The Only Life

I’ve been angry and frustrated almost all day, every day since all that stuff came up two weeks ago. It’s been hard to manage while keeping a straight head at work. Back to counselling tomorrow, hopefully something helps there.

The most frustrating thing about building trust in a relationship so you can get to the point where you let out your biggest dragon to fight is when you realise you’re still fighting alone and your safe space is not safe.

JB decided that day was the day he needed a break from giving me any support, that day he made it all about him and despite the fact that I had a lifetime of trauma bombarding me and was a wreck, he decided it was all about him. Right when I needed him most.

I will support him any day. But not the day after a super explosive counselling session where I’m facing big traumas head on. And he wants to tell me counselling is bullshit and writing out your feelings is just reinforcing negativity and I’m calling him stupid by not responding to his taunts. So I’m staying in the spare room and looking forward to travelling back to work tomorrow.

I have had a week off work expressly for deflating the balloon of my stress. It’s a lot of pressure to release a year and a half’s worth of work intensity but I’m starting to feel some of it dissipating.

First, I turned off my phone and computer. I didn’t binge any games or TV. Then I asked JB to take some time off with me as he was still doing all the house stuff while I rested. I kept my Friday counselling session as the only thing I had on all week. And last night I let go a little with the neighbours after their bbq. Letting go is not my forte. I’ve had no phone so haven’t taken pictures to add here apart from this cheeky one I turned my phone on specifically for mid week.

I have a week left and I’m back online and fixing my sleeping pattern again (from tomorrow), settling back into life before a spa day with a good friend and a trip to Bristol Pride to culminate my break!

I’ve had happier moments lately. Part of me feels like the counselling is hitting the right note. Part wonders if the fodmap diet sorting out my stomach is having an impact on my anxiety and depression, there is a strong link between the gut and emotions… plus side, less physical problems with my digestive system 🙂

When I first started adulting, I often found myself overwhelmed by the endlessness of it all. You’d cook and clean and wash and organise just to have to do it all over again tomorrow.

Over the years that faded away, some years I bore all the brunt of the household and the breadwinning and caring. Lately, I’m lucky enough to focus on the breadwinning only and my other half takes care of the home.

 

Lately I’ve started to feel the same way about my personal growth and my mental and physical health. I took for granted in my younger years my health and, to some extent, my mental health.

As I age, I find myself having to actively manage my health every day and pushing myself to grow and improve is proving hard work on top of the endless cycles of just getting by. I need to move more, do physio every day, cut out half the foods in existence, actively manage what I drink and think for my anxiety and fight depressive tendencies so I don’t spiral down again. And all so I can make it through having a half decent day with no physical pain or IBS or mental breakdowns. All so I can be normal.

 

Where is the time for improving instead of just maintaining? And how do other folk do all this along with the household stuff and children? I did it all for a few years and the stress hammered my brain’s ability to cope with things that used to be simple, in some ways I think that is holding me back now.

I’m trying to realign my relationship with food. At the end of a rough week I feel I deserve a whopping bowl of ice cream with all the trimmings, which would be fine if dairy didn’t give me migraines and worsen my IBS.

Is food there to comfort me? To fill a gap when I’m bored or lonely? A reward or a punishment? I’m trying to focus on food as nutrition to show care for my body. And for the comfort and reward centres of my brain, I need to think outside the food box for other pacifiers. I welcome ideas.

I don’t know what it was exactly but one of the things, some of the things or all of the things that have happened in the past have left me traumatised and scared of sex. Even the enjoyment. Even on my own.

I only realised how much so tonight. I have the house to myself and am trying to reduce my fears. I found myself crying because I don’t feel I deserve to feel good sensations, or to enjoy them. I cried because I find it sad that I can’t allow myself to enjoy so much of life under all this tension and fear that dominates my life. I cried for the girl who once savoured life and for the woman she became who only savours food. I cried, which in itself is an achievement.

So my stomach sucks, it has been painful and explosive roughly half the days for the last 3 – 10 months.

Blood tests came back clear. So JB has been researching how to make me not feel like shit, or like shitting constantly, and has put me on a FODMAP diet. While I’m away. With no prep. I don’t know what to eat!

Thankfully a work friend made me eat and picked out both my lunch and dinner today or I’d have just had a banana all day. And I was in the office for twelve hours. I hope this gets easier.

I’ve been away for a while. I haven’t stopped fighting to get better and better. I’m still going.

But I’ll keep my updates bite sized so that I actually update my blog and also so my favourite reader can take it all in.

Keep pushing people.