Remission, weight loss and dreams

It may have been a long remission between Easter and last week, because for the past few days I have been sleeping a lot and finding things a little difficult again.

My immune system has taken a massive hit and I feel like I have influenza but there is no temperature and not much else of the normal flu like symptoms.  The brain fog is coming back, the depression is hitting hard again and then the washing machine breaks down two days ago and it needs replacing.

The asthma has got a bit worse too, but it’s the feeling that I am turning into stone or lead I can’t get over – every limb feels weighted. 

Very sleepy is not a good description really – I kind of feel like I am going into a hibernation period, if you get my drift?  But what is weird about that is the fact that I can’t seem to sleep at night.

My appetite has stayed much the same, not eating much at all, so the idea of gaining weight over Christmas is silly as I seem to be losing up to two pounds a week still or not moving on the scales at all.

I found a local gym for £8.75 a week membership, I can afford that with my personal allowance and I will be signing up for the membership around the end of January, to help me tone up – my upper arms in particular as they are the only things which don’t seem to be doing what the rest of my body is doing… losing inches and toning up.  They are a good gym to go to because they specialise in helping people who have long-term health problems or are morbidly obese, which I need because I have asthma and a couple of auto-immune problems, one of which is rheumatic arthritis.

It’s exciting to note that I have lost ninety six pounds over a year now without much effort, now let’s take it up a huge notch!  I am not that far off from my goal weight and with this gym membership I should reach my goal weight before July with any luck – at least I haven’t been on the morbidly obese scale for a while now- In fact I remember a time where I was a horrifying 56 on the BMI scale that was nearly two years ago!  No, this wasn’t the reason I was bedbound either, the bedbound came first and this kind of obesity was caused by that!

How did I manage that?

Simple!

I was a highly active person who walked an average of nine miles a day amongst lots of other exercises and physical activities, needing to eat an average of four thousand calories a day just to sustain myself or collapse – to becoming a severely ill and bedbound person literally overnight, but never readjusted my diet, until three years later when it dawned on me what the heck I was doing!

I had such spleen pain and constant chest infections for nearly eight years solid, the amount of times I was diagnosed with pneumonia too, I couldn’t move because the spleen was too swollen and I was literally advised to do nothing in case it ruptured!  NHS overstretched before covid even existed and so operating wasn’t an option given to me! 

Especially as I was eating my feelings when the depression stepped in, meaning I was over doing food on a massive scale for someone who was extremely sedentary!

It wasn’t until around three years ago that I realised when I am having an angry or a depressing day, I go to food again for comfort, I realised this is a base instinct we all have; why?  Because as animals we would take our anger and frustrations out on other animals and bite them and attack them, but as humans have learned to civilise ourselves somewhat we suppress our anger and food is the substitute for the primordial release for biting!

So when you feel depressed, sad or angry get yourself chewing gum – believe me, it works – only I find it hard to have gum these days because most of it contains soy and soy is really bad for my spleen issue.

Around four years ago was the time I had a completely free from diet, no eggs, no gluten, no lactose, no soy and a mostly paleo diet.  This helped a lot with the breathing problems and the swollen spleen, eventually I learned that I could eat almost anything without pain but there was something still off – occasionally my spleen would swell again and it took until earlier this year to find out what was doing it… mustard and soy. 

Now I am not on a free from diet anymore, but I have to avoid soy and mustard, or the spleen swells up again and my asthma has a bad day – unfortunately most of my favourite foods contain them, as I especially love mustard!  So suffering is a choice now – which I don’t choose often! 

Not a lot of people who are recently acquainted with me take me seriously about how much I understand nutrition and exercise since they’ve always known me to be this size.  But in actuality, I am really switched on, because I used to be very athletic and I can name in approximation the calorie worth and nutritional value of most foods.

But for some people they can’t understand that if you know all of this, then why did you allow yourself to get so fat?

Because if you live a certain lifestyle for too long, then you become ill where the physical aspect changes but not the food – you can see how this is easily done.  But people will be people and some people are morons and don’t use their head on this kind of stuff!

I remember a time where my doctor suggested my diet was too healthy, too low on salt, too low on fats and too low on calories, that I was blacking out three times a week on average and going into severe full bodied cramps.  Because of lack of electrolytes as I didn’t add salt to anything and I had a low fat diet which was mostly vegetable based.   I remember having to keep a food diary constantly and keep every nutrient in mind and I remember having to rush out to McDonalds at random times throughout the week to get the high fat, high salt and calorific food I needed because I didn’t have time or the wherewithal to eat a large meal, so I had to opt for big macs as a dietary supplement.  A weird contrast to my life now!

No, I do not miss it, because I didn’t enjoy having to do those things – what I do miss is the health and fitness I used to have and the energy I had as well as the body.

In the future, I am hoping to get all that back again, only this time I am going to be smarter, no big mac supplements anymore – I have a weight lifting professional friend who had the same problem, only she supplements the low salt problem not with crisps and salted fries or peanuts, like I did – but as adding rehydration salts to every bottle of water she drinks!

At the time I knew I was a protein type metabolism but I didn’t fully understand it as much as I do now and I never knew you could get really nice protein drinks to get what you need in per day.  I was literally trying to stuff down copious amounts of chicken and fish every day into my system – another thing which will change in the future.

