Time out needed. Sorry for myself.

I haven't posted for a few days. It all got a bit much. The news that the police had shot an innocent man saddened and frightened me, my constant headaches and tiredness worried me, the resentment that this had happened and was still affecting mine and other people's lives so much was making rigid with anger. I noticed I have been chewing my inside of my cheek until it bleeds.

Young men, who live a few miles away, tried to blow up my route home two weeks after other young men blew me up going to work. I have felt too despairing to post, because, what the hell do you say to that? What do you do? What do you write?

And work has been really busy. Straight back on it. I've been working on a big pitch and there hasn't been much room for anything else. Last night I couldn't get to sleep til 2.30am. Today I was up at 6am and in the pitch meeting at 8.45am and the adrenalin which has been running me for the last week kept me going, but I am almost hallucinating with tiredness, my eyes feel raw and itchy and I can't get rid of the ache in my back and neck. I am feeling very sorry for myself.

Another email from another survivor, telling me terrible things. I have pulled myself together and arranged a meet up at an Islington pub on Thursday, so people can meet each other, so we have a group, instead of individuals contacting me. The responsibility of helping and emailing and worrying about them all is heavy on me. I would like to draw strength from a group, instead of trying to give out strength to individuals. I would also like to have a rest from all of this for a while.


I am fed up of media requests, all of which I decline. I've done one anonymous BBC interview with a journalist I respect, no surname, I've written my anonymous diary and had this amazing, undreamed-of response, and I've done a bit of BBC radio, still no surname - reading out my BBC diary.

That's it. It was all unpaid, though the BBC Radio 4 people gave me a small fee which I've donated to charity. It was all meant to be anonymous. I didn't know it would have this effect and whilst I want to help people if I can, and of course I feel I should, I am also feeling very tired and need to pull back a bit.

I am also angry at the idea that I am loving all this attention. Which somebody accused me of. That I am somehow being 'self indulgent'. This doesn't feel self indulgent. It feels like a full time job, and that other people are getting a lot more out of it than me. Self-indulgence would be doing what I really want to do. Which right now is, drinking some iced pink wine, running a rose scented bath, climbing into clean white sheets with the cat plonked at the other end of the bed, snoring furrily and starting to read a trashy magazine and falling asleep and sleeping for 12 hours.


I'd quite like someone to look after me. Self-pity is oozing in. It is the lack of sleep. I need 8 hours. I've been averaging 5. I look shit on it.

I need a holiday. The trauma therapist pointed out that I am manic, smoking cigarettes again, quivering with with tension, talking much faster than is normal and seem preoccupied with wanting to 'do the right thing' and 'not let people down'. I think it is survivor guilt, and my internal need to please, to help, to make people proud. I am the eldest daughter of a vicar. This stuff is hardwired into me.


I bought some Nytol today. I'm going to use it. And damn it, I am going to drink the pink wine and have the pink bath. And probably a self-indulgent weep as well.


Good night.