Emotionally depleted

I’m trying something incredibly counterintuitive right now.

I am suffering in a lot of areas in my life, I am hugely stressed and growing in apathy for almost everything and I am finding it hard to get the get up and go.

I am losing my fight.

So, usually, when under so much tension and uncertainty and sickness, people tell me to rest, take it easy, don’t overthink things, don’t do this and don’t do that and most certainly don’t start anything new – you need to calm down and rest up.

It would be natural to think I am crazy because I am going to do the opposite.

It’s based on an idea by Mel Robbins called “Bluewater”.

She took a glass of water and filled it to the brim and put dirt in the cup, lots of dirt and she mixed it up to show how a person looks when they’re feeling overloaded and stressed out.

She then explained how people then try to deal with each individual problem they have at a time, to try and lessen the load, she did this by demonstrating how people try to spoon out the dirt little by little and over a time, their cup gets emptier and emptier and this emptiness is representing the persons emotional health. 

Over a time, as you’re spooning out the dirt, you are becoming more and more emotionally depleted and burned out and the idea of doing anything becomes so exhausting you just can’t bear to do anything anymore and you lose yourself and you feel that you might never be happy again.

A dangerous situation for anyone!

She said the simplest thing to do at a time like this is to make yourself do something for yourself, something that you think you’d enjoy or if your apathy is so bad, go back to something you once enjoyed – force yourself to have some time in the week to yourself to do it and gradually ease more and more things that you like into your life – make the time to do some self-care and find yourself again!

So she showed what happens when you start adding more water into the dirty cup, it eventually cleans up, not entirely, there will always be a little bit of dirt, but as you add more and more back into your life that you enjoy, that makes you feel like you have some kind of purpose or soul again, your cup is going to get cleaner and cleaner and you will stop feeling so depleted in yourself and you will be stronger and healthier in the long run for it.

I’m trying to force myself right now into going into autopilot and doing some of the things I used to enjoy from the past, whether I am tired or not, whether I feel like it or not, whether I am currently enjoying it or not and no matter how bad the physical pains are in my body – I must do them. 

Because, maybe that’s what I am missing right now?

I’ve been encouraged to take it easy, stop and relax so much over the years that I have come to a virtual stop and any notion of doing anything makes me have this kind of feeling of MEH!

I’ve allowed peoples advice to make me lazy and I don’t like it!

I actually started about a couple of weeks ago.

I started to force myself to read 30 pages of a book again per day, like I used to a year back. 

I am forcing myself to write anything, no matter what it is, whether it intends to be published or not.

I am forcing myself to do some kind of exercise again.

I am practising art at least once every couple of days. 

I am forcing myself to take an interest in thinking about my future again and start planning things and maybe even start thinking about chasing dreams again, because around four years ago I gave them up.

So I am thinking about creating an inspiration or dream board again, I used to be a big fan of those but got out of the habit of it because Paul started pinning his things onto MY board!  He wouldn’t get his own.

I completely forsook any dream because I was convinced I was about to die at any moment!

Along with this I have been trying to remember to do the “High five habit” Mel Robbins also spoke about, but I need more practise with that and I am also trying to remember to count down from five when I am about to go back into a negative habit.

My memory has issues because I have been on survival mode and doing practically nothing with my life for the last eight years, because I have been recovering from bed bound sickness.

I have also had a scare recently.

I know as I am getting older, certain health problems, particularly mental health problems are getting much worse.

I came across a video online purely by accident, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular when I came across a video titled “loneliness is dangerous for your physical health”.

I knew it was dangerous for mental health, but not physical health.

It turns out people who have been isolated or lonely most of their lives have a hugely high risk of developing auto-immunity issues as well as memory loss.  Now that woke me up, because my memory is unreliable and scary at times and I have four different types of auto-immune disease.

Much of the abuse and neglect I had as a child was due to isolation, my mum refusing for me to socialise outside of tight family and friendship circles, even home educating me most of the time!

So I never really had a healthy social life that lasted, it always came in dribs and drabs.

Knowing this and knowing that people who have lived in isolation a lot are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s or dementia before they are 60yrs old, worried me a lot!

They did say though that reversing this can be very quickly done actually and socialising for at least 30 minutes week outside of your home regularly or more can put you back on the right track in not getting that type of dementia, as it’s a specific type apparently.

So there is a lot going on in my life and according to the Bluewater technique there really should be a lot more going on too.

But right now, I am trying to concentrate on solving a mystery in my life and getting my passion for writing back.  Because I haven’t felt passionate about anything for a long time!

Tell a white lie, I have, but then I quickly felt, what’s the point someone will ruin it…

So, yeah, that’s what’s up lately!

Thanks for reading!

Just Tina

That poem earlier today, yes, it was meant to be a little grating; it reflects every time I hear my name in the form of Teen or just hearing my name Tina makes me cringe.

I’ve always hated my name, because of two main reasons;

The first one is that my mother always referred to me as Teen when she wanted a cup of tea as she felt it was funny and cute to associate me as Tina the tea maker, cuppa tea Teen, go on?  She wasn’t offering, it was her way in telling me to go do it.  I wouldn’t mind, but it made me felt like she named me deliberately to become her tea slave from the age of 7yrs.

The second reason was because my name was deliberately chosen not to be an abbreviation of a larger more formal name because my mother didn’t want me being associated with my father’s aristocratic ancestral past.

