A Year Later

So a year ago i wrote a rather angry piece:

https://amiagrownupyet.com/2019/03/21/i-will-find-a-way-lucy-lyness/

It was suggested i write an update a year later. So here you go.

Occasionally upon waking

The demons stir, their claws reaching for sunlight

Momentarily I freeze, awaiting their grip

But when I roll over and see the splayed hair of the man I love contrasted against his pale skin

Their hushed, angry whispers disapte, retreating back to their dens.

Some days they find a hold, their grasp choking,

Their familiar sting like a sweet home coming to a masochistic brain

And I want to scream and gouge out my eyes and shred the brain tissue to dust

But reassuring words from my benevolent love wash over the pain, like a soothing balm, reducing their grip and calming the turbulent seas, and these days grow fewer with farther between.

I rarely think now of the girl I once was, no sense in mourning the long gone, the potential, the ifs and maybes. She is never coming back, she is a myth.

Who can say if she ever had hopes and dreams, I don’t remember after so many years of not having any other than the simultaneous wish to survive and die

But I feel the dreams, the ardent hopes returning, sizzling at the base of my skull, waiting to strike. Waiting for a cue that it is safe to come out.

Occasionally I catch a glimpse of that girl, her shadowy visage reflected back at me in the windows of the cars and shops as I walk past, but like a ghost, she is always in the peripheries, too scared to reveal herself and converse.

As I walk, my armour spreads all around me, it’s sharp, poisonous barbs pulsating a deep orange,

A warning to any man who dare try to approach me,

But when I arrive home and see the smile of the man I love reach his eyes, the barbs retract to spiky stubble on my skin.

I try not to bristle him with them, as I seek his arms and lay my head on his chest.

On lucky nights the stubble falls off, my skin grows smooth and soft against his, and a warm glow makes me eyes prickle with tears.

Melancholy is my best friend, along with ptsd despair, but these days we only converse through messenger. They appreciate I have stuff going on.

My Naivety – 31/05/19

I have alluded previously that I am horrendous at making decisions as I cannot rely on my own brain.

I get caught up in fantasy, choose to see things the way I want to see them, a defence mechanism built up over many years of being hurt. Reality is usually too painful to acknowledge, so a retreat into a version of life where things are not as bad is an easy thing to slip into, and for the most part does no harm, it just makes things easier to deal with.

Unfortunately the down side of this is when reality comes crashing in and collides with the fairy tale life I am weaving for myself.

It is better to live in reality. I wish I could. But it hurts too much. The despair, the pain, the realisation, is too much. Perhaps, however, a source of this pain comes from the juxtaposition I create, in having a fairy tale life in the first place, by having hope and reaching for it. Perhaps if I embrace full pessimism, accept that my chance of happiness is not going to happen, I can live in reality. It might be depressing and it might change who I am, but maybe it would be the best option. In order to do this though, I would have to stop giving a shit about anything. And that is hard. Giving a shit gives us a reason to live. It gives us the passion to do things, to make the right choices, to act with honour and integrity, to move forward as a person. Is it fair on other people if I stop giving a shit?

I am fed up with the words from others that perpetuate the fantasy, but the actions that tear it down.

I am fed up of catching myself believing those words, only to find myself a fool again. Perhaps this is one life lesson I will never learn. Perhaps I will always be naive when it comes to the things I desire, because I want so much to believe it. So perhaps the only option is to believe nothing. To live in nothing.

Most of all I am fed up of living in my brain. If I stop giving a shit, will the thoughts finally stop? Or even if they don’t stop, will I at least be able to dismiss them because I don’t give a shit anymore? What would living a life like that be like? How would it affect those around me?

Recently, I have started recovering what is left of myself. I had been a shell for so long, and all I wanted was to regain what I used to be. This has been slowly beginning to happen, but if I chose to live a life of reality, I would be kissing that person goodbye once and for all. If I chose this path I would be essentially killing her and letting someone else walk away and live my life out. Is it fair to her? Or is it a mercy killing?

Can someone please make the decision for me. Just make sure it’s the right one please.

 

I Will Find A Way – Lucy Lyness

youth’s ultimate beauty of innocence and hope

if ignorance is bliss, then surely, therefore, so is this

the potential and possible timelines and paths

streaming out of my body like ribbons of life, like lifeforce  itself

 

you took this, it attracted you like the murderous magpie you are

that malleable soul before you

that you systematically destroyed, inhibited, reduced to nothing

but it was my fault of course

 

no different from those that find a rare and undiscovered animal

Shoot it and put its head on their mantel piece

I sat on your mantel piece, broken remnants of a once wondrous masterpiece

now shattered into a thousand jigsaw pieces, the complete picture wiped away forever

 

that lifeforce, once so bright and strong

now a dark cloud, a demon smoke

inside every one of my cells

it is more me than I am

 

now that I have gained my freedom, why can I not be free?

still trapped beneath your limitations, your words and intentions, your strikes and misses

I wish I could twist your neck until I heard every last vertebrae snap

watch the ligaments dangle like spaghetti from my hands

I wish I could scream in your face, unhinge my jaw

and release that black demon smoke into your own being

fill you with everything you gave to me, an unwanted gift

watch your brain spark and burn under the pain

I could crack open your ribs, splinter one into a quill

remove your heart and write on your forehead

in your own blood, am I enough now?