You see, back in the good old days of when I was active, I was active alone and without a fitness network, so I was literally clueless and often had stomach ache and a bulimic reaction to the food I needed to eat.

You live, you learn.

Paul and I are still living together but we are separated, still he is trying to support me the best he can with the diet I need.  He has told me that our finances are better than we used to have as we are now being supplemented now he is retired, which means I can see the doctor more often and the diet can improve slightly.

In March my own personal finances will have doubled for me, which means I could also supplement myself too – so I should be losing the weight much faster soon.  I will get back on it all after Christmas, properly.  

Calorie, protein and nutritional monitoring that is, as well as signing up for the local gym classes!

My self-employment should be kicking off around March too, so hopefully I will earn enough to consider moving out of Paul’s by the end of summer, maybe – who know?  I can’t see me living alone to be honest, but there you go!

I don’t do New Years resolutions, so please don’t take all of this as that!

My second biggest dream right now is to rediscover my inner pride and vanity! 

When I was healthy and fit, there were a lot of people who said all I needed to do was dye my hair blond and get a Chihuahua and I’d be like Paris Hilton in my style!  I was offended, because what’s wrong with a brunette?  Though I like the idea of platinum hair! 

Though maybe they were just on about how much I love pink and fluffies? 

My first biggest ever dream I’ve had forever now, is to find someone who genuinely loves me and wants to keep me, build a family with me, push me to be the best that I can be and we motivate each other like live in life coaches!  Along with this the person has to tolerate that I can be suffocating with how I love them and hands on with them, because I am just like that!  I am like Elmira from Looney Tunes – but they also have to tolerate eccentricities, daydreams and creative pursuits as it’s all a huge part of who I am!  Please also, the person must understand I am very childish – I am overly playful and I am not too responsible really.  I am such a hedonist to be honest!

My third ever dream is not what you think it is either… nope… no, it’s not really anything to do with my stories or art – it’s having a great home and social life. 

The stories becoming movies is really a fourth dream… shock horror… I know!

I kind of kept that a secret as I kind of wore this with shame for a while – but I am starting to release the true me and I have to be honest with you as much as myself now, don’t I?

I feel bad admitting that actually.

I am still writing, don’t fret!  I am just not all that bothered in giving boring details about word count anymore, because nobody really cares enough to comment unless they are a troll who moans about how often I update word counts!

But meh – I always lacked structure anyway, I say I intend to write one novel but I end up writing a little towards twenty and so…. I am learning to become at peace with me and the way I am… so should you!

But project AD and the Easter project are the main focuses for me right now, even if I only write about twice a week on both of them – at least its progress!  You have to remember I have lots of other projects on the go too!

I know lots of people are eager to get their hands on project AD and this is why I am writing this as fast as I can, because I know there are a lot of people in waiting over it. 

I just got to get it out there anyway, because it’s a great story and I am very excited for it.  I am seeing merchandise in my head already; it will be a great new toy brand in my opinion as it is a dystopian comedy for kids.

But the Easter project is also gripping me a lot too with so many amazing ideas I am literally bursting to share them with someone but scared I’d shoot myself in the foot if I did!

So that’s what’s happening in my life right now.

Thanks for reading!

Henry, dreams & things

Celebrating the fact that Henry has had two full days at school this week!

It’s becoming a rarity, but I hope it’s going to change a bit – Henry has come home a little bit anxious because a new supply teacher was rude and apparently mean to him and several other children; but Henry is a lot like his mum, in that sometimes in stressful situations we forget the words but remember the actions, if you get me?  So Henry can’t relay exactly what was said.

Thankfully nothing came of this meningitis presumption – I am so happy and relieved about that!

Henry is at his youth club tonight for three hours, so I have plenty of time to get to write something today, I am going to do it, though I had only three hours sleep last night and I have big dark circles around my eyes that make me look like I have been in a fist fight with a kangaroo!

I am having a lot of weird and heavy dreams at night in the past few weeks, even in short sleeping bursts like last night.

Two days ago I had a dream about three candles being lit that were a brownish colour, that had red and white wax melting inside of it, which was weird and on one of the three candles were two rings – like non gem wedding and eternity rings. 

There was a hooded red figure discussing what to do with the candles and they were slightly frustrated but still patient with me, because I kept moving the candles around and blowing the flames out and relighting etc. 

There were other people at the table, just one man and one other woman; they all had their own candles.  The man found me amusing somewhat and tried to advise me a little, but the woman looked at me in disdain and thought I was an idiot.

I remember taking the rings off one of the candles and I was told not to do that yet, be patient – so I put them back.

I was a little tensed and confused in the dream and felt like a naughty hyperactive child and ended up trying to sit on my hands or twiddle my thumbs whilst sitting there clueless about what’s happening – the other two, seemed to know what was what, but I didn’t.

I woke up and did a tarot and oracle reading about what the dream meant and like a fool I didn’t consider it had anything to do with a new relationship or marriage – but my cards dropped a marriage card, a ring card, a love card, as well as a diamond in my usual 3 card reading – these cards dropped on the 3 I had already chosen and I thought that this was weirdly significant and related to each other too spookily well.  The oracle cards I used have 200 cards and are the Tea Leaf fortune cards, so to get all the indicators for marriage or new relationship like that was just so random and weird to me!

