Becoming, Lucy

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  • I understand myself to death

    My goodness, my thoughts are a tangled web this week. Each thing has opened another door and I am officially exhausted of being a human with a nervous system.

    I don’t know where to begin. Nothing is an obvious starting point. Actually, maybe there is an obvious place because I don’t think most of what I have felt this week would’ve come up without it. I have started dating again…sort of. I have allowed a man into my direct messages and begun feeling things I haven’t felt in a really long time. When I say it has opened many doors in my brain, you have no idea. I’m here running round trying to close them all whilst my subconscious is laughing manically as I chase after it… prick.

    The issue is, I understand myself to death. And therefore I live in this cycle of feeling, analysing, understanding, feeling, until I’m left confused by what is ‘right’. Since when were emotions ‘correct’, Lucy? Trying to articulate all of this without rambling and just telling is extremely difficult – I’m too busy chasing my manic subconscious.

    Talking to someone again has helped me recognise that a part of me I thought was long gone, is still very much alive, it has just been in hibernation. I have this really fun, playful and flirty side that has been enjoying getting to know somebody again. I have felt excitement and hope… Things I didn’t think I’d get to experience again, at least not for a really long time. I have no idea why but my brain has this timeline that I wouldn’t be feeling any of this until I’m thirty-two. What the fuck? It has been lovely rediscovering that side of me though.

    However, it has also opened up another side of me… I don’t know how to date. I don’t know how to get to know someone. What is it supposed to look like? So alongside the excitement I have also felt: confusion, fear of liking someone, uncertainty about what to disclose, and dread of being rejected after becoming vulnerable.

    I can understand where a feeling comes from, I can understand why I feel that way and what I should do with the information going forward (to some extent) but I don’t know how to just feel it and stop revisiting it.

    With every feeling I experience, I have found myself questioning it – even the ‘positive’ ones. I put myself on trial, wondering whether it’s okay to feel that thing. Then I use it all as evidence that I have some sort of flaw: I’m too much, I feel too strongly, I have an anxious attachment style, I’m selfish, I’m being/feeling wrong, I’m not enough. It’s emotional whiplash. Can I not just feel an emotion and go ‘ok, cool. I recognise the feeling, it’s offering information, done’? No. Apparently I can’t.

    Understanding myself has become a requirement of accepting myself. I am constantly asking myself ‘am I allowed to feel this?’ I take every possible argument and try to justify a reason to feel or not feel it… EVEN THOUGH I AM ALREADY FEELING IT. There’s this disconnect between my brain and nervous system and sadly, it always leads me back to the thought that ‘I am wrong.’

    I observe everything happening inside myself so closely that I struggle to experience it without judgement. I use my own emotional self awareness as a reason to punish myself. It sucks so bad.

    And honestly? I find it fucking funny. I have spent months (and a lot of money – thanks therapy x) reconnecting with myself – trying to understand my needs, recognising my feelings, rediscovering my personality and now that I’m experiencing those things… I’m interrogating myself for experiencing it. Apparently I need a bloody permission slip for every emotion, woohoo!

    Still the wound is deeper than just putting myself on trial. I don’t trust myself to be myself even when somebody else might not approve. I ensure I judge myself harshly before anyone else can. I set myself up for disappointment, disapproval and rejection before they can. I try to make sure I cannot be misunderstood. I make sure that before I say something, I can argue every possible side so I can reject my own thoughts and feelings too if they do. If I understand everything about myself well enough, I can prevent myself from being hurt again.

    I know why I do it, I know why I act like the judge, jury and executioner of myself. I spent years having my thoughts dismissed. I have spent years being misunderstood and having to justify myself out loud, so much so that it has now become an internal monologue. So now I can control how I come across, I can control the lack of understanding, I can make myself smaller before someone else can… because fuck that feeling of being made to feel small, right? I want to be able to control their reaction to me.

    Understanding why I do something though doesn’t make it any easier to just exist without living in a constant state of trial of myself.

    None of it has actually protected me either. You don’t say?

    Understanding every possible outcome hasn’t stopped rejection. Criticising myself hasn’t stopped others from criticising me. And it certainly hasn’t stopped any of it from hurting any less. In fact… It has just made me feel everything before I needed to. I have felt rejection before someone has even rejected me – even if they don’t reject me. It seems I endeavour to hurt myself before anyone else can so I have the illusion I was the one who chose it. Fantastic x

    I don’t want to wrap this up in a neat little bow and pretend I’m going to change and stop analysing myself because then I would be a liar. But I can’t help but wonder if the reason I feel ‘wrong’ is because I make myself feel wrong even when no one is actively questioning me. I wonder if there is going to be a moment where I finally believe that I can be wrong about something or misunderstood and that doesn’t make me wrong as a person.

    Thank you for watching me spiral on the page. If you enjoyed it, subscribe for more chaos. If you didn’t, feel free to go away and think, “wtf was that?” 🙂

  • you don’t know me (on purpose)

    Anger has been running my life recently, and I have been trying to figure out why. Or rather, intellectualise the anger to try ‘fix’ it. I tried talking it out when I first noticed it (to myself – practical, I know), but I thought if I could explain why I was angry then maybe I’d just stop feeling angry. Genius, right?