 

At least through my anger I can purge you

I can feel something, a reminder that I was once a person

I don’t know how to start my life without you

I don’t know what to do or how to cope

you were my battle

my fight for freedom defined my every thought and action

now I am free I have nothing to live for, no purpose

but I will be damned if I waste it

I will find a reason to live

I will find a way to allow myself happiness

I will find a way to release you from my soul

I will find a way to love life again

with one foot in front of the other I will walk away from you

until I no longer hear you in my brain

until your reach no longer permeates

and I can finally fly away

February 11th – I need to breathe

I am struggling and I don’t know what to do. I am pissing myself off with my inability to grab things head on and deal with it. To me, my struggling is a weakness I abhor.

I want to reach out to someone and tell them that I cannot cope, but I don’t know who to turn to. I don’t want platitudes, meaningful quotes written in script on a sunset background. I don’t want to hear that everything will be ok, everything happens for a reason, these things make us stronger. I am tired of having to be strong, of swimming against a never ending tide that washes away the sand from under my feet, leaving me constantly unstable.

All I want to care about right now, is meeting my basic survival needs, but in order to do so I have to make myself ill working a job, in order to earn enough money to almost meet my survival needs. The rich care about money, I do not. If I could meet my needs without it, I would. My soul is trapped in an ever tightening cage, I feel crushed and in pain, I want to neither exist nor not exist. I just want to be able to breathe.

I have always had ambitions, not ones important to anyone else, but ones for myself,  becoming self sufficient, self employed, free from the chains of capitalism to whatever degree I can manage. But now even these thoughts give me no pleasure.

Some people may wish to be at home to rest and recharge from these things, but I hate my home. It is a prison, a symbol of everything in my life I want to get away from, the reason I need to earn so much money, and for what? Four walls I don’t wish to be inside. A glorified shed for belongings I have no time or desire to touch. It is the guarantee that for the next month I shall have a roof over my head. But the price, is wishing I didn’t.

I find myself floating from friend to friend, telephone conversations about nothing, attempts at socialising face to face, to take my mind off it, to fill the hole of loneliness, but this only serves to make me feel isolated even further. But if I reject these interactions I fear I will lose my brain completely into a pit of nothingness.

To think of the future before, gave me hope. I had a passion, something in my present to fight against, and the idea that in the future would lie my freedom. Now I do not know what the future holds, I am struggling to see a way out, so all that fills the gap is the day to day strangulation of my being, stretching out to eternity in front of me. It may be easy enough to say, “do not think of the future, concentrate on the present,” but if I have nothing to look forward to and to live towards, what is the point in living today. Every now and then, if I find myself in a lighter mood, I daydream of a potential future, one that I would like to have very much, but the path there seems so obstructed that what should be a pleasant daydream leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

I simply wish to be able to breathe again. This isolation, much my own doing, is not good for me, but I don’t feel able to connect with anyone, or know where to start, as I don’t want to drag anyone into this pathetic fuckery. But if you feel like someone has your back, you can tackle anything that is thrown at you, but if you don’t feel like you have that, then everything can so easily overwhelm you and make you feel like you are breaking.

I am proud of myself for not resorting to drinking through it at least. Every cloud…..

 

 

Mendacious Human Race

No bigger fool exists, surely, than I.

I do not wear rose tinted spectacles, I see reality for what it is, in all its putrescence, but I have a rose tinted brain and choose to ignore this reality. The pain of the truth is too much to bear, so my brain softens the blow. Tells me it’ll be fine. Whatever your gut instincts are telling you, I’m sure there’s an explanation. Just keep going. This can’t possibly be the truth of the matter, because that would be too painful. If this is the truth of the matter, what is the point in living. That people do not even have enough self control to question their base desires and consider them, consider another persons feelings and the consequences of their actions, nor the integrity to be honest in the first place. Surely this should be the deviation from the norm, and not the norm itself. Despite my rose-tinted brain, my gut instincts are usually amazingly spot on from the word go. And yet I never fucking listen.

I once read that the sadness of life is that no matter how good your heart is, eventually you have to start treating people the way they treat you.

