Today, I feel .......not sure...about anything, about everything.
That's not true, I feel sure about not drinking. I am resolute about it and it feels right. I simply don't want to. I think through the process right to the end and the outcome is one I simply do not want to have so I do not embark upon the process. What I do miss, is the taste of beer and wine and so I find myself buying sparkling presse and 0.00% beer. They taste fine. They give a placebo unwinding effect after a long day and I am happy with that.
I am also eating better. No bread or potatoes and my body is sighing with relief. It is not something I intentionally did, just something I fell into when I began to value myself , over a week ago now. I have known for about 9 years that carbs make me feel sluggish, bloated and lethargic and yet I did nothing about it. Seeing that I deserved better, with such clarity was shocking to me and as I write this now, I wonder if that's what has brought me to this place of today, feeling angry and petulant, childlike and fearful; confused.
I set off on the walk to the therapist yesterday morning and felt confusion bubbling, a cauldron of emotion simmering gently. Quite suddenly, 2 corners before her street, I heard myself growl. I often hear myself do things that I have no intention of doing; like screaming in the car on the way to work that stopped the moment that I got out of the car for a meeting and started again once I got back in, whereupon I wailed all the way home and had to call a friend who took me to hospital. They said I was depressed. No shit!? I knew that something was very wrong. They and I, thought -quite rightly-that I wanted to leave my husband but obviously the bipolar would have been toying with me too.
A time that I will definitely tell you about in detail in the near future, was when I found myself weeping like a sponge that had too much asked of it (again, I was driving) but I enjoyed sobbing so much, that I felt that it had to be cathartic and so I actively fostered it for the whole of the 4 hour drive. It's still one of my happiest memories. I found myself hollow and cleansed simultaneously and a teensy bit inappropriately in love. I was completely spent when I arrived home and had to go and stay with a friend to be looked after like a toddler afterwards, instead of going home.
Anyway, it turned yesterday that the growl was a precursor to a tantrum. If I could have had my fingers in my ears, lalalaa-ing for the hour when P was trying to talk, then I would have. I actually said (and I meant it) that I wanted to leave because I was being told off and I didn't like it. When I think of the conversation now, there was probably a hint of anxiousness in her voice and she spotted signs and signals that I should go no further down the path I was on, but that was all. She said I seemed to be stuck in my 'child mode' yesterday and for whatever reason, I was refusing to come out of it. She also said very astutely that nothing that she said that day could possibly be right or helpful. I was refusing to access my adult.
As she said it, I knew that it was true, I felt like a furious teenager -lost and angry and misunderstood. She wasn't supporting me at all was she? She wasn't allowing me to be fulfilled and happy, I had to bow to drudgery and boredom. I felt as though she was telling me that I wasn't good enough for a fulfilling life -as though she had no faith in my ability to earn a crust -not good enough, not talented. Wasn't that what I railed against that saturday evening when I told myself that I deserved more than this treatment I was giving myself. I deserved more than this teensy bit of worth I begrudgingly allowed myself to squeeze out the bottom of a tube... of a bottle. When I saw it, it was simultaneously great and terrible.
Terrible that I should have felt that way about myself all my life and terrible that my life had been full of experiences that had made me think about myself thus. This teenage fury, sitting opposite that therapist was so very present. She has never been so clear and sharp to me, at least not since I actually was a teenager. I cried in terror sitting in that calm,warm room, with the nice lady who took all the rebellious sarcasm and petulance that could be thrown at her from a 45 year old body that was afraid of the future. Like my teenage self (....as her) I was shrieking at the injustice of it-standing up for myself; saying it wasn't so, that I was worth something.
I had an article printed in the paper recently, and rather than be thrilled, I was absolutely mortified, I felt completely invaded and it took me by surprise. I wanted to squirrel away my privacy, to close the curtains and hug my knees; for no-one to know that I was at home. It wasn't even a personal article, just an informative one on a asinine subject. Sitting in the therapist's front room, spitting out my venom on the matter, P said that perhaps invaded was how I was feeling now. And I think she was right, at least I recognise that I had put up all of my defences and that they would be breached over my dead body. Why though? What is this girl doing here now? So strongly making herself identifiable?
I like this hissing ball of anger. She has guts, she won't take shit. She stands up for herself. But, she cannot recognise love when it is offered. She cannot trust it. It's part of what she had to do to survive, not trust. And so her life began in a superficial way, a life lived on the surface of the cauldron. She was her own heroine in 'The Trueman Show' and she played all of the lead characters, desperately weaving a world that cocooned her raw self, naked and soft and vulnerable in the centre - untouchable. Every now and then demons would arrive and she fended them off her raw self by leaving the light on, focussing on a book, watching the TV, writing all her fears down in an attempt to expose them to the air and have them shrivel before her eyes. It was a constant battle and one that she very often thought that she wouldn't win.