    But of course, that didn’t work. I kept talking myself into circles which included a lot of ‘I don’t know’s’ and explaining – for some reason – that maybe it could be loneliness even though I am not actually lonely. I thought maybe I had found the trigger but until I actually understood why the trigger started a catastrophe, I stayed angry. No one likes to be angry and I especially don’t – it isn’t ‘natural’ to me (yeah, yeah, it’s a normal human emotion, blah blah). I had been doing good, really good in fact, then life and my wonderful ‘don’t give straight answers’ brain decided ‘good’ had been happening for too long.

    So I was a good little therapy goer, and stopped trying to figure out why I was angry; instead I listened to what my anger needed. Well… Haha, the list that came out of me was eye-opening. It showed me I was tired – mum burnout, but it also showed me that I was actually lonely. It showed me I had been alone inside my own head for a long time.

    I’m not lonely in the sense of ‘I need company’ but rather I lack a person or people that see and understand me. I also felt lacking in the department of feeling chosen and loved. The extensive list of things my anger needed to stop being anger brought to light that I am truly tired of carrying everything alone.

    There’s a problem though. A lovely contradiction. Contradictions are where I spend my life, did you know? I want to be known but when somebody could have an opportunity to know me, I retreat. I see it happening in real time too, that’s what makes it worse. I am consciously aware of not letting anyone see me. Because visibility gives people too much information to form an opinion of me, right? That’s what my lovely brain, and maybe even my heart, believe.

    It’s multiple things that hold me back from letting someone see it all. By all, I mean the thousands of threads pulling every single thought I have together, making them all interconnected. I don’t want someone to misunderstand because then I have to explain myself and I usually don’t have the words that make my ‘stuff’ make sense so then they get frustrated, I get frustrated and I end up wishing I never mentioned anything. Or worse, they don’t care to hear it… I could be met with a less than enthusiastic response. Or even worse, my thoughts could make them see me differently, resulting in them treating me differently. Or, (you still with me?), they could use it against me in the future.

    I am really good at shutting myself down before someone else can.

    I don’t want to show someone something, a part of me, and they suddenly decide I was never worth the effort in the first place.

    It’s a nice little recipe of reasons, right?

    Imagine desperately wanting someone to understand you, but being too terrified of what could happen if they do.

    Consequently, I am stuck in this state of partial visibility. I filter my thoughts – each one goes through a rigorous ‘Lucy quality check’ before they’re presented. The only thoughts that leave my brain are fully formed and intellectual. Because if someone doesn’t fully know me, they cannot fully reject me. I can dismiss their rejection. I can say to myself “well they never fully knew me anyway, so it doesn’t matter.” I find relief in making myself smaller before someone else can.

    I am stuck in a cycle that preserves the loneliness I was angry about.

    Which sucks.

    I can be okay with being by myself, with being alone but, unfortunately, I’m still human. I long for someone to choose me as their weird little life partner. Not even a life partner – I long for someone, a place, a relationship where I can just exhale and I don’t have to run my thoughts through a quality check.

    I really wish I could turn around and say the next person that gets the opportunity to really know me, I won’t filter myself or find a reason not to share but I can’t.

    This was never an optimistic blog anyway x

  • Who let me make life-changing decisions?

    I don’t think anyone under the age of 25 should be able to make life changing decisions.

    Hear me out before you jump either way. Sit on the fence. Get comfortable.

    Unfortunately, I was under 25 when I made most of my life changing decisions. I have lived as the girl making life altering decisions and the woman looking back at them just wanting to give younger me a hug.

    I moved out at 17 with my ex, I was responsible for bills at 18, I was pregnant at 20, I was in charge of a whole human two months before my 21st, then I experienced two miscarriages and fell pregnant with my youngest at 23. And in between all that are life-altering decisions like moving home, changing jobs (too many times), making a relationship work, choosing a damn car (why is that so hard?) and decisions around money. And not once did I feel like an adult during any of it. I felt like a fraud. A child playing dress up.

    But recently—finally—I have been having a lot more clarity on who I am as a person. I have been trusting myself and my own boundaries a lot more. As well as my capabilities as a woman living in this world and raising two young children alone. But with this clarity comes reflection on past decisions. With the reflection there is a lot of anger and sadness felt towards myself, the situations I was in, and sometimes even the other people involved.

    As I have dived deeper into my feelings surrounding different situations and things that I have made conscious choices on, I have realised the version of myself I am now feels unrecognisable to those Lucys when I was 16 – 25… There wasn’t just one Lucy back then, there was two. Present Lucy is the third.

    Before I continue, I really do want to reiterate that I am in no way saying any of my decisions were a mistake or that I regret some of the things I chose. I only wish I had the tools I have now.

    I think we should probably start at the end? (Or just anywhere, Luce, just start.) I had a therapy session a few weeks ago where I was talking about my relationship with my ex, how I stuck it out even when I knew it wasn’t working. I felt a lot of resentment towards myself because of it but that’s not actually what we were talking about. We were discussing what part of me was making those decisions to stay as long as I did. Was it the part of me that hoped for the future we had planned? Was it the part of me that thought love looked like that? Was it the part of me thinking that was as much as I deserved?

    I didn’t come to a clear answer. I know it isn’t as straightforward as picking one and saying ‘yep, that’s the answer’. But as part of our discussion we discussed the transactional analysis model (it’s a regular theme in my therapy). For anyone unfamiliar, this is a psychological theory used in therapy that refers to a person as having three ego-states: parent, adult and child. The ego-states are present in everyday interactions and situations, and decide how we react/behave. The ‘parent’ is where thoughts, behaviours and feelings are copied from our parents/authority figures. The ‘child’ is where we replay thoughts, feelings and behaviours from childhood. And the ‘adult’ is the one that’s present in situations but each state feeds information to the other.

