Back to the river, baby

Posted on May 21, 2013 by metaphoricalmarathons

Shit I miss the sea and rivers. Like, miss so much there aren’t any words. I have often found myself tearing up about how much I miss the sea. That’s why when I hopped on the train headed west, yesterday, I couldn’t stop grinning. For the last six months I have felt like my title of The Cold Water Swimming Weirdo I have always held amongst my friends, has been a bit of a fraud because my toes have barely even touched water, let alone my whole body been submerged. I’m talking the wild stuff. Obviously I wash (regularly).

I am back by my beloved countryside and coast for a few days, and this morning I got to dive head first into the chilly river. YES. It took me a good five minutes stood there in my bikini, knee deep, grinning, and slowly letting my legs go numb so the water felt warm, before I dived in. This is my tactic. Let yourself freeze a bit because the colder you are the warmer it feels, yo. I swum around and just smiled. It was when I had to check that my limbs were still attached, that I decided it was time to get out.

Never ever will I lose this love for water or this desire to dive in whenever I see some. The wilder the better. There is just something so magical about being tucked in the eddy of a river somewhere, just you and the wild around you. And then the odd passing-by hiker who looks at you as though you’re nuts. This always brings my amusement when people look at me incredibly puzzled as I strip down to my pants and dive in. Round these parts though, it’s more of a done thing.

Last summer I was so desperate for some wild water whilst in the city, that I found the nearest strip of woodland an attempted a swim in the stream. It was just this though – a stream. The water was approximately 5 cm deep, so this swim attempt became a lie down and rest instead. Not quite the same but the hilarity was nice.

I used to joke that I had some kind of disorder that I couldn’t see water and not get in it…and friends would probably agree with this one. But like some ‘disorders’ you need to work on them, this one ain’t going anywhere. It’s a massive love, not a disorder anyways. It’s a need just like I need food. It always has been, and it always will be. When Wild Swimming became this cool trendy thing to do, I felt super confused because it was just a normal thing to do…wasn’t it? Since when did it have a title and an ‘image’? This gets my goat. The real wild swimmers are the ones that do it naturally, not walking around with a guide book.

Water to me just means healing. It’s like the epitome of all things health, nurturance, wholesomeness, vitality, and life, wrapped up in a chilly or warming liquid blanket. So often I just visualise myself swimming, or when I’m stood by some water I just imagine the water running through me as though we’re one, but the fact that these next few days I actually get to BE IN SOME is so amazing. And couldn’t be more needed.

Adios 25

Posted on May 20, 2013 by metaphoricalmarathons

So in about forty minutes I’ll be saying hello to 26 and adios to 25.

This evening I announced to a friend that I had decided I hate birthdays. She told me that was unfortunate timing seeing as mine is tomorrow. Then, about five minutes ago, I realised I don’t hate birthdays at all. I absolutely love them and I always have. They’re special. They’re the marking of a chapter. They’re the movement from the old into the brand spanking new. They’re a shift when sometimes you need it the most. They’re a moment in time when you get to sit back and honour your wisdom and growth you’ve gained over the twelve months previous. They’re a time when you are flooded with love that you can let flow in and hold and cherish for the year to come.

So I don’t hate birthdays, I just feel really sad about this one. There feels like a lot of sorrow attached to this one. There feels like a real need for love and friendship around and because of my handbag biking superman over the handlebars episode yesterday, my trip to my beloved coast has been postponed until tomorrow. So I sit here on my own, teary and reflective and realising that I really do love these times of the year. In this sadness is a lot of relief. Relief that this year is OVER. Relief that I am still on my way to finding me, just me, away from the complicated and fucked up family. Relief that things are beginning to ease, or at least the ease is in the sense that things are healing and it’s becoming clearer as to what is happenin’ rather than just a big foggy hazy mess of panic and pain. Now it’s happenin’…the healing’s happenin’. It always has been really, I just am letting it now.

Teary eyed, I realise these tears hold a love for myself that has never been there before. A love that doesn’t need anyone else. These tears fall because I’m finally giving myself the love I have craved and desperately searched for, for so so long. This marks a birthday too. This birth of this love has been coming for a while now, and I can officially say it is here and is ever growing.

