It’s been a while

I’ve been through a lot since my relationship ended last year in November. Ups and downs. Some bad decisions, but I feel more good decisions have been made then bad.

Out of loneliness and desperation for social contact, I did hang around with some less then desirable people and made bad choices. Took drugs that I regret ever trying. I don’t feel I ever got to a point of being reliant or addicted, as I feel it was more being around the drug and people who had a dependency on it and simply partaking out of boredom and just being around those people. I never really cared for it and can happily live without it and those people and the stresses that their lives involved. I was mostly using it as a distraction from my unhappy feelings. It was most definitely an unhealthy coping mechanism. Trying to runaway from my reality, instead of facing it head on and making the changes I needed to, to make my life better. Certainly I do not think people who take such a drug are bad people, but they tend to be, from my observation, very stuck, hurting people, who generally have traumas and issues that they haven’t resolved and rather then actually doing the right thing for themselves and working through their traumas and issues, they choose to numb it and block it out with drugs. This, as we all know, never fixes anything. This is always a temporary solution and never serves to improve their lives and then due to their addiction, they do end up make bad choices and becoming pretty shitty in how they behave and treat others, out of desperation to feed their addiction. It’s really bloody sad. I am quite empathetic and I see their pain, but I don’t accept their excuses. I can empathize with how their trauma is a constant struggle to live with, but still, you are the author of your life and only you can rewrite your story and that there is power. A power that I wish these people would embrace.

All you can do is say, “hey, I see you. I see your pain. I see how much it hurts, I see how hard you struggle. But you can do better and be better and you have these skillsets and you can make something of your life and you know that”. No-one will ever change until they are ready. All you can do is let them know someone believes in them, that they are important and people do care and leave it at that. You can’t hang around to see if they make these changes, as due to their addiction, they will sadly use you, manipulate you and play on your sympathies to feed their addiction.

That’s as much time as I’m willing to devote to that subject. I’m done with that drug and those people and my life is better for it.

I was so sick of living a life of regret and shame. I hated hurting people I love when I was weak. I hated that I lied and only thought about myself at times, in the context of making selfish choices that did not serve my growth and I couldn’t be the best me.

I am SO lucky for the few great people I have in my life. I keep my circle small for a reason. Only people who want the best for me I allow to stay in my life. I am thankful to my Mum for being there and loving me, even when I couldn’t love myself. For supporting me and advocating for me when I was depressed and suicidal last year and the mental health sector didn’t offer me any help. I am so thankful she kept pushing until someone would hear me and offer me the support I desperately needed. I am thankful for my friend Lindsay, even though he didn’t always know what to say, what he had to say was supportive and caring and just even if all he could do was listen, that was huge to me. I am thankful for my oldest daughter Sophie telling me some hard truths and pulling me up on being kind of shit Mum during the Xmas holidays and not being there for her. She was blunt, but I love that she was and I needed her to tell me straight how that effected her. It really helped me. Yeah, no doubt it was very hard to hear. As it hurt and I hurt her and failed her when I couldn’t be present. As I was not coping after my break up and I just couldn’t be present and be the parent she needed. I am thankful to my ex, who is still my friend and I think he will always be my best friend, despite everything. Because we have been each others best friend for 5 years and we are used to sharing our lives, triumphs and struggles with each other. And I Love him no doubt. It hurts me so much when I know he is hurting because of me. He’s been my biggest supporter in life and been with me through so much. The best and the worst and he still stayed loyal and by my side, loving me through it all. But I wasn’t always the team player and partner he needed and I was detrimental to his mental health at times, due to my unresolved issues. So I respect he needed to leave and put that time and distance between us, to look after himself and ultimately it forced me to look after myself and find myself and start to heal my life. I do want a life with him and I hope in the future we can have that. We do both care for each other deeply and love each other. But because of my last slip up with drugs on my birthday, his guard is up and his trust towards me is shaken. So that will take time to rebuild. But I appreciate that he texts with me every day and we chat on the phone several times a week. He is irreplaceable. No one has captured my heart like him. No-one gets me like he does and he’s just a beautiful soul, so kindhearted and a real man. He softened my hardened heart.

I’ve had to sever contact with his parents, as they don’t agree I should be in his life in any capacity. I do understand based on the past me, that they have their reservations. But people can and do change. But I can’t allow myself to care so much what they think and about their approval, as the last interaction I had with his father, left me feeling enraged, hopeless and suicidal and rather then allow his father to throw anything more at me that had such a negative response by me, I did what was best for me and cut off contact. If you have followed my blog and read many of my previous posts about myself, you may recall I have quite an issue with seeking approval of parents, especially fathers. I think fathers, because I lost my own father at an early age, so I tend to crave that acceptance more.