    My therapist and I don’t stick aggressively to this model but it has helped me understand my thought process a lot better and recognise who/what is leading me. I keep referring to the woman that shows up when I’m being capable, setting boundaries and feeling sure of myself as the adult. And when I look back at my life between the ages of 16-25, I feel like all I see is the parent and child states leading my life.

    My parent-state had internalised this idea of what I thought love should look like and my child-state was simply seeking love and acceptance. But then I have to bring into question that maybe adult-state Lucy was making decisions based on who she was and what I valued.

    Because that’s the thing about the Transactional Analysis model — it isn’t saying that the adult is good and the parent and child are bad. Healthy functioning involves all three of them. Without all of those learned behaviours and feelings, the adult wouldn’t be able to make decisions or set boundaries and feel sure of them. Sometimes, of course, one state rules over the others or sways a decision one way because that feeling or thought process is stronger and more prominent than the others. So then I have to sit there with myself and think that I consciously made these decisions based on… what? My perception of love? My perception of myself?

    All of this to say I can’t be arsed anymore and just argue amongst yourselves x

    Anyway, during reflection I have of course spiralled into trying to find a straightforward answer (because why would I not?) and that has inevitably led to some questions about myself and where to place the blame. Which I know isn’t healthy. It’s not about blame, it’s about what I do with whatever comes up. There was a moment when I was trying to make myself believe that I wasn’t in charge of my own decisions so it sat better with me – that the parent and child ego-states led me. That the adult-state was sleeping and has been kept hidden away. But that isn’t true.

    I recognised my adult was making the decisions back then, but she wasn’t working with neutral information. I didn’t make decisions on positive beliefs about myself. I didn’t apply boundaries. I didn’t allow myself to receive anything better than what I thought I deserved. Which based on the information I had back then about myself, it makes sense as to why I stayed so long in a place where certain situations kept reinforcing these ideas about myself.

    The adult grows and learns with us. The adult makes decisions based on what it knows. Everything comes into play. Adult Lucy was there at 17. Adult Lucy was there at 20. Adult Lucy was there at 23. She was just working from completely different data.

    Which leads me to now. Why am I only learning these things about myself at twenty-fucking-six? Why am I only just learning how to fucking think when I’ve been doing adult shit for nearly a decade? It pisses me the hell off and that’s why one of my first thoughts was “who let me make life altering decisions before I knew myself?”

    Still, can we really put a timeline on when someone’s adult develops? Can we even determine that “yes, you know yourself well enough to make informed adult decisions.” I don’t think we can because we are learning and gathering information everyday and changing constantly.

    And I have just ended up doing one big circle and I want to cry with frustration. Brb x

    At the beginning I said there were three Lucys. I did that to reduce the blame on myself. And I was right to reduce the blame on myself but I shouldn’t have done that by splitting myself into three. I am one woman and each version of me made decisions based on what she knew. Of course I made some of the decisions I did. I wasn’t stupid. I just couldn’t make decisions based on what I hadn’t learned yet. 17-year-old me couldn’t set a boundary based on self-worth I hadn’t learned. 20-year-old me couldn’t use 26-year-olds me’s understanding of relationships. I only had myself. I only have myself now too. And I trust myself. I have to trust that I am unfinished and not hold anything against myself… Would I even have this knowledge now if I didn’t make a decision whilst I was still unfinished?

    So basically, I have spent the last 1000+ words telling you how being an adult works and that none of us have any fucking clue what we’re doing, no matter our age, no matter how much we know ourselves. That the woman writing this today will not be the same adult in 5, 10, 15 years. I will have changed many more times with each life lesson that gets thrown my way.

    Unfortunately, nobody has figured out how to live a life without making decisions before knowing how they’ll feel about them later.

    Unfortunately, that’s adulthood.

    Great. How fun x

  • On watch

    I think about cancer all the time. That I have it. That I deserve it. That I’m going to die slowly and painfully. That I’ll discover I have it and it’ll be too late to do anything to save me.

    I think about death all the time. What it would be like to be dead. What is after death. People close to me dying. What would happen, how I would react. 

    I like to think I’m prepared for any possibility. Even if it is morbid to everyone else. 

    I think because I’ve thought about ending it all multiple times when I was younger, it’s just something I’m comfortable with.

    We all know death is inevitable. 

    I don’t try to prevent it. If I have a thought like: “that wagon is going to lose control, drive off the road and straight into me on the path,” I don’t try fix it. I don’t make sure there are ways for me to get out the way. I accept it. 

    However, if I’m with my kids, friends, family, someone I care about, it’s different. Sometimes even a random stranger who I think could be in danger. I immediately jump to how I can protect them. How I would save them. How would I make sure they stay safe and it’s me that takes the harm.

    I think there’s a word for it. I’m sure there are probably lots of terms for the intrusive thoughts and thinking about death so much.

    And to clarify, I don’t think about killing myself. I haven’t had that thought for a really long time, thankfully. I just accept that I’m going to die and it’s peaceful. A surrendering. Although, I say I don’t think about ending it all but sometimes when I’m faced with a problem, my first thought is: “if I was dead, I wouldn’t have this problem.” That’s always an odd moment when my brain jumps to that extreme because the chicken is sticking to the pan. Jesus Christ, Lucy. It’s chicken.

