Toil for your happiness

Seas of sorrows drowns one if one keeps swimming in its waves

Keep away from the sea of sorrow, lest you want an early grave

I summon with all my strength to keep upon the land

Where hopes and dreams can eventually be found

Just dig within the sand

Keep digging until you find your peace

Keep digging till you find your way

Keep digging even when you’re tired

Keep dig, dig, digging away

Never give up with your search

For a better life

There is always something good

After a life of strife

Nothing lasts forever, this is very true

That means all the bad things, won’t always be there with you

So keep on digging artfully, keep on with the toil

Because one day you will find gold amongst the soil

You will be happy once again

Just trust these words my dear

Just keep believing in better things

And one day it will be cleared

Research what your doctor diagnoses you with!

As someone who has had pneumonia once a year for the past 5yrs, I was told when Covid19 came into the world that I should consider never going out as I am on the very vulnerable list especially as I have other health issues on top of it all and Covid19 as we all know is known as a super pneumonia! 

Being used to isolation since childhood, it seemed to me to be a doddle of a thing to accept.  But it is frustrating, because I was just starting to get my life into gear and I am starting to feel that this is some kind of curse my mother has put on me.  I know it sounds ridiculous because the rest of the world has it and surely she can’t have cursed the whole world?  Of course I know that is nonsense, but it still crosses my mind a lot!

How ironic that this has happened just as I am free from her isolating me and shutting me away?

Well anyway, Monday was the first time I went out since the first ever lockdown in the UK, because I have dental issues that need to be seen to and I am due to have an IV treatment for my teeth in February – coincidentally today I have woken up to feel as though my chest is bruised and I have a cough and a cold on top of my usual respiratory problems.

A few days ago I started getting into the habit of making smoothies, particularly green ones, because I wanted to boost my immune system for when I have my tooth seen to in a couple of weeks’ time; when I get a cold and a cough like this after being on a really super rich high vitamin and mineral diet for the last 2 weeks, it makes me wonder why I bothered in the first place?

Surely I would be stronger by now?  But no, I have a cold or something…

Well anyway, desperate I am to find any recipes for immune boosting so I found something called Goot, made it myself, lemons, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, apple cider vinegar, garlic and honey, going to take 2 spoons 4 times a day to see if I get better any sooner than I would normally – which would normally be around 3 to 5 weeks’ time – a lot of colds and flu turn very chronic for me and last up to 6 weeks on average at the chronic level, something doctors could never understand!

Well anyway, a few years before I met Paul, I remember being diagnosed with pernicious anaemia, but nobody explained to me what that meant so I presumed, much like my mother did, that it just meant really bad anaemia – well Paul after hearing me reminisce this, decided to research it to find out it is an auto-immune problem which can make absorption or development of vitamin B12 very difficult for me, which would explain the neurological problems I seem to be developing!  I have been living with pernicious anaemia for a little over 15yrs and no one told me what it meant or treated me, no wonder I am falling apart!  I have also been diagnosed with and untreated for 17yrs with rheumatic arthritis!

Pernicious anemia can severely damage your nervous system and digestive system over a course of years if untreated, it is an autoimmune disease which can make you severely malnourished of certain B vitamins!

So because I am scared to go out unless absolutely necessary because of Covid19 I am waiting until things die down a bit so I can tell my new doctors here in Rugby, Warwickshire about my health past and how I have never received treatment and see what they got to say about that!

I think perhaps this is what my doctor meant when he phoned me a few months ago about a medical review, because I gave him a list of symptoms in an email and he was concerned and said he is going to look into my files etc. about other things and see if there are links – but I never got back to him!  Perhaps he has seen my medical records and understood I am not being treated right!

My doctor knows that I have suffer from chronic anxieties at the best of times and I am very OCD, so getting me out of the house unless it is an utter emergency during covid is going to be a huge challenge!

Just thought I say this to update you all!

Hope that the UK takes lockdown seriously this time around so I can get my health back into check by keeping to my appointments and investigations!

Beetroot & Berry Smoothie

I made a smoothie today, totally experimental and it is utterly delicious!

Ingredients are;

A cup of cranberry juice

Half a cup of frozen mixed (blackberries, raspberries, redcurrants, black currants, strawberries)

Half a lime including the zest/skin just take the seeds out!

1 medium banana

1 whole large beetroot raw!