I am a lot stronger then I realized. That I am still standing and persevering despite such a long struggle with depression is awesome. The end of last year was so hard for me. Living by myself has been very hard and yeah, there was a period of bad decisions because of loneliness. My brief time on Tinder, I thought it was about sex, but when I really looked at myself, it was loneliness and not respecting myself and not loving myself and not caring about myself. It was so much deeper, that behaviour, then what it seemed. Truth, once I got over my self destructive tendencies, I realized I don’t even care about sex, unless it’s in a relationship and with someone I love. It doesn’t feel good, it lacks substance and depth. I feel some females can tend to keep sex very separate from feelings at times. This is evidenced in how females can tend to move on sexually or otherwise quite fast. We can be a bit ruthless to be honest. Men, despite many misconceptions have more depth and emotional connections related to sex. Interesting, because there’s always been this perception that women are the more emotional sex. Hmm, don’t fully agree. It’s just more socially acceptable for us to have and show emotions. I feel the opposite is true. I feel men are the more emotional sex. But it is less accepted as appropriate for them to show emotion by society. Yes, there is more acceptance of this, but still we have a long way to go. I feel women really are given way too much leeway and they get away with so much that they shouldn’t. We are taught from a young age in fact, to be less then honest and how to manipulate and in fact how to use our sexuality to get our way in certain situations. Whereas men are taught to be honest, loyal, truthful and to make their family proud. They are taught to be hardworking, nurturing, protective and they have a huge weight of expectations on them by society and family. I accept I’m a female and it is what it is, but I am not proud of what little is honestly expected of us. I mean come on, really?! Why do we get bought up with such questionable values?! Why didn’t we get bought up to be honest, loyal, truthful, hardworking and protective?…. Like in this world of equality, this is fucked! Granted, there are likely some women who may have been bought up in a less morally questionable way, but I’m not one of them and every female I have known so far, accept maybe one, was bought up much the same as me. And just let me say, I think men do deserve to get paid more with regards to certain careers. This isn’t about sexism though, it’s about certain tasks they can better perform then women and I’m not saying there aren’t possibly women who could do some of those tasks, it’s possible, but this is why the higher pay is justified.

On to another subject. Stoicism and Philosophy. Both bloody awesome subjects! I’ve been listening to a lot of audiobooks on Stoics, Stoicism and Philosophers and Philosophy and it’s very insightful and relevant and can definitely be used to better our lives. Markus Aurelius, Socrates, Seneca, Epictetus. I have come to discover a lot of modern Psychology has a lot of basis and inspiration from Philosophy and Stoicism, especially CBT.

So, what else have I been upto lately. Well, self improvement, studying for my Class 2 license and Forklift License. Trying to get a full time job. Eating well and looking after my mind, body and soul. Living a life I can be proud of. I can’t remember if I have mentioned my annoying diet restrictions. Annoyingly I am Gluten Intolerant, Lactose Intolerant and Egg Intolerant. Makes eating healthy on a small budget so damn difficult! You go to the supermarket and have to really look and not be impulsive. That not being impulsive with foods has been a hard one to work with. As I love sweet, bad things, but my body WILL punish me if I eat bad foods 😦

I’m feeling a lot happier these days and have more energy and motivation. Dropping the antidepressants seems to have helped with that. Though I do still have dreams that are intense and sometimes emotionally charged or distressing. But I’ve come to accept that might just be because dreams are the brains way of resolving issues, whether current or past. Having to just use your own strength to deal with your many varying and intense emotions without the aid of antidepressants just shows how strong you really are. But damn! It is not the easiest task to sit with those intense emotions, especially the desire to self harm or any suicidal thoughts, when you don’t have the off switch or balancing influence of antidepressants. But look, I am still here and I’ve not self harmed and I’m still living my life and finding hope.

It used to feel like I had this lifelong sentence with BPD. I feel the essence of my issues with regards to BPD was the shifting self identity and now that I have a more solid sense of self and feel assured of who ‘I’ am, I am feeling more at ease, more contented and less of a lost cause. I feel so much more hope for myself and the future. It sux when you lose yourself and just can’t work out where you fit in this world. Finding that renewed sense of self is a beautiful, powerful thing.

Right, I’m happy with that level of sharing and also, just past midnight and I need to sleep. Thanks to anyone following my blog and reading it. I appreciate it and appreciate you. I hope what I share helps others feel less alone in this messed up world. Knowing you aren’t the only one going through what you’re going through is reassuring and makes life, with it’s ups and downs and various struggles, that little bit easier just knowing you aren’t alone in your struggles. Hence why I blog and I encourage others to blog. This started as an outlet just for me and then became about just being real in hopes that others might draw inspiration from knowing they aren’t alone and being at the very least, comforted by that. I do my best not to filter myself, as I want to be as real as possible about my ups and downs.

2020 & so on

So clearly I haven’t blogged for quite some time. I am still having the same roadblocks that tend to stop me from blogging. Those being, too anxious to let myself stop and take the time to blog, as I do tend to have many things to blog about, so lack of content would not be the issue. The whole lack of motivation in general. I used to not let my depression deter me from blogging, as this was always a great outlet for me. But now, thinking about it, I did blog more when I was with my ex, because I was way less happy and so unsatisfied in that relationship. Not to mention, I felt like I was heard, but not listened to and the communication was lacking big time. So I guess what has changed is that I now have a partner who hears me, who listens to me, who communicates with me. Though sometimes I feel like a bit of a relationship retard (forgive the use of that word) and like I have spent so long in the past in unhealthy relationships, that I don’t know how to have a healthy relationship or what that is meant to look like. But in saying that, I do know somewhat what makes for a healthy relationship.