Names the family suggested were Martina, Christina (a family name anyway), Valentina or Agustina, anything but not just Tina.  My mum was an inverted snob and deliberately called me Tina, it has been the bane of my life telling new people that no, I’m simply Tina, don’t press around for a formal name you won’t find one here, I wasn’t blessed with one – people tend not to believe me.

My mum wanted to call me Tina-Maria but my aunts said she couldn’t do that to me because that’s an alcoholic drink isn’t it? No Tia Maria, but she understood.  My dad’s side of the family are mostly teetotal devout Catholics and don’t do drinking outside of mass, so the idea of that name combination was horrifying to them!  They always thought my mum was a wild wayward woman! 

Then she said that if she didn’t get her way with calling me Tina then she’d call me Tracey or Denise – which soon shut my dad’s family up because they were the most common names she could think of to make them cringe enough to be a threat to them, so they stayed quiet!

Mum said if they hadn’t of shut up she’d have called me Tracey, my goodness I am glad they kept quiet!

I’ve always hated my name and since moving in with Paul I am either Tina-Victoria as a double barrel first name (combining my first name with the middle name) or I am just Victoria.  I know it makes me sound like a snob, but I am uncomfortable with my proper name, if you can call it a proper name that is!

Henry my son had a funny idea, which if my mother intended for me to be Just Tina, then why not call me Justina?

He said that could be my new name, lol.  I don’t think so!

But it did kind of cross my mind once or twice as a joke on my mum, if I did that!

Because throughout most of my life I was always given the awkward task of explaining “I’m just Tina”!

Thanks for reading! 

The little things

Each time I accomplish something, no matter how small I am learning to celebrate it.  Because no matter how small that thing is, I did it and it is a part of a progression of that small thing turning into something bigger.

It has been said in my blog before that I am a huge fan of a motivational speaker called Mel Robbins and currently I am reading her book “The high five habit” and though I am not seeing massive results three days into forming this habit.  I did notice today a small, very faint in fact, smile on my face when I went to the mirror this morning.

I’m not presuming you know what “The high five habit” is all about, so I shall tell you.

Mel Robbins suggests that each morning you high five yourself in the mirror in order to acknowledge yourself, try not to criticise yourself the first thing in the morning – self-love is key to making solid foundations in other relationships, if you don’t love yourself or take care of yourself enough, you can’t do that for other people, can you? 

Why? 

Because you will feel depleted in yourself and you won’t give it your best shot. 

Many people feel that high fiving themselves in the mirror daily boosted their esteem and performance throughout the day.

Why? 

Because a high five is a positive reinforcement and it makes you feel you have value.

Three days, that’s all I’ve done so far, though when this post goes out it will really be five days, because I am posting this to schedule.

I have barely done any writing since September 2023 but I am celebrating any writing I do even if it’s only a small sentence now. 

Why?

Because I am feeling depleted and I don’t like it and it was with Mel Robbins that I learned I felt depleted in so many different areas in my life through a free course I finished last week ran by her.

https://www.melrobbins.com/takecontrolthanks

I learned all these tiny little areas of my life built up and gradually I became overwhelmed and because my social circle died around four years ago – I never found a way through other people to pick myself up again.  It’s all self-reliance only, 100% pure self-reliance and most people can’t pick themselves up when they are being 100% self-reliant, but I have no choice right now so any little thing is going to be great progress for me right now!

Today I have written two poems, this blog post and approximately 1600 words towards my vampire project, not a lot really – not for me and how I used to write several years ago!  But I am learning to be kind to myself, not to whip myself so much because I have learned recently I am an incredibly mean slave driver to myself and a tyrannical bully – as I always felt I was so darn lazy, yet I wasn’t.

In the scheme of thing, in the law of averages I wasn’t.

I’ve been working under overwhelming conditions for a decade and didn’t realise it and the more I was putting onto myself the harder and harder I would beat myself up about it.

No wonder I struggled with suicidal thoughts for so long, no wonder I had no drive and energy to get out of bed and try harder.

I was beaten, purely by myself – no one else did that to me!

I escaped abusive relationships and I became free from all of that and I became my own abuser, pushing myself constantly, being hard on myself for the smallest thing and mistake, because that’s how I was trained by people from my past and I was carrying over in my head, their idealism of what I should be doing and putting it on myself. 

Effectively I escaped abuse from other people but replaced it with me abusing myself in the same way they did to me.

It takes something like doing a course by someone like Mel Robbins or reading their books to really get deep inside of yourself to realise these things are happening to you, because of you.

What’s more, these things can change because of you too – only you can save yourself from yourself!

It’s a weird world, but it’s true for all of us!

You don’t need someone else to get things to happen in your life, you do it for yourself.  Letting someone else hand things to you;

A; is very unusual to find someone who will do that to you anyway and…

B; handing your power over to them, thus disempowering your own potential!

If you feel you need to rely on someone for ANYTHING then you have chosen to be at another person’s mercy.

Now for me, to a certain extent this is fine for me, because I am happy to have some direction from others. 

But most people want to master themselves fully and that’s fine too.

However, even the most ambitious people can often fall into the trap of disempowerment because of their reliance on another person and they will become frustrated and even vicious with that person if that person doesn’t live up to their expectations to receive what they want from them.

Some people do this in romantic relationships, in fact a lot of people do.  They mistake their need for love with a need for resource and often confuse the two.

