Grief and New Years Resolutions

2015 saw the loss of my Uncle, one of the kindest and bravest men who has ever lived and my Grandma Betty, one of the quirkiest and again kindest people I have known.

I carry them with me still so going into this new year instead of making resolutions about doing certain activities or losing weight I'm going to take on lessons they taught me.

1. I resolve to be kind


Kind to myself as well as kind to others.  Care about other people and try to help in my own quiet way. Forgive myself for my mistakes and treat myself with the kindness they always showed me.

2. I resolve to listen

To take time to really listen to what others are telling me, especially my kid.  It's too easy to let the babble wash over you without taking it in.  Both my Uncle and Grandmother made me feel like they really listened to me and I know how important that was for me growing up.

3. I resolve to be strong

To stand up for myself quietly but firmly.  Especially when they bully is my own mind.

4. I resolve to tell the people in my life everyday that I love them.

No explanation needed.

This body

So yesterday I was going to take a shower and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.  As usual I winced and looked away.

Then I stopped.

I have learned that my face is not hideous but not my body. I still wince when I see myself and tell myself how ugly I am.

Yes I have a loving husband who tells me I'm beautiful but I of course don't listen to him.  This time I thought of that and thought of how I know my brain is not a reliable source when it comes to myself. So I looked at myself.  All the parts of me that were lumpy or saggy or odd or different and I said to myself.

"This is the body my husband loves.  This is the body that he thinks is beautiful.  This body is the one that makes him smile.  This body is the one he loves to hold.  This body, how it is now, is what he doesn't want to share.  This body, as it is, is what he wants. This body is beautiful to someone."

My husband is a much better judge of things then me, so when I see myself in the mirror and I want to wince and look away and tell myself how I'm ugly I'm going to stop and look at myself and remind myself that there is a person who finds me beautiful....and if I tell myself that enough maybe I'll start to see it too.

What I want for Christmas

I just turned 32 and had a really great birthday.

Like just the best.

It was great not because I got a ton of presents or what have you.  It was great because of the family around me. The book I received from my parents was great not because it was good (though it's an awesome gift) but because my Mom clearly thought of me and what I love when choosing it.  The chocolate bears from my son were special because he was so excited to give them to me.  The rest of the day was spent with my in-laws and spending quality time with them which was great.  They are my family just as much as my parents and sisters are.  I even got some wonderful quality time with my niece which was wonderful. Following that up with a phonecall to my parents and my grandmother was really great.

 Presents are just things, those connections with the people I love is worth far far more than any gift.

I am really lucky I have so many fabulous people in my life that care about me.

I'm so very grateful not only that I have them, but that I can appreciate that they care about me. Anyone who has suffered from depression knows how hard it is to believe that you have value, that people care about it.  To understand that I am loved and to accept that as true is huge for me. I am glad I have that.

To all of my family and friends, know that I love you.  You matter to me, you are important to me and I care so deeply about you all. Please love yourself.  You deserve it.

That's what I want for Christmas, for all my friends and family to know that they are loved and that they deserve love and can accept love.  Because every last one of you deserve happiness, love and kindness.

Remembering

This year saw the death of two people in my family who were very important to me.  One death was my Uncle at the end of August but didn't really hit as real until the beginning of November.  The other was only two days ago and was my paternal Grandma.

The combined grief led to me having to "reboot" as I call it where I stayed in bed for pretty much an entire day. I didn't have any studying that I had to do and we managed to obtain help for Charlie and I had a guilt free day of just coming to terms with my grief.  The grief for both them are forever going to be tied together not just because of the timeline but because of what they both meant to me. 

You see I was the weird child in a weird family.  My family loved me (I never doubted that) but I often felt like no one really listened to me.  As an adult I get it, I have a very creative and chatty 6 year old myself and I know that at some point in the rambling constant stories you check out and just let the noise wash over you. I get it, especially when you're busy...but at 6 I didn't get it.  I just felt like no one really listened to me.  

I was also quiet in a really bizarre way.  I could be loud and obnoxious (I was the youngest child after all) but I kept secrets that perhaps I shouldn't have and again I didn't understand why no one could see I was hurting or lonely or sad even though I wouldn't tell them I felt any of those things.  

Goddamnit.  I really made things harder for myself as a kid.

ANYWAY.

To top it off I didn't really feel like I fit in with my family in my home town.  Oh in some ways I totally did but in many others I felt I didn't. It was like I was running at a similar wavelength but not quite the same.  It was difficult for me.