    I’m not quite sure what I’m trying to say. I’m not quite sure why I’m writing about it. I’ve just been noticing it. Not noticing it, I knew I thought this way but I’ve been questioning it. Questioning why I think this way and what it could possibly mean.

    I’d love to say there is a straightforward answer; that I don’t think death is scary, which is completely normal for many people. I’d love to say that I know they’re only intrusive thoughts and they don’t linger, because they don’t once the moment has passed. But it feels so much more complex than that.

    Why does surrendering feel peaceful? Have I really spent so much of my life anticipating bad things, that accepting death in whatever form it comes, even if sudden, is peace to me? Even though I have kids and I’d do absolutely anything in my power to protect them and make sure they get through life okay?

    Why am I so determined to ensure everyone else’s survival but weirdly neutral about my own?

    When you grow up depressed, alone and genuinely believing you’d be better off dead, it becomes a daily thought. Sometimes more than daily… I think I made my brain believe that death is a completely acceptable outcome for myself and I shouldn’t do anything to fight it. Because at least someone would be helping me do the job I’ve always been too much of a coward to do… Or at least that’s what younger me might have said.

    Okay… That was some truth dumping. My brain has entered the chat. It’s picked up the suicidal ideation box from the corners of my mind and dumped the contents all over the floor.

    However, I don’t think it’s that someone would be helping me do the ‘job’ – not anymore. I don’t want to die. And I don’t believe I am a coward for not being able to complete the job. I am extremely fucking strong for surviving it.

    I don’t know how to word this next part. I’ve just taken a moment to sit and stare into space, dissociate for a moment and I saw the answers. Or rather one word, over and over.

    Unworthy.

    I do not think I am worthy and therefore I do not protect myself.

    Somewhere, somehow, I’ve decided I’m not worthy of living. Of surviving. Even though I already have. I’ve already survived so much. Why is my life worth so much less than those around me? Logically, I know it isn’t or… yeah, whatever. I don’t know what I’m trying to say and it makes me want to scream.

    Maybe unworthy isn’t the right word. I haven’t consciously decided my life is worth any less.

    It’s just… I consistently put my needs last. I consistently ensure everyone else is okay. I consistently forget about myself.

    I’ve spent so long and so much of my life ensuring that everyone around me is okay, that everyone around me is comfortable, that it has just become normal to put myself at the bottom of my list.

    I’ve spent so long being the protector that I’m always on high alert, watching for danger, ensuring no one gets hurt.

    Maybe I just spent so much of my life watching over those around me that I forgot I was also supposed to be watching over myself too.

    I don’t know how to switch off being ‘on watch’ all the time.

    And I don’t know what I would do if there was no one to watch over… Would I stay on high alert and continue to forget about myself?

    The intrusive thoughts don’t scare me. The fact I don’t think about saving myself does.

  • Blood and butterflies

    Clarity is a new concept to me.

    Maybe new isn’t the way to describe it but I registered it for the first time the other day,

    Things I had been worried about for quite sometime, something I was certain was giving me grey hairs – I gained clarity on. I didn’t realise I had gained clarity until I acted and then felt this relief.

    I registered my brain chemistry has changed. And I felt the impact. I felt myself able to make a decision and know it was exactly the right one. That what I was doing was right. That I was making the right decision.

    All sounds like bullshit though I’ll be honest.

    No. Not bullshit. I just don’t know why I’m talking about it. Maybe so I can document the moment that I found comfort in my own conscience, that I knew what I was doing.

    I’m not sure why I just called bullshit on myself in the first ten sentences.

    It’s not that clarity is bullshit. It’s not even what I was saying is bullshit. I have had clarity recently.

    It just feels wrong. I haven’t earned it. I am undeserving of it. I should now go out of my way to find more problems so I no longer feel changed.

    My brain chemistry has changed and my nervous system thinks I’m under attack. Or maybe it’s the other way around. I don’t know which way it is. I just know I feel underserving of clarity. Of changing. Of entering this new chapter where I shed old skin.

    Am I shedding old skin though? Or am I forever holding onto these things?

    Is that what the patterns on a butterfly are? Scars? Scars that make them beautiful? They wear them proudly. Show them off proudly.

    Beautiful things don’t carry beauty just because they have scars though. Structures change. They are built. Caterpillars become beautiful butterflies because they suffered through metamorphosis and did not allow the suffering to decide what they would become.

    Maybe I am emerging.

    Or maybe that’s just a hopeful part of me. Maybe that’s just me wishing I’ll have this big transformation and be able to bear my scars proudly. Rather than hide behind masks of who I think people want me to be.

    I don’t want to keep hiding behind masks.

    I want to let all my trauma seep out of me onto the floor. I want people to see the pain they caused. I want it to flood the ground they walk on. I want to let the rivers bleed red with my pain.

    That’s what I want. People to truly see the pain I carry. I’m angry that no one sees it. That to everyone, I’m just another depressed, helpless human.

    Well. I am not.

    I am a woman whose blood is written in stories of trauma. They are woven into my very essence. I want my blood to paint the ground as I release my trauma. I want the evidence to show.

    I want my blood to seep slow and constant out of my veins, to pool at my feet as I stand there facing everyone who has ever looked at me, ever been curious about me.

    My blood pools then begins to flow towards them in steady streams. The blood is deep red how it should be. But as more gathers, as the streams gain momentum and thickness – words seem to be written into the current of the red river.

