When you suddenly realise the blindingly obvious...

Another one from the archives.  This is five years old, but still a defining moment of pain I'll never forget.


"Good pain good pain good pain good pain"

This was my mantra while I was birthing my sons, and experiencing the most intense physical pain I have ever been in.  This week, I've discovered an emotional pain so raw and intense that it left me quite literally sleepless, hungerless, tasteless and thoughtless.  It took my breath away that in all that I've experienced in life, I had never quite felt grief and sadness like this.  I also discovered that it was possible to sit with this pain...to live with it, and experience it, and learn from it.  Most importantly, to learn from it...that it could become "good pain".

It took this catalyst to give me the impetus and courage to finally see what people had been trying to tell me for years.  I finally had that "clunk" moment, where it all fell into place.

You see, I have "abandonment issues", as those psychoanalytical people like to call them.  More simply, I'm perpetually paranoid that the people who are important to me, will bugger off on me.  In fact, the more important they are to me, the more paranoid I am about this.  Again, the psychoanalytical people can give you nice history on why this occurs - that I didn't have proper stable attachment figures as a child, that I never formed proper adult relationships based on true love and respect, that I have never learned to be happy with my own self etc., etc., etc.  The most damaging part of this, was that I was driven by this nagging fear, to be seeking constant reassurance from those around me that they were still there, that they would continue to be there, that everything was OK.  Ad nauseum.

My Dad, bless his cotton socks, has been trying to tell me for years "the thing is, you push people too much - you're always trying to get too close to people, too fast.  Slow down!".  I didn't get it.  I mean, I vaguely got it, in the abstract...but I didn't really get it until this week.  By constantly running around trying to ensure people weren't going to run off on me, I was chasing them so hard that...you guessed it, they had no choice but to run off on me.  I was fulfilling my own fears by trying to fix relationships that weren't even broken in the first place.

And I was so driven to do this, because the idea of being alone was so terrifying to me, I'd do anything to ensure that I wasn't.  I subjugated my whole "self" to those relationships - wanting to do anything, be anything, give up anything, to ensure that they continued.  Which meant that the genuine people, who had initially been attracted to me for me, found that the person they liked, was no longer there.  And therefore I fell into relationships with people who were more than happy to take advantage of my compliant nature, and developed a nasty habit losing myself.

This week, I finally realised, in that "truth has melded with mind" sort of way, what it truly means;

...that you have to love yourself, before you can properly love another
...that the only people worth having in your life, are those who want you, for YOU

Terrifying Drop

Terrifying Drop

It's true to say I fall in love
I don't sink comfortably into it
Or step, carefully, deliberately
Into all consuming passion.

I watch and it seems to me
You're different, it isn't the same
You exultantly throw yourself off the edge
Thrilled by the wind in your face
Happily seeking every opportunity to discover
If she's the one

While I am skittering, desperately clutching
Slipping, falling, terrified of every inch
Even as I crave the cool waterfall below
I'm fighting, fighting so hard not to fall

How can I step off if I don't know you'll catch me?
It's only in seeing that every time I slip, there you are
To pick me up and dust me off
A hundred little opportunities to see that you mean it
That you're here and you're real and
I can count on you

And every time you catch me
My grip is a little looser
My struggle a little less
I glance into the ravine below and think that
Maybe

Maybe soon
I can jump off the cliff after you

Restart

"I wanna wake up, I wanna restart...put the drumbeat back in my heart"

~ Remedy Drive, Heartbeat

It feels like a lifetime ago that I began this blog and yet now in my forays back into dating I've started to remember why this was such a big part of my life at the beginning.  And maybe the fact that it hasn't been lately says that there was something missing.

I started writing here because I was going through an intense period of emotional and spiritual growth.  I was a new Christian.  I was newly divorced.  I was discovering myself and the world around me in a myriad of new ways.  Then I was heartbroken.  Then I got remarried and life here on the blog stopped for a while.  Then I was heartbroken again and the grief and pain was just too raw, too exhausting and too much.  And I couldn't write.

Now I'm waking up to myself again.  I feel like there's once again forward momentum in my life, that there's growth and adventure.  And so the urge to write is rising again.

Expect to see more in this space...

Struggling to be a human that continues being

This is not at all easy to write, but I think it's time.  As some of you may know, I have struggled with clinical depression off and on for all of my adult life.  I'm also going through an incredibly tough season personally this year.

The combination of these two factors currently has me in the downhill slope of a Major Depressive Episode (what happens to clinically depressed people when we become very unwell).