Uncle Renn and Grandma Betty though were my mental anchors.   They both made me feel like they really listened to me and really saw me. I felt I was more in tune with them then with a lot of the rest of my family.  They made me feel like I belonged when I felt I didn't even belong to my family.  They made me a place to be weird and unusual and eccentric even by my families standards and they made me feel like I was okay the way I was.

I always felt like they had my back which as a lonely child was so important. 

I would like to stress again here that my family did love me and try to support me as best they could and I made it damned difficult for them to do so, so I am not condemning them.  It's bit related to the fact that I didn't have a lot of friends because I made it very difficult to be my friend. Same deal, I made it very difficult for my family to understand me.

Renn made me feel valued and important.

My memories of him mostly revolve around family gatherings where he would talk to me like an adult and listen to my answers.  He took me to the ocean on a short holiday when I was a teenager and that was brilliant, he took my sister and me to the fourth of July celebrations in the park where we embarrassed my sister by dancing and where I got to move around the gun of a tank (it was awesome.) I remember him making me laugh and just generally being kind and making me feel valued.

Grandma made me feel like no matter what she was in my corner fighting for me.  I'm sure she took us out places when we visited her for a few weeks every summer but that's not what I remember.  I remember sitting in her kitchen eating pancakes, playing in the back yard.  I remember going to the grocery store with her or sitting in her living room watching terrible movies we got out of Blockbuster and making fun of them.  (Hey sis remember that awful fantasy movie with the floating head that said Ciao a lot?) I remember telling her a story where every other line was "and the peasants rejoiced!" said with a dance.  I remember telling her how dad told us about him and his siblings climbing a bridge near her house and her calling up all her children to yell at them.  I remember always getting letters from her and her encouraging my writing by talking to me as a fellow writer.  Of her eccentricities which were so like mine.  Everyone said me and Grandma Betty were very similar and we were.  She gave me my first dragon statue (which is the only one I brought with me to England) she knew me when I didn't know myself.

This year I lost the two people who saw me and heard me clearly when I was growing up despite the amount of effort that took. (Seriously looking back on it and seeing it in my own kid I clearly thought everyone was psychic...maybe that's because I was 8 before I stopped believing everyone was secretly a fictional character in a book being read by person who might close the book and make us all disappear and who could only be stopped from closing the book if I turned the page every night...  Jesus Christ I'm crazy.) 

I'm sad and I'm going to have weeping fits and I think I'm going to find next autumn very difficult. But...I'm going to to do my best to remember my Uncle and Grandma the way they would want me to: by following their example of kindness and maybe stop tuning out my kids hundredth very involved story about FooFoo land and really listen to and see the people around me.  Because everyone deserves to feel valued and important.

A love letter to my husband

After 11 years my husband are still in love but are less of the cutesy love. I had seen these adverts for a "reasons I love you" book to give your significant other.  *gag* My husband and I agreed that we would never want to be so cheesy and sickly sweet in our marriage (now) so as an ode to my husband I present:

The Horrible Reasons I love you.

Dat ass.  

You torture spiders to death...you monster.

History will condemn you for not stopping me.

But dat ass tho.  

As this year closes

For the last few years in December I have come up with a list of good things about the previous year. Each year it grew to match the years number.  So 2010 I made a list of 10 things and 2011 I made a list of a 11 things and so on.  

It was a good and helpful tool in perspective. This year I'm going to do things slightly differently. 

This has in a lot of ways been a shitty year.  A lot of people I love have been in hospital and at the time of writing one death this last year, there may be another before years end. That makes it hard to make a list of good things when so much sadness happened.

I'm still going to do my list of 15 good things about 2015 but I'm going to do it later and with my family.   What I'm going to do for me is instead reflect on the positive changes I made in my life in the last year by examining my fears and obstacles and how I over came them.  So here we go:

Fear of Failure: A lot of my life has been characterised by my fear of failing.  At times in my life it got so bad I froze and lost my ability to try.  Last year I took the plunge and started with the Open University as a part time student in order to get my degree in History. This year I completed my first level one course in May in adverse conditions.  I not only passed but I had good marks.  If I had let my fear of failure rule me I never would have even begun it.  I learned courage.

Fear of Asking for Help/Admitting Limits: I have been ambitious this year and tired to be active on the Friends committee at my child's school as well as continuing my education and redecorating the house.  However, instead of letting my sense of obligation let me run my health into the ground I have tried to express to my family, the people of the friends group, and my tutor that sometimes I can't do what I said I would do or that I need to take a step back.  It always sucks when I do that but I am speaking up when I need to instead of crashing.  No one has made me feel bad for doing that and I have been able to do at least some instead of crashing and being bed bound. I have learned trust.