The three cards I pulled out in the normal manner were the firecracker card, the handshake card and the broom card. 

The meaning of the above according to this oracle is;

Firecracker = Excitement

Handshake = A meeting with a stranger could be important.

Broom = New home, new attitude

The other fallen cards just speak for themselves, its weird how mindless I can be during dream time and interpreting things – I suppose it’s because it was a dark room lit by candlelight and the rings didn’t look like jewellery to me, they looked like metallic black, if you get my drift?  A little darker than hematite. 

Last night’s dream was weirder and extra spooky because of events that took place when I woke up.

I dreamt I was at a ballroom again, this is a common dream I have, it is in the same building and room where I have those sorts of dreams and it isn’t a real place I’ve ever been to or seen on TV.

Like usual in those dreams I seem to have a completely different family to my physical real family, they’ve been in and out of dreams for years – it’s almost like I slip into a parallel world when I sleep at night.

Anyway in that dream I was wearing a golden dress with a sun like piece of jewellery just above the navel, it was hooked onto the dress like a brooch. 

I was just standing around when a gentleman comes over – the usual dream guy in fact, though this time he is slightly different facially, not much, but slightly showing some facial hair like he is growing a beard and moustache but it’s the early stages.  He had red decoration on his chest and wore his black suit; though it was different it was far more formal than usual.

He took me to a balcony and we talked a bit, then he went to my dream parents and they exchanged to him some black scarf or wide set ribbons, unsure what they were really and they placed them upon a staff – I think it was a staff anyway.

Then he came to me and we spent time together and then the scarves were tied like bangles around my wrist, it wasn’t bondage.  But in the dream people who saw us when we went back into the ballroom started to become excited and throw confetti or something like that at us.

It felt very similar to a private 121 hand fasting experience, if you understand me?

A sort of mini pagan wedding that hadn’t been officiated properly yet – this was like the first stage, I understood in the dream.

As I am writing this there is a weird pressure on my third eye – very odd.

Anyway, when I woke up I found lots of small pieces of torn up paper around the bed and on the bed, like someone had thrown confetti on me in the night, in fact it’s why I woke up – I felt a piece hit me on the head, but no one in the house was a awake to have done it, I checked.

All I know is as I woke up, I heard a voice say – quick, she’s stirring!

I’m either losing my marbles or things are stranger than I thought about this world!

It’s weird because traditionally scarves and ribbons in weddings are usually red in certain cultures, but these were definitely black.  What is weird is the guy had something red on him, but not sure what.

This is one of the reasons I didn’t sleep well last night – because when I woke up and went to the bathroom the house started to wake up around twenty minutes later and I decided to stay awake until I got dozy and had a two hour nap in the late morning.

It’s really eating away at me all these strange things – but at least those last two dreams were more pleasant than other dreams I’ve had this past month.

I have had awful dreams before them – Warning content needed here…

There was a baby I found that looked weak and ill and I wrapped it up in a blanket to look after it, the baby spoke to me and told me how I could find his mother and so I took him to her and she was working at a food van.  When I passed the baby to her, she snapped at me and said, put him on the counter there, I will sort him out later.  When I put the baby onto the counter he turned into a huge burrito and the lady grabbed the burrito, cut it in half and offered it back to me, which I declined!

Another one was a true out and out nightmare, I was escaping from some sort of prison and I managed to get out with the help of the dream guy.  But he needed to act as decoy to get someone away from me, but unfortunately whilst he was away my mother crept up behind me and cut out of my kidneys and ate it raw in front of me. 

When I woke up my back hurt a lot.

Loads of other dreams similar to these, but there is a horrible dream that keeps repeating lately and that is my rabbit Ray, being turned out into the garden in a small tight hutch and it falls into a muddy pond drowning him or there is a flash flood that sweeps him away.

Don’t know why I am having a lot of disturbing dreams late; usually dream time is a sanctuary.

I am worried about my lack of sleep, my light sleeps when I do sleep and the fact that lately I am struggling to eat more than 900 calories a day.  I’ve had two days in the past two weeks where I ate around 1400 but it’s much less than that recently and consistently.

I am getting pain whenever I eat anything bigger than half a sandwich which makes me stop eating a full meal.  I don’t eat breakfast and rarely have lunch, I have one or two snacks in a day, with a quarter of a plate for dinner if it’s a good day.

Paul is more than a little worried about it.

Yesterday was a goodish day, I had a tuna bagel with mayonnaise and chives and I had a ham & cheese salad sandwich and a packet of crisps for the whole day.  Unfortunately that’s too much gluten for my body, so my abdomen is a little swollen today, but it’s not painful.

Sometimes my chest gets bad the next day after I have more than a little of gluten and sometimes depends on how much gluten I have, my abdomen will swell like I’m pregnant or something, weird. 

It’s much worse with soy and mustard, because with those two my spleen swells as well as my abdomen and there is intense pain!

Right so, an hour into writing this, I have warmed up enough to get back onto my project AD for the evening, I still have an hour and twenty minutes before they come home approximately.