So I thought, for about two hours, that I hated birthdays and actually now I realise that is a load of bollocks. And I feel like anyone else who says they hate birthdays, actually beneath it all, just don’t know that they deserve the time and focus and effort. Or they don’t deserve the fuss-making – from themselves or from others. Or there’s underlying family shit that’s left them scarred for birthdays. That’s just my theory.

I’ve been dreading this birthday because of the connection with my family that birthdays always bring. The sorrow and loss, with this one being the strongest I thought it would be because of the nature of my lack of connection with them. But weirdly, it brings that up, but it brings it up in a way I can manage. It brings it up in Grief. Well, who knows what tomorrow will bring emotions wise. What I do now know it will bring is a knowing that it is safe to let this love that is about to flow my way, right into my heart. It’s safe for me to love me and let others to also. That defense against this birthday was a fear of feeling the love. But that ain’t no fun, and isn’t where I really want to be. I was just pretending to be tough and not give a shit. This pretence never lasts long with me…it’s just not how I roll no matter how hard I try sometimes.

Part of me feels relieved 25 is over – thank fuck for that, I want to say. But actually I hold a lot of love for this mental crazy horrible and turmoil filled year, because with it has brought so much healing too. So much laying the foundations of lessons I was about to learn. So much pain that I never ever thought would end and now I see has, and so now I know this will always be. So much turmoil that I now know I can do, and get through, anything. So many big changes to lay more foundations of my relationship with myself, my friends, my family.

That’s all the philosophical type I’ve got energy for, for now. I’ve been feeling so sorry for myself all day because of my bike crash episode yesterday. I’m in so much pain, it’s a bit of a bitch. Apart from the odd twenty mins here and there, and a drink down the road with a friend, I’ve been in bed all day. So for the last eight minutes of my 25 year old self, I am going to do what 25 has taught me to do so well: I am going to look after myself and say goodnight to you all.

Twenty-five, I’ve loved you, I’ve hated you, I’ve cursed at you, I’ve thanked you, I’ve wondered what the hell I did to deserve you, I’ve noticed the luck you’ve brought with you, I’ve seen the lessons you’ve been here to bring and tried to embrace them all, I’ve longed for you to take a bit of a break, and most of all – I’ve wondered what I would have done without you.

By the time I’ve finished this post, it’s just hit midnight. I am officially 26. I couldn’t help but just think ‘jackpot’ and found a big grin just come upon my face. I made it. As posts full of love from friends are coming in on facebook, I realise again how I do actually really love these days.

What a freakin’ year.

The secrecy of Chronic Fatigue

Posted on May 19, 2013 by metaphoricalmarathons

There’s something so secret about chronic fatigue. Not only are there the literal physical secrets – the way you look ‘fine’ yet feel like shite – but there is the chronic fatigue lifestyle that just invites secrecy in for tea and lets it stay and run riot. This is just going on my own experience and noticing or hearing others patterns I’ve known, also living with it.

As I lie here with indigestion after barely chewing my food because I’m too fucking knackered (for those of you who read this post – yes, it keeps on happening lately), I find myself thinking about the shame around chronic fatigue and how there is so much of it. For me, anyway. This is easing now – for sure – and maybe this is why I can now see this and spot the patterns that lead to the isolation and the withdrawal when energy and/or feelings of health rapidly go on vacation. My theory is that this shame is the thing breeding the secrecy. Without shame, I don’t reckon we would be so secret. Sure, a lot of the time the secrecy is there because I’m too fucking knackered to be out there showing off my chronic fatigue, but I would be a lot less worried or hesitant, and riddled with social anxiety, if I didn’t hold such shame around it.

For so freakin’ long – too long – I’ve felt so embarrassed about the fact I have chronic fatigue, or as we call it in the UK: M.E. If someone asks about it or initiates a conversation about it, I mutter and stutter my way through a few sentences. I generally always appear confident with what I’m saying but I can’t wish the conversation to change subject quick enough. Most of the time I just have to do this myself and start talking about something cool and fun – because who wants to talk about Chronic Fatigue anyways? This swift change of subject purely comes down to my lack of confidence in what people will be thinking and my shame around the fact that I have it. In these moments I become a professional mind reader – this quite often becomes my full time occupation – and I just KNOW that the person I’m talking to is thinking: “oh, she’s just making it up…she’s just lazy…she needs to get a grip…maybe if she just stopped thinking about it she’d be okay…I get tired and I don’t lie around all day…I bet she could just push on through…”

Yeah so, chances are most people aren’t actually thinking these things. And if they are then sod it.