Self Doubt: I have believed horrible things about myself for a lot of my life and a lot of that is believing that I'm a failure, or worthless, or a fuck up. I passed my schooling, I have supported my family emotionally and I have been able to organise and help around the house as much as I am capable of which is more than I had previously believed.  Every time my depression tries to tell me that I'm worthless I remind my self of what I have accomplished. I learned to believe in myself.

My life has improved remarkably in the last year I am much more confident, much stronger and much happier in general than I used to be.  A lot of this year was shitty but a lot of personal growth and friendship and love and happiness to.  I'm glad I was able to see more than the dark and maybe that's the biggest obstacle I've overcome.  During the years of depression I could only see the darkness around me and was unable to see the good things.  Now I can see both and the good makes the bad easier to bear.  So I'm thankful I see life more clearly than I used to. 

A change in analogy

I have seen it time and time again and you probably have to.

Some idiot goes on a forum or a Facebook page or just the comment section from a blog and starts being a dick.

Like a massive dick.  Just trolling and saying the most hateful things possible often with personal attacks.

So they get blocked, or their comments get deleted or they don't get published at all and they cry censorship.

Now a lot of people respond with "That's not censorship!  It's like coming into someone's house and calling them names."

The comeback is often about how it's not private at all it's a public space and it is censorship.

Well there is an element of truth in the comeback.

It's still not censorship, but it's not someone's house, but that doesn't make it public either.

Here is a better analogy.   Imagine a restaurant.  You go in and you don't like the service or you don't like the food.  What you can do is complain to the management and maybe even fellow diner at your table.

What you don't have the right to is 1. Disturb other people and 2. the right to stay inside.

What trolls often do is the equivalent of standing in the middle of the restaurant and screaming about how shit it is, or in other examples repeatedly being a creepy stalker to women in the restaurant.  Now here's the thing; If you did that management can and would kick you out and maybe even ban you....and in the real world they would probably call the police if you kept trying to get in and be a creepy jerk.  You have the right then to go to another restaurant and be a creepy jerk there...but probably the same thing would happen.  Hell if you were following say a group of women having a conversation on the street you would probably have the police called on you. No one will physically stop you from saying things, but you will have consequences for saying them. Now if you said them in your house or your own restaurant no one would be able to do a damn thing about it (but if you were being a creepy jerk in your own restaurant you wouldn't get a lot of women coming back).

You can argue that deleting comments or threads is different because it's wiping out everything you wrote but that's a childish argument.  This is the internet.  There is a record of everything it isn't censorship it's more like....if you put graffiti on the restaurant the restaurant can clean it off but it knows that wouldn't have prevented anyone from taking a picture of the graffiti...but just because you put it up doesn't mean it has an automatic right to stay on their page forever.  Basically if you can't get away with certain behaviour in a restaurant then you're not going to to get away with it on the internet.

Hell lets take an example of a real public space like a park, there are still rules.  If you follow someone around the park screaming abuse at them you will get arrested.  If you repeatedly follow and either harass or just follow like a creep a person you can get an injunction. If you graffiti an area it will be cleaned up and you may be fined.  If you flash people on the street you will get arrested etc etc.

The point is censorship is only when the government is preventing you from speaking or writing about specific things even in the privacy of your own home. You are free do whatever you want in the real world but there are consequences and there are rules and there are other people who have the freedom to decide they don't give about what you want to say.

So lets stop comparing it to a home and compare it actual places in public like a restaurant.  It's more accurate and maybe will get the point across better.

The Right to rest

A lot is made about how good it is to keep fighting and "Even if you fail it's okay as long as you give 110% everyday" and that's great and all but it's a problem as well.

Yes you should try and the message to not give up and to keep trying is a good one, but there needs to be a dialogue about this flip side.

It's also okay to know when to stop.

It's okay to take a day off.

It's okay to sleep in, to skip a day of studying because you're sick and you need to recuperate, to skip a day at the gym because you're tired to have a piece of cake because you're sad.

It's okay to just have a break.  Hell it's okay to give up if what you've been trying for turns out not to be what you want.

So much is made of how much you work that when you find that you HAVE to stop and recuperate or take a break instead of enjoying the break and relaxing you're so consumed with guilt that the good it should have done is negated. Then because you still don't have the energy you take another day or whatever and the guilt is doubled and the benefit less.

We need to remind ourselves and each other that no one can be fighting or trying or working or studying all the time.  We all need to rest and recuperate and we need to allow each other and ourselves that that's okay.

It's actually the same with mood.  No one can be happy all of the time, sometimes we get fed up and we need a moan or a cry or whatever and that is okay.  We no one is positive all of the time and we shouldn't try to be.  It's not healthy.  It's like couple who say they never fight, I kind of side-eye them because if you're in a relationship the chances are you piss off your partner and they piss you off occasionally but if you can't hash it out it only builds.

