Spirals and Countdowns

I've been struggling this week. More than usual. Tomorrow is Mother's Day, and a week tomorrow it'll be two years since my mum died. 

I've brought myself out to a cottage on the Yorkshire coast, to... shake myself out of it? Let myself sink fully into it? I don't know. I know that I want to drive home on Monday feeling recharged, reset. Ready to keep going. Capable of it. While I'm here I want to get some work done, do some yoga, look after myself. None of which I've really excelled at, lately. 

But, wherever you go, there you are. Which is the trouble. Wherever I go, I take my grief, my depletion, my physical pain. 

Something I realised today, as I sat in the car park of the RSPB Seabird Centre at Bempton Cliffs, is this: there will very likely always be a part of me that is shocked, all over again, that my parents are dead, every time I "remember it". It may always feel like a stab in the stomach, send my heart into my throat, bring me to tears. "Maman'd love this... fuck." Every. Damn. Time. I'm sitting typing these words an hour later, and I still haven't recovered from that moment. I let it catch me, let myself spiral, and I'm still stuck in those feelings, unsure of how to get out of them. But I'm trying not to fall into the old pattern of letting myself dissociate (the double edged sword which my childhood trauma gifted me) and choose numbness instead. That's easy, but it's never going to actually help. So, if I'm going to be potentially brought back to the full force and rawness of my grief over and over for the rest of my life, I need a fucking panic button. Something I can do to cope with it, limit its effects. Because (and I don't mean this in a suicidal way) I *cannot* keep living with this.

I know that I'm living and feeling reactively, but it's so hard to change that. 

I've been watching a lot of Youtube videos over the past few weeks. To the exclusion of most other things. Lots of TED talks on personal development topics, especially. As though if I just kept watching more and more of them, eventually I'd find one that would give me The Answer! Some kind of magical key to Fix My Life. I absolutely realise how absurd and pathetic that sounds - I suppose it demonstrates how desperate I've been feeling. But yesterday I stumbled upon something.

I watched a video called How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over, a 2011 TEDx Talk by Mel Robbins. Wow. I downloaded her audiobook, The 5 Second Rule, and listened to it on the drive here last night. And oh my fucking gosh. I don't want to get all Amway about it, but I think this woman might have cracked it: motivation is bullshit; our brains work hard to maintain the status quo, via our bastard, bastard feelings; if we want to be productive, or happy, or healthy, or ANYTHING, we need to (as the Stoics did) act in line with our goals, our values, not in line with our feelings. And how? Every time you think of something you should do to meet a goal (like write this blog post, to aid with processing my grief), GRAB that intention before your brain glosses over it - you have five seconds. So, start counting down! Literally: five, four, three, two, one, ACTION. I am explaining this so poorly. Watch Mel Robbins explain it, in the video linked above, search Youtube for more videos of her, and seriously, read (or listen to) her book. 

I don't quite yet know exactly how I can apply Mel's 5 Second Rule to my grief spiral (although her "spotlight effect" feels relevant), but since I watched that first video I've already been using it to achieve small things, including taking on her getting-out-of-bed challenge this morning, and succeeding. So I reckon by the time I get to the end of the book it'll be clearer. 

Until then, yoga in five, four, three...

February Feels

After a (financially necessary) break from therapy, I've had appointments the past two Mondays, and another was booked for the same time today. But, last night, as I was scribbling my priorities for the day, I utterly forgot about therapy - I awoke to a text from my therapist, hoping I was OK. Bugger. So, in lieu of therapy, I thought I'd type out some thoughts.

I've had a cold for the past two weeks (or has it been the flu? Fibromyalgia means the "hit by a train" feeling is a normal part of life, so how can I tell?) and, having gotten really bronchial and miserable, I think it's finally tailing off. More gradually than I'd like, but it's happening. Being so unwell this past two weeks has really fucked up a load of things, big and small: birthday cards have gone unsent, uni work has gone unstudied, and I haven't even contemplated my yoga mat. All of which is excellent fuel on the I'm-such-a-vile-waste-of-space fire. I've stayed on my low sugar wagon (is there such a thing as a low sugar wagonwheel?! There are vegan ones, I know.) throughout, though. Which is a good thing.