That's not true, I feel sure about not drinking. I am resolute about it and it feels right. I simply don't want to. I think through the process right to the end and the outcome is one I simply do not want to have so I do not embark upon the process. What I do miss, is the taste of beer and wine and so I find myself buying sparkling presse and 0.00% beer. They taste fine. They give a placebo unwinding effect after a long day and I am happy with that.
I am also eating better. No bread or potatoes and my body is sighing with relief. It is not something I intentionally did, just something I fell into when I began to value myself , over a week ago now. I have known for about 9 years that carbs make me feel sluggish, bloated and lethargic and yet I did nothing about it. Seeing that I deserved better, with such clarity was shocking to me and as I write this now, I wonder if that's what has brought me to this place of today, feeling angry and petulant, childlike and fearful; confused.
I set off on the walk to the therapist yesterday morning and felt confusion bubbling, a cauldron of emotion simmering gently. Quite suddenly, 2 corners before her street, I heard myself growl. I often hear myself do things that I have no intention of doing; like screaming in the car on the way to work that stopped the moment that I got out of the car for a meeting and started again once I got back in, whereupon I wailed all the way home and had to call a friend who took me to hospital. They said I was depressed. No shit!? I knew that something was very wrong. They and I, thought -quite rightly-that I wanted to leave my husband but obviously the bipolar would have been toying with me too.
A time that I will definitely tell you about in detail in the near future, was when I found myself weeping like a sponge that had too much asked of it (again, I was driving) but I enjoyed sobbing so much, that I felt that it had to be cathartic and so I actively fostered it for the whole of the 4 hour drive. It's still one of my happiest memories. I found myself hollow and cleansed simultaneously and a teensy bit inappropriately in love. I was completely spent when I arrived home and had to go and stay with a friend to be looked after like a toddler afterwards, instead of going home.
Anyway, it turned yesterday that the growl was a precursor to a tantrum. If I could have had my fingers in my ears, lalalaa-ing for the hour when P was trying to talk, then I would have. I actually said (and I meant it) that I wanted to leave because I was being told off and I didn't like it. When I think of the conversation now, there was probably a hint of anxiousness in her voice and she spotted signs and signals that I should go no further down the path I was on, but that was all. She said I seemed to be stuck in my 'child mode' yesterday and for whatever reason, I was refusing to come out of it. She also said very astutely that nothing that she said that day could possibly be right or helpful. I was refusing to access my adult.
As she said it, I knew that it was true, I felt like a furious teenager -lost and angry and misunderstood. She wasn't supporting me at all was she? She wasn't allowing me to be fulfilled and happy, I had to bow to drudgery and boredom. I felt as though she was telling me that I wasn't good enough for a fulfilling life -as though she had no faith in my ability to earn a crust -not good enough, not talented. Wasn't that what I railed against that saturday evening when I told myself that I deserved more than this treatment I was giving myself. I deserved more than this teensy bit of worth I begrudgingly allowed myself to squeeze out the bottom of a tube... of a bottle. When I saw it, it was simultaneously great and terrible.
Terrible that I should have felt that way about myself all my life and terrible that my life had been full of experiences that had made me think about myself thus. This teenage fury, sitting opposite that therapist was so very present. She has never been so clear and sharp to me, at least not since I actually was a teenager. I cried in terror sitting in that calm,warm room, with the nice lady who took all the rebellious sarcasm and petulance that could be thrown at her from a 45 year old body that was afraid of the future. Like my teenage self (....as her) I was shrieking at the injustice of it-standing up for myself; saying it wasn't so, that I was worth something.
I had an article printed in the paper recently, and rather than be thrilled, I was absolutely mortified, I felt completely invaded and it took me by surprise. I wanted to squirrel away my privacy, to close the curtains and hug my knees; for no-one to know that I was at home. It wasn't even a personal article, just an informative one on a asinine subject. Sitting in the therapist's front room, spitting out my venom on the matter, P said that perhaps invaded was how I was feeling now. And I think she was right, at least I recognise that I had put up all of my defences and that they would be breached over my dead body. Why though? What is this girl doing here now? So strongly making herself identifiable?
I like this hissing ball of anger. She has guts, she won't take shit. She stands up for herself. But, she cannot recognise love when it is offered. She cannot trust it. It's part of what she had to do to survive, not trust. And so her life began in a superficial way, a life lived on the surface of the cauldron. She was her own heroine in 'The Trueman Show' and she played all of the lead characters, desperately weaving a world that cocooned her raw self, naked and soft and vulnerable in the centre - untouchable. Every now and then demons would arrive and she fended them off her raw self by leaving the light on, focussing on a book, watching the TV, writing all her fears down in an attempt to expose them to the air and have them shrivel before her eyes. It was a constant battle and one that she very often thought that she wouldn't win.