Thanks for reading!

Sickness and feng shui

Covid hit my Henry in the first week of April, then it hit me a few days later, because of this I have been functioning at zombie level, because not only did I have Covid at the time but I was recovering from a non-Covid chest infection and gastric flu – which coincidentally, happened again just a couple of days ago.  More gastric flu hit the house on Wednesday and apparently gastric flu is spiralling in and out of everybody’s lives a lot in the last few weeks or around here in any case.

Because of all of this, I haven’t written a word towards a novel since the 2^nd February 2022, ironic considering this was going to be my hardest working year in writing and I wanted to start as I meant to go on for the year.

I am exhausted but recovering slowly, my asthma seems much worse these days and my bronchial tubes seem to be permanently filmy and half opened, along with this it is also a bad hay fever allergy year for me.

Just existing is difficult these days, but I am trying to push through and though I have never been a huge coffee drinker, Covid has made me become one of the worlds many addicts as it seems to be one of the main things which is helping me through it all!

I don’t know if it is my neurological problem or Covid which has made this happen, but recently I am struggling to walk in a stable manner and I am finding it hard to sit up from a laying down position.  My legs feel like they have weights on them, however the weird thing about it is, it is as though I am walking on air at the same time, or that the ground has become marshmallowy.

My appetite has decreased further, where a simple dish of a small salmon fillet and half of a small a jacket potato with nothing else, is a feast to me!  This has meant, finding highly nutritious and varied foods on a small scale has become hard to manage.  I literally need micro-meals, I don’t mean microwave meals either, I mean small meals, miniscule for an adult, perfect for a 5yr old and I need to eat at stupid times.  I now regularly have to have a small meal at 10:30 pm just to get enough calories and nutrition in the day, which doesn’t help the insomnia.

A positive thing though, is I have discovered I am not actually lactose intolerant at all – I have found I have issues with gluten and lactose purely because those foods contained soy, since eliminating soy completely from my diet, I am now able to eat gluten and lactose again and let me tell you, its pure joy!  Though being a Chinese food addict means I can’t indulge in that anymore unless it is homemade and without soy!

I found out because twice I accidentally consumed things containing milk and then expected a bad night of gastric like proportions, but no, nothing happened.  Then I had another food which had milk and soy and I reacted, Paul thought that maybe it’s because I ran out of enzymes, but then we noticed that my lactase pills were not working for certain food items.  So I began a soy elimination diet, as suggested by a friend.

So I had been spending £18 a month needlessly on lactase pills, because it wasn’t a lactose problem at all, it was a soy one!

Despite being ill a lot this year, there is a noticeable improvement in other areas of my health, since going back onto lactose and gluten.  My skin and hair have improved a lot and a couple of other personal issues.

Henry is currently sick with very bad gastric flu and his fever broke earlier today, he had a temperature for so long that the doctor had said that on Saturday, if there was no improvement, he would have had to of been admitted, so there is a lot of relief there that the fever has now broken!

Because of all these health issues and so on, I decided that I should reconsider the house in a feng shui style, I knew certain aspects about feng shui, but not a lot, and I realised that things were better in certain years when furniture was in different places and worse when it was moved in other places.  Considering this, I read some books about what I did right back then, but was doing wrong now.  I found that there is a lot of blockages in areas that was good, particularly the health – which explains why we’re sick potentially.  The health centre of our house was established around the time I started to get sick eight years ago as a laundry pile area – not good feng shui, also we have small mirrors which we glued around each other so our reflections are always fragmented and cut up into bits, again not good feng shui!

Also I noticed that I moved dragon ornaments away from the places that they would like to be according to feng shui, we did better financially when a dragon and a tortoise was in the south west corner of the living room, but things have changed since I put them both in the south area of our bedroom!  Effectively moving them from the transformation area to the career area – career wise things may have improved as we are developing good contacts, though have not dedicated ourselves fully into creating a career just yet – so we will not move them back to the transformation area, but instead, move a spare dragon from another area to the transformation area and then move the tortoise out of the bathroom, which is a bad area to keep it according to the practise, especially as the bathroom is half in the health area!  Because our health centre is split into two rooms, which is unusual and complicated in Feng shui terms!

I love Chinese culture a lot, I believe a lot in the Chinese astrology and I do not like western astrology, I believe Chinese astrology to be more accurate in my life.  So, the idea of throwing me into Feng shui as well, I think, is a good idea!

My grandmother always said there was Chinese in my family, but I found out that she was slightly wrong about the nationality; they were actually Vietnamese and Singaporean ancestors, which kind of explain my so-called throwback eyes as some people call them (I actually think it’s kind of rude, but there you go).

 I would love nothing better than to move the furniture around again, but at the moment the family is sick and the areas I want to move would cause bad things to happen moreso this year, because those areas are all the areas of this year’s sha chi, which means if you move those areas outside of good construction days (according to chinese astrology) you will activate the bad energy there and make things much worse.  So we can’t make improvements until the 9^th of May or the 23^rd and 24^th of May, as per the household’s astrology signs.

I am a water dog, Henry is a metal tiger and Paul is a fire monkey!