I have spent so bloody long not quite believing that I have it. It’s taken approximately 5 years. Wow, yep – 5 whole years of not really fully believing that’s what’s going on. There are a thousand words I could type about why this is, but just in a nutshell – it has part to do with a lack of confidence and trust in myself but also a big part to do with the world that I submerged myself in shortly after discovering I had chronic fatigue. It’s the world of ‘Emotions Make You Ill’ – authors like Louise Hay…I took this as ‘I have made this happen, so therefore it’s my fault and it’s not really real, I’m making it up, I just need to think positively, this is hear because I’m negative’.

For starters, that is absolute bullshit. But also, I think this has definitely contributed to the shame and secrecy story I began telling you about. Now though, this belief and ability to connect with the fact I have chronic fatigue has come, and this definitely has to do with my therapist who GETS it and so has slowly enabled me to trust myself enough to say: “yes, I have chronic fatigue. Yes, it sucks. But yes, I deal with it this way and that way.” This, without a doubt, is how I now can ‘own’ my chronic fatigue.

The shame and secrecy is still there but not as much. It only sneaks about when I’m not paying attention…when I drift into old patterns because I’m too exhausted to notice I want to change them. For me, shame shows up in the mind reading and the assumption that people don’t want to hang out with me because I’m tired or not such good company (in my opinion, not necessarily theirs) and the inner critical self chatter I give myself. The secrecy then spills from here, showing up with my bypassing any kind of conversation about what physical experience I am having that moment. I will just – second nature – fail to mention that I have spent half the day in bed, my entire body hurts, I feel like I’m going to throw up, when I speak on the phone with a friend. Instead we talk about everything else. Often it’s because I consciously don’t mention what’s going on for me physically but also I notice that so often I just don’t even think about it. I hang up the phone and realise there is/was a whole world of stuff I didn’t even mention…my friend would never know. The trouble is, when it is so fucking confusing and one day varies so bloody much, from the other, this just adds a good dose of shame and secrecy to the mix because it feel so impossible to articulate. So I don’t. Or I try to but I just am swimming in mind reading and inner critical chatter that I end up not doing myself justice at all.

It definitely has been an effort to break out of this secrecy shame spiral. Definitely. And so often it’s been so painful and shit and I’ve wondered how on earth I will ever have any friends left when I am so lame, so sleepy, so monotone. But the truth is, we never are what we think we are socially…I believe. Chronic fatigue or no chronic fatigue. The self critical chatter just screws us over and is always playing a false tune.

The shame around being so ill with something that can’t be ‘seen’ runs so deep for me, and I definitely think this is a big part of why I feel that urge to just stay secret. How the hell can I be so attached to my bed, so riddled in pain or crippling fatigue, and think it is okay when The shame that I am not out there being 26 like all my friends are. The shame that I am not ‘fulfilling my potential’ and embracing life. The truth is though, I am embracing the life and health that I have right here at my fingertips. And sometimes that health is seemingly so distant that all I can do is sleep or doze or at least be horizontal. The fact that I can’t do anything else in these moments should wipe away any shame on my emotions slate. It should, but it often doesn’t. The only time it does, is when I remind myself of reassurance I have received from friends about what they think – about how they don’t feel any of these things I feel towards myself. Then I remind myself of what I know and believe in my core, and I know that I am not making this up, that my physical experience is as valid as any other persons. So slowly I have begun to trust myself and let the shame not rule the show.

Test the shame-free water. Share through the secrecy. Begin to carefully take the chronic fatigue outside – even if just through conversation – with those you trust and love and know will offer compassion and/or empathy and I think the shame naturally has nothing to hold onto. Shame breeds secrecy but secrecy breeds shame too. The only way, with any kind of shame, is to share it and take it out of the isolation. Ask for reassurance. Check it is okay to have a nap at a friends if that is what it takes to enable you to visit them for an afternoon or an hour.