A wedge of red bell pepper

Cinnamon to taste

I mixed this together in my nutribullet I bought about 5yrs ago and it serves three.  My son Henry needed sugar with his in order to convince him to drink it; he won’t have it with honey unfortunately!

It’s very tasty, I have had smoothies a lot in the past, but it is usually a bother for Paul to help me with making them when I am going through my hard times and so I feel guilty getting him to do them, but today I did it myself, had some energy to do so. 

It’s a new recipe for me, I made it up as I went along and I am glad I did.

I was fearful of wasting a lot of food I can’t afford to replace, but it was a good and well paid off risk and Henry seems to like it so far!

I need to find a green smoothie I like just as much, lol.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS!

The last fiction book I read was “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig. 

I’m not sure if I have ever mentioned this before, but I rarely read much fiction at all in comparison.  So when I find a piece of fiction I like, I like to talk about it.

I’m not anti-fiction, because I write fiction, but I often worry that sometimes fiction from other authors can scramble themselves up into my mind and confuse me about what I have read and what I have thought of myself.  Some authors will say that is the yumminess of reading fiction, it adds to your uniqueness, your reading experiences can become new tales, fresh in the way that only you can tell.

But that is where the imposter syndrome drives me insane the most.  Just how unique would I be in my own writing, if I have read lots and lots of fiction rather than non-fiction?  Well anyway, that is just me and it is probably way too complicated to talk about further, so let’s get on with this review!

As much as I loved this novel for its very insightful paragraphs and pep talks for life, there were many flaws to the plot I found and that made me itchy, irritated somewhat.  Let me explain;

Nora feels that she is a failure at life, that she isn’t needed, she is desperate to have something to do, people to take care of and one day she wakes up to find that hardly anyone needs her anymore and her cat died to top it all.  So she decides that it is best for everybody that she kills herself, so she tries to and when she tries, she wakes up inside a library staring at her old school librarian Mrs Elm. 

She discovers that every book in the library are books of lives that could have been if only… Mrs Elm invites Nora to take a glance at the book of regrets and choose which regret she would like to work on – when she does so, she gets to experience that life and if that life is too disappointing for her, she then comes back to library to try again, but as long as the clock remains at midnight and not a minute past it, she can try as many times as she likes, fail to choose a life in time and she may lose her chance at life altogether!

What irritates me about this plot is this… each life she enters, she enters with complete amnesia about her past between that past regret and the years that lead to her current time span now, meaning she doesn’t know these new people that entered her life between now and then nor has any memories of any events that lead to where she is now.  This only gets better after several weeks in those lives IF and only IF she feels happy with that life and she seldom does!  So basically most of the plot of the book is a story about the main character going around in a permanent state of confusion, fear and amnesia and seeking out what the blazes happened to her, but is usually side-tracked by the busyness of life!  Very irritating, this book could have been a lot more better and gripping if it weren’t for that major flaw.

To then put icing on the cake of disappointment, Nora finds a life she is happy in, yay, you think and you are happy for her, because she went through a lot to get to that happy state, but that life wasn’t meant to be, because just as she decided she wanted that particular life, the library goes into wreck and ruin and she has to choose to live the life she left originally or die.

So for me, it was a lovely book, full of life quotes I loved enough to stick in my art journals and a promising all round plot, but lots and lots of irritation and disappointments – especially when you never get to see how she actually lived her life after this event.

Pfft basically.

But that’s my two cents.

Monitoring depression with reading status

I haven’t read much for several months due to illness and chronic depression.

When I read it usually means I have an interest in the world around me and a zest for life, so I am more likely to read a lot and quite quickly, but when I don’t it usually means my depression has set in again and I am thinking dark suicidal thoughts again.  It is easily monitored if you know me, you will notice a drop in my books read pile and won’t get to see me reading much during those times because I get into the mind-set of what is the point?

Although tragic I suppose it is a funny idiosyncrasy of mine.  You can tell how depressed I am by how slow or fast I read and whether or not I read at all – just check my goodreads activity if you are curious about what is going on in my mind at the time!  I will add you as a goodreads friend too, if you want.  https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/8725823-tina

The past two weeks has been pretty good in comparison to the past several months.

During a mentally stable time I can read 3 to 7 books in a week and about 3 or 4 magazines, during a bout of depression maybe I will read approximately 30 – 70 pages a day, but during really dark times I struggle to read 50 pages a week if anything at all!