    Words that speak of my trauma. Words that spill my story to everyone. I can see their horror form. I can see them feeling my pain.

    I will not cry. I will stand there, letting my blood pour and watch. They do not deserve to feel my suffering. But they will learn what it is like to feel this way.

    I will change their perspective.

    And thanks to absolutely no one else, I have shifted. I have transformed. I am who I am because of my trauma. I am still fucking nice. I am still a decent human being.

    Fuck all of them that etched scars into my skin and altered my DNA.

    I’ve sat for five minutes and now I’m not sure what to do with the fact that I’ve suddenly felt anger like that and now it’s gone. Just note it and move on?

    “Great. We’ve released something else, now go do something mundane. Drink your coffee.”

    My brain wants to sit and dissect it. I want to analyse why that happened, where it came from. I want to understand it until it’s as clear as counting to ten.

    But I’m not sure where to begin. I mean I know I don’t have to dissect it but I’d love to understand it.

    Maybe it’s just a purging of all the anger I’ve never allowed myself to feel.

    If you could see me right now, you’d laugh at how much I’m huffing and puffing. I was talking about clarity and then I ended up ranting about blood and butterflies. Maybe next time I’ll start talking about how the moon and stars are also a picture of my suffering. Maybe anything is a picture of my suffering if I let it be.

  • The safety of my sickness

    I had a dream that my sister turned into a gorilla and rubbed her chest hairs proudly.

    My dreams have been WILD lately. I wake up from them absolutely baffled and I keep waking up in the middle of the night completely confused. I don’t remember all of them, just bits and pieces and the confusion I’m left with when I wake.

    I’m not sure why I am telling you about my weird dreams.

    I keep thinking about dating.

    But I’m not a fling person. I’m not a situationship person. I’m not a friends with benefits person. When I’m in, I’m in for the long run. And I don’t think I’m ready to meet someone who could give me that yet.

    That’s a partial lie.

    I don’t believe anyone will want to give me that.

    Who is going to want a twenty-six year-old single mum? I feel like a baby still.

    Who is going to want someone who has no idea what they’re doing with their life?

    I have dreams but I’m here doing fuck all about any of them.

    I’m still here trying to heal.

    I want to be weird again. But I want to be weird with someone.

    I want to have someone. Everyone has someone.

    My therapist would probably say I have friends – my best friend and at least three other friends.

    But they all have someone else. I mean my best friend has two other best friends (she’s a traitorous bitch (no offence to her other best friends)).

    I don’t know. I just know I have no one.

    I think I’m supposed to be alone now. I don’t know why but I can feel it inside me. That I’m supposed to be alone until I’m thirty-two. That I have six years ahead of me doing this solo, doing life alone.

    Maybe that’s restrictive. Maybe that’s protecting myself. Maybe that’s me trying to protect myself from making connections. Maybe that’s me saying I have six years of healing to do first from the first twenty-six years of my life.

    I have so much love to give… I’m not prepared to give myself to someone again. I want to make sure the foundations of me are set before I lose myself to someone again.

    It all just sounds like bullshit. Almost as though I’m trying to convince myself of it as well as you.

    Ignoring all the other stuff shoved into boxes.

    I want to be noticed but not perceived. I don’t want to be made to feel not enough again. I don’t want to be too much for someone.

    These thoughts they consume me. They suffocate me. They’re not just in my brain but written into my blood, my bones, into every particle that makes me, me. I can feel them wrap around me like a blanket… Covered in steel spikes. Puncturing my ribs, my chest – my eyes too, until I’m blinded by my own sickness.

    There’s no escape.

    And I don’t fight. I don’t panic. I just let them press down. I don’t even cry.

    I keep telling myself that that is healing. That sitting with my thoughts is healing. That not shoving them into boxes is healing. But I’m not convinced. In fact, I know it isn’t. But I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how I’m supposed to look healing.

    And I don’t want to hear someone say “everyone’s healing looks different” – kindly fuck off.

    Give me an instruction manual or something. Give me a finish line. Tell me when the sickness will have extracted itself from my body.

    Scratch that.

    Tell me how to remove the sickness from myself and I’ll do it. I am the surgeon of myself – just tell me where to place the scalpel so I can bleed.

    Should I cry more? Should I be angrier? Should I smile more until I believe the smile is real and not practiced?

    Just someone fucking hand me the instructions and I’ll get it done.

    But will I?

    I’m convinced I like it here in the safety of my sickness. I’m convinced I won’t like myself if I remove the sickness hurting me, suffocating me.

    I think maybe I’m holding that spike-covered blanket down. That it isn’t that heavy. That I’m okay with living with puncture wounds because without them… I have no concept of who I am.

    But then why do I want it to stop?

    Nothing makes sense. Nothing is clear.

    The sickness blinds me.

  • It’s costing me, me.

    Healing is a load of bullshit.

    Apparently you have to unpack something that hurt you deeply. Something you stored in a box and refused to look at. Then replay each detail with forensic precision.

    You open the box and carry it around for weeks, all while not feeling like yourself. You overreact, withdraw, make decisions you wouldn’t normally and question every part of your personality. Then some annoying fucker comes around and calls it ‘healing’ because you’re finally feeling.

    Bullshit.

    What about all the friendships that suffer because I don’t feel like myself? What about the days I’m impossible to live with? Or the guilt of becoming someone I don’t even recognise?

    No one says it gets so much worse before it gets better. No one warns you that paying someone to listen to your boring life cracks you open – they just say ‘therapy healed me.’