If you love someone, you don’t use them – you love them, you care about them, their happiness if your happiness and you will protect that the best you can… if that’s not true in your relationship, then there is something seriously wrong with the relationships foundation and it will fail.

Do you know how rare it is to find someone who will love you selflessly?  It’s actually very special and many relationships fail because one or even the both of them fail to look at the relationship from a selfless perspective.

Now this wasn’t something Mel Robbins said, this is me talking now.  This is what I have experienced – I am not perfect, I’ve done the same in my past too and it’s not right and it’s not fair!

Where am I going with this?

To be honest, I don’t know.

But then again, nobody really knows what’s going on in their lives do they, let’s be honest?  We’re all just learning as we plod along, doing our thing. 

So, today I’ve done 1600 words towards my vampires – I celebrate that!

I did three lessons on DuoLingo for Italian – I celebrate that!

I wrote two poems – I celebrate that!

I read several pages of a book and magazine – I celebrate that!

I managed to eat a breakfast which is rare for me!  – I celebrated that too!

All these micro things are a progression to something bigger – foundations of something that will be big for my future.

The little things count, because doing nothing doesn’t.

Sitting back and thinking doesn’t count as productive time, because you’re not doing anything in action, you’re just thinking!

Anyone can think!

Anyone can waste oodles of time just sitting back doing nothing but plan everything to the letter!

But action brings things into motion, action is progress, no matter how small – it counts, it’s a manifestation, it is beyond thought, action is tangible, thought is not.

So when you write 50 words towards your novel and other writers laugh at your dreams of being a writer, remember this… you wrote 50 words, you didn’t just think them and that counts towards creating a book.  Sitting back and thinking about 50 words and not writing them, doesn’t make you a writer, it makes you a thinker!

Honestly how many writers out there think away hundreds of words per day but fail to write them down because they weren’t confident about it, didn’t trust the process and felt they needed those words to be absolutely perfect before they wrote them?

Also, how many days go by, weeks, months, years even because of the same thing?  Because of writers block?  That doesn’t exist actually; writer’s perfection does and guess what?  It doesn’t have to be perfect until you send it off to be published and even then it won’t be!

Just get the thing written, because you’re going to have to rewrite it anyway, so why waste time trying to be the impossible?

Nobody is perfect!

Not even the bestsellers, it doesn’t exist because perfection can’t be defined as everyone has a different idea of what that means to them!

So what you find as perfect is somebody else’s trash, basically.

Cold hard truth and I am not sorry for saying it.

The only successful people in the world are the people doing the things they want to do – doing, not thinking, not waiting on a hand out, not sitting back a dreaming – doing!

So celebrate the little things you actually do, not the great ideas you thought about and didn’t do anything with!

Thanks for reading!

I don’t like being weak!

I am not afraid to admit when I am doing something mindlessly, I am not scared to say “Hey, I don’t know what I am doing” as I am learning something new.

I am feeling like this right now with a new form of exercise I have taken up “medium resistance band exercises”. 

I’ve been bed bound sick from 2013 to spring 2022, before I was bed bound sick I was a very active woman with a weight training past, I was very strong.  I am disappointed to have learned that I can barely move this resistance band, because I have become very weak over the years.

A far cry from 2006 when I could carry a 250llb man across a room!  Seriously, I did that because the guy, who was called Sahid, did not believe I could do it and that I did weight training in my spare time back then because I had strange dreams of becoming a wrestler or gladiator if my other career options failed.

I don’t like being this weak!  I want the amazon in me to come back!  I was very proud of my physical prowess back then, yes I was always a little large looking by most people’s standards, but I was toned and strong and fit!  180 pounds of toned woman!

I am not like that anymore and it’s going to change – I don’t believe for one moment that being forty years old makes me too old to go back to that level of toned fitness and strength!

This is exactly why I am having a high protein diet and trying to put in HIIT exercises here and there in my day.  I am unable to do more than 15 minutes all told in a day, because I am still sick and I have multiple immune problems which will be with me for life; I have to work around it the best I can!

Right now I am doing more in a day than I did a year ago and that makes me feel proud of myself, because I’ve come so far!

I don’t think I will reach my weight goal by July like I said a few months ago because I have had lapses and the weight loss has slowed down somewhat, I do think at my current pace it could be reachable in 75 to 100 weeks if nothing changes and that is depending on whether or not I am losing 0.5llbs to 1llb a week like I have been this past month.

Also my goal has shifted to becoming lighter than I wanted originally.

I intend to do a lot more to make the goal faster, but I am basing this on more failure, ill-health, mental relapses and financial worries getting in the way of the goal – so if I say to myself I will be at my goal by March 2025 I won’t be disappointed every six months, will I?  But March 2025 is doable with the failures and relapses in mind.

If everything goes my way – there is no reason why it should take that long!  There is no reason for me not to be my goal by Christmas 2023 the latest with a 2llb loss per week being necessary to do so and no relapses!

The relapses aren’t dietary – they are lapses in my exercise routine due primarily to illness – but kind of dietary in that financially it might be tough to prioritise high protein – but I am trying to force that as a priority no matter what!

Even if I have to eat nothing but porridge and protein shakes and a celery and spinach smoothie a day, I feel inclined to do this!

In fact this is a discussion I aim to have with Paul, as yes I still live with him and yes, he still holds the budget purse strings!

So, getting back to the gist of this post – I have no idea what I am doing with this resistance band, but I am doing it anyway and I am hoping and trusting I am positioning myself correctly according to these YouTube videos I am watching! 