Weight loss & image

Weight loss and image photos will not start until I know precisely how I am going to react after my dental surgery in early February. Because of my limited diet and because of potential pain and loss of a tooth due to an abscess I have, I may not be able to keep to new dietary changes for a few weeks, hence why realistically I am starting this diet plan after I know what is happening dental wise.

I hope to have posted my “before” photos around the end of February to the beggining of March!

The last thing I want to do is to set myself all up for this and then fail before a month is up for a couple of weeks just because of tooth complications, I want it all set for the rest of my life after this!

It is doubtful I will lose my tooth and to be honest, I have already changed my diet, but I do worry about what kinds of food I will have to eat for a couple of weeks if there are tooth complications. It is likely I will need soup, jellies and that sort of thing for a few weeks, so basically it might be high sugar because of the fructose in the fruits I would likely have to eat.

It sounds utterly stupid because more fructose when you are talking dental is the last thing my teeth will need, but hey hum – I am not sure what is soft enough for dental problems other than soup, jelly and fruits and certain vegetables.

Some ideas I have are homemade tomato soup (without cream), bone broth, avocadoes (as well as guacamole), pesto, vegetable soup and consomme, chicken consomme, overcooked gluten free pasta bolognese and arribiata without chicken, fruit jellies, canned peaches with vegan cream, gluten free berry crepes, banana smoothie, vegan banana milkshake, berries, gluten free apple or berry crumble and custard, onion soup, to name but a few. The reason behind such a drastic idea is because I am currently in a lot of pain as I have an abscess in the area of my mouth where I mainly chew meat and hard things like that. I can’t shift sides because of medical reasons, my other side of the mouth/jaw is very weak and can cause pain which leads into the neck and ear as I had lifesaving head & neck and mastoid surgery 20yrs ago. The abscess was caused by dental floss slipping the wrong way and cracked my tooth a little; my dentist recommends NOT TO FLOSS, she says people who floss have more trouble than those who don’t, instead, we should swoosh salt water around our mouths rigorously several times and spend more time brushing then mouthwash, after using mouthwash, you do not rinse it out with water again or you made the mouthwash useless!

If you can give me some ideas of what I can eat during that time which is soft, low in sugar, lactose free, gluten free, flax free, and low in fat (as I have trouble synthesizing certain fats), then I’d love to hear from you!

New Categories to be added and old deleted

Along with my updated blog, there will also be new categories to peruse in a few days and they are as follows;

Poetry & Song – This will no longer be placed in an A-Z category.

Short stories – I plan to write a new short story specifically for the blog once every season on average.

Writing life – what I do in order to write, my tips and guides to writing and my writing development.

Art I love – sharing links to art of people I am inspired by and what their work has invoked in me.

Defining myself – my journey to self-improvement in all areas of my life along with in depth insights to my goals!

Family Life – Updates about my family life, my household in general.

My mental health journey – talking about my mental health barriers and the lengths I have gone to try and conquer them and how they might help you!

Art by me – my own personal art I have done and how it was born and why!

Fan art & fan fiction – my version of my favourite works or alternate sequels I would have done if I were the artist and author, it is just my take on what goes on in my mind as a whole, nothing to do with trying to steal someone else’s limelight or putting them down, because if I made the effort of making a fan fic of your work, then that means you have inspired a large part of my creative brain to thinking about your work and how your characters and story has a part in my creative journey!  Basically, it’s an excellent form of flattery.

Photography – photographs I have taken.

Garden & Self-sufficiency – my garden and self-sufficiency updates, if all goes well this year, I hope to do as much gardening as I used to, but I am having problems with a particular neighbour who is rather sexually harassing and so for the past 2yrs in particular being in my own garden is very uncomfortable as he will stand staring at me with a huge grin on his face and his hands in his pockets for hours on end!    It’s really weird and scary! Especially as he makes an effort to actually stand and look over his fence as near as possible and then dives down to sit on a chair as soon as Paul comes out into the garden. Paul hates gardening and I usually do it alone, but since this idiot moved in next door, I can’t garden without Paul being there to make the guy go into hiding, as he seems to get shy around male company! The front garden is worse because he will stand blocking the shared pathway to watch me and there is noway of hiding from him there! I have some new privets I hope would grow to block his view soon – but it will take 3yrs to get to a good enough height. Paul thinks he is sick enough to observe from his bedroom window, if that is the case, then I will place a cherry or rowan tree as a canopy to block him.

