I’m really struggling to comprehend why this has happened now, but for the last eight days, I’ve really been struggling.

I’ve been having mild panic attacks every time I go out. I’ve found myself standing in supermarkets, suddenly shaking and breathless, with an overwhelming feeling of panic and the need to get out of there washing over me. I’ve spent most of the last week living the life of a recluse; sitting indoors, because it’s the only place I feel semi-normal, but even that isn’t perfect.

The chest-crushing panic often sets in at home, too, and bedtimes are a nightmare. I’ve even taken to sleeping with the pink blanket again to try and make me feel better, but it’s not working. I’m exhausted all of the time; my body aches with tiredness, but as soon as I get into bed, I’m wide awake and can’t get to sleep for ages. When I do sleep, I wake constantly. I’m falling asleep during the day – today I fell asleep and was late picking the children up from school. I’m having dizzy spells, the shakes and headaches, and the stress is causing my whole body to itch. I have major brain fog and sometimes find myself driving along, wondering if I’m actually driving or if I’m asleep and dreaming it. I’m worried that I’m going to have an accident because I feel so out of it much of the time.

This is how it used to be when Tom and I were together – the adrenaline surges of fight or flight when he would ‘attack’ me. The constant state of stress and trying to keep him happy. I can’t believe that almost two years after leaving him, it’s got me again. I haven’t felt this way since last October, which is what made me see the doctor and then the counsellor. I thought I was doing okay now.

I’ve been trying to think about what may have triggered it.

It started last Thursday while out shopping. I was in a shop and just felt completely overwhelmed; I ended up leaving empty-handed and had to shop the next day again. Then Phil went away for the weekend, and I felt desperately lonely. I missed him so much; the depth of it really shocked me.

The loneliness this week has been hard. I have all the old feelings back of feeling isolated and alone, and that I’m stuck with no definite future other than picking the children up from school, feeding them and putting them to bed. I also have a new worry as Rosie may need a major operation, and Amelia had a funny turn the other week, which I haven’t got to the bottom of yet, and everything is on my head.

It’s all on my head.

I have no one to talk to about it, no one to share the worry with me. Every week it looks to me as though Rosie’s condition is getting worse, and Amelia is always feeling tired, dizzy and headachey most days. I have to support them and myself constantly with no backup, and it’s just the biggest struggle some days.

Everything that goes on in my life, I have no one to share it with. I talk to my diary more than I do real people. Also, all the old feelings that I had when I was with Tom and he rejected me on a daily basis are back. That desperate sadness of not being wanted, of being on my own day and night, every day and night, while all the time he was so close, but just not interested in me.

This isn’t actually about Tom – I no longer feel sad about what happened – it’s about how the same feelings are arising now; mainly the panic, and it scares me how little it took for me to slip back to the constant state of anxiety. But worse, I don’t know how to get out of it.

I’m back to not being able to hold a conversation with people, back to feeling worthless, and the worst part is that all of a sudden everything Phil is saying to me, I don’t believe. When he promises to love me forever, I know that won’t be the case. I know that at some point, he will stop loving me and will reject me, too. When he talks of me being ‘The One’, I don’t believe that either. I think he’s settled for me.  I don’t understand why he says he loves me. I don’t think he knows me well enough, and I don’t think the children and I are really what he wants. At some point, he’s going to realise that.

The logical part of my brain, which is just about still working, knows that actually, this is what Tom did – decided he didn’t want me and the other children, after all. How many times did he say the kids should go and live with their Dad so it would just be me, him and Annie, but that I’d be there only to look after her, not because he wanted me?

I think Phil going away has triggered all this, because it reminded me of how I felt every time Tom went away without ever asking if I wanted to join him. Weekends away, holidays abroad, days out;  or every time he went out, every time he rejected my pleas to spend time together, instead choosing to go to the pub alone rather than spend another minute in my company, or to go up to bed to get away from me, or when he’d get up and go downstairs rather than be next to me in the bed.

Was I really that bad?

I can’t even tell Phil all of this even though I should, even though deep down I think he’s different, even though he doesn’t deserve this. I can’t tell him because he’ll see what high-maintenance I am and that Tom was right after all – that it was me and not him. He always said I was high maintenance – I always thought he was projecting his own shit at me, but really? I couldn’t be any more high maintenance now if I tried. Why would anyone want someone in their life that gets this fucked up so easily and so quickly? 

When is the ghost of Tom ever going to leave me alone?