Am I lost?

"I starting with the man in the mirror

I'm asking him to change his ways

And your message couldn't've been any clearer

If you want to make the world a better place

Take a look at yourself and make that change'

Man in the mirror - J2 feat Cameron The Public

I'm lost, I'm so lost and I don't know how to get back.... I don't know if I want to go back.  Oblivion is a place I would really like to be.  It is so inviting, somewhere I can get comfortable. I know I shouldn't, I do, but I am so tired, exhausted.  I have no map, no compass, and I'm not convinced I care.  The road I am on is comfortable, it's like going home.  I smile as I great old friends, recognising landmarks.  

This is a journey I take alone, for the first time in my life I take this journey alone and I am content with the likely outcome.  There is no fear, no pain, no confusion... just the journey.

One hour at a time, moving in a direction, never stopping, fighting doesn't work, all I can do it to keep moving in a direction.  Where that takes me, I can imagine, but that's where I am, it's what I'm doing.  No more fighting.

take a step back.

There are time in ones life when you should stop.  Look at your life, and work out if you like who you are, do you know who you are?  Do you like what you've become.

I've been doing that a lot lately, I'm not really sure why.

I have spent a number of year, since I finished therapy, trying to find my way in the world.  I change jobs so many times, trying to work out what I wanted, what I needed.  I moved to different areas, met new people, tried different things.  Pushing my comfort zone, looking for something, some meaning to help me to keep going.  I know that I am made for the single life, I don't do well around people for a long period of time.  I never have been.  People annoy me.  I can't think of anything worse than sharing my life with someone.  That I come home to an empty house, to do what I want to do, in the time I want is my saving grace.  I love it and it's what I need.

I have all that I have ever wanted, I live on my own, I can support myself. I have a social life.  I do voluntary work.  I am part of a wonderful parish.  I have a worth while job and am  making a difference in lives.

I should be content, I should be fine to glide through life until death.  Yet I never want to wake up, I hate waking up.  I want to stay asleep forever.  I am always tired.  I feel nothing. When a laugh it's not real, there are times I feel I should show some sort of emotion but I have no idea what.  

I just don't understand it.  I have everything I have been working towards for year.  Surely it should feel better than this.  Is this all there is to life, is this what the next 40 years is going to feel like.  If so, God please listen to me and let me die.  I can't do this.

I have spent so long creating this life of mine, I have no idea how to change it at this point.  I am too tired to even attempt to change it.... and I can't tell anyone, because this is my fault.  I thought this was what I wanted. I got what I wanted.  So why am I not content.  Why does it just.... I have no words to explain how I feel.  What it's like to wake up and know I have x amount of hours before I can sleep again and enter the oblivion.  Why can't I stay there!

My prayer tonight is for the strength to do what I need to do.

Oops I'm doing it again

I had a review yesterday of my performance in my two weeks in my new job.  It wasn't good.  They don't like the fact I know my limitations and will voice something I know, from experience I can't do.  However they want me to ignore all of this and attempt to see through my limitations and go a head and do these things anyway.  It's crazy.  It's not like they've even asked me, they just demand it.

They pointed out that in my interview I said that I would never ask someone to do something I wasn't prepared to do myself... which is true, but the flip side of that is the fact that you have to understand people's limitations and adapt around those limitations.  You can not ask someone to flourish in a place where they concentrate only on limitations! Can you?

Until this point I was more than happy, I felt I was doing okay, knew I was struggling in some areas but didn't know that they were so unhappy with me.  I have been struggling with their prayer.  They have turned very, very, very traditional!!! Unbelievably so.... to the point I have to more or less sit in silence for the best part of an hour..... it's so hard!!!  I don't get a lot out of it, even their praise and worship is slow and quiet which is no so nice.

So once again I feel as though I have made the wrong decision and am fucking up my life again!!! When will I find somewhere that works, that is right.  I want to find somewhere that will except me as me and not as they expect people to be or their idea of what someone should be.

It's been so long since I've felt like I have a home, where I can be me completely and utterly, where I can feel so comfortable that I don't need my walls or my barriers any more.  I can feel them going up again, I can feel me pulling away from people.  I can feel myself not wanting to be part of the world again.  After fighting so hard to try and be part of it, I know want to run away again.

I'm tired of having to suppress so much of me to fit in, for people to except me, just so I can be a stereotype.  Am I wrong to want to be myself? Am I wrong to want to be comfortable with people around me? Why am I always in the wrong?

review

2007 was spectacularly shit, I actually took up cutting and it was like meeting an old friend I hadn't seen in along time. I know that this friend could get me into a lot of trouble, but I had forgotten (not completely) how this old friend makes me feel better and helps me to cope when things are not going so well. This is the only way I cope with the shite that life threw at me last year. Cutting is very strange, it calms me down so quickly, looking at old scars you can tell in each round when I start to feel better because the cuts get smaller and lighter. I always sleep fantastically well after I've cut. That's now content it makes me feel.

