We were discussing my mood swings over the past couple of weeks in my counselling session today. I have been circling around, happy & positive, irritation & rage and miserable and sobbing . Round and round it goes like the worst fairground ride ever invented and I want to get off!
I started the session on a positive, showing her the sanctuary and then went on to have a little moan about the husband, he hadn’t actually done anything, I was well aware it was me with the problem and it was more of a moan about his lack of psychic ability rather than anything else, I complained about the clutter in my house, how I wasn’t sleeping properly, despite being back in my own bed and generally the only time I felt positive, was in my sanctuary, except, I was finding myself doing anything and everything but writing the book I had been dreaming of writing my whole life, in fact, I had talked myself out of the idea.
As I have said before, writing books has been my dream since childhood and the more time I spend writing, the more I feel like this is what I am supposed to do, it feels so natural to me, I feel like its where I need to be, it feels like home. So, why after 20+ years have I still not got a book under my belt? Why don’t I even have a first draft? I’ve been on a writing course, I took a home writing course, I’ve read books about writing, I’ve been on writing retreats, I’ve listened to podcasts about writing and I have looked at endless websites about writing. Where is the book dammit??
Today, I had (another) revelation during my counselling session and found out why there is no book yet.
I. AM. SCARED.
I cannot tell you how hard that was for me to admit that to myself, let alone anyone else, it feels hard even writing it. I got really emotional when I realised just how petrified I was of failing, the thought of failing actually made me cry.
It turns out I am an avoider, I am avoiding writing this book because I am scared that I am not good enough to write a book, so rather than try and fail and say at least I tried, I just won’t try.
I will do everything else, such as create a beautiful room to write in and I will write blog posts and publish them anonymously, because then I can hide behind it, only my friends know who I am and they know most of what goes on in my life anyway.
This avoiding stretches into other areas of my life too, I will avoid doing anything I feel like I won’t be good at, which when my self esteem is on the floor, could be pretty much everything but sleeping and at the moment I can’t even do that bloody right!
I thought about how long I had been like this for, as a child I was very, well annoying I guess. I was an extrovert, I wanted to be the centre of attention and would literally give anything a go. I didn’t really think about whether I was good at anything, it was all about the enjoyment.
I remember really fancying a boy in primary school, everyone fancied him and he didn’t fancy me. I was appalled, why would he not? I asked him outright, as you do, but he wouldn’t tell me, so I did what any self respecting 10 year old would do, I sent one of my friends to ask him.
It turned out that he didn’t like the way I dressed. In all fairness to him, my mum always regales me with some outfits I chose for myself and there is some particularly bad photographic evidence of clothes I had bought with my own birthday money or outfits I had randomly put together.
One particular favourite was onesie (about 25 years before they were even a thing.) It buttoned up the front, the left hand side was black, the other side was mustard with a paisley pattern. I thought I looked the bollocks in that, but I guess with the confidence I had as a child, I thought I looked the bollocks in most things. So when I heard that he was not won over by my individual style, I said to my friend “Well if he doesn’t like the way I dress then sod him, I’m not changing myself for anyone, his loss”
I will always remember that, I can remember where I was in the school and I can remember being insulted and then angry, who did he think he was?? Who doesn’t want to be my boyfriend? How weird? I was probably too confident at that age, but I lived in such a small world, I had no reason not to be. When I got to secondary school, I learned quickly from the mistakes others made and toned myself down. I started to care a bit more about what others thought but not to the point where I would change myself drastically. That happened with my second serious boyfriend.
Looking back it was more an act of defiance at first, I thought he was a bit of a bad boy, it turns out he was just an insecure, lazy stoner, but it took me a while to see that. It took my dad minutes. I spent all of my time with him, I thought it was great he wanted to spend so much time with me, I felt wanted. I gradually stopped seeing my friends as he would make me feel bad. On the rare occasion, I did go out he would either want to come or be calling me all night, it was suffocating. He didn’t like me wearing shorter skirts or low cut tops and would accuse me of looking at other boys. In the end my days consisted of staying at his parents house every night, getting the bus to work at a local office and then would get the bus back to his after work. I never went out, we never went out, he was always out of work and couldn’t afford to take me out, I even bought my own Christmas present once, he was going to give me the money, he never did, he spent it on weed, which he always seemed to find money for.
I think, because my dad saw him for what he was and we had about our relationship, I felt I needed to prove a point and show him that he wasn’t a bad person and this relationship would work. Obviously, this never happened.
Fortunately, my parents, on one of my rare occasions at home, convinced me that I should get a job in the city. I was 19 and wasn’t enjoying my job. I got a job in a really young company and I loved it. It was a completely different world, I started going out more and after being at the job for 3 months, I broke up with him and moved into a houseshare with one of the girls I now worked with and at the end of that year, I met my ex husband.
