A day when the worms are winning....

Today is not a good day. An early morning counselling session has left me struggling.

Over the past few weeks we've been reviewing everything from the beginning, in order to figure what still needs to be faced, head on, no putting it off, plan of action required.

I've looked at the lists, heard words that I wrote at the beginning and I know that I've moved on from. I recognise them but feel differently now. I've achieved a huge amount. But....today's 'to do' list is hard. It's the stuff that has held me back always, and will be the hardest to confront.

It reminds of my greatest fears.

It's a day when I feel that I deserve nothing and that I know that I don't know how to accept kindness or love. A day that I will look at anyone who's offering their support and think that they are are mad.

I am sad and scared.

It's the stuff that I'm scared to dream about or want for my future, because it all feels so very far away and I know how much work I have to do to get there. I will do it.

Today I am glad I'm here on my own because I suspect if someone said the wrong thing, tried to be too nice to me or told me how to feel, or pressed an old button I would probably push them away, cry or scream.

It's a day when someone could easily be a target for all my hurt, anger and fear. It's a day when I all really need is a hug and to be listened to and to feel safe.

It's a day when someone would have to be hugely patient, and see past the ugly words and know that they are looking at a hurt little girl.

It's a day when I must do this for myself.

I have too much work to do and I can't concentrate. I will try. I must.

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.

Today will pass, I hope it hurries up

Today I am unravelled and upset, and I don't really know why. I know where it's come from, but I'm not sure what it is exactly. Partly it is not feeling respected.


I have no idea what to do with it.

My morning has been a write off. I am tearful and pissed off and frustrated and wondering if I will ever be able to make this better, or if I should give up trying and accept that it is what is and I that I'm not going to move forward from here.

I am tired of being angry. I am tired of fighting to keep my head above water. Most days are not like this, but this one is. Pressure builds and must, from time to time, be released. 

I do not want to be told how I should feel or think.

I just want to be loved and cared for. I want a hug. There is no one to give me a hug, and no one to ask me how my day is, how I am, and let me cry, make me safe until I've let it all go and I'm ok. I have to do this for myself. And I will try.

I will just have to pick myself up, dust myself off and carry on. I need to focus. I know I shouldn't, I know I should go with this and allow myself just to feel and 'be' whatever comes along, but that's not going to get my work done and pay the bills. I can't take a sick day because I earn my money by the day. My time is billable. Clients and deadlines.

I won't give up, I will keep fighting, keep trying because I have to. I can't go back to where I was, but right now the slope feels very slippery indeed.

Post counselling unedited, angry rant

I think I just feel stupid again.

Stupid that I don't know how to do this stuff. I don't know how to connect with it.

I'm not going to allow myself to feel stupid for choosing to care care for my parents and for being here. I felt like I was being pushed to reject all of that, reject my family and my part in that, and I won't. I did what I felt was right and that made circumstances better. Yes, I'm suffering for it now. I do not regret it.

I don't want to have another conversation about the idea of not speaking to my mother, because it's not something I will consider. She is part of my life and my family, and if I want to spend what little time I have left with Dad with him, then she's part of that equation. Going down a line of suggesting that option just makes me angry. Other people can choose to do whatever they like, I don't care. I am doing this. I don't want to feel stupid for that.

It is, however, likely that I will leave here when Dad dies.

I need to find solutions in the here and now. I need to work with the resources I have available, going out and creating new ones will be an ongoing project, and I can't rely on what may or may not come good in the future. I have to do the best I can today.

My friends may not be ideal, but they're all I've got and I won't allow myself to feel stupid for having those people in my life either. Defensive? Yes, I'm sure I am.

The majority of the people that I see face to face on a regular basis or can share with beyond hearing about new teeth or the horrors of breast feeding, are people like me. Maybe we are all flawed and bad at this stuff as we're the ones who've ended up as solitary creatures. We've failed to make that step into partnership, or have destroyed or lost the ones we had.

The married, pregnant, kids, wedding planning friends take less of an interest because their priorities change – rightly so. Their friends are no longer the most important people in their lives, and they forget that, for people like me, friends become your family. They no longer understand my life.

We cling together like those on a sinking ship. Not necessarily what I would have chosen, but it's what my life is and what I have available.

So, if flawed and dysfunctional is what's on offer it's better than solitude and all I have to work with. I don't want to have to defend the choice of people in my life. Half of the people I see regularly here have known me for twenty years. They've stood by me and vice versa, and I'm not giving up on them.

Yes, I have people elsewhere that I am closer to, but life and geography get in the way. I don't have someone to come home to and tell about my day, not am I going to unburden myself on someone else who's come home to a cold empty house and is probably feeling much the way I do. Instead, I work hard to make to make the best of what I have and create new, and I keep my relatively insignificant whinges to myself.

So, if I'm going to sort through the stuff I need to, then it has to be with what's available, otherwise it's all fantasy. Today I was defensive, and upset because comments and questions made me feel stupid.

I can acknowledge that anger is not an inherently bad thing. At work I know what to do with it. It drives me forward to fix things and make the world a better place. Anger personally is another thing entirely because I don't know how to drive it to do anything, mostly because the problem is me. I have no idea how to make it constructive.

Telling someone every time I'm pissed off? No-one's listening. Reality, MY reality, today, now and for the foreseeable future.

I will continue to seek out new people and things and create opportunities, but I need to deal with now, or I will never get to the tomorrow I want.

And so, the journey begins again

I woke up this morning and cried.

Yesterday's counselling session had left me feeling stupid, and sad, and unable to see for myself how I can stop getting it all wrong. I guess if I knew the answer I wouldn't be there. I'd be somewhere else being happier.

I know I need to unpick things before I can put them back together. I know this stuff takes hard work and patience, but I do get so very tired of trying to be strong and positive. I feel like a kid lost in a physics class that logically flows but by the time I get home it all looks like Greek.

Will I ever be able to learn how to let people see me, love me, just be me? Do I even know who 'me' is? I given so much of myself away over my lifetime that I'm not sure what's left. I am lonely and a bit scared.

Endings

I've been scribbling here on and off for a little while, but have never said anything of why. For the past seven months or so I've been seeing a counsellor. It all started after a series of hideous events that left me completely exhausted and lost. I hit a dangerous low.

I'm not sure what made me pick up the phone, but I knew I needed help. I had nowhere to turn, and things had gone too far to get myself back on track alone. I googled counselling in my work post code area, found the nearest centre and called it. No research, no idea of what I was looking for. Within hours I had an appointment arranged, and I couldn't let myself turn back.

I have found the process extremely painful and liberating, but it has also enabled me to write. I found that I couldn't often say what I need to immediately. After a particularly difficult lunchtime session, I got back to work upset, in tears, and needed to let some of it out so I started typing. My counsellor has received thousands and thousands of words from me since. Writing it all allows me to reflect, and give a voice to things I've struggled to say out loud.

Today that process came to an end. My last session, for the time being anyway.

I'm sitting here in tears wondering where there is for my words now. And I guess that's why this space was created. It as been the hardest and most important thing I've ever done. I'm very grateful for the generosity and understanding of a very patient and intelligent man who knows more about the real me than virtually anyone else. I guess it's time for that to change and for me to bring all that I have learnt into the real world, find my voice and my place. I am sad and proud. I will miss that space in my week, and I hope the blog that was created to keep my words going outwards will flourish instead.