Fewer worms

I usually write about the challenges, the navel gazing things with unedited honesty and share less of the things I am grateful for. So, a little celebration instead.


Today I sat with my councillor and we went right back to beginning of my time with him. Eight months first time around, and another couple months which began again recently. I went back in December because I felt myself slipping. The warning signs were heeded, and I was too scared of what I knew could happen if I didn't do something.

I want to mark this as I'm feeling really pleased and proud of myself. Hideous, challenging, satisfying, cathartic hard work lifted me from being  depressed (which I didn't realise at the time, and just thought was normal. How could I think it was normal to cry every day?) to now. Today there are a few live and wriggling worms lurking still in that rusty old can, but the lid is well and truly lifted. (The list of worms from the early days that we wrote up today filled a whiteboard....).Now I know I will deal with the remainder one at a time, with a space in my week and commitment. They have names now, and are part of me.

Simply asking for help helped.

Life is not perfect and nor am I, who is? But somewhere along the lines I'm beginning to find out who I am and not what others want me to be. My anger, anxiety, lost-ness have largely dissipated. Don't get me wrong, there are bad days – some horrible, some sad – but they are far fewer.

I am better for it all and I am certain now that what I want me and my life to be are, perhaps for the first time, within my reach.


I believe that I will find better ways of coping and expressing my needs, emotionally as well as intellectually. Intellectually I can do, always have been able to, but emotionally? Phew! Although I still find these things easier to write than say out loud.

I believe that my life should be my own, and that I deserve to go easier on myself.

I believe that one day soon I will let someone love me without assuming my relationships are temporary and dooming them before they ever get off the ground.

I believe that I will learn to forgive and put up with my mother as she is.

I believe I deserve to be happy. I actually believe it, not just agree with other people saying it. And so on.....

Tomorrow my belief my waiver but tonight, and although I know the journey is not at an end, I will simply allow myself to be happy at what I've accomplished.