Words, words, words. There’s so much power in words but more so, in my belief, in saying them aloud. There’s still a hiding place for those words that are attached to feelings, attached to old fears, attached to old hurts, attached to wants and needs when left to dwell around and around in your head.
Digging deep for 2019 saw some of my hidden words come to life, pushed out into the universe never to be taken back (because that’s the bitch of it, once it’s said, rarely can you bury them back inside). Digging deep was and still is about saving myself…
“I’ve got to dig even deeper. Dig deeper into me. Dig fucking deep and find resources within myself that will fight the mornings that want me to stay in bed. That fight the words “It wouldn’t matter if I didn’t exist”. Fight the hurt that will inevitably come from this connection slog-fest. Fight not asking for help.”
In my fight to dig deep, I headed to therapy — financially, paying for therapy seemed like a cost I just could not afford but something in me seemed to negotiate on behalf of my mental health, ‘suck it the fuck up, you need this’. And I did need ‘this’. I looked up therapists in my area — a fucking minefield! As it happens, a failed attempt at seeking help for my lack of organisation skills lead me to my current therapist whom I’ve sat across from almost weekly since August. They are American but have been here for so long that ‘Mom’ is said as ‘Mum’ which stops me every time, it’s a curious thing and totally unnecessary to mention.
If you’ve ever had a referral from your GP for counselling/talking therapies, you may know the overwhelmingness of trying to sort your shit out in a limited number of sessions. There’s a weight that is lifted when you walk in knowing you don’t have to try and solve all your shit in a constrained time frame. It takes that long for some just to even get going let alone getting down and dirty with it all!
And it has been a slog-fest and continues to be and whatever possessed me to lay it out for public consumption, I’m not sure but I have. Notes on my session discoveries and thoughts can be found through Instagram stories that if you were to read — and I don’t mean that mindless scroll that we often do — you’d find a couple of themes that I absolutely hate to have uncovered but kind of always knew (academically, of course):
- Connection is necessary not an optional life addition (see, I’m still fighting this one)
- Your early experiences do shape you but are not set in stone (still pisses me off)
- Controlling the outcome does not keep you any safer than embracing come what may (this takes up a lot of my energy)
- Having no experiences of the vulnerable stuff can make it seem like a mother-fucking mountain to navigate now
- You don’t need permission to feel how you feel (I still seek permission, it’s a sneaky little fucker)
- Not everyone is going to leave you (probably the most deep-rooted feeling)
I could go on but I feel that as my therapy time comes to an end, maybe a post will be written then.
Please note, while I’m shouting about the positives of the therapy train, I do understand that it is not for everyone and those that don’t, there are other ways to explore you — you do you, dude.
I’m heading into 2020 with therapy firmly in my diary but this isn’t the only thing that has quieted my ‘It wouldn’t matter if I didn’t exist’ mantra. Little did I know that a tiny ball of black and white fur would save me in ways I never saw coming.
My friends and family conspired in March to bring Daisy to me, a black and white cat that I had lived with back in Bournemouth. She had been struggling with all the changes in the house since I had gone, displaying itself through patchy fur and using the house as her own personal toilet. Anyone living with animals knows how fucking exasperating this kind of behaviour can be! They teamed up through the age-old WhatsApp group facility and even paid my pet deposit. Walking into my kitchen and seeing her on the table will be a moment and feeling I hope never to lose. I cried.
Even now, I look at her and cannot believe she’s with me. And that’s where she saved me, her fur grew back, she’s back to using the outside as her own private toilet as well as her actual own private indoor toilet. She needed me and I needed her. I couldn’t think of not existing anymore because to think of her at home waiting for me to never come back, never to walk through that door, it floors me in a way I’ve never known before. I’d ask you to sit with that for a moment but that shit has some depth.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why the power of animals and caring for them should never be underestimated. They are sneaky little fuckers that take your heart with an unspoken promise to never break it regardless of your status in the world so long as you never break theirs.
I have a lot to be thankful for, don’t get me wrong, 2019 was fucking hard, even without getting into the state of the world outside, I never saw summer from working so much (take that as avoidance behaviour), some relationships have suffered from my need to explore me, but it has been slowly giving me strength to uncover, feel, learn, experiment, experience and every other fucking word that could be used here.
2019 aside, my word for 2020 is ownership. To own what I feel, to own my stance, to own without seeking permission first. This is huge for me, as someone once messaged me ‘you walk around like you’re apologising to the world for your existence’ and it’s fucking true. I’m very good at finding a way to make shit my fault, I’ll own it for you. It’s the next step which involves just as much trust in me, authenticity, and digging as deep as I ever have. To trust that when I am disliked, when my beliefs are not yours and you may not like it, I can hold myself strong and will not concede. Own that that relationship may need to be laid to rest, not everyone wants to come along for the ride for whatever reason that may be, and own that I put my shit on the table too.
Experiment • Reflect • Learn • • tweak • Repeat — ultimately, stop being such a dick and own your shit
All the best in 2020,