I have never subscribed to this. Living to some code of honour and self respect, holding my intentions above the mendacity of humans, convinced that by living the right way, there must be some end game reward.

That’s bollocks. Perhaps all there is in life is base desires and chaos and feculence. The turgid, tumescent writhing masses of the human race, a plague on this planet, a scourge and an insult to the very universe itself, caught up in their pathetic petty fuckery, stabbing at each other in the dark like blind babies whose mummies and daddies didn’t love them enough. Perhaps I should be playing the villain, instead of the self-righteous protagonist. I have the capacity to be a truly malevolent and pestiferous monster, something that I bury, in favour of the code of honour, but if there is no end game, does it really matter.

I create these rules to keep myself in check, but maybe it’s just all a shit show.

I am aware that my BPD can cause me to swing violently from “This is amazing and everything is going to be great” to “This is terrible I need to get the fuck away from this situation now”. Because of this I find it hard to know what thinking is rooted in rationality, and what isn’t. I try to share with others, in as much of a non-biased way as possible, to try to get insight into whether my reactions and thoughts are valid. But this isn’t always easy. And because I swing so quickly from one to the other, it is hard to ever make a concrete decision regarding a situation, because my outlook is ever shifting. I have always wished I could see the end result, so I would know which decision to make, what is worth investing my time in and what isn’t. But I don’t have this power, none of us do. So we blindly stumble through life, trusting the wrong people and branding our ever shrinking hearts with the deceit and betrayal of others.

 

 

 

 

December 2018

I haven’t written on here in over a year.  A lot has changed.

2017 was a year of discovery, hope, breaking out, finding myself and new experiences.

2018 has been a year of depressions, difficulties, reality checks and avoidance. Also a few good bits.

I lost the house that I had so badly needed. My finances have been in tatters. I have withdrawn from social situations.

I discovered that I am not as strong as I thought.

Currently, I am low and struggling. I have made the decision to once again leave the boat and get a house. It is not going to be easy, my finances are going to be tight, but i know it is the right decision.

The relationship was too hurtful, and after 11 years I could see no way of undoing all that had been done. But I didn’t know the half of it. I assumed as I had put up with this over the course of the 11 years, that I could handle it. I have discovered that it has actually left me a very broken person in many ways.

I am more fucked up than I thought.

This is impacting those around me, and more importantly driving me insane.

I have sought help , which will begin in the New Year. In the meantime I want to purge.

Purge my possessions.

Purge my emotions.

Purge my past.

Purge my brain.

I want to scream and throw things and cry and paint and empty my brain.

Maybe I need to acknowledge my past. Acknowledge the hurt and the damage. And realise that it does not reflect me. It is not me. It is part of my past. I am a different entity to my pain.

I feel that I need to pour it out. Verbally, write it, scream until the pain is at the surface. I have pushed it down for too long and now it has become my foundation.

Now I feel at risk of ruining something that has the potential to be awesome. My inability to get out of my head and be present with the situation is making things awkward. The onus is not completely on me, there are other parties who are complicit, but their deal is their deal. They can choose to get out of their own heads too, that is not down to me. But I can help by doing my part for my brain.

I want to regain what I used to be. I used to have life sparkling in my eyes, everything was mischief and nothing in the world was too serious. I have been through so much throughout my childhood and teenage years, and yet I never let it rob me of who I was. But now I feel like a shadow. A spectre wearing her face, her clothes, whispering through her life.

It is my life. And I want it back.

 

 

Imposter Syndrome

Wiki describes Imposter Syndrome like this:

“Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon or fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a concept describing individuals who are marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a “fraud”.”

“Despite external evidence of their competence, those exhibiting the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be.”

Impostor syndrome is particularly common among high-achievers, but it is said that 70% of us will experience it at some point in our lives, so it is more common than first thought. It is true though that those who are more brilliant tend to suffer from it more extremely.

I can only speak for myself, but imposter syndrome is something I have encountered at every step of my life. In every job I have ever had I have never been able to shake the feeling that they are going to rumble me, and that I will be fired for not being good enough. That one day someone will request a meeting with me and say “You shouldn’t be here.” Every time that I receive praise on how well I am doing I smile awkwardly and try to give them an excuse as to why I “appear” to be doing so well.

When I first started my therapy practice it plagued me more than ever. I was convinced that one day a client would look across at me and say, “Who the hell do you think you are, trying to help me with my problems? You are a liar and you are going to jail for being a fraud!”

That was my honest thought on the subject. I seriously believed that I was going to get into trouble for setting up my business, despite being fully qualified, and achieving high results on all my studies, because I felt like a total fraud. It is a feeling that I still haven’t quite shifted to this day, but one that I manage a lot better.

