One of the advantages of regularly updating a blog which your loved ones often drop by to read is that it gives me an outlet to say some of the things it is hardest to say. I have never been good at opening up as anyone who knows me well could attest to, and its a trend that has got deeper as life has gone on. It is the price of living alone I guess that I have got used to bottling things up, or dealing with them here where no-one can see.
There are often so many things I want to talk about, but I can't find the right time, or the right words to do it, I am much more comfortable making people laugh and smile than letting them worry about me and how I am. Yet, in the cold light of day, all I am doing is hiding myself and postponing dealing with what troubles me which in itself has led to some of the problems of the last year and a half. Having said that, I don't want anyone to think I am constantly in turmoil, at least 95% of the time when I say I am fine, I really am, but there are always the other times, when I am really not. So, here in the sanctuary of the blog, is a taste of what I sometimes want to say.
Since the meltdown of last year, I have had to get used to some new realities pretty sharpish. For example, it worries me how long I am going to be on medication, I don't like my mental health being dependant on it. The tablets sometimes make me tired, not tired as in having a disturbed night's sleep, but weary, knackered, worn out. It makes me feel older suddenly, not something I enjoy. In fact, it terrifies me; I want to feel young and full of energy, otherwise I am hurtling in the wrong direction. I know the medication is doing a job, I just wish I didn't need it anymore.
Of course, I do need it, and that is why I have had to come to the hardest state of affairs to accept. Emotionally, mentally, I am vulnerable. I suffer from mental illness, I cannot rely on my emotional state to get me through. There were times over the last few months that I wasn't sure I could trust my responses at all. I have spent years building up a hard outer shell, almost impervious to outside influences without realising the real attacks were coming from the inside. There were so many times I could, I should have let people in, and I am so sorry now that I didn't. It has been a tough transition to begin viewing things emotionally through the prism of OCD and depression but perhaps now I can understand better some of the stranger reactions I have had over the years to people, and events.
The biggest mistake I have made was a few years ago accepting it was my lot (and considering it the best option for me) to live alone, that I would make a poor life partner for anyone. If I have a biggest regret in life, this is it. It's not the best option, and as 'easy' as I might find it on a day to day basis, it really isn't. It's not so much that I am currently single, it is that I have somehow deleted the files in my databank that deal with communicating love and romance. Sabotage of the self. It eats at me, it really does. I hate that I have become petrified of confessing to feelings. It annoys me that I just referred to discussing my feelings as 'confessing'. I can write poetry, but I can't tell someone I think they are fantastic and they make my heart skip a beat or ten? I come home at night to darkness and silence. What sort of fool am I to have decided that was best for me?
So, there we have it. Some of the things I wish I had said years ago, months ago or weeks ago on those occasions when 'I'm fine' is a bare-faced lie. I really should have said more, more often. I am sorry I was too foolish to do so. Love you all.
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