Anyway, thank you for reading and maybe in the future there will be more about the feng shui as I learn more.

Mental health update 26th May 2021

The thing about mental illness is that it grabs you and sometimes even the sufferer doesn’t even know why or what caused them to cry at that precise moment.  I have been having times like this a lot over the last few weeks, but in the past couple of days in particular it has been really a big struggle.

For the first time in almost two years the suicidal thoughts have come back, but along with this is a reasoning thought, that if I were to try and commit suicide right now, I am likely to be saved and therefore my life would be worse to live in the aftermath because of whatever damage the attempt may have done to me, I would then have to live with along with everything I am trying to escape from.  I am already under scrutinised watch, because of my past breakdown a few years back, so it is quite probable, that I will be saved – whether I like it or not.

I am in the situation that I know why I feel this way, but I really don’t have anyone to talk to who is not going to be conflictive with me about those matters to talk it through with.  I am too deaf to use a telephone helpline and I don’t really have enough privacy to talk about matters online.  I barely have the privacy to type this here now.

Well, Paul knows how I feel, but he is painfully irritating with his responses and usually end up making me feel worse, he isn’t the sort of person you can rely on for too much emotional bolstering or betterment.  He knows I think this way about him, and yes, it does put a strain on our relationship – especially as I try and tell him that he shouldn’t feel emotionally responsible for me despite this.  But he always proclaims that he does anyway and how could he not? 

He is in denial of his own depression, I know this, because instead of trying to help me see the Brightside of life or help me take my mind off things, he is one of these people who will wallow with me and we both sit there in our pit of despair, talking ever deeper and concentrating ever more on the crap that’s in our lives – that’s not a place of healing.  Alternatively on his more positive days, as he does have them occasionally, he will talk to me about stupid dreams of “if we win the lottery” or “if we built our dream house”, those conversations helps him in his dark times, those dreams, but it just makes me a whole lot worse!  There are times and I am sure he knows it by the looks I give him, that when he talks of me of those big pie in the sky dreams, that I just want to take those dreams he talks about and shove them down his throat.  Because, who wants to be reminded of things that are unreachable when you are in a time of struggle?

My problems are not primarily financial, that is something he can’t get his head around, I think.

My main focus is the lack of love, the lack of attention, friendship and family.  I am also very sick and I am tired of that, I am tired of constant pain, constant illness and no one to sit there and snuggle with me for more than just five minutes a time, because no one has the time.  No one has the time for me.

I talk about this to Paul, but he is so exhausted all of the time and struggling with his own injuries and pain as he is my main carer and Henry’s main carer and the household carer, that when I do talk to him, within twenty minutes he has literally fallen asleep during our conversation and wakes up with a jerk when I probe him about it.

I know I am a selfish cuss, because he struggles to balance everything for me, but he really could help himself a lot more by communicating with people who are willing to help him, but he doesn’t.  He just plods along doing all of this and coping with all of this on his own and I do literally nothing.

He is 27yrs my senior, I am terrified of how I will live if he dies.  That’s how selfish I am.  I do love the fellow, I do, but I am shit scared of what will I do if he goes?

I can’t do a thing for myself these days, on an emotional and mental health level I could barely anyway, but now the body is falling apart, I can barely even cook for myself these days.

We have no one.  We only have two adult nephews who visit once or twice a year and that is all.  We have nobody, not even a reprieve of a friend who’ll come to tea anymore.  Not since I have got too sick to reciprocate and Covid has made socialising with professional’s non-existent now.

I am ultimately desperate for two things, to move out of this house into a house that is not riddled with rising damp and holes in the roof and the ceiling literally falling apart in some rooms and I am desperate for more love and attention, especially long snuggles!

Oh I could add a third, to have a decent allergen free diet on a consistent basis, not having 2 weeks of feast and 2 weeks of famine in every month, which is how we live now.  Well, I say we, Paul and Henry eat properly, I don’t, because I am the one with the intolerances.  Gluten, lactose and occasionally egg, flax, pineapple and a few others; Gluten free foods are fine if they don’t contain flax, but most do.  My body can’t cope with chocolate more than once a week either, or beef and my body can’t cope with a high fat diet, which makes things very difficult on a diet front these days.

When I went through a phase of anorexia as a teenager, I actually ate more then that I do on the famine weeks in the month and that scares Paul, but the doctors don’t batter an eyelid.  I am still overweight you see and I am nearly a woman in her 40s.  They don’t take the food problem seriously – if I had been 8 stone, maybe they would!

Yesterday all I had eaten up until 5:35pm (the time I am writing this post) is 1 slice of gluten toast (because we are struggling with finding decent gluten free locally in the past few weeks) and 3 slices of bacon.  Later I will have a cereal bowl size of tuna pasta with new potatoes and herbs; the pasta is at least gluten free.  Because of the toast today, it will mean tomorrow I will wake up coughing up phlegm for an hour and my asthma and blood pressure will be bad.  But I needed quick food; I was feeling light-headed, shivery and headachy.

The food wasn’t ideal and I feel sick since, but I was hungry.

Anyway, this is just another bad day for me and I needed to get it off my chest.

Maybe tomorrow will be different?