    Fuck off.

    Does it even get better?

    I’m not even angry… I’m sad. And I’m hiding behind anger because I’m tired. I’m so tired of finding things out about myself.

    Those ‘things’ by the way? Good things. But they don’t fit this image I have of myself, so my nervous system is just in a constant state of fight or flight.

    I don’t even know what I’m trying to write about.

    I hate that I can’t just accept the things I’ve learned about myself… Especially when I KNOW the things about myself already, but they don’t fit the core identity I have of myself. Does that make any sense? Probably not.

    Maybe I am angry because I just want to scream. Oh my days, an intellect actually having a somatic response? Should probably message my therapist and let him know so I can get his praise. Pathetic.

    If I accept the things I’m learning about myself – if my nervous system allows them to click into place, lets them slot into my identity blocks – then I have to grieve everything else… I have to grieve who I thought I was. I have to feel the shame of accepting things I would’ve never allowed, had I believed these things about myself from the beginning.

    I am already living with so much shame. It’s a shadow that won’t give me a moments peace, poking and prodding at me, over and over. I don’t have a single thought that isn’t followed by my brain going ‘remember when?’

    Why is everything related? Well… No. That’s a silly question. What I mean is why does my whole life have to reflect the identity I have of myself?

    Maybe this is why everything in my life feels wrong. Maybe this is why I believe I am the thing that is wrong with everything in my life. Maybe this is why I believe I’m following a script that was never mine to begin with… Because the identity I have of myself never sat right.

    Still want to scream.

    I don’t hate healing… I just hate what it’s costing me.

    It’s costing me friendships. I don’t have the energy to reply to anyone. To be a good friend and check in. Then I hate myself for it. I hate myself for disappearing. Even though if it was any of my friends in my position, I’d tell them to give themselves grace, to give themselves time. But I can’t seem to give that same grace to myself.

    It’s costing me these early years with my kids. I’m not being the parent I wish I could be. I’m here. I’m reading the stories. I’m cuddling on the sofa. I’m playing games. I’m hearing their laughter. But I’m not really there. I’m somewhere else trying to rearrange my entire nervous system. And I hate myself for it.

    All this hate…

    It’s costing me, me.

  • I miss being witnessed

    I miss being witnessed

    I have a confession.

    I think I’ve become bitter.

    I can’t stand seeing happy couples. Families. Fathers present with their kids. I have to look away. Or I catch myself staring, feeling resentment for strangers.

    And I’ll admit, I have been hesitant to write this piece, even with it constantly on my mind, because it’s an ugly truth that I have to admit about myself.

    But I’m noticing the resentment too much, too often to not address it… To not dissect it. The final nail in the coffin was witnessing a random couple about my age come into the coffee shop I was sat in. They seemed happy and I saw myself in her for some reason. I found myself having thoughts like ‘I hate her for what she has’.

    That isn’t me at all. I’m not a hateful person. Those thoughts terrified me. So I knew I had to stop putting this off and figure it out.

    I don’t want people to lose what they have. I don’t want people to be unhappy. I want people to find their loves and spend forever and a day with them.

    But why does it hurt so much to witness?

    I think I’m scared. Scared that I’ll never find love again. That no one will want me again. That I’m too much or not enough. I’m scared I was never loveable in the first place.

    But I also think I’m grieving too. Not the relationship – but who I was in the relationship. My role was clear: a partner, a safe place, a friend, a routine, a home. I miss being chosen. I miss being witnessed by another adult. Now that I no longer have someone else to build a life with, I’m not sure who I am.

    The only role I have left is being ‘mummy’. But even that gets taken away from me sometimes.

    The boys went for their first weekend at their dad’s recently and I spiralled quickly – astonishingly so. Within two hours I was lost. I didn’t know what to do with myself. There was no bedtime routine, no planning for tomorrow. so I took myself for a walk (I did have to ask my best friend first if going for a walk after 6pm is a normal activity people do), I went to the shop so I had a ‘reason’. The walk there was fine, the walk back… not so much. I got into my own head – convinced myself that without the boys I am nothing, I am no one, I am just a shell – whilst I walked along the canal.

    But it was okay, before I could get to the extra dark thoughts, two people came up behind me and scared the living shit out of me (I had my headphones on). They were just running right next to me half way through my thought of ‘what is the poi–‘ “SHIT!” They got a good giggle from me shouting shit at them whilst they continued running, and I was just standing there having heart palpitations (yes, I saw you have to stop running from laughing so hard if you see this). I did apologise for shouting ‘shit’ in their faces too (only because the man looked mortified), but they had no idea they had just stopped one of the darkest spirals I’ve had in months. They dragged me back to the real world.

    It has become evidently clearer as time has gone on that I don’t know who I am or what my purpose is. I envy the collective of people who believe we don’t have a purpose as humans and that frees us from trying to fulfil a destiny or live a life we think was made for us. But as much as I want to believe that humans are just humans and live freely from the shackles of life, I can’t.

    I need a reason.

    Whether that’s the people pleaser in me or the anxiety-ridden woman clinging onto something – hope, maybe – I don’t know.

    The spiral did surprise me when it arrived, not because it was the first time the questions of purpose had arisen, but because I thought I was part of the collective that was happy just living as a human with no destiny or some wild prophecy to fulfil. When I had a free day previously, I had thought about my purpose but I had felt relief rather than panic. I could breathe for a moment, I could just be present. That moment was freeing… So why a week later did I spiral into loss of purpose and identity?