If we take my therapy practice for an example (I even have trouble typing the words and calling it that because a little voice in the back of my head says “it’s not really though is it? It’s not a real one is it so you can’t call it that.”) I actually found that my attitude was starting to sabotage sessions. It was minute, almost imperceptible little things, but I noticed. My lack of confidence in myself was communicating to certain clients, who I could see starting to shift in sessions, no doubt unconsciously picking up on this and implanting that doubt in their own minds. I realised that if I wasn’t careful and didn’t deal with this issue, I could turn my irrational thought into a truth. I wouldn’t be good enough to do my job, and it wouldn’t be through lack of knowledge or training, or not being able to do the job well, but it would be through letting my own mental processes interfere with the work that I was supposed to be doing. I had to do something about it, but what is there to do?

I began trying to talk to myself and motivate myself before sessions. I began “rehearsing” sessions with a non-existent client. I re-read study materials (that I knew like the back of my hand) and did old exercises from modules. I even sometimes would ask a client to close their eyes to do an exercise because their inability to watch me doing what I was doing helped me relax. I began going to any little course, seminar etc to make myself feel as though I was doing something, reigniting and maintaining my frame of mind. It helped, and little by little I didn’t need to do quite so much to feel more at ease. I still go on courses and to seminars etc as I feel that really helps to keep my mind keyed in to what I am doing and boosts my confidence.

I am really good at what I do, and always have been. It was only my own mind I had to prove that to.

I know that it won’t be the last time I encounter this problem, and I know that I am not the only one who does. I think thoughts like these can rot away at the base of your brain, undermining everything you do and ruining your chance to be happier and perhaps to excel. I know I have been afraid in the past of trying something, of pushing myself, because I thought I would fail because I wasn’t good enough. But through trying different things I have found ways that help me, and if more of us spoke about these things, maybe they wouldn’t knaw away at us, and maybe more people could feel happier.

 

Prickle

via Daily Prompt: Prickle

As I stare at the screen, trying to process what I am seeing in front of me, I feel a prickle at the base of my neck. My whole body suddenly stands to attention and i feel the rush of adrenaline in my stomach. My body starts to shake and I feel the energy coursing through it. I feel sick, my breathing ragged.

That feeling doesn’t go away and hours later as I try to sleep I still shake.

The next morning the shaking is reduced but the adrenaline is making my stomach churn. I can’t get rid of the sick feeling, and every time I think about it my stomach flips again. The constant feeling of the prickle on the back of your neck means you can’t relax, you can’t breathe through it.

You can’t un-see it.

The Void Inside

 

I have discussed said void before in posts, it is the ever present, ever sucking hole inside of me that I cannot determine. It is the restlessness, the procrastination, the goal that is always planned but not quite begun, the decision that teeters on the edge of my mind, the identity dancing just out of my reach, the achievement mocking me from the corner of the room. It is emptiness, dissatisfaction, waiting, sadness, anxiety and hedonism.

There are a few things that hit it right in the centre. They don’t cause it to disappear, it is still there, but they fill it and numb it. I still feel it, but I feel the fullness of it and there is a release. Those things are:

Being drunk

Having a cigarette

Getting a tattoo

Getting spanked

Orgasms

 

It is a physical feeling of fullness and the release is sweet, but fleeting.

There are however, two things I have encountered in life that have made the void disappear:

Doing a truly spontaneous exciting thing

The excitement of the build up to a first kiss, if it takes weeks or months, even better.

 

These things make the void disappear completely, and for those moments I am whole. I am alive, truly living in the present. I get a similar, if not quite as satisfactory, feeling when looking at something new and being independent on my own on a sunny day.

But how feasible is it to bounce between these things in order to try and feel alive? I have spent my twenties (and latter part of my teenage years) partying, doing these very things in a constant stream, in order to try and feel alive and plug up the inevitable consuming void inside. I cannot carry on like this. My body is starting to show signs of wear and tear form the years of partying, my mind haunted by some of the things I have done.

I read about people who discover meditation and yoga and green juice and fill that hole, but I don’t think that is going to work for me. I have tried it.

I need to find a way of plugging the hole, otherwise, if I carry on like this, it is eventually going to suck me down with it.

 

 

Bury

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/bury/

 

How do I bury you?

You are in my head, from morning til night. In my thoughts, in my dreams, in my hopes, rattling around my brain, a jumble of memories and sentences, expressions and feelings.

Should I bury you?

It probably isn’t healthy, but it can give me so much joy. Where lies the balance between helpful and harmful? How do I stop myself from investing in the good things and protect myself from the harmful things?

Could I bury you?

How could I stop the constant internal chatter? How can I move past this? How do I bury you when I don’t want to?