Defining self update May 2021

Since 2012 I had been trying to learn how to define myself – why?  Because I had such a suppressed, isolated and abused life before that time that I had never developed my true personality, likes and dislikes etc; because I was never allowed to be nurtured as an individual.  I was literally born to become a facsimile of my mother’s dreams and wishes and because her dreams and wishes went against a lot of my own instinctive nature, both of us were very unhappy with the result and neither of us got exactly what we wanted from my existence.

Where it was my nature to sit quietly, drawing, cutting & pasting, playing Barbie dolls and watching cartoons, it was my mother’s nature to force me to listen to pop music, watch top of the pops, worry about fashion, gossip and EastEnders and to try and teach me to give certain people Hell on Earth. 

When I was bullied by other children, it was my nature to ignore them, but confide in my mother and hope that she would try and help to advise me or complain to the parents or head teacher on the rare occasions I went to school; but instead she responded with the concept that I had to play dirty and hit them back or I was considered weak and therefore would only get bullied continuously.  There was a situation with my mother’s close friend, where her two children bullied me and pushed me off my own swing in my own back garden, I ran indoors crying and both my mother and their mother dragged me outside with a broom and told me to hit those kids as hard as I could or else I would get it instead.

Looking back I still can’t believe how both my mother, her friend and her children would sit back and laugh in recollection of that day, especially as I chose not to hit the kids with the broom and instead scarper upstairs as fast as I could and bolted my bedroom door up with my bed to stop any punishment of my supposed cowardice.  I stayed in my bedroom for the rest of the day, because I knew once my dad came home my mum couldn’t continue her plans, as dad had a sweet nature and wouldn’t allow it.  A trick I had learned to use for most of my life – hide till dad gets home.

I had to learn to be partly how she wanted me to be, as long as it didn’t go against my personal morals within reason.  I am glad to say, I have a higher standard of morals than she does.

The amount of times she had tried to train me to be violent, it had worked in some cases, but in others it only taught me how to literally close my emotions off at dangerous situations.  I easily phase out when there is a dangerous violent person around me ranting and raving and throwing things around, I go blank, close down, and become almost robotic.  It is something I have been told I need to alert the doctor about, but I won’t because I feel that they might try to think it would be helpful to keep me switched on.  A lot of people state that switching myself off emotionally during these times can be very dangerous, a sign that I could become a dangerous person, but I am by my very nature, quite passive unless provoked too much!

I just want a quiet life where I am loved, that’s all.  I want happy people who dislike drama and just want to get on in life, not bored, arrogant people who thrive on bullying and drama.  That’s not for me.  I don’t want that kind of attention.  I just want love, peace, getting on with my art, games, gardening and pets.  That’s all.  Boring I guess to a lot of people, but I would be very happy.

I am learning that a lot of things I thought I loved when I lived with my mother are actually things I was taught to love because she liked them.  Since moving away, on every context of my life, I am unrecognisable.  I don’t hold myself the same way anymore and I certainly don’t have the same voice anymore, strange I know, but even my voice has changed a lot!

There are a few things I wanted to be, do and have, when I lived with my mother, that I still want to be, do or have now; but not much of it. 

I still want to be a writer that gets her books published, but I understand that for now, it is best not to get published before Autumn of 2022, for certain personal reasons.

I still regard myself as bisexual, something that I have never been open about to any member of my blood family, due to stigma, my mother has a problem with gay people – she wouldn’t hurt them, but she is ridiculously avoidant of them and I have heard the kinds of things she says behind their backs!  The rest of the family are kind of open to homosexuality, but they are very Catholic too, so it is a stiff subject to rise with them.  Some of those family members will now most definitely know, because I know they read this blog.

Despite being sick, I have always wanted a homestead or a smallholding.  But I have to be realistic with what I can physically do, but I am trying hard to find a way in keeping to this dream, but working around the disabilities too.  I don’t have a big enough property yet, to do it, but I am researching a lot about chickens and food forest permaculture style gardening and that sort of thing.

I used to regard almost shamefully how much of a gamer I am, but these days I am starting to feel a part of a proud community of gamer nerds.  It is becoming cool to be a gamer nerd these days and it is a huge boost to my confidence about admitting to people my love for PC games in particular.

I also used to feel slightly ashamed at being a reader, because in my mother’s side of the family in particular, to be a reader, was regarded as weird as you admitting that you are a lifestyle Klingon who actively understands the whole of the Klingon dictionary!  Actually I know some Klingon words, an ex-online long-distance boyfriend of mine was a lifestyle Klingon who moved to USA and became pretty famous for it… so there you go!

I have always wanted to be a larper too, which is something that Paul has always wanted to be too, so we might do that together someday.

But there is a whole host of other stuff I never knew I liked before recently.  Really strange things that are even starting to raise Paul’s eyebrows in confusion as to…. Why is this interesting?  But I honestly can say, I don’t know why I am finding life of bacteria, soil health and microbiology so fascinating lately; as well as the entire lifecycle and habits of bees.  I also read a lot of books on cosmology and physics and this is puzzling to Paul because I can’t do math, don’t understand any of the maths involved in all of this and therefore only understand the non-mathematical parts of the stuff I am learning.  I have dyscalculia, it is dyslexia for math, and it has been confirmed professionally by the OU.