This, for me, has been what has gradually made it safe to have chronic fatigue. Even though it fucking sucks, it is a hell of a lot easier having it and knowing that I can share it with friends too. I’m not saying I’ve perfected this art – I often feel pretty freakin’ far off – but I notice the difference between now and a year ago and it is huge.

So go share where and with whom you feel comfortable, and let that shame or secrecy begin to take a hike.

My metaphorical medal cabinet

Posted on May 19, 2013 by metaphoricalmarathons

What a week. What a freakin’ week. I’ve been rather quiet this end – well, blog-wise, not any other wise. I would go into deets but right now I can’t be arsed. Right now all I want to do is share my latest EMDR session yesterday.

EMDR is the bomb. It really really works, folks.

I got home from my session and I just sobbed, and smiled, and sobbed and smiled some more. I sobbed because I’m happy…it’s changing…the ‘okay’ that everyone always told me would come and would happen is slowly/quickly becoming a reality I am increasingly getting a taste of. And a permanent reality that I can see right there on the safe and cosy horizon.

One of the main reason I sobbed when I got home is because I feel like I deserve a medal for what I did in my session. I worked with morocco. I worked with that trauma. The one that actually has ruled my day and my body but I have kept so hidden and secret out of total fear for what it is and was. So for that, I deserve the holiday that I am going on tomorrow. I sobbed because I feel free…the freedom is here, touching the tips of my fingertips. And as the EMDR continues to work over the next week, this safety will be nestled in my whole hand. This I cannot even begin to explain. I can now let this trauma go. It can be something that has happened to me, just like other things that have happened to me. It doesn’t need the control and the charge that is has had until now. When a trauma is so secret and so huge and so fucking scary, and GROSS, I feel it is really easy to just not look at it (OBVIOUSLY). It is easier and safer to focus on the softer traumas. The ones that are still hideous but not as mind numbingly terrifying and overwhelmingly full of details, emotions and stuff you need and want to share…but you just don’t know where to start.

Now I feel like I could talk about it. Another thing I deserve a medal for – my metaphorical medal cabinet is getting chockablock (on a side note, I think we all need a metaphorical medal cabinet. Maybe I’ll start to note my medals down, that’d be nice, wouldn’t it? I think you should all do that too.) – is that I stopped myself forcing myself to share the details with her. In EMDR your eyes are going back and forth whilst you think of the trauma or the feelings that are ‘up’ in relation to it…or simply wherever your mind goes. And I had the urge to talk about the details but I didn’t want to do it with her, but I did, but I didn’t…I went round like that and then I just let myself go and she reassured that I didn’t have to talk about it. This shit still works even if you don’t speak. Even if the therapist doesn’t even know what they are working with! But, for me, talking is something I love and need to do. Some people ain’t such a sucker for words… I. Am.

I can now talk about the dirtiness, the GROSS-ness, the terror that I almost died, the fucking craziness that it even happened. I can TALK about it with those I love and feel safe with. This…this is undescribably huge. And weirdly exciting because it means healing is coming.

This medal for reaching this point that actually I can talk about this and protecting myself whilst I do so, is so huge and a gold & chunky motherfucker. (See above. I drew this in my journal shortly after getting home from the session.)

We worked with my fear of my bursting and overflowing levels of creativity. At the moment I get so overwhelmed with how much creative energy is running around my system. Words are just flooding to my fingertips, wanting to burst their way onto the page. But so often I don’t do anything with it, or I only do a little bit, because I feel scared because there is just SO much! I get overwhelmed, exhausted and then fall asleep or spin around the room in anxiety because I haven’t done anything with the creativity. She reassured that it’s because so much of my energy has been going on being stuck with this trauma, stuck in the past, stuck in hypervigilance and protecting me…this stuckness is now becoming free and so it is only a matter of time that I realise it is safe and I learn to just continue on and release it, to type on the page even if I feel like I could never do the million words justice – to just keep typing, keep expressing and let the overwhelm soften away.

