I hate feeling so helpless, when you know that someone you care about is upset, and you can't do anything to change the situation.  And they are always there for me, I just want to be able to give back the same amount of comfort and support, but I feel like I am failing.  As trite as it sounds, I wish I had a magic wand, to just be able to wave with one quick flick of the wrist, and make everything better.  The unfairness of it all is so unjust, so unwarranted and makes the situation so much more frustrating.  I wish there was something, anything, I could do to help.

It has been a bitter-sweet day.  I faced a few challenges, which in hindsight seem pathetically petty, but I coped with them.  The herbs on the herb shelf in the kitchen had been muddled out of the alphabetical order I have them in, I panicked a little, but it was fine once I put them back into the right order.  I know this sounds crazy.  I went to the doctor’s on my own to have some blood taken for tests, and was more or less completely fine with it.  I went to the supermarket and, because my Grandmother is staying for a few days, there were a few different items from usual on the list, including generic, ‘chocolate biscuits’.  Well, I did not have a clue what to get.  I stood in the aisle, looking at the overwhelming variety of calorie-drenched, fat-filled, anxiety-inducing chocolate biscuits.  And they were all sitting there on their little perches, in their vibrant packaging as colourful as parrots, looking back at me, eyeing me up and down, throwing me into a panic.  But I survived.  Then I had another letter from someone who always, without even trying, manages to make me feel like shit. 

Now all these ‘challenges’ I faced, and conquered, seem so utterly trivial compared with what some people are facing at the moment, and I hate myself for being so selfish.  Now all I can think about is how worried and upset someone I care about is feeling and I don’t know what to do to help.

So I am sitting here now, avoiding sleep and subsequent nightmares, making origami shapes to keep my mind distracted from unwanted thoughts.