It was completely different to my last relationship, not only did he have a job, he was ambitious, he took me out on dates and he encouraged me to go out with my friends. I felt almost grateful, so much so, that I didn’t notice that he was slowly chipping away at my self esteem.
He used to tell me about all the girls he been with, how popular he was and basically how lucky I was to have nabbed him.
He constantly made comments about my weight, I wasn’t even fat, I was a size 10-12. It started off as small little things like “I don’t find bigger girls attractive” to “you’ve put on a little bit of weight” to “should you be eating that?” It got to the point where I would eat things in secret and hide wrappers and generally just lie about what I had eaten to avoid the judgement “you’ll never lose weight eating that” I hadn’t ever thought about what I ate, it wasn’t a thing for me, I just ate when I was hungry.
Then it would be what I am wearing. I was a girlie girl, wearing dresses and skirts, I never really wore tracksuits bottoms or trainers unless I was exercising. He always told me that I should wear trainers more, I told him I didn’t really like wearing them he even tried to convince me to buy these hideous blue and red trainers as he thought they would look nice with a pair of jeans, I told him it wasn’t my thing and it would be a waste of money as I just wouldn’t wear them, so he bought me them for Christmas and complained when I didn’t wear them, constantly reminding me how much money he has spent on them.
When I moved into his house, I was so excited. We brought all my things to the house in the evening and the following day he went to work so I decided to be the good little girlfriend, unpack all my things and clean the house so it was all perfect when he came home from work. I sweated my arse off that day and was still cleaning when he got home. The first thing he did when he got home was wipe his finger along the side and tell me that I hadn’t cleaned it properly, I was devastated.
The same thing with my cooking, something was always not quite right. Everything I did just wasn’t good enough and I honestly mean everything, I don’t think he ever said a good word about me.
When I mentioned he was always criticising everything I do, he would say that its constructive criticism and he was helping me. How ungrateful was I? He was just trying to help me! I was always reminded that I would never meet anyone better than him, he was a catch. No one else would want me, I was fat, I couldn’t cook, clean or even dress right. I wasn’t good enough.
I believed him.
When my next relationship came along my confidence was on the floor. It was a long distance relationship so we didn’t see each other much, we called, messaged and video chatted in the evenings. I ignored every single red flag, every single comment from friends and every little voice in my head. I was just grateful for every speck of attention he threw my way.
It turned out he had a girlfriend of 12 years and a child. I know that I had a lucky escape, but at the time, all I wanted was for him to call me and say it was me he wanted to be with, to pick me, but there I was again. Not good enough.
As much as I would love to go back in time and do things differently, I am so thankful that these things happened as I learned some valuable life lessons and they led me to the amazing friends I have today and of course, to the husband, who as much as I moan about him, is one of the good ones. He has never commented on my weight, my looks or my clothes. He just wants me to be happy. Even when I am crying because I can’t get the robot hoover to work.
Unfortunately, the issue with my self esteem and self worth still reappears from time to time and I need to work on this and they only way to do this, is with lots of self care and the scary part, getting out of my comfort zone.
The self care, I am doing. I think I have got that down, I just need to keep on top of it and not let it slide when I have a bad day. I know what works for me and what doesn’t.
The getting out of my comfort zone terrifies me. Today, when we were discussing why I am avoiding writing the book, I said I already feel like I have wasted so much time. I look back and think if only I had done this then it would be different now. I need to stop putting things off, I need to stop procrastinating and start doing. I can’t tell you how many times I have thought about stopping writing this blog for example, is it too long? Are people going to get bored reading about this stuff? This is quite uncomfortable to write, should I be sharing this? But as you are reading this, I have obviously bitten the bullet and done it anyway and actually its been really therapeutic. That bolshy 10 year old is still in there, shes just being tied down, probably with that hideous onesie *shudder*
Its not going to be easy, as my counsellor said, there will be resistance, excuses and distractions but I need to push myself gently. I am going to set myself some small achieveable goals such as writing for one hour or writing so many words each day, then I will lead onto submitting my writing and putting myself out there, which for me means putting myself in for rejection, but as my counsellor said today “Rejection is just redirection” and that quote is bloody going on my vision board!!
#selfcare #selflove #love #loveyourself #mentalhealth #motivation #selfesteem #wellness #health #positivevibes #inspiration #happiness #life #mindfulness #confidence #comfortzone #positivity #healing #happy #yourself #mindset #meditation #therapy #counselling #lifestyle #mentalhealthawareness
2022-03-10 19:37:13