Most people, while growing up, have a friend that their parents don't like and wish that you didn't hang around with. That's what cutting is to me, a friend who means so much to me and helps me in so many ways, but can get me into a lot of trouble, especially by those who know that I cut.

I still have not told my mother about the depression or the cutting this time around, nor have I told her that I'm about to undertake the psycho therapy. This does scare me but I know if I want to lead anything resembling a normal life, where I deal with things in a way that I don't cut then I need to do this. Saying that however I have been told that I may never give up the cutting. This could be with me for the rest of my life, something I don't relish but something I might have to accept. I had accepted that I would properly struggle with depression on and off for the rest of my life, but cutting I thought I had got rid off. Then it came back, it all came back.

So this year I have to work on the following

1. My Self Esteem - I come across as a really positive and confident person, but I'm not. I'm now where need these things. I constantly look for reassurance but hate being praised and I hate people giving me compliments. I also don't believe that I deserve happiness, I think that's why I don't tell S or even hint at him how I feel.
2. Friends - I have to stop taking it so personally when friends don't try and make the time to spend time together. I can only do so much before I give up. This Christmas I have decided that I will no longer run around after people like a little lost dog trying to spend time with people who obviously don't want to spend time with me. I give up. If they want to see me they can contact me. I just don't have the energy any more.
3. Mental Health - I will work hard this year to try and get better in the mental health department, I will try and be honest with the psycho team and my support network and deal with the stress' of life in a more constructive way. I have had some sessions with CMHT (community mental health team) and I wasn't exactly truthful with them, not was I truthful with my support network. CMHT asked me if I ever thought any further than cutting (ie ending my life), I told them I didn't. In truth although I would never do it seriously or even attempt it, I did wonder who would notice if I ended my life. Would it be hours, days, weeks or months before anyone noticed that I wasn't around any more. Who would really morn my death? Other than the family? I should have told them this but I just couldn't. But with the Psycho team I will need to tell them things like this so I can get all the help I need.
   
4. Trust - I will try and learn to trust people this year, I need to start taking risks by allowing people through my walls and let people in. I will not be easy and I may not like it to begin with but I have to start letting people in or else I really will walk this world alone.
5. Love - I need to open my heart to love and to let people know if I have feelings for them. I'm not saying what I feel for S is the L word, but I certainly have strong feelings for S and I miss him when he's not around, when he is around my heart beats fast, I get hot and sweaty and I get butterflies in my stomach. L is a word I will not use lightly and need to think a lot about.

So that's what I'm going to try and do for 2008.

Good bye to the old, hello to the new.

It's no secret that I find life hard, I have my ups and I have my downs. A comment happened today and it really got to me, got to me a lot more than it should have.  My mother was asked about being a grandmother.  My mother said it was unlikely that she would ever be a grandmother.  My sister apparently doesn't want kids, and me well it'll be a miricle if I ever get a guy.  It wasn't said like that but it was insinuated.

I want to be a mother, I look forward to the day I become a mother, but there are probelms with this.  When I do be come a mother I want to be married, I want to marry someone I love and I trust.  The problem I am afraid of being in a relationship.  I am afriad of all that goes with the relationship emosionally and physically.  I am 26, I've not been in any sort of relationship since I was 18.  I've never had sex.  I'm so afraid.  I'm afraid of never knowing a male touch, I'm afriad of never knowing love, I'm afraid I will never be a mother but most of all I'm afraid of being close to someone, sharing my life someone, that someone will know me so well that they know what I'm thinking, I'm afraid of change.

I want to be a mother, I want to know love, I want to have sex but I am so afraid of everything that it hinders me, it stops me going out there and meeting people and just living.  It's so stupid I know but I can't help who or what I am.  So what am I to do?  I'm so afriad that I will love so much and then they will leave because I am not good enough for them, because I can not satisfy them, that I can not be what they need.

I almost wrote a letter to santa, not because I believe in him, but because I believe that Christmas is a time of magic, that at Christmas anything can happen, so I almost wrote a letter to santa saying that next year all I wanted for Christmas 2007 is to find love, to loose all my inhibitions and to find someone I wanted to spend my life with, even if marriage never happened, I wanted to loose my inhibitions and my fear.  I wrote it but tore it up.  How dumb is that! To write a letter for something that can only happen if I actually do something about it.  I know that nothing in this world get's handed to you on a plate.  If you want something you have to go out and get it.  It will never just be given to you as Hollywood like to try and make us believe!  Things will only change when I make them change.

So here's to 2007 and things changing!

Last Weekend

Was absoluly frelling brilliant!

The retreat was a complete sucess. People want more. I'm hoping for our second retreat in six months, give or take.

The guy I got stressed out over, didn't come. I have never prayed so hard, or been so thankful for anything in my entire life. I keep thanking God for this guy not coming. Although I'm sure God wants him to come back to church, I just couldn't cope.

But I'm still buzzing from the retreat. Now I have lots of work to do. If I can hand in my report over the next week or so, the sooner I know if we're getting a youth worker and if it's me.

Buzzing, buzzing, buzzing.

There I've posted. Will try and post more over the coming months.