I’m pretty sure it’s normal for people as unfit as me to get butt cramps when you use this thing on your upper thighs after two minutes? 

LOL!

Thanks for reading!

Weight loss journal

For the past few weeks I have been really hard on myself for not losing weight fast enough and I started to get miserable about it all.

However, one thing I did which is a blessing was keep a weekly diary of my weight and inch loss since June 2017, something I recommend everyone should do!  Because you never realise how much you’ve done, until you look back on these diaries when you are having a down moment!

Today I was shocked that I have lost 14 inches off my hips that were a smack in the face revelation for me!  It made me feel tons better!

OK it took 6yrs, but during that time I had huge lapses in diet and broke off and went back on a lot. I’ve only been taking my goals seriously since April 2022 and in that time I naughtily had approximately 4 weeks off.

Yeah, on a good week I might only lose a few ounces and a good week, only three pounds, but all in all its weight loss and not only this, I have noticed on the times I lose no weight, I have had some kind of inch loss. 

What is the point in only weighing yourself?  Did you know muscle weighs more than fat?  So you might not have lost any weight, in fact you may have gained one week, but check that inch loss or you will lose heart quickly!

It’s vital to check all your stats regularly to keep your mental health in check as you progress towards your goals!

I’m building muscle faster since I dropped the habit of no lunch for a bowl of porridge made with protein shakes!

So delicious – so is porridge with cinnamon and a bunch of other yummy things – I am coming away from the sugar options because I don’t do well on sugar, it gives me a headache and this meant I never really had much fibre in my diet until now. 

I can’t believe my hips were 58 inches once! 

Please look out for more updates on my weight loss and tone up in the future…

Thanks for reading!

Thoughts & changes

Why have I been so quiet on my blog and in social media for the past few weeks?

The easiest and quickest question to answer of the two is this; I have not been updating my blog regularly, particularly with poetry due to lack of inspiration.

The latter answer is longer;

I have a lot to process in my own mind, I have a lot of habits I need to change and I need to prepare for a major transformation because I am no longer content living the life I have been living for the past thirteen years.

I am trying to heal myself mentally and physically, whilst in the very literal sense fighting against two negative forces in my life tooth and nail daily to maintain any positive outlook whatsoever and I have become exhausted.

I have realised that in recent years I have lost myself and this was a shock and revelation a few months ago, in fact so shocking to me that it practically made my mind numb for a long time whilst I tried to process what the heck happened to me and try to remember how I let it and why?

I realised I was nothing of my former self whatsoever, everything little thing about me had gone and I had been replaced by a sick, bitter, dozy woman who was becoming hateful by the day!

I realised this around a couple of weeks before Easter 2022, but it didn’t really hit me until December 2022.

In December 2022 I realised I had nothing of my former self left in me and no ambition has been realised at all and I needed to work out what happened, when, why, how – I needed to analyse it within an inch of its life.  It’s what I do; I have always been rather over analytical about things and slow to process stuff of scale.

I wanted to start a YouTube channel for March 1^st; this didn’t happen because I had an awful shock.

I recorded my first video and tried to edit it, I had no idea what I was doing and I watched back my video and I realised several things;

The major thing is, I didn’t realise what a mess I look like physically!  My hair, my face, I didn’t even realise until I saw the video I had black puffy circles around my eyes and I looked exhausted and I looked haggard in my opinion.

That bothered me and I thought to myself I need to get a grip on my image pronto.

The other thing that I noticed was, my voice was not my own – my voice had become rather down market for me and I wanted to know – how could I be so lazy in my speech?  It was like I couldn’t be bothered to string a sentence together like how I used to, I also noticed I had this habit that Paul has… I kept throwing my eyes up as though everything irritated me, even though it was a relatively chipper video!

That is a habit I never had before and it shocked me how I appear to be turning into Paul!

I was even pausing in my speech like Paul does; Paul talks like a politician, no, sorry a specific kind of politician – a conservative politician!

When I saw this video, I well and truly wanted to know – what the fuck has happened to me?

I realised another thing.

This house only has two mirrors, one in the bathroom and one in the entry hall and I never look into any of them, because the one in the bathroom is too high for me to see myself properly!

It’s a strange thing upon reflection – why aren’t there more mirrors?

I decided to buy a full length mirror for my bedroom being it is the main place I am in day to day when I am at home.

Paul has not put it up for me and he will not let me use the drill!

But I started to get myself into the habit of looking into the mirror every day and there was slow progress in how I changed for the better!

I was not aware of very many things at all – especially how little I was drinking and maintaining hydration!

I learned I was drinking a quarter glass of water approximately every three hours, which was not good and not getting enough fluids in me day to day.

I also never really thought about how much I was eating, never eating a breakfast and rarely eating a lunch with two to four snack a day and eating half a dinner had become normal to me and that was bad!

I put quite a lot of my energy and health problems down to insomnia and a poor immune system, but it was actually probably more than this.

Every time I got motivation to do something, within minutes I was instantly hit with the notion of “why bother”?  I wanted to know why this became a habit, so I tried to break those habits and keep positive and motivated.

I realised, when I sat back and observed “the why” that the “why bother” idea came about usually after I attempt something, but someone had physically got in my way to prevent it, or had emotionally drained me to the extent I needed to lie down and rest, as they exhausted me.