My husband and I rarely have big fights but they few we've had have been resolved fairly quickly because we worked it out.  I remember saying to him early on and I would rather he say something to me as soon as it started bothering him rather then letting it fester.  It's actually gotten to the point that if something has been allowed to fester when we do bring it up we start it with "This is partly my fault, I should have said something the first time." and we work it out.  Usually when we fight it's over small things but it's healthy to have it out.

It's okay to be sad, it's okay to  be frustrated it's okay to give up a project you no longer enjoy, it's okay to take a break and it's okay to rest. We're human, not machines.

Who I am now

Sometimes when I stop and look back at my life I'm astonished at the person I am now.  5 years ago the person I was was very different to who I am now.  I wouldn't have been able to imagine myself as an OU student, or at having friendships with more then a handful of people.  

I wouldn't have believed that I could find an exercise that made me feel good, or that I could come to terms (on the whole) with how I look.

I wouldn't have believed that I could be reaching out to others, signing up for the friends group, or generally being part of the world.

I wouldn't have believed I could do anything that I do now.

It's not easy I often doubt myself, imagine that I'm failing at everything, imagine that everyone secretly hates me.  I often feel I'm ugly and unworthy because of my weight.  I often feel ill at ease with the world.

I still find being social...difficult.  I like it and I like the people I know and have become friendly with.  Everyone from the mums at school to my fellow classmates...but being social does not come naturally to me so I find it enjoyable but exhausting.  I often struggle to understand simple social cues or subtle facial expressions so every conversation is a mental exercise for me.  I have to be careful not to over do it, just as I do with physical exercise.  I'm still learning the balance but I'm glad I'm better able to do it now.

My life has gotten more complex and certainly busier than it was 5 years ago and every change I've made is a struggle to maintain but it's worth it.  I know it is because I know how richer my life is now.  Even now when the darkness inside my head is extremely loud and I feel a wave of hopelessness and apathy and self loathing wash over me...even when that happens....it lacks the power of me it once did.  

In the past I was a danger to myself now it's more along the lines of not having the strength of will to get the washing up done.  That's a huge change.  No matter how dark it gets in my head I don't have the worrying thoughts or feelings for self harm.  That is very reassuring.

Everyone with depression and or anxiety deals with it in different ways.  One of my ways is imagining this sort of conversation between my Anxiety, Depression and my Sensible stuff.

Depression: "Heeeyyy Anxiety.  You know I heard everyone is laughing at you...."

Anxiety: "Really? OH MY GOD."

Sensible: "OBJECTION where is your evidence for this Depression?"

Depression: "Oh I have my sources...."

Anxiety: *whimper*

Sensible: "Oh please! You're a known liar Depression.  Come on Anxiety ignore her, she's just trying to upset you."

Anxiety: "Can we *sniff* can we do something nice."

Sensible: "Yes, how would you like a nap?"

Anxiety: "I...I'd like that thank you...."

Depression: "HEY GET BACK HERE! I'M NOT DONE MAKING YOU FEEL BAD!"

Sensible: *leads Anxiety away while flipping off Depression with both hands.*

It helps me deal for some weird reason.

I hate being an Adult

This week I have been on top form at being a grown up.  I've managed my home studies for my BA in history (I'm an Open University student), I went for walks, recorded my diet and exercise, attended a Friends meeting for my son's school (essentially the PTA), called the doctor and got a refill of my medications and even got that number of a carpenter that my Father in law wanted.

And I am fed up with it all.

Oh sure the ladies on the friends group are great, I'm ahead on my studies and my doctor is the best doctor I could hope for but I can't shake the feeling that I'm a big fraud and they're all going to find out that I'm really just a 14 year old who thinks farts are funny and wants to watch Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z and Pacific Rim in a blanket fort with a pile of snacks.

I don't feel grown-up or together or anything even when I do have my shit together.  Yes I get a nice warm glow when I've answered all my emails and do all my errands...especially if I can do them without leaving my room...but then I get hit by the "Oh God I'm actually rubbish aren't I?" Doing too little lets the fear of "being found out" in but also doing too much does as well.  It's like I'm standing there with a smile doing things and thinking "Oh god, I can't keep up this act for much longer."

I know I'm not the only one who feels like this and I know I just have to ignore that niggling doubt and fear. However knowing doesn't always help with the doing.  So I might not get a blanket fort this weekend, but I am sure as hell watching Pacific Rim because who needs to be an Adult when you could have giant monsters battling giant robots?