We worked with the shit that went down this week. Only slightly but just enough to feel like it was acknowledged. We worked with the scenario that if my mother showed up on my doorstep and how I would feel. (This is what happened – my mother found out where I lived and sent me vouchers through a company. Freaked. Me. Out. But also, weirdly, because of EMDR, there has been a distance between me and the terror and the connection with her…this is phenomenal.)

Today, the following morning after the session, I feel like SHIT. I feel like I’ve had a severe bout of chronic fatigue. I am in so so much pain. Last night I cried myself to sleep with the pain that was running a gentle riot all around my body. And it’s back again today. I don’t really know what to do. I am supposed to go away for my birthday, which is tomorrow, but I now wonder whether it is the right thing to do because I currently feel like an arthritic ridden 75 year old. That ain’t no fun. All I’m going to do is curl up in a ball and tear up a little bit and meditate/doze…and ponder whether I get on that train.

This pain definitely has something to do with the fact that I flew head first, superman style, off my bike yesterday two minutes before my EMDR session…it was so embarrassing and so painful! But, I did also feel like a superhero (Superwwoman?) because I do not know HOW I didn’t get more injured…like, really. I FLEW head first as my bike buckled beneath me (my handbag had been dangling from the handlebars and it got caught in the brake and jammed. Note to girls – DON’T RIDE YOUR BIKE WITH YOUR FLIPPIN’ HAND BAG.

So, I know that this big ass shock will be contributing to this pain, because fuck everything hurts. But I also have a feeling that it is to do with the physical release that this last session brought. I can feel it so so physically. The freedom…the taste of freedom in my body that I didn’t even realise wasn’t there. This freedom that I didn’t even know something like Morocco takes away from you. I’ve been living the last two years in unbelievable closedness and disconnection, and now that freedom and connection to my inner safety is suddenly here, it just kinda makes sense that my body would take a bit of a whack. This pain feels like it’s the shift and the transition. But fuck, it hurts like a bitch.

Soften a bit, please pain. But freedom, you can definitely stay. And I have a feeling you really will.

Brick by brick, not sky scraper by sky scraper

Posted on May 15, 2013 by metaphoricalmarathons

Y’know, something I have learnt, and then learnt to find real comfort in over the last couple of months, is that just so so many women have a trauma involving men. Like so many it is fucking heartbreaking. Within this realisation and connection has come a lot of comfort in knowing I am not alone, but also so so much anger, rage, and a feeling of protection for us females. But, anger is so much better than withdrawal and isolation around the subject…the route I had taken until now. I am so not off that route, but I am slowly beginning to know it is safe to talk and to share about it, even if only one or two sentences at a time. Baby steps.

When healing from any kind of trauma or ANYTHING as a matter of fact, knowing you’re not alone is so freakin’ key. But I feel this even more relevant to a trauma that can leave you feeling so dirty, so ashamed, so powerlesss and embarrassed, and just wondering whether the world should just swallow you up because of it. Or that you should tuck it under a rock in the garden and never ever look at it again. In a way this is kinda relevant to any kind of abuse. Hearing tales of others going through the same journey of healing, has brought so much comfort to me. Even though I have only heard a few, I realise my great stint with silence and living as though it “wasn’t that bad” or that it didn’t even happen, is a very normal thing. I was numb.

The few stories I have heard of people keeping schtum with their rape or sexual assault until years down the line when it all just burst out gently or not-so, gave me reassurance that I’m not the only one who goes this way. To look at beautiful women around me and know that they have encountered some kind of abuse of their rights, in varying ways, brings solace to something I just never ever ever thought I would end up facing or sharing or dealing with. I need more of this, I know I do. But to even find words to type and the confidence to know it is okay, is a big whammy of progress…so, sitting amongst a therapy group of women will be one day too, I know it. And I long for it. Just not yet. They need to be the right kinda women. And for now, these kinda women are the ones I find online!