Youngest brother came to stay for his birthday, and he had a good time. Obvs this is his second one parentless. Last year I agreed to whatever he wanted - a trip around various museums in London - and then pushed myself too, too hard, trying to keep my promise. I just ended up in agony and tears, and sitting down aside from the death march from tube station to museum and so on. Subopt. And needed a week to recover. (The part that people don't see. Even if you feel let down, it still fucks my body up!) This year I took control and suggested things I felt confident I could deliver. And it worked. Phew. Still knackered, mind.

Youngest brother's birthday marks the beginning of a difficult part of the year. On 15th February 2016 I kissed Ma goodbye, and drove 150 miles home, having no clue that I wouldn't see her again. Throughout March, there are various little markers, leading up to her death: mother's day, the last time we spoke on the phone, her texting asking me to call... she gave up a week before she killed herself. I was avoiding her because, happening in parallel, my relationship was falling apart and I couldn't bear the "I told you so" which I was sure I'd get. (She'd insisted, for the first couple of years, that he'd been "sent" into my life to "destroy" me. Not in the gaslighting rapist sense, which turned out to be the case, but as part of a huge spiritual conspiracy against me. Did I mention the psychosis?!!) For a long time I wondered whether, had I told her about the relationship issues, she'd have stayed alive, to look after me, for long enough to change her mind about suicide. Or to give her plan away, so she could have been stopped. After the anniversary of her death, of course, there are markers of other horrors: seeing her in her coffin (an image which still intrudes multiple times a day); sitting on the bank of the river, so, so close to doing exactly the same as she had; the funeral. And smeared across it all, the presence of the man who no longer loved me, but was insisting, for his own self concept (Nice Guy™) on being physically present (but of course emotionally absent) throughout, a cruel shadow puppet display of a partner. Ugh.

Last year this was a really difficult time, and I burrowed away from the world. Looking at things now, I think I've done that again. I've been telling myself it's just because I have a cold, but now I'm not so sure. Other than my lovely boyfriend (seriously, he's fucking awesome) I think I've only interacted with two friends in the past two weeks, and that's been on an unusually superficial level. For a while now I've been extremely lucky in having multiple top tier, "best" friends, all amazing women. But I suppose an unfortunate effect of this is that should I be out of touch with someone, they assume that I'm talking to someone else. But I haven't been. Right at the beginning of the year, I had a desperately sad falling out with one of my best friends. That whole thing really broke my heart. And more recently (this sounds absurdly juvenile, I know, soz) I've felt firmly downgraded by another - although relatively a very new friendship, it's always been intense, and felt very deep rooted very quickly - she often used to refer to me as one of her "best" friends, but suddenly the adjective became "good". I know she has another best friend who can be jealous, but regardless of the reasoning, this feels like rejection, and I feel wounded by it. 

So. I am feeling really quite sad right now, and lonely. Despite aforementioned lovely boyfriend. My grief all feels closer to the surface. And I'm feeling really impatient with myself. Both in terms of (uni) productivity and health goals, and in terms of where I am with my grieving. It's almost two years since Ma died, and in June it'll be three years since Dad died. God, I miss my dad. Such a mensch, and so broken, poor love. 

I'd like to feel less ill, less tired, less sad, less impatient with myself. At least I'm not eating sugar.

Normally blog posts are rather less stream of consciousnessy, and are *about* something, but nope, that's your lot.

Jamifesto 2018

I'm way, way too late to the New Year's Resolutions Party, I know. But that's OK; these aren't new year's resolutions! This is my Jamifesto for 2018: a document stating my priorities for this year.

The arbitrary nature of the linear progression of time (and... all things) is something I think I've grumbled about here before, but 2018 feels pretty significant. In the summer it will be ten years since I left an unhappy, chaotic marriage (a good decision!) and entered (young, stupid, vulnerable) into what turned out to be a miserable, controlling relationship, which ended two years ago this May. Although this brought me to a city I am happy in, and led to me meeting lots of wonderful humans, I do look back with frustration at all that time lost. And it will also be three years in June since my lovely, stupid, genius idiot of a father died of a heart attack at 58. And two years in March since my mother's suicide. The years have looped round indifferently, while I've been sat with the pieces of my life scattered about me. It feels as though now is the time to put them back together.

I'm still grieving, of course. Still ill with a pain disorder and CPTSD. But that doesn't mean it isn't time to get unfucked.

So, I present the Jamifesto 2018. And if you're reading this, I hope that you achieve whatever it is that you want this year.

Jam XXX