I have been thinking about joining SkillShare to see if there are videos that would help someone like me learn math to as high as I possibly can despite this problem.  But I won’t be able to afford that for a while, until the debts have been bought down a bit.

I don’t know why I want to learn math, especially as I don’t really plan to do anything with it, other than learn stuff I don’t really need to learn because I won’t have a career in microbiology any time soon.  But it is fun stuff the bits I do understand.

I am very geeky, I admit it.  But there you go.

Another thing my family will not recognise is my eating habits.  I don’t eat like how I used to because of medical reasons.  I can’t eat lactose (dairy) at all unless it is vegan, because my stomach can process it anymore.  I shouldn’t eat gluten (wheat) because it irritates my skin and asthma, but I do slip that in more than I should and I should avoid eating more than 2 eggs a week.  Because all of this can aggravate my problems; my main diet looks like this – 70% vegetables and the rest meat or fruit.  I have less than half a plate of my usual dinner size meal per day, for the whole day.  This is regarding what my mother would expect.  When I lived with my mother it was normal to consume 4500 calories per day – since cutting out a lot of the allergen foods and because of my illness, I can barely manage 1500 calories most days.  I am on high doses of most vitamins and minerals because I can’t process a lot of them.

My mother would think I am starving to death if she saw me eating 1 chicken fillet with a Mediterranean style salad and 2 roast potato halves, which is my usual meal and often only meal of the day.  Because I just can’t physically cope with more than that anymore.  Weirdly, I am just not losing weight, but I am losing inches.

Funnily enough doctors aren’t too worried about this because according to blood tests, my iron is the best levels they’ve ever been my whole life, lately!  I used to have constant anaemia when I lived with my mother and even was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease called pernicious anaemia too.  I have problems with B vitamins or something, which is now worse because of the lack of gluten in my diet, bread is rich in vitamin B, but I can’t have normal bread.

The new me is becoming very different to how I imagined I would be.  A lot of the things I thought were my deepest desires are now considered things I no longer want.  I wanted a large family, but because the cosmos has contrived to make my family as tiny as possible I have gave up fighting for it and no longer want any more children.  I never wanted to live in a rural area, I always wanted to be a suburban homesteader, but now I want to be as rural as I can get, whilst maintaining at least an hours journey from a major British city, London or Manchester.

I never wanted to become vegan, but I have to say, that my body is doing better with a plant based diet than not – though I am not giving up meat anytime soon, just yet.  But I am surprised that my diet is literally 75% plants, whereas before, it was around 20%

I am having a problem with sugar lately and I am finding candies less enjoyable than berries and vegan vanilla ice-cream.

All these are in my opinion are major changes.

I had very little respect for certain types of art and music and now I love them and will even fight for them.

I am becoming so very, very different; it is both exciting and scary!

I am shocked at who I am becoming.

Thank you for reading.

My lifestyle for food, skin and health (or what little there is of it)

A few people will be astounded to learn I am nearly forty as a few people believe that they think I am in my mid-twenties, I don’t look my age apparently.   Have been told by a lot of people that they believe me to be incredibly young, three or four years ago were the last time I tried to buy alcohol and was asked for ID because the seller felt I was seventeen, which wowed me.  Maybe he just fancied me?  But I have had straight female friends who are much younger than me have their mouths drop open when they realise I am fifteen years their senior.

I believe it has something to do with how I treat my skin and what I like to eat and drink.  I took Honour Blackman’s advice when she was on a show when I was around eleven years of age that she has never washed her face, she uses only moisturiser with some cotton which she dabs and never rubs.  I do indeed wash my face but never put soap on it ever, I wash with plain filtered water, hot first then ice cold, I do use a moisturiser about once a week which is Nivea crème, I use this crème on my face, elbows and knees, my elbows and knees are as smooth as a child’s.  I drink cranberry or raspberry juice twice a day, I drink a lot of water with very, very watered down fruit juice concentrates, I have never really been one for tea or coffee, I never grew up.  I drink around six pints of fluids a day if I am not having a bad day, on bad days my body can’t keep fluids down.  I drink green tea about three times a week and a hot honey and lemon most days.  I love berries and eat them daily, prunes, raisins, dates when I have sugar cravings.  Chicken and fish being my main meats with lamb once a week if I can afford it; lately lamb is a once a month treat.  I love pickles and sauerkraut and I aim to eat a whole cup full of green leafy vegetables per day.  My diet has to be gluten and lactose free because of intolerances which make my illnesses much worse, two years ago I was hospitalised with bronchitis only to find out that with other symptoms I had, I had severe intolerances and my health has improved vastly since shifting onto a free from diet.  I consider my diet to be a semi-paleo, Mediterranean and Asian diet these days.  I say semi-paleo because I like beans and pulses and I will eat gluten free rice, pasta, oats and potatoes, hard-core paleo dieters will slap my wrists for those.  Despite all of this I am very overweight still, though slowly losing the weight since the shift.  I am around forty pounds lighter than I was before the lifestyle change.