I’m sure I probably mentioned in previous posts that we have pet rats. Well since I last mentioned them, all the previous lot we have, died of old age. The last dying in November I think. So that was a very tough time, as you really get attached to the little creatures and their quirky individual personalities and damn, the loss hurts like hell! So for a few months we had no pet rats. And I’m sure some people will find this weird, maybe even disturbing, but some people will understand… that sometimes I would get their little box out of the freezer (you see when they would pass away I would make them a box to be cremated in, which I would put some blankets in and wrap them nicely and I would also decorate the outside of the box and until I could get them cremated, I would put them in the freezer) and I would just give them a little pat. Like, I know they are gone and passed, but it bought me some comfort to pat their soft fur. Also, I didn’t get them cremated until I had some new pet rats. As I had a hard enough time dealing with not having the pitter patter of teeny lil rat feet around anymore and these cute lil animals in my life.

I found it SO hard being alone when my partner was at work or course, without any rattos around. They were my little buddies. They are also highly intelligent creatures too. So they definitely knew how loved they were. And one, sad, but beautiful thing they often do, is seek out their owner when the are close to death. So I knew with the last remaining one, Lily, she was probably not far from passing, when she basically didn’t move from my backpack all day, not even for food. I might at some point do a post with pictures of all my past ratties. Because I couldn’t live without them for long, I did purchase to young boy rats, brothers just before Xmas. And when they arrived, I was like “yay! Real live ratties!” (instead of frozen dead ones in the freezer) and I was so excited to meet them and start to see their personalities and quirks. Which didn’t happen very fast unfortunately, as the breeder failed to mention the fact they had not been handled at all! This explaining why in the photos of them on Trade Me, had a hand with a huge bite mark on it! But we have been persevering with them patiently and the shy one who was very bitey, now at least allows pats and is a little bit curious, his name is Shadow. And his brother, who was always a bit more curious and confident, his name is Dusty, is very friendly and playful. It’s hilarious! He is such a fun lil ratto!

Here’s some pictures of them

Shadow is the dark brown beauty and Dusty is the very light coloured one. They are quite different from our previous rats in colouring also. Love them so much. But I must confess, Dusty is my fav-rat at the moment. In time Shadow will sit equally in my heart too, he is just a sensitive and jumpy lil anxious boy at the moment, so it will take time. They are definitely helping me in my times alone, as at least I have a cute distraction. I found myself very depressed for weeks after the last of the previous rats died.

In other news, my health has kind of sucked for like I don’t even know how long! And more so I feel in the last month. Generally being a lot of nausea, generally feeling like shit and unmotivated and just zapping all potential joy from me. Then, on top of that, about 2 weeks ago one of my molars started giving me grief and that made me even more miserable. I was in tears when I got my partner to take me to the pharmacy for some pain relief and was having a major panic attack before going in. I got some panadiene, which helped initially, but then the pain went up a few levels, as in a 9.5 out of 10 on the pain scale. So then I had to go to A & E and thankfully they gave me some Tramadol, which most definitely helped. Also they referred me to the emergency dentist, which thankfully by then the pain was more manageable, but with them doing their assessment and poking around my teeth, reactivated that pain again. Gladly it has eased again and my appointment is tomorrow morning, nice and early and I’ll be honest, I’m not looking forward to the nice and early part lol! So they will be extracting that pesky tooth. I had been having sleep issues big time on Monday and Tuesday night, no idea why. But man lack of good sleep does a hell of a lot of damage to the mental state too! I think just so many combining factors are just exacerbating each other and making life just shit. I was saying just yesterday, this is not living. There is no joy in my life and it sucks to feel like that. I did see a dietician today and basically I know a fair amount of which foods are an issue, but also, I need to know how I can eat as I need to on a budget. As I’ve always found eating as I should to be very expensive. So over the last few months I’ve been dealing with increased nausea at one point being every morning and night. Foods just feeling like the enemy. Tooth sensitivity, limiting even more food wise and it made me just feel so hopeless and lost as to what the hell to eat and anxious about eating, in case it triggered more nausea.

I am trying to educate myself of foods and learn why certain foods are bad and why I am reacting to them. I have watched a few good documentaries on Prime Video. I’ll find the links. https://whatswithwheat.com That is free to watch if you have Prime Video and also this one: https://www.fmtv.com/watch/food-as-medicine Both free to watch if you have Prime Video. They seem to have the science and research behind them to the degree I feel they are accurate. They definitely explain a lot and make.

I think I will try find some time to blog again tomorrow if I can, as I’m aware it’s nearly midnight and I have to get up at 7:30am. Which yeah, isn’t that early, but for me it is LOL!