    I think that is exactly what it is – a loss of identity. Although I have done work to figure out who I am away from the boys – I’m still not convinced I’m on the right track. I still believe I am a scam, that everything I think is fake and not my actual thoughts. It’s funny I can think my ‘positive’ thoughts about myself are a scam but I can’t think my ‘negative’ thoughts are fake… lol.

    I feel like a shell playing a part I didn’t realise I was scripted for… Does that make any sense?

    I am not quite sure how I have ended up here, I thought I was writing about relationships and how I have suddenly begun to hate people. Apparently not.

    I wrote about hope… I think secretly I do have hope of being loved again – it’s just buried under a lot of grief and loss of identity at the moment. But I know it’s there because I keep making up little false realities in my brain. The glances to the single dad on the school run that seem to be shared, or maybe just my imagination, the sexual tension between me and the builder working across from where I drop my youngest off at nursery.

    There is something so fun and innocent about having a crush. I’m not ready to commit to someone again, I’m still surviving my life – I’m still learning how to live it – but crushing and coming up with fake little scenarios in my head is one of the things keeping me going at the moment… Hope.

    I’ve somehow gone in one massive circle from bitterness, to relationships, to grief, to purpose and identity to talking about damn crushes…

    I think this is just my journey into discovering who I am away from no longer having another adult to witness my becoming, no longer having someone to share those moments with.

    I am discovering what it means to be me after the future I had planned went up in flames.

  • Where survival ends and I begin

    Where survival ends and I begin

    Is it normal to know you’re suppressing your emotions and being unable to stop?

    I know when I’m intellectualising. I know when I’m masking. I know when I’m making myself smaller and staying quiet.

    I almost understand why.

    So why can’t I stop? They say awareness is the first step… Yet I feel like I’ve been stood at this checkpoint for a lifetime.

    I feel lost. Or rather I’m unable to name my emotions. 

    I have this static in my chest but I can’t seem to tune into the frequency. 

    I can’t name what is going on inside me. It all feels a bit much. Something I can’t understand. I think it’s a complex mix of emotions and there are so many, I can’t get my head around them. 

    Maybe my issue is I’m trying to understand them. I’m using my brain rather than actually feeling. 

    I’m good at that, throwing understanding at them. Because if I can understand, I can fix it, right?

    I’m still trying to figure out if I learned that behaviour – to understand rather than feel – part of me wants to say it’s just who I am. Because I am one of those people that always asks ‘why?’ Whether it’s about how we were made, someone’s opinion, or my own emotions; it doesn’t matter what it is, I will ask why because I am endlessly curious.

    Though, I think I may be using curiosity as an excuse for myself. But I resent that idea because curiosity has allowed me to wonder – it has led me into rabbit holes about many topics as well as helping me understand people with compassion rather than judgement.

    However, there is another part of me that wonders if asking why I feel a certain way is a behaviour I learned. There is definitely evidence to suggest it was. Therapy helps but it doesn’t ease my own self-blame. Somewhere along the way, I stopped using curiosity as a form of connection and started using it as a form of armour.

    I do know, emotions aren’t there to be fixed. They’re there to be felt and to help us understand ourselves and what boundary has been crossed. At least the ‘negative’ ones are. I think. Yet even with all this ’emotional intelligence’, I don’t know how to feel. I’ve had a lot of emotional awakenings (yes, that’s what I’m calling them) recently. 

    I’m unsure if I’m numb or content because I suppressed my ‘negative’ emotions for so long that my nervous system also suppressed the ‘positive’ ones. 

    I don’t know how to show or talk about my emotions because I’ve always felt guilty and a burden for doing so to someone else. 

    A friend reminded me that humans were never meant to do life alone. We are naturally ‘social’ beings. We prefer a tribe. We need a tribe. Biologically speaking. And I know this. I know I’m not meant to hold it all alone. But I’ve been tuned out of my own emotions for so long that I have no idea how to express them. Everything ends in tears. And those tears feel like a failure. 

    I’m so conscious of everything I do. I know when I’m intellectualising. I know when I suppress. I know when I stay quiet. I know when I’m masking. So why can’t I turn any of it off? 

    Is it because I don’t feel safe? Am I too scared? Do I not know how? 

    Surely if I know I’m doing something, I should be able to just stop? Because I end up hating myself for it, for not stopping. 

    I’m so fed up of it all. Of myself. 

    I’ve spent forever and a day trying to fix myself. I’ve been the patient whilst also being the surgeon to myself and trying to fix everything ‘wrong’ with me.

    And it has cost me. Being the surgeon of my own self has cost me my own trust. I cannot trust myself to be able to feel safely. I can’t trust myself to not stay in the pits of despair, grief, sadness, and anger. I can’t trust myself to be able to accept comfort. To be able to be seen.

    The surgeon made sure I knew how to dissect a feeling, but I can no longer dance with one; whether it’s a positive or negative feeling. Show me joy and I will be unable to feel it, instead I will analyse it and figure out why I feel that joy, and then why I should not feel it. If I was told to simply feel it, feel the joy, I would be lost.

    I’m trying so hard not to be the surgeon any longer but I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to just feel it all. I don’t know how to just lay there and accept I’m in pain. 

    My brain really said, “survive, survive, survive.” 