I will admit that temptations do set in and I often sneak in gluten and lactose into my diet with severe ramifications which affect me for three to five days after eating them, I have done this around once a month since the change.  I am getting tired of this and getting to the extent that if I don’t have enough fruit and vegetables in my day I actually feel really ill, so it has got to the extent that I need to eat around five pieces of vegetables and a fruit a day in order to feel relatively ok in comparison.  I am happy recently that I have found free from Paninis, hot dog rolls, burger buns, naans and tortillas which don’t take like cardboard, so the idea of becoming totally gluten free permanently is more doable.  I have found lactose free whipped cream and single cream, which also helps and the other day on TV I learned that Hotel Chocolat does lactose free options which is exciting, because I love truffles, which they do lactose free – I generally don’t like chocolate much though because it clogs my ears up sometimes, so chocolate is a once a month treat and it is usually only about three or four mouthfuls. 

I am impossible to cater for food wise because of my allergies.  I am intolerant to gluten and lactose, allergic to pineapple, flax/linseeds, camomile, thyme, shouldn’t really eat eggs as it gives me wind, should avoid binging on chocolate due to ear blockages, there is an unknown spice at the local take away which also causes my mouth to burn and swell, never knew what that was!  Beef can affect me in a bad way if I eat it more than once a week; I eat starchy foods but not too much because that affects my body too.  Certain candies can make me extremely hyperactive mentally and sometimes physically which can be dangerous when ill.  I am really difficult to cater for since discovering these allergies and reactions.  When explaining to a friend at Henry’s school a few months ago called Dee, she shook her head looked at me and asked “what do you eat”?  At the time I was good for seven months solid, without breaking my free from diet at all and I had 9 weeks of what I call, normal health, then I caught a cold and thought fuck it all!  I never did get that streak back.  Purely because the government cut our benefits by £200 a month, so the above diet I had is no longer possible!  At the time it was very strict, I only had gluten free products once a week to satisfy beans on toast cravings or ham and pickle sandwich cravings.  I still ate eggs a lot though, but it was a windy time.  I had health, but I stank, but that was OK for me, unless I was on a bumpy ride on a bus.  I ate fish, poultry and lamb, salads and vegetables, I made sauerkraut three times a week, I had lactose free cheese and omelettes with samphire and spinach.  It was tasty, but boring and predictive and being on benefits I can’t afford to eat as regularly as a normal person should.  I can’t afford it on a strict paleo diet, whether it benefits my health or not, I do not have the money for three prime optimum meals per day.  My doctor is concerned with the lack of certain vitamins my body isn’t having because of food cost.  In fact so much so, we’ve recently become members of a food bank, referred by my son’s young carers group.  They’ve recommended the only food I should buy is the food I need, the food for my son and Paul should come from the food bank.  It is a sorry arrangement, but something we can’t refuse at this stage. 

That’s my situation. 

It baffles me that I eat all these fruits and veg with a piece of meat or fish a day and yet I am still not getting enough nutrients.  I can’t afford nuts, I can’t afford to have meat more than once a day, I can’t afford, seeds, I can’t afford red meat, or canned fruit, or exotic fruits which are highest in vitamins.  I can’t afford avocados, or shrimps etc. 

What I can afford and have almost always in my kitchen available to me are chicken legs, cans of tuna, sweet potatoes, potatoes, gluten free pasta, gluten free rice, gluten free porridge, prunes, dates, apples, bananas, grapes, oranges, spinach, kale, carrots, peas, onions, ham for sandwiches, gluten free bread, sweet pickle (not entirely allergy free), mayonnaise, baked beans, parsnips and sweetcorn, swede and cod fillet.  That’s all we can afford for me.

I have eaten this diet and only this diet with the occasional food from Paul and Henry, such as crisps, biscuits and fish fingers (not allergen free) for about a year and it is sending me insane.

I could afford better food if my doctors were able to get a grip on many of my symptoms.  My illnesses dictate that I need tissues for my sinus problem and I need an average of 12 to 20 boxes a week just for the sinus and chest problem!  That is how much mucus I produce in a week, 20 boxes worth; I get no extra financial support for this.  I also need regular sprays for sore throat, Vaseline because my nose gets sore and dry, hay fever tablets because of my other allergies; I need approximately 12 to 20 painkillers a week.  I was told by my consultant that I need to have Canestan ear drops (as they do them as ear drops too) as often as possible but they said they won’t pay for more than a certain amount but you can buy them over the counter at £5 a week on average.  I need to have these drops all the time and I am not overusing them apparently, despite my fears.  Because my ears seem to have a permanent inner skin infection, which in layman’s terms means I have a permanent ear infection, try living with that!  Because of my digestive problems I was told to bulk up on specific vitamin pills which the NHS cannot provide, so again, I need vitamin C, calcium, for some reason kelp and zinc primarily and have been recommended to double doses per day.  I need a psoriasis medicated specific shampoo and body wash, again unavailable on the NHS and this costs me £12 a fortnight for the strength I need.

So when you look at all that, you can see how I can easily come into debt and cannot afford a better diet, whilst being on benefits.

If doctors got a handle on my symptoms I would instantly become £45 a week richer.  I was told recently that our local NHS is struggling to the extent they no longer do hearing aid repairs, so I was told to go to boots, so I guess I will be paying for that too?

Ho hum, there you go.