Myths, Legends & Folklore – all the myths, legends and folklore around the world that I am interested in and have learned!

Reviews – reviews of books and movies I have experienced.

Cosmic Ordering – I am on a cosmic ordering journey too, trying to build the life I want in a very serious sense and writing about how that is going for me and how you can do it too!

Art Journal & Mixed Media works – I have got into art journaling and mixed media art recently, I am excited to start sharing this soon.

About me – this page is going to be expanded into a new category and updated regularly because as I am trying to define myself, some old aspects of me die off and new ideas etc take its place!

Pet updates – Pets are a huge part of my life, if Paul wasn’t so assertive with me, I would have a mini zoo in this house! 

Home Projects – I like to have a project around the house on the go, either painting a wall or stencilling it again, or reupholstering stuff, upcycling furniture etc., there is always something going on!

Diet & Health – I have new dietary needs since I have found out a lot of my health problems are due to food allergies, so I will be updating semi-paleo recipes, recipes are vegan dairy, gluten free, lactose free, etc., I say semi paleo because I love beans and will still indulge in those and candies from time to time, but being I do have a non-diabetic problem with metabolising sugar, I rarely have refined sugary candies anyway nowadays!  Also general health updates and fitness etc.  A huge part of my weight was because my mother is a feeder, she got me up to a huge size, I have lost a lot of weight since moving away from her, but for the last 4yrs my weight has stopped budging, it’s like my body has got comfortable being that size and has refused to lose more weight despite a calorie reducing diet.  You can’t live on 900 to 1300 calories for 4yrs without it starting to make serious issues occur, especially if you discover you’re no longer losing the weight!  I have lost 71 pounds since leaving my mother, which is amazing as I was pregnant during that time too!  But I still need to lose 85 pounds, to be regarded aesthetically OK – 114 pounds to be doctor’s recommendation.  But I remember being my goal weight before and to me, any less than that and I was too bony as I have what doctors regard an unusually petit bone frame, they are convinced I am going to have severe skeletal health problems in the future due to the weight I’ve lived with.

Brain drain – just brain dumps, I need somewhere to put them and here it is!

My inspirations – who inspires me and why?

Major changes explained

Updates to this blog are aesthetic updates as well as content updates; in the future I hope to post not only my poetry, short stories, art and life updates, but also updates on my mental health journey:

In future posts I will show you how I am trying to re-define who I am, because in reality, I have never been the truest version of me, I have been severely supressed and it is a journey about unleashing the real me!

Everything about me currently and in the past are not my real choices, it is not the true or real me.  What I mean to say is, I had an abusive past and a past where I was controlled and isolated very severely not only by my parents, but an ex fiancé as well.  My current fashion choices, my general knowledge of the world around me, my diet and my habits and even to a large degree, my career choices and beliefs were all facsimiles of my abusers, not me.  I do still hold myself accountable for many of the things I have done in the past, because it was due to my emotional weaknesses that I allowed those things to happen and take place, but that does not defer from the fact that my abusers were abusive to me!

This blog will include how I am changing into the habits I want to have, becoming the person I want to be, fighting through all the pain and sickness and mental health issues I have to literally sculpt myself into something I want to be, rather than making do of the moulding that my abusers have made me into.

My sense of fashion, my habits, my diet, my everything is going to change so dramatically and I know I will falter and falter a lot, because I am changing my whole existence and current life, for something completely new, unexplored and it will be tremendous hard work, which is why I feel it needs to be documented online and hopefully I will build a support system from my readers to help me through the major changes I am about to incur.

I am 39 on my next birthday October 3^rd 2021. 

Let’s hope that my honorary aunts are right, that life begins at 40!

Because for me, I am still only a baby mentally, I am still only new to life – because I have never been allowed to live.  It is very scary to admit a lot of things to everybody right now, that even though I have a child who is nearly 11yrs old and even though, I have lived away from my mother since 2009 and totally broke from her in 2012, I still have never ventured out of the house alone, without some kind of assistance or support from a relative or friend.  I have literally always had someone hold my hand when I left my parents, someone to speak up for me when I am in difficult situations and to be perfectly honest, it is annoying, because even though, these people are my carers and they are helping me to come out of my shell and undo the abuse my parents have done by prepping me for life – but they also misinterpret a lot of what I mean to say to certain people or they say things in their own way, which sometimes isn’t as clear as I would have said it.  A lot of the time regarding my health, talking to doctors etc, they forget things and me being me, would sometimes be too nervous to speak out and say well actually.

