Step Away from the telly..phone..www..

I thought that I was a  ‘ feeling ‘  kind of person,   emotional ,  honest, passionate & transparent.   But I am not.   I realised this week ,   that like some of my fellows in our Group Therapy ,  I hide away ,   I block things,   I use earthly things (food mainly)  to fill the void that I am often  unaware of.   My mother’s pending diagnosis of dementia,  my daughters all encompassing anxiety ,  my son’s wild ways:   all taken in my stride,   all seemingly handled well and with the confidence of a therapist who helps other people to do the same with their lives.   Except ,  I am not heeding my own advice.    Sit with the feelings,   stay with the unknown,  be aware of the strategies you do to avoid the feelings ,  talk to the people you love about the way you feel ,  take to group therapy the difficulties you have with yourself .  I feel like I am  this robust , well – rounded character    and in many ways,  I am ,    but within that ,  I also need to allow myself to accept my blind side.    The side that finds it difficult to tell my mum I love her,    that yearns for her son to love her with intensity ,  that wants to control my daughter’s destiny & thinks she knows best with her husband all the time.   I have struggled to concentrate this week,    I read this book recently  called   ” Breaking up with your phone “  .    I felt euphoric,   like I had discovered the answer to all my ills,  that my phone was eviscerating  my very self,    yet ,  this week,  with a fractured ankle and plenty of time to rest and re- read  Eckart Tolle ,   I end up ,  endless scrolling through fucking Facebook     (on line , as I at least deleted the APP) and reading shite articles ,  that I hadn’t chosen or sought out for myself.     I could feel my consciousness screaming at me ,  let me out ,    your EGO is trying to smother me !    I keep getting little snippets of goodness,   OH I want to go blog,  journal ,   draw , meditate … But NO ,  I ‘ll lay here mindlessly a bit longer watching shit.     Yesterday ,  I watched ,   for no reason whatsoever ,  the old classic ”  Midnight Express “ .     I love Prison films..      Shawshank Redemption is my all time favourite film.    It must be the breaking free that I love!    Well tonight , I am breaking free,   I am writing ,   I have put down my phone,   now I am going to read.  I am not turning the telly on.    Although I do feel tempted now to watch my favourite film again! LOL.  I haven’t seen the end of it for years,  as It’s always on so late and I am never prepared to sacrifice my precious sleep.

Well haven’t I warbled on in a good fashion?       Since I am on a crusade to only do things for me , I am not going to edit this post,  to make sure it is  liked ,  loved or   funnier.  I am just letting it be me.

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What holes are we trying to fill and how is the only question?

My OH and I have just been to see  ” A Star is Born ”  , the re-make with Cooper and Gaga.

As film watchers we are reasonably easily pleased,  certainly my husband can just about enjoy any film ,  but we loved this and my OH really loved it.  It was just so raw and real.    Cooper’s depiction of an alcoholic was extraordinary ,  addiction is such a powerful thing & the film pulled you in on strings designed to touch the wounded parts of your soul.

Addiction ravages people.  Some addictions like alcoholism can maybe feel more glamorous than say  heroin ,  certainly Cooper was a loveable drunk ,  many aren’t.    My father was an alcoholic.    Far removed from the likes of Cooper,  he was quiet ,  secretive and very functional.   He did come alive when he had a drink ,   his serious subdued nature was put aside when the whiskey flamed his spirit ,   he was quite the gregarious one!  Alcohol controlled his life in a very unobtusive way , almost unnoticeable in fact.   But as I reflect on my father,   I feel his sadness.  I feel the hole that he was trying to fill.   There are so many wounded souls on this earth,  in many ways ,  we are all wounded . What holes are we trying to fill and how is the only question?

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It’s a full moon..

Music soothes my soul.

Prosecco does a good job too.

 

I have never felt like killing myself . Ever.

My husband sent me a message today saying that for the first time in his life,  he felt like killing himself.   He’s nearly 60.   I have never felt like killing myself . Ever.   But perhaps one day ,   there will be a time when it just all feels like too much effort.

I work with people who cope with thoughts like this on a daily basis.   Imagine thinking about wanting to die at least once a day?

Anyway,  some TLC is needed for my OH,  he’s facing his 60th ,  he has to commute at least 3 hours every day & he hates his job.  He said today ,  that he thought he was a man who could pretty much deal with anything and just get on with life.   He sounded beaten.   Addiction,  debt,   old shame and trauma, grief & low self esteem , job dissatisfaction , separation , loss of youth ,  must contribute to most peoples’ lives in some way ,  tainting our ability to grow and experience joy.   But when these sorts of issues come tumbling out the crisp  November sky  it can floor  even the hardest Scotsman.    I wanted to tell him that I have booked a surprise trip to Prague for his birthday in February ,   I knew this would cheer him up ,  but I so want to keep it till the last minute for full effect,  so I kept my tongue.   But ,  living in the now.   I said to him,    we have a house,  warm bed,   we can credit card some presents ,  it’s not the end of the world.

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.. I doubt I will ever do a 5 day week again.

I work a 3 day week.   I came home tonight , feeling like I had just started the week and it’s already finished ,  work wise anyway.    Part of me feels lazy &  spoilt  ,  but mostly I feel relief.  Even though it has flown by since Monday ,  it is fully jam packed and I am exhausted.    The thought of perhaps  adding another day into my world of work is on my mind,   solely for financial reasons.   Well , I say solely,  I do feel pressure from my OH to earn more money.   He sees my part time status as indulgent ,  he is older than me and feels that he should be the one who is stepping down from life.  He feels envy.     I believe all mothers should work part time where possible.    I do most things in our family ,   this is my own doing,  taking responsibility for all of it , but it is still a fact.   I do a full time job with a home , 2 kids  a dog and an anxiety ridden mother.   Then there is my 3 day a week side job.  That’s my take on it.   I may go up to 4 days …   But I doubt I will ever do a 5 day week again.  Life’s too precious and money is overrated.