    There is fear behind it all. If I was to stop being the surgeon for just a moment, if I put down the scalpel, and allowed myself to soften… What would be left? What would remain of me? Would I cry sooner? Would I still listen to the same music? Would I be able to feel everything without drowning? Without the highs feeling like the highest highs and lows feeling like the lowest lows?

    I’ve lived in survival for so long that I don’t know where survival ends and I begin.

    Maybe it isn’t about stopping the surgeon completely. Maybe I just need to ask the surgical part of me to slow down. I need to allow myself to witness the emotion.

    I tried sitting with myself. I tried just feeling. I put my hand on my chest, I tried to say what I was feeling but I physically recoiled. I threw my hand away, I felt sick and made my hands busy instead. 

    It was uncomfortable. And that’s a really horrible thing to admit. I’m that incapable of feeling.

    What? No.

    I’m afraid of feeling.

    I can’t feel anything until the weight is too much, until the dam breaks and the tears fall. Until I’m suffocating on my own air. On my own emotions. 

    But I didn’t run. I have to remind myself of that. Sure, I couldn’t allow myself to feel the emotion, to name it. But I fidgeted and felt uncomfortable for another 10-30 seconds and then I picked up my phone and begun writing this into my notes app. I poured this out. 

    And sure, I’m still trying to be the surgeon. I’m still sat here trying to fix it, to understand, to apply logic and maybe even find excuses (or is that guilt talking?). 

    But I’m learning. Something. I’m not sure what I’m learning. But it is something. 

    I think. I hope.

  • Silence isn’t easier

    Silence isn’t easier

    Lonely.

    Loneliness makes me believe I am not worth knowing, that my thoughts aren’t worth hearing, that I should stay quiet, that I shouldn’t rely on someone, that my silence is easier.

    And I can’t write anything because I just have this block in my head that says no one – not even myself- wants to read about the same shit again.

    I can’t even write for myself.

    I am just very alone right now. I miss having that person I could share every random thought with. Someone I could excitedly tell about my new weekly interest with. Everyone seems to have someone. And even when they don’t, they find other ways to interact with people.

    But how do I do that when I’m so introverted? I see people comment on strangers social posts and all I can think is, ‘wow, i wish i could share my thoughts.’

    Every thought that crosses my mind… I don’t believe it is worth hearing, reading… No one wants that. No one cares. And maybe that’s what someone would say to make me feel better, that no one cares so just speak your mind. But I want someone to care. I want someone to speak to me. I want someone to ask me more, to converse back.

    And I don’t know what the hell I’m trying to say or what the point of it all is.

    I’ve had more breakdowns this week than I care to admit. I’m finding it all very fucking hard.

    I just listen and listen and listen… I keep everything in.

    I listen to friends, to family, to people I love. I say I hear them, I understand, that they’re not alone. Instead of turning round and reciprocating their openness, I keep mine in. I don’t want to burden them. And I don’t want to be rejected. Or made to feel small or whatever, so I make sure I’m not put into a situation where that could happen.

    I don’t know the last time I felt heard. And that isn’t to blame anyone… But I just make sure I don’t share. I don’t know when I became the person who listens and doesn’t share. I avoid it all. I avoid the rejection. Because in my mind, I don’t care if it says more about them if they can’t hold space for me than it does about me. In my mind, the worst thing is the rejection.

    I remember the last time I reached for recognition. I stopped myself just before I could become too much of a burden. I reached out, said I was struggling then not even a minute later, I was saying ‘yeah, I’ll be fine, thank you for listening.’ They didn’t really listen because I didn’t give them chance to, I just cried on the phone and then abruptly stopped before I could say anything else. I physically felt the recoil in my body. I felt the walls slam down.

    Is it repetition or am I just living a wound everyday, every hour, minute, second? Maybe I’m just checking if anyone is listening yet.

    Maybe that’s why I put this all online. To see if anyone is listening. A cry for help. Or rather, recognition. I hate how alone I am. I hate that I stop my thoughts before I can get them out. I don’t know what to say or to think.

    Usually I can just write but it’s like my brain has decided I have a whole audience watching and not a single person is impressed. I try stop myself before I say something mean to myself, but it’s really hard. I try stop myself before I end up here, crying, alone, hurting but it’s getting harder, not easier. I wish it was easier.

    I wish I was able to do this whole thing easily. No one really speaks honestly about the ugliness. They mention it, but they don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about how suffocating it is. How dark and gloomy it is. How it’s like a stormy summer day – the air thick, warm, suffocating, and the skies are dark and gloomy, a constant reminder of the heaviness. It’s a storm cloud you can’t shake.

    But I don’t know how to shake it. I don’t know how to release the storm cloud. And I keep telling myself this isn’t a cry for help, that I do just want recognition, that I want to hear someone say ‘I see you. I understand’ but part of me fears that wouldn’t be enough. I’m not sure I know what recognition actually looks like. And the more I think about it, I wonder if it’s even recognition I crave but rather just someone intrigued enough to go ‘yep, same. Shall we talk about whether dragons were ever real now?’

    But I can’t get that conversation until I actually allow someone to start seeing pieces of me. I don’t know what I’m protecting by staying quiet. Myself, yes. But what? Because staying quiet seems to just be hurting me more. I’ve silenced myself before anyone else can, simply because I don’t want to be rejected.

    And I’m not sure I know how to speak about my pain anymore. I mean look above – how many ‘I don’t know’s’ are there? A lot. I’ve spent so long silencing myself that I don’t think I even know how to let myself be seen.