Though this aspect of me has got hugely better in the past 4yrs, the doctors are surprised by the progressed I have made there, because whereas they used to look at Paul for confirmation of what has happened, they are now starting to look and listen to me, which they see as amazing progress.

It is these points which make it difficult for me to actually contemplate a life in marketing of any form – but I need to have that life, I can’t sit back and watch years go by and have more and more regrets of not doing things just because of the stuff that my abusers have locked into my head.

It is to a large point, very stupid to actually know that the world isn’t as scary as my abusers lie to me it had been, that those bad people in society were actually them and they are rarer than they make out and they are actually the worse of the lot.  It is stupid to know this and still be scared of the world.

I read a book recently which is very timely – “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig, about a woman who lived her life in regrets and got a chance to undo those regrets by having alternate lives, therefore getting a chance to redefine herself time and time again.  There is a quote from that book which resonates to me very deeply “life fright”.  There are other quotes from that book which really connected to me too…

“If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don’t give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise.”

― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“The only way to learn is to live”

― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“Sometimes just to say your own truth out loud is enough to find others like you.”

― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

That’s what I am doing, saying my truth loud enough, to not only start to throw off the burden of my past and to heal from it, but to stand tall and let the world know I am here and to ultimately find my tribe as it were!

Future posts on this blog will include my new diet ideas, plans, because recently I found out a lot of my illness is due to the fact that I am allergic to a lot of food!  Gluten, lactose, eggs, pineapples, flax and beef gelatine to name but a few;

I will also include, my weight loss plan

My art and photography

YouTube videos I may start at the end of the year

My skill development and so forth

I am also watching copious amounts of self-improvement videos on youtube lately, especially Blush with me Parmita, a life coach! 

All this to sculpt me into who I am, not what people think I should be.

I my opinion I need to lose 85 pounds

I need to start thinking about makeup and changing my fashion not only to my preferred tastes but to make the best of my natural body shape, as for someone who is fat, I have a very strange narrow and defined waist and an envious shaped body, well this is the opinion of many people who have told me this, personally I don’t see it – but as I have learned from a lot of self-help books, you’re inner critic needs to be ignored as it never sees the truth regarding yourself.

I consider myself hideous in every single way, yet I get a lot of attention from people about how pretty and unusually young I look for my age – I have had people interested in using me as a plus size model and hair model, but I get really hurt and confused by this, because I just see a hideous monster in the mirror!

I don’t understand how some people reckon I look like Meryl Streep that totally confuses me!

I need to start becoming more independent.

I need to start doing more art and writing and actually getting it published not only on my blog, but approaching agents too, because I keep sitting back wondering what was that movie I wanted to watch again?  To then remember that it was a book I have in my head that I have written and the movie doesn’t exist yet.  My primary motivation for writing is that I enjoy it, but also because I want to see my stuff turned into movies – I know that’s pretty pie in the sky, but that’s my dream – I think ultimately I would rather make movies than write, but there you go!

I write the books I want to see acted out on stage or on TV basically; I write the stuff I wish there was more of.

So it’s a vast change, I am already exhausted just thinking about it, especially as I have such severe health problems, nobody, not even the doctor is sure yet, if something I have is terminal yet; covid19 has caused a lot of investigative delays!

But I don’t care if I live or die and yes, part of my mental health problems is the fact I have been struggling with suicide for the last 7yrs, primarily because I am sick so often that my life isn’t really worth living, because any movement is pain!  So I guess that is one of the major factors why I am going to push myself now, if I push myself into exhaustion and collapse by changing myself so quickly, then so be it, but at least I died trying!

So there you go, it is not a New Year’s resolution, this has been brewing for some time now, but now I have had enough!

Speak soon xxx

Trying hard to learn technology…

I am trying so hard to learn the technology needed to edit a few simple things on this blog! It is taking me days and there are things I don’t know how to to do – such as the post title shouldn’t be black, you can’t see the title that way, I want to change the color of it, I am also finding it really hard to create a complete new banner for this new blog name.

Technology is one of those subjects that stresses me out – it does so all the more, when I know nobody who is efficient at it to help me!

Update

It’s going to take me a few days to understand what the blazes I am doing – I am trying to update the site, new name and stuff.