I still feel a million miles away from truly embracing this trauma, holding my hands up and letting the empowerment fill my bones, and feel full of beauty and power despite the dirtiness, shame, helplessness and most of all, the terror that still lingers. But, I am getting there. Something I notice that is helping me along the way is working how the way to share in a way I feel safe. Like, actually all the gross and fucking mingin’ details are not the ones I want to share. NO THANK YOU VERY MUCH. They are things I never want to think about again, and don’t really believe I do need to – unless we’re talking within an EMDR session. The things I do need and want to share with loving folk around me, are the feelings I had/have around it. These are the things that are safe to share, and don’t leave me transported back in a PTSD spaceship, to the time when one of the most awful things happened to me. The fact I could have died. The fact I was so isolated and desperately alone, literally. The violation. The terror. And all the other things that I can’t quite bring myself to type just yet. That PTSD spaceship still kicks in pretty quickly.

It’s hard really because I feel almost split down the middle. One side of me feels as though it’s going to burst at the seems if I don’t talk about it ALL, and share everything. Right. Now. It blinds me and leaves me seeing only this terror and feeling of trapped-ness as though it only happened yesterday. Yet the other side of me wants, so strongly, to gently let this trauma seep out. Rather than it being a tsunami wave that hits and causes destruction to any kind of feeling of stability, control, sense, peace, that I have just recently in the last couple of months, begun to find. This side wants to integrate it slowly, little brick by little brick, not mega sky scraper by mega sky scraper, and honour the fact that I am still connecting to the fact that this trauma even freakin’ happened to me.

Then, the wiser witnessing part of me that is increasingly taking shape and coming into strength, knows that actually what about a balance? This part of me can step away from this split down the middle feeling, and know that a balance can and will happen. A little bit of falling apart and sharing it in the moment that I get the desperate urge to, but with the knowing that I don’t need to share it ALL that milli-second – I can let it be something I feel in control of. That PTSD spaceship is the thing I blame for this – the way that all control of your processing and sanity goes out the freakin’ window and is replaced by serious anxiety and a feeling as though you are right back in the moment the trauma happened.

Well, by hopefully continuing to just type out little, or long, words about it. Simply just sitting in front of the computer, feeling the feelings but typing about something completely different or just loosely associated to the topic, is so freakin’ healing. By slowly knowing it is safe to have these memories rise in my mind rather than get freaked out about it. To tell these memories I am safe now – to be able to converse with them, or just put them in their place, rather than get swept sideways is a giant leap on this path of healing. And by gently sharing the Feelings, not the gory details, with those I love or with those that I know understand, will continue to bring solace, rather than fear and disconnection.

I think by these kinda ways, this trauma will slowly integrate brick by brick and leave a lasting foundation of strength and empowerment and protection – of myself and towards all the other women in the world. Then, someday, I’ll be able to openly share this thing that happened with a solid knowing that it is safe and I am safe, fo’ real.

No comparison

Posted on May 11, 2013 by metaphoricalmarathons

The size of a misfortune is not determinable by an outsider’s measurement of it but only by the measurements applied to it by the person specially affected by it. The king’s lost crown is a vast matter to the king but of no consequence to the child. The lost toy is a great matter to the child but in the king’s eyes it is not a thing to break the heart about.

Mark Twain

Talking grief

Posted on May 11, 2013 by metaphoricalmarathons

Grief is a natural part of life, but it can hurt like a bitch. It can show up in so many different ways for each of us and every tear always brings healing, as it does with everything else. Sometimes it can hit you and bring your to your knees, other times it can simply sit gently with you throughout your days.

This is what it looks like to me. I wonder what it looks like to you?

When it all piles up

Posted on May 10, 2013 by metaphoricalmarathons

Y’know when the house work just piles up, you can’t find the beans to sort it out, but even if you can you just don’t want to because you’re too whacked and you want to use any energy you do have to do something nice? This goes for any kinda fatigue, not just the chronic kind. And this is something that happens in every household…or at least I hope it does!

This is what it looks like to me, except I don’t own orange pants and I kinda wish my dishes looked like this but instead they tend to be sprawled out onto every surface possible until they’re thrown in the sink with a tonne of washing up liquid.

It’s been cartoon central this week so this is the first of a few.

A breakdown at the sink

Posted on May 7, 2013 by metaphoricalmarathons

There’s something fucking funny about Chronic Fatigue. Heartbreaking, but fucking funny.

