, or yesterday when I was having a worse-off time of it, there's an empty feeling that she made the call.

I had gone out this afternoon to see the chiropractor because of the immense pain I've been having over the last couple of days, exacerbating things, and she had gone out to do the shopping.
I was glad of the break, and the treatment taking the edge off my pain and therefore my mood. When we were both home again, we had reset. So it came as a surprise to me when she announced that she was going to a friend's house to get out of my hair.

I'm split-minded on the matter.
Part of me is relieved: we can have some time to ourselves and not worry about bothering or hurting one another.
Another part of me is sad: sad that my mood has made it come to this, that she feels this is the right move - uncharacteristically so, and that my evening is now going to be spent with my guilty reflections.

My trademark guilt hasn't yet overwhelmed me, but I expect it to hit me later on. Probably as I grow more tired.

I walk into the kitchen to start preparing dinner, missing my partner, and I look at the chart on the fridge. It lists a wide array of human emotions with little faces showing the expression.
During the day I'm supposed to move a magnet to the one I feel represents me best at the time.
My therapist has also encouraged me to do a similar exercise at various points throughout the day where I identify how I'm feeling without naming it as positive or negative, assign it a shape and a colour, and identify its location in my body.
For example "I feel sad: it is a blue square in my throat."

This is supposed to ground me and tune me into my feelings, and the magnet chart is to help my partner observe where I am on the scale. But the problem is on days like this, I don't really feel much at all until the boiling point. It's like on a scale of 1 to 10, everything below 7 is 'indifferent', and anything above is 'pure raging frustration'.

No gradient.
This is kind of why the colour/shape exercise is something I need to do.

But first things first:
Since the last 36hours is a clear indicator that they were doing something, let's get back on the meds. I can't do this until tomorrow morning, and even then it will take a while to have any effect. My partner said she will aim to come home when I'm already asleep.

I feel lonely. It is a pinkish maroon hexagon in my chest.