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How long can a soul trudge the earth being busy before it will crumble up and die?

Letting go of the past is quite difficult I am finding.   What I have learnt in the last week is that I seek to be important to people.  I search for my identity in others’ lives.

I am learning to let go of my need to be noticed , my need to be useful ,   to be somebody .       Because all it is is my need.   Yesterday a colleague said  that everybody on the planet  seeks out things to do  ,    something to achieve ,  busyness  ;       in order  to stop themselves having to feel .    There is a huge disparity in how much and what people do  to distract themselves ,   in some lives it is unnoticeable and in  others it causes utter dysfunction.

So what happens,   when we stop the wheel from turning and just sit ,    sit and feel?

I am learning to do this and it’s quite enlightening ,  how much you learn about yourself when you listen !  Listen to the whispers of your soul ,   tune into what your feelings are saying.   Underneath all that noise  ,   all that stuff ,   is you ,   yearning to have a voice in your life?

How long can a soul trudge the earth being busy before it will crumble up and die?

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A demanding little girl !

How do you know when you are being an idiot and when you are just being who you are?   Which might well be an idiot!

Does being an arsehole come with a set of guidelines?

I think I am paranoid;  overthinking ,  too easily concerned with what others think about me ,    but sometimes ,  I do wonder,   well ,  maybe I am just an arsehole?

As the rain buckets down outside on this mild British winter Saturday eve  and I nurse a slight headache still ,  from too much prosecco  ,  after celebrating my 43rd birthday last night .  I sit and wonder why , at this grand old age ,  do I still get bombarded with thoughts and ideas that something I said or did ,  would have  offended someone,  or made them like me less.  And then similarly berate myself for being bothered about the fact that they might!

I don’t know.   They say people with ADHD are given 20,000 more negative messages by the time they are 12 than the average person.   I think ,  as a child I was always pissing people off,  either with my ‘bull in  china shop’ approach,  my clumsiness or  my lack of impulse control or adversely  ,  my naturally empathic character which just got too involved in things ,   felt too hard,  loved too hard,  cried too hard.

I remember when I was around 7 or 8 ,   I would sit in my bed ,   and scream ,    scream blue murder for my father to come up and kiss me goodnight.   He would sit stoically downstairs ignoring me ,  I don’t know why he did this,  whether it is just one memory of one night but I sense that it was more common.    I think ,  he just couldn’t handle the intensity of this demanding little girl who just had a relentlessness to her.   He didn’t know how to love me,  so he froze.

I really reach out to my childhood self in those moments.  She was desperate for something .   My father loved me ,  adored me   ,  I was his only daughter ,  but like a lot of men from that era,   he came from a home devoid of emotion .   And there was I ,   emotional to the core.

I think that is what gets me now,   I am highly strung    (so an old boyfriend once said) ,   I laugh loud,   I cry noisily ; allowing tears to stream down my face ,   I dance with utter disregard for appropriateness and have had addictions with pretty much most things throughout my life.  ..   .    And so when I let myself just be me,   I suffer with doubt and shame .    I fight it , don’t get me wrong.  I am good at fighting it.    I fight to be me and often win –  but lately ,   I have been Me,  a lot.    I came back after a long period of conformity   and it seems that conforming held some boundaries for me.   It kept me safe.      But it was just restraining the natural me ,  it wasn’t changing her.

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Lead me to the light.. it’s dark in here.

My head is frazzled.   The weekend has been long and hectic,  the stress that I feel because of the drama in my life is palpable .   My head aches and twists in pain.

I want to escape my mind.   Escape the constant overthinking and catastophising.  I want some peace.   It feels like the days are long and the nights are peppered with uneasy dreams ,   oddly light states of sleep which bring no rest for the mind.  That strange place   which titters between wakefulness and the land of dreams.   Where one does not quite know if one is asleep but cannot enter that blissful state of deep subconscious .

My body aches to feel held by the tides of effortless being.   Longs to know the answers ,  how to surrender to the inevitable pathways of my existence.    Where do I sit in this story ,  what is my role.    What am I meant to do .  Who am I meant to be?

I am so tired. Tired of trying. Trying so very hard to get it right.   Why can’t someone take over.   Look after things ,   be the organiser,  the doer ,  the lead ,  the anchor.   Because I am falling down ,  like Alice down the rabbit hole ,  the blackness beckons.

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~Letting go of our ‘ boys’ ~

My son is 17 years old today.

He’s obnoxious , ungrateful  & entitled .

He’s also funny, affectionate & bold.

How did it happen that I am a mother to someone who is 17?    I blinked and I was 42.   Being 17 feels so long ago to me.    Time is such a funny thing,   it feels like age ago that I gave birth ,   I don’t recognise myself from that time anymore,     yet  our lives shadowed in the fall of eternity are just a tiny speck of dust in the universe.

There was a time that I may have been pricked with anxiety or unhappiness that he would be disappointed with his gifts,  or the amount of money that he received ,   that he would somehow love me less.   I am glad that this insecurity has left my heart,   it crept in a little this morning and I admonished myself,   his entitlement is pretty ugly ,  he needs to learn some thankfulness and humility ,    so a little bit of disappointment might be just what he needs.   What we give would never be enough to sate his ferocious appetite for stuff  .    How did it get so?

Today I relinquish a little bit of my hold on him,   on my own attachment to him.   On my propensity to still hold him hostage to being a child .    I will try to do this less.    From now on I pledge ,  he can make his own mistakes &   get  his own self out of bed.    If he’s late or doesn’t go to college then he can get a job and start giving me pocket money!

That is all I have to say about that.