I have been very sporadically present on this site.
As anyone who looks at it will most likely know me, there’s not much to tell that adds to that. Life has been very intense for the last few years. I lost my footing and fell. My mental health issues that I had no idea were issues came a calling. My marriage fell apart, I saw the woman I loved die a little day by day. I saw her become someone else. (I accept that I failed the marriage and her, but I won’t accept the totality of the blame of the situation. But all that is another bucket of thoughts I’m not getting into today.) My children suffered and needed more support, love and comfort than they were given. I was hit full on by the depth of my isolation and struggled to survive.
I followed my heart. I followed my head. I helped my children cope with their immediate grief. I was ostracised by those whose support I could have used. I’m not proud, but glad to have survived 3 attempted suicides. I found security and care and lost it again. I felt heartbreak and grief that overwhelmed, I almost lost the care of my children and was almost sectioned.
But I’m still here.

Why this post, why now? It’s not all been pain and clouds of sorrow. If you could see my thoughts as I type this. There is a side of me that yells how dare I. How dare I complain when others have suffered more and are suffering more. I accept that they have suffered more and are suffering more, but I’m not in a suffering competition. My experience is worthy as any others.
But I digress from my internal debate. I’m writing this for me and to me. It is the 14th of October 2024, and I am alive.

I want (no wishes - wishes are for the benefit of the world, if wishes exist I shall not waste them on personal whims.) I want to use this as a journal

. I have been struggling to find a format that works for me.

Throughout this whole life, I feel like literal chapters have been closed and opened. Along with the clouds and fogs in my head, I have experienced joys that I think few get to experience. I found the most intense love, I have been so deliriously happy. I have found all my senses overwhelmingly fulfilled. I have been moved to tears and ecstasy by trees in rainy sunlight. UI’m not a spiritual person. I was once, and I can see how some would view these moments as a lifting of the veil. I have experienced a depth of friendship that still seems s to grow. I have undergone therapy that has shaken the very foundations of who I thought I was.

Today? I’m growing. Since 2016 my life has been influx. Wall after wall of illusion and revelation have collapsed, and all the things I have done in the past now lie before me as actions. My therapy has allowed me to see the reasons for my choices and actions, and the thing I choose to do. Now I feel like I’m starting over. I try to picture myself younger, my internal vision of myself. It’s no longer there.

I am free to be me. However, I no longer have the full motivations for all the behaviours I want. My motivations in the past were never fully for me. They were to gain acceptance and to people please. To escape and not face who ever I am now. So I’m learning to do things again. But for me. And with that comes rebellion and fear. These actions like washing dishes, sweeping floors, self-care even my art, while part of these were completed for me. Overwhelmingly, they were completed for the benefit of others. The art is a different beast. I was away of shutting all of it out and dwelling with in.
I wanted love and acceptance. I wanted to feel worth. I was filled with self loathing and anger that I couldn’t love myself, that I was not worthy of that love.

So now I am learning how to be loving to myself and how to care for the human I am. I can forgive myself when I mess up as a parent. But I find it difficult to find that compassion for myself. I am full of what if, why can’t I, I should and other judgment thoughts.

So the why? I write this as an expression of the past and the current state. It’s not structured well. It’s a brain fart of a mind dump and that okay. It’s ambiguous, as I’m going to put it public. It’s for me, as I know where I have been and where I am. I think I know where I want to be. No, I don’t know where I’m going or how to get there, really. I just know those answers need to be found by doing in the here and now. The past only reveals to me patterns of behaviour that based on escape and giving up of responsibility.

Where I am now, is scary for different reasons. What if I die before I get to progress much further. What if I never love again. What if I’m wrong again. What if. What if. My choice is to be compassionate to myself. To take my internal voice and tell it how I want to be spoken to. Setting the boundaries I want. Stern enough to jolly myself along when I am capable of pushing more. Compassionate enough to know when I’m nearing my limit. Focused enough to help me cut the chaff from my behaviours.

I want this to be a daily practice and to see how I develop through the practice.

I don’t have a central theme to this post. It’s just a musing or a ramble. I like many others have been in lock down and suffering from mental helath issues. I have fourtunately had a good mental health team around me and they have ensured that I am getting medication. The difference a set of good eds makes is unbeliveable. This time last year I was struggling to get up in the morning and then spent the day struggling to think.The meds made me sluggish. The new meds have allowed me to be more motivated and helped to focus on getting stuff done. Like getting on with my coding learning. I had a hiccup with the meds last week and the difference is striking.

I have also cut a lot of social media out of my life as well. I still have profiles, but I have deleted the apps from my phone. This has resulted in me haveing no clue about whta is occuring outside of my curated instagram feed. I don’t get embroiled in any agrugemnets that my head can’t let lie. I feel a sense of guilt I guess because there are things occuring in the world stage which are huge like the ‘Black Live Matter’ demonstrations, the covid response , and lifting of the restrictions. I feel like I should be more vocal about these things and recognise thaat my ability to just turn off socail media, speaks volumes about the level of my ‘priviledges’. Lots of people don’t get to just ‘turn off’ these issues when it gets to be too much.

I don’t have much to add to any of the debates as I don’t know enough about the problems. So I’m reading and listening to podcasts, in order to better understand. I try to amke my kids aware of the inequalities in the world, but I worry that I’ll bog them down in the rot and not have anything positive to show them. I’ll bumble and ramble along I guess and make a mess of things here and there, but I hope I remeber to tidy upafter myself and that my actions cause more good in the world than harm. I want to do more than hope. I want to make the world around me, and that spreads out from me a better place. It’s overwhelming the amount to be done. But I will try to take it on piece by piece. I feel that my major contribution will be in how I bring my kids up, and how they then influence the world.

I’ve rambled enough here. I’ll shush and things.