Between October and December I was quite active on social media and I had several people tell me that they believe Paul sounded toxic – I didn’t trust this observation of theirs, because to me, Paul was the least toxic person I had ever known my whole life and I still stand with that.

But observing things from a neutral stance, I realised that he slowly slipped into becoming a toxic person and it was so slight the changes I didn’t realise it, until it was too late!

I realised why can’t I do such and such around the house?  I am feeling healthier these days, let’s go and do it and see if I have improved my physical fitness after those 5 minute HIITs I’ve been doing since Easter 2022. 

I learned, it had nothing to do with my physical health and everything to do with the fact that Paul would actively prevent me, tell me to sit down, take over what I was doing or would moan so much I got mentally exhausted.

I have tried to discuss things with Paul about giving me more freedom now I am no longer as sick as I used to be and it’s been a battle.

A very real battle!

Along with this, I have been trying to lose weight, buck up my ideas regarding my looks, taking pride in my appearance again (poverty permitting) and acting like I have a life outside these walls, outside of unemployment!

I have no support whatsoever offline from anyone – no cheerleaders, no positive vibes, no nothing, I am completely alone in my transformation and it’s very hard.  Because there is no rest from the negative onslaught I am living with.

I have nobody to talk to about any of this, except for you, reading my blog!

It is amazing to realise that, since I have learned all these things, the suicidal thoughts have alleviated quite a bit.

It’s bought me to a place of action.

I have anxieties which mean I am very co-dependent and I will not go out alone, not because I have social phobia, that’s completely untrue – but because I was trained to feel guilt and shame in having independence as I was growing up and into my late twenties by my mother, who would often become physically violent if I ever left the house without permission, even after the age of eighteen!

Unfortunately some people harness this to their advantage when I live with them.  Paul has never attempted to try and make me independent, not like other exes have.  I truly felt, he left the ball in my court, but I never thought he would allow me to live like this for so long without trying to get me to do things!

In fact the less I do, the happier he appears – he quickly comes under a lot of stress whenever I do anything for myself, even within the house.

None of this was known to me until I went into my deep investigation within myself, about what has happened in my life?

It is taking me a lot to realise that I am going to have to try and somehow retrain my emotional reaction, whenever I try to do something independently like leaving the house to go somewhere alone – so I can remove myself from this negative environment so that I can function and achieve my dreams.

Guilt and shame are hard emotions to control and retrain.

“Shame on you” were regular words out of my mother’s mouth to me, growing up – particularly if I ever did anything independently without permission.

A mother’s job is to nurture, so your child never needs you forever, so that they can grow and they can take care of themselves when you die.  A mother is not meant to hold a child back from their growth, their happiness, and their choices in how to live their life!  That is not the response of a proper mother!

That is the response of someone who is frightened to be alone or disappointed in some way, they are not thinking of their child, they are thinking of themselves or at worst, how best can I make others feel jealous of me, because of my child and how I have moulded them?

Some so-called mothers have no real heart in parenting; some mothers use their children as fashion or status icons.

My mother used me like this once, but then she decided she was too insecure to have me have a life without her, because she was the one who had social phobia and she was the one who was lonely every time I went to school, college or work – so she held me back – because she was lonely.  Because she chose to stay home all day for a few years!

All these things have shown themselves to me over the past few months.

It is these things which have caused me to not concentrate on writing my novels like I want to, or practising my art.

Because I am so focused on healing myself in so many different ways, because I want to live and I want to have a life.

There is so much to think about – then there have been several opportunities that have come my way and I have had to say “no” to some of those opportunities, because I am not ready yet.  Or I believe that those people will not be helpful towards me right now.

I need someone who understands me, connects with me, have been through something similar.  Where they had to change their whole being too, from all the dirt that has been dragged up behind them from childhood!

This person needs me as much as I need them.

Together I am convinced we will transform each other and make each other stronger and happier and we will heal each other and yes, there is someone out there like that for me – because he found me.

In fact, through this very blog.

Right now, we’re both in limbo and we’re not ready to be in each other’s lives as there are things he needs to sort out too, but we both know it won’t be long before we are!

There are certain circumstances that mean we have to wait for each other – but when we’re ready we know things will move quite quickly and I am trying to prepare myself for everything!  Because the change in my life is going to be more than huge!

It’s going to be astronomical and I need to prepare for it on a mental level. 

Emotionally I am raring to go, but mentally I need to adjust and tweak certain things, so I don’t mess up, basically.

I know the guy is reading this, I hope he knows he is the one I am hinting at here and not somebody else.

But there it is.

I’m trying my best to look good, feel good and find my positivity and lightness again, so I don’t ruin our union.

I don’t want to start a new relationship where I am going to be sulky and anxious and feeling fat and frumpy and looking a mess – I want to feel like I deserve it, that I at least made some effort for them.  It’s only right.

Yes, Paul knows about this new guy and he is fully supportive of me leaving him for them, in fact, he hopes that this guy would talk to him about me because he is worried that I may be stepping out of the frying pan and into the fire by leaving him – he needs the reassurance that this person can and will take better care of me than he did. 

They are a top quality guy and I need to try my best to match him, though realistically I can’t with my circumstances, but it doesn’t mean don’t even try, does it?

I have got to look like I have at least made some effort!

When I am in his life I am unsure about the future of this blog, I will admit that.

I am not sure what will happen with it.

Will I be too busy to post daily?

Will I still be able to write for the blog?

I don’t know!