Suicidal Immortal

As the waves of grief threaten to crash upon my shores
However unbearable that looming pressure is
I will endure forever more.

I stand here broken and yet somehow in tact
Unbelievably believing that this tsunami of pain
Will, even as it sweeps me up, smashes me again and again
Not shake my core, my resolve
It will not take my life.

For though I am battered
I am bruised
I am broken
Pain sears seemingly endless flames around me
I will endure because above it all
I am a mother.

Nailed It!

I love doing my nails.  It's something that makes me feel "pretty" no matter how I'm currently feeling about my body.  What I don't love about it is the expense of some of the more "fancy" nail stuff.

Fear no more, nail loving peeps.  I have discovered an awesome use for the waterslide decal paper I have left over from Baker Boy and my wedding craft - CUSTOM NAIL DECALS.  You can pick this stuff up for around $1.00 - $2.00 per sheet online, which is enough for about 10-15 manicures if you put a decal on every nail.

Super super easy steps:
- Turn on BBC's Torchwood.  I find doing my nails in front of TV helps me go slow enough to not wreck what I'm doing.
- Print out decal designs.  Optimally, these are around 1cm square for my nails - YMMV.
- Coat the printed area in a single layer of your clear/top coat polish, NOT spray acrylic
- Wait for that to dry.
- While waiting, paint nails with an opaque, light coloured base (I chose two coats of OPI's french white,topped with a thin layer of their french pink)
- Cut out your decals, soak in water and apply to nail surface as you would normally apply to glass, ceramic, etc.

- Let the decals dry and set on your nails until the episode ends for at least 10 - 20 minutes.  

- Apply another layer of top coat and let it dry until the next Torchwood episode ends for at least 10 minutes.
- Think how much MORE awesome this would look if you were one of those people who can apply base coat without also covering your cuticles.
- Look at your nails and demand that your spouse tell you what a flipping genius you are.

You can happily gang these on a sheet and print off quite a few in advance if you like, for future manicures.  Be aware that using decal paper, what you end up with is inkjet printing on a CLEAR sheet, so whatever base is on your nails, needs to be something light to really make your design pop.

Circling your head, Contemplating everything you ever said

I have had recently both horrible writer's block, and a desperate need to lay digital pen to paper.  I'm trapped in the confines of what I feel to be a community and societal pressure to be almost perpetually positive, eternally tough and always "bright sided".  And inside...inside, a silent scream to be heard, to be really seen.  Because I'm not feeling positive.  Or tough.  Or even, very bright at the moment.

Yet, I'm stuck in a paralyzing grid of rules and expectations that I can barely navigate any longer.  Surrounded...alone.  I crave friendship, a chat, a kind word...for others to look in on me, pick up the phone or make the first move.  I can't ask, it seems, because that's attention seeking.  Desperate.  An emotional drain.

If I tell you how I'm really feeling, that I cry myself to sleep at least 3 nights a week, that my long suffering husband cares but can't be my lover, my friend and my community all in one package...if I tell you that the weight of scraping the bottom of our pockets to feed ourselves each week leaves me feeling like the worst failure as a parent...as a breadwinner...as a human being.  If I'm raw and honest and tell you that I really just want to have friends who talk, not just text, who tell me personally before publicly...that's demanding and petty, and selfish, and high maintenance.  You "whinge" too much.  Why don't you have an "attitude of gratitude".  Be positive.

So somehow I find the mask and I slip on my rubber smile.  I Facebook my new job, and how thrilled I am...neglecting to mention how bittersweet it is because my husband is still unemployed and how unfair that I can find a new job while still employed at the old one, and he is desperate to work, but can't.  I make lots of positive noises about how it's a good thing we haven't fallen pregnant straight away because it gives me time to settle into new my job...and stay silent about the pain of knowing that it's not for lack of trying, that we have been told that but for God's grace, we won't conceive naturally.  I'm tired of the knowing looks, the judgement and cynicism about Baker Boy's unemployment.  If you have all given up on him, then God knows why you feel surprised that he struggles not to.

And I'm tired.  I'm exhausted, pretending that it's OK, pretending I'm OK.  Pretending I don't care that I feel so alone surrounded by people, crushed by the weight of expectation and the pressure not to need real connections.  So I sit...paralyzed.  I have no idea what to do, where to turn or how to climb my way out...all I know is that writing this down, and letting it out...you'll probably think it's wrong.  Maybe it is.

But maybe isn't, maybe it's time to be real and stop dying to politely distant perfection.