The way that twenty minutes after getting up, you have to get back into bed again. The way that halfway through a meal I am too tired to keep eating so I stop and come back to it later, when it’s cold and withered…or I continue at it but can hardly chew, so end up giving myself indigestion because I’ve ingested whole chunks of chicken as apposed to nicely chewed mouthfuls.

Today is a classic one of those kinda days. I am so fucking tired I can hardly function but I can’t just lie in bed because…well, I just can’t. So instead I get up for ten minutes and attempt to do something, but am so fatigued I end up lying right where I started in the first place: BED. I have made my bed three times already and it’s only 12pm, each time with the motivation that that will be the last time I am lying in it today…but this kinda tiredness is as though I have been smacked in the face with a spade and am wearing a rucksack filled with a thousand tins of beans.

Ugh.

It’s days like this I just want guidance. Guidance on how to manage this fecking thing. Like, am I feeling so exhausted because I have been trying so hard to get back into the world of work, and use my focus and energy and adrenaline (what’s left of it) to do productive stuff that I love? Or do I feel so tired because I got a lot of sun yesterday, on a lovely walk, with friends? Or do I feel tired because of the PMDD shit that’s going on, and it’s just that ‘time of the month’? Or do I feel tired because I am in the process of somatic experiencing (releasing trauma)? Or am I tired because I’m eating something that isn’t working for me? Or am I tired because it’s a combination of all those things? Or am I tired just for the crack?

All I want to do for myself today is walk to my favourite hill just down the road – it is hardly even a hill, so exertion is minimal – and write my journal. The minute I woke up that is what I wanted to do. There are, of course a bunch of other stuff I want and need to do, and will do, but this is the nurturing and resourcing thing I want to do. But have I got there? NO. I have headed out the door twice but crumbled on the bench half a second from the front door, feeling too like shit to continue.

But I can’t just lie around. Beneath this fatigue is a bunch of fucking anger at this situation, and this needs to be heard because otherwise it just buzzes around my body and makes everything ten times worse. In these moments, or on these days, it’s like a battle between what needs to be done and what you want to do, to keep your soul alive. The kitchen was looking as though a bunch of vegetable munching and tahini eating teenagers had had a week long party and not washed up for any of it…a lot of this mess is/was mine. So I knew today was the today something needed to be done about it but I felt too shit to wash up. Plus, I wanted to use any inch of motivation to do something nice for me.

On the second bench-sit-down/failed attempt to reach my hill, I decided to attack the sink. And what followed was hilarious. I was so cold but didn’t have the energy to walk up the two flights of stairs to my room to get some trousers and a jumper (today it’s sunny so I’m wearing shorts, obv.), AND do the washing up. That’s how it goes – work out how I can expend the least amount of energy possible, to conserve it for what’s needed. So, I got my down jacket and put it on and just imagined that my legs were super warm too. They weren’t. They were fucking freezing. I whacked on the hot water full pelt and squirted a months supply of washing up liquid onto my sponge, turned the music up in my ears, and started WASHING UP. And then…I started to cry. And then…I couldn’t stop! It would have been a fucking hilarious sight but thankfully no-one was there to see it. Me with bubbles up my elbows, water flying everywhere, my down jacket getting a soaking, my legs in goose bumps, and me sobbing over the sink.

I sobbed, I scrubbed, I sobbed, I scrubbed. And then I looked around and it was all clean! But I wanted some more of that…the sobbing felt like such a release. And so I attacked the cooker too. I sobbed and scrubbed that too, but this felt a bit like I was trying too hard and the cooker is a bitch to clean, so I left that not feeling so inspired…more, frustrated.

I don’t know if I’m doing this ‘right’. I don’t know if there is a better way to manage your energy. I sure as hell think there is, but I haven’t worked it out yet. I don’t know if it’s good to push yourself sometimes. I don’t know if when I do, that is what makes me ten times worse the following day (PROBABLY). But what I do know is that to keep my soul alive I need to feel normal, human and capable. So, maybe what I needed was to move this anger around and have an outlet – the dirty dishes – and get it going. And it clearly worked. These kind of mini breakdowns is where healing happens: keeping it stuffed inside is where it doesn’t.

If in doubt, wash up. And if in even more doubt, wash up and have a good sob.

Future road