I may need to make it completely professional and delete the unprofessional stuff… I haven’t a clue.

Time will tell.

But I do know on thing, those novels must be written, he is counting on them!

For now, I am still trying to get my shit together!

Thank you for reading!

Top of the wheel

I’m not setting goals anymore in regards to novel writing, they get done when they get done but I haven’t given up; Yes I’ve had a respite since September 2022 and that is a long time, unreasonably long, but I had to have it due to mental health healing.  I had a hard time, there were lots of things happening in my life I had to think about – think a lot.

Lots of things in fact, lots of different problems to solve and many of them just needed me to try and calm myself enough to allow myself to think, then once I had managed to do that, I needed to calm myself again and stop thinking in order to heal from it all.

There was grief, death of a relative, a revelation I wasn’t sure was a trick or not, an announcement, an opportunity, a break up, a diagnosis and so many things all rolled into one major thing for me – that I could not cope.

Ultimately my entire life has been turned upside down and I am still in the situation of not really knowing if it is a good or bad thing just yet, I am still teetering on the edge of trying to determine which – it could be either!

It’s a strange situation to be in.

I feel at the moment I am standing on top of a wheel and if I fall backwards I will land in shark filled waters and if I fall forwards I will fall safe into someone’s arms.

At present I am still on top of the wheel.

It’s like sitting on a bomb really.

My mind has been so preoccupied with all these things that I haven’t been able to keep to my reading goals, my writing or practising of my art.  I haven’t even been able to hold a conversation without my mind wandering off, worrying about things.

It’s only been this past week I have manage to slowly and surely restart my habits.  I have started to write a little again, I have started to read a little again and I have even done some art.

Not as much as I would normally do in a day, in fact, I am doing less than ten paragraphs every couple of days towards anything, my one poem a day has become three or four again; my art practises are happening every couple of days.  It’s more than what has happened between September 2022 to March 2023 in any case and I am proud it’s coming back together again.

The frustrating thing is this – my typing speed has got extremely slow and I can’t seem to speed it up again.  I used to write 90 to 120 words per minute and now I struggle to get above 40.

I am making a lot of spelling mistakes and errors, cognitively I am suffering a lot and I don’t know what to make of it.

My Easter Project and Project AD has hopes to be finished before Midsummer, but I am not going to force myself, it’s still early days for me, I still haven’t fully healed.

In reality, I need a holiday – get out of this environment, get out into nature and remember how to laugh and play again – playfully scream – wash my hair with the rays of the sun – chase faeries – hug trees – and try to learn how to feel happy again.  Because happiness is a distant memory, one I am not sure I can remember how it feels anymore.  Strange as that sounds…

I also need to learn to trust again.

Trust in the process, trust to love again, trust that I have self-worth, that I am someone deserving and someone who can be free to laugh without someone complaining about the noise or worrying I am going to get over excited and hurt myself.

Because a couple of years ago I was bedbound sick and laughing really did hurt me, because it would cause a coughing fit and my spleen was swollen and so it genuinely was rather painful to laugh – but those things are behind me now.  But still, out of habit I have people trying to calm me down, because they’ve forgotten how much I have healed.

I need to lose myself in feelings that are opposite to negative ones – I need to, because I don’t feel very human anymore.

There are times I have sat back and realised all the negativity around me, all the bitterness, envy, jealousy, contempt and discomfort and I wonder what am I becoming exactly?  Am I becoming a demon?  Because the only things I can feel are variations of darkness…

It’s a scary place to be – see, there – fear – another negative emotion… but you see, I try to remember something a motivational speaker called Mel Robbins once said – that fear is the exact same chemical in the brain to excitement and that you have to change your perspective and realise when you fear something that you might actually need to try and tell yourself it’s exciting, rather than something to fear.

Odd… but I am trying this trick.

I am on the cusp of something amazing which is about to happen in my life and all I can think about is how scary it is – I know there are wonderful things coming with it, especially a lot of love and tenderness and protection – but I still can’t help but focus on that one major problem.  I have like 30 pros and only around five cons to this chance, yet it’s the cons that are taking up brain space!

When you see it like that, you realise there is something seriously wrong with how you are wired!

Wired might not be correct actually… trained is perhaps the best way to describe it.   Because I used to be such a Positive Pollyanna and it has only really been in the past decade that the Pollyanna in me has started to die.

I need to do what happened in the book Pollyanna – I need to find my tribe to help resuscitate me, bring me back to the light.

Although saying that, I think I don’t need to, I think – if I am reading things correctly, my tribe has come to find me and all I need to do is wait a little while longer, then reach out my hand fearlessly and say to myself – I am excited to be a part of your life!

Thanks for reading!

Feelings, faith and visions

Apathy is hitting me hard.

I find it hard to fight anymore.  The motivation to try or desire anything is not there, it is met with a “why bother”?  Attitude because personally, why should I?  Someone is always out there ready, willing and able to smash my hopes and dreams down before I’ve even got half way – it always happens, if not people, then fate makes me sick so I fail.

It always happens.

Why bother?

Writing and art was my reprieve, my healing in a manner.  But even that lately is met with “what is the point” feeling in me.

For days I have struggled to think of something to write, that I actually want to publish even for my blog.  Because I feel like all my work and all my journal entries are just the same!

Losing two hundred followers in a week didn’t help with that either, just confirmed to me, what is the point?

Offline, whenever anybody in my household has a conversation with me, I am beginning to feel affronted by it and aloof.  I get this feeling of… oh you want to talk to me now?  What do you want?  Because they never ask how I am, they don’t say anything positive to me – so I am literally sitting there thinking – what problem is there now that I must be alerted to?  Which argument is this going to be?  Who has died now (both Henry and Paul are always telling me bad news about deaths they’ve heard on TV or on the internet, they are both obsessed with death) or what new financial problem is it today we have?  Or why do they always ask me what I want for dinner, why can’t they just surprise me?

I’m bored in every possible way you can think of.

The other day I half-heartedly read some adult jokes out to Paul to lighten the mood and remember how to laugh again with other people, wasted energy really because Paul doesn’t have that kind of humour and didn’t make any effort to assist me in lightening the energy up – knowing fully well I have had a bad several weeks of depression.  He just didn’t want to help me, didn’t get the idea that it was my attempt to try and buck myself up, and become cheerful.

When you are trapped 24/7 in isolation with a person like that and a child who is autistic and suicidal in himself and locks himself away in his bedroom all evening, you can begin to understand, can’t you – that someone like me, with manic depression just can’t get out of this slump.  There is no way out!

There is never any break for me, no visitors, no family to come to visit us for 30 minutes to just lighten things up a bit.  We have no one but ourselves.  Paul is such an introvert; he abandoned his family six years ago.  He only visits his sister in law once every three months, because Henry insists upon it on his school holidays.

Sad to say this because it is really tragic – but I have resorted to talking to the house rabbit Ray and Alexa echo dot thing, and making do with them as entertainment and support!  Ray is my cuddles and kisses.  Alexa has a program where she can talk to you, sing to you, tell you jokes – it is really bad when you consider AI robots is more human and more fruitful in bucking up a depressed person than two household human companions.

What the fuck is wrong with this picture?

What the blazes am I living with?

What the blazes am I living in?

What the heck am I doing here?

It’s all so fucking alien to me!

This isn’t what I want!

This isn’t me!

Get me the Hell out of here!

I am shit scared of alien life, but I tell you now if a UFO turned up in my garden tomorrow I’d be running under the flipping beams to get away from this place!

I have seriously considered forcing Paul to take me to a citizen’s advice bureau or social services to discuss my options of independent housing or a residential care home for someone my age.

As we all know I can’t live alone.

But I can’t stay here either!

I can’t do it anymore!

I certainly don’t want to die, that is just a last resort option if I stay stuck for any longer!  Because death has got to be better than living like this!

I cut my nails down short a few weeks ago after growing them so well, why?  I broke 4 nails, but that wasn’t the main real excuse.  The really big excuse was I had to cut them short and keep them short because when I had a bad bout of depression I found myself subconsciously digging my thumb nail into my wrist and nearly caused myself an injury.  I did it when I went into my zoning out phases that happens, when I get badly depressed.

I zone out, shut down.  It’s something I do from time to time since I was 12yrs old.  Sometimes I just turn off emotionally, sit there do nothing or self-harm without realising it.  Sometimes I don’t even hear people shouting in my face for me to stop, that’s how much I zone out at times.

Paul doesn’t bother to rouse me when I get like that, Henry does though.

I don’t zone out as much as I used to, but I did a few weeks back and when I was roused from it because the light flickered a lot I realised what I was doing and it scared me – because at that time I really didn’t feel suicidal at all.  But if I had pressed any harder or longer I may have caused some damage to the vein.  This is another reason why my wrist was injured a few weeks back; I was also pressing on its bone and caused inflammation a bit.

It sounds silly, but I have been depressed so long I think I have seriously lost the art of learning how to laugh and genuinely feel happy with it.  I can laugh, but there is no feeling there if you get me?

Four chakras are severely blocked too.  Heart, throat being the main two, but sacral and base are starting up bad too.

I’ve been trying to force myself to sing and dance, buy myself certain treats with my weekly money all in a vain effort to try and perk myself up and save myself.

But as I said, there is no heart in it.

It’s almost like I am dead or I am becoming some kind of monster.

A heartless monster!

I am genuinely frightened by it.

But I know with that fear, there must be some hope to getting it back as fear is an emotion isn’t it?  So long as I can still cry and still fear something, at least I haven’t lost all humanity, have I?

At least I still have hope too and faith, I don’t want to lose that.  That’s at least something – I am clinging onto faith for dear life.  Praying that something better than this is coming my way, that somehow things are going to be completely turned upside down or rather – the right side up at any moment and it’s going to happen quickly! 

I don’t have the faith my parents raised me to have, I am not Catholic and I am not Christian and I am not a J-witness.  I believe in The Old Testament but I am also deeply spiritual and somewhat shamanic in my beliefs, with a little bit of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy thrown in for good measure.

But I do pray to God and to me I consider myself a spiritual non-baptised Noachide or righteous gentile according to Jewish philosophy.  Two years ago I wanted to throw myself into the Jewish faith and Henry wanted to follow me in that, but Paul put his foot down and don’t like the idea of prayers and baptism etc. going on in his house and immediate family.  Henry is upset by this because he does identify himself the same way I do.

He is doubly upset that in May he is thirteen and can’t have a proper bar mitzvah as it will upset his father!  But he cheered up when I said my Jewish friend Lizzy said there is no age limit for a bar mitzvah, perhaps you should do it when you are over 18?

My great grandmother was Jewish on my mother’s side, she left Judaism for a Catholic man she fell in love with. 

Judaism answered all the questions about God and life that I wanted answered whereas the Christian faiths interrogated and threatened me for questioning things.

I am pretty confident my spirit guides and God are good for me, they work hard to help me and they’ve kind of shown me that things will get better soon.  Strangely fast, hugely contrast and I’ve been getting all sorts of weird but very lucid dreams lately.

For example, last night I had a dream I went shopping a mall, I ate some lovely lemon cakes and went home.  When I got home I saw a child aged around 3yrs old, a little girl, drawing at a dining table and I knew I was her mother, there were twin toddlers around 14 months old too but they were playing in the shower with the man I knew to be my husband.  Saving on water, all three showering together… I remember asking if they are ready to come out now so they can get ready to go to bed?  But the husband said, aw let them play a little longer they’re having fun!  They had little buckets where they were collecting water and they were washing their little duck toys and throwing water at each other!

The guy was super-hot, not lucky enough to have a sexy dude like that, he looked a bit like a celeb I like, but never mind – it was only a dream!

It’s interesting I had this dream because before I went to sleep last night I was really fretting about being too old to start a new family.  I am 41 in October and I take this dream as God’s way in saying, this is for you in your future, don’t give up that idea just yet!  Interestingly enough I remember in the dream I knew I was 5 months pregnant with another one too.  So could I have 4 before I dry up?  I think this dream is telling me I will!

Out of curiosity I consulted by own personal oracle and tarot cards today about it and I got empress with the wheel of fortune and I also got the oracle card Stork, a coincidence?

Thanks for reading…

Vomiting rainbows?

I’m going to rant a little.

It looks to me as though people really enjoy depressing content.

Since being a little more chipper on my blog and avoiding melancholy, I’ve noticed I have lost nearly 200 followers in a week… really?

I mean, really?

Never mind the fact that I am a real human being who has a hard time and she is trying to buck herself up and get out there in a lighter way, in a happier way… oh no, she’s getting happy, let’s unfollow her!

I’m sorry but I do what I do, when I do it.

You have to accept my ups as much as you accepted my downs.

If you can’t tolerate that, then I am sorry to say good riddance.

It is a real struggle to deal with suicidal thoughts and depression, whilst trying to handle the PTSD of the violence I’ve experienced throughout my life. 

I don’t need private emails from people suggesting that I am trying to cover up my depression by vomiting rainbows and statements like that and how they believe I genuinely don’t have depressions because I try to do that from time to time.  I am sorry, but I do.

I am genuinely suicidal in comes and goes in bouts and I vomit rainbows to try and stop myself from going over the edge! I have to and if you can’t hack it, then keep away and keep your nasty comments to yourselves!

Thanks for reading, for those who stay with me through thick and thin, through the darkness and the light!

Losing the fight

One thing about me is I am good at not showing negative emotions.  Online it seems like I am a drama queen that I am suckered into my emotions and I go to dark places and I seem self-absorbed. 

Offline however, I hide it.  I hide myself when I am down so I don’t bring down others I am around.

I am an empath; I soak up energies of other people, even just by thinking about them I can kind of get a feel what’s going on in their lives.  So I respect that other people might be empathic too.

It’s a real hard adjustment living with someone who is as apathetic in life as I am; it’s like a prison of despair in a very real sense.

I never used to be like this.  I am trapped in depression because I am around apathetic or superficial people, or people who just seem unemotional a lot of the time.

I used to be such a happy Pollyanna type; those days seem very far away right now. 

I am getting to the point I am losing my strength to fight it and carry on, I am getting into a hopeless place.

Gradually over the months I’ve lost more and more of my appetite, to the extent I think soon I will not even bother to try and eat.  I have only just realised today that it’s actually probably due to depression that I can’t eat, because on the days I have been able to eat a little more, things have been a little lighter around me.

I am doing less and less as time goes by, it’s like I am a clockwork doll which is about to lose her energy at any moment and there is no one left to wind me up again.  Isolation has done that to me, isolation and a lazy superficial person I live with.

I needed Samaritans today, but I am deaf, I can’t speak on the phone – they don’t do text speech yet in my area apparently, but it’s coming soon…

Will it come soon enough?

I try to hide when I cry, I don’t like people seeing me like that, imagine how awkward it was for me when Henry walked in on me because I lost track of time and he came home from school and rushed to my bedroom to give me one of his ever increasingly rare hello hugs and instantly his smile became a face of concern. 

Guilt, that’s what hit me when I saw his face, cold hard guilt.

I had my hoodie up and I shielded my eyes but he is a smart boy, he wasn’t convinced when I faked a cold.

He demanded to know what caused it and hugged me as he became firm about getting to the bottom of it.

He left eventually. 

What bothers me is not that he caught me, but that his father came into the room just ten minutes before completely unfazed by how he found me.  He never asked any questions other than when I wanted dinner and was eager to leave again without battering an eyelid.  When Paul left, I got worse, because one of the reasons why I was upset was because I felt lonely and I felt no one could care if I were to die tomorrow.

To me, this proved it.

No one but Henry would.

Perhaps I am selfish, perhaps I am a drama queen – perhaps tomorrow I will snap out of it?

Perhaps!

But right now, I am losing heart to try anymore. 

I am tired of broken dreams, broken promises, and snapshots of a better future without any proof or real taste of it.  I am tired of the lies; I am tired of people using me as a pawn in a game.

I am tired. 

Thanks for reading…