Tag Archives: reality

What does it matter.

01 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in Friends, Life, Motherhood, Relationships, Uncategorized

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I’m on holiday in the South of France with the two youngest boys and my mum; the eldest ditched me to stay at home. Can’t say I blame him, I would’ve at his age!

We have had a lovely week. The sun is shining, we’ve swum, played games, sunbathed, read books. It has been awesome. I’ve read three books in 6 days and started a 4th. This never happens. I love spending time with my mum and kids. I don’t get enough of it.

Whilst I am officially on annual leave, I have spent a lot of time emailing and calling work over the past two days as I am changing jobs and had issues with my start date. I’ve done this laying by the pool in between diving in and out, or watching the kids attempts to learn to dive themselves.

Whilst I’ve been doing this the boys have been playing with their friends and my mum has been reading on her kindle, watching TV on her ipad or crocheting. She’s never without a crochet hook within easy reach. She is bloody amazing at crochet. She makes loads of fantastic stuff. She can’t help herself.

Anyway this evening on the last day of our holiday my Mum said to the boys in front of me “I have to say your Mum is always on her phone”.

For some reason this raised my hackles. I have fully participated in this holiday. It is my holiday too after all. Despite the fact that I drove for 14 hours to get us here, whilst they were all watching TV, or reading or crocheting in the car. I’ve swum, taken the kids go-karting, and climbing. I’ve read over three books. I’ve cooked every night (with help from my Mum, of course), but I was being judged because I was using my phone a lot.

Whilst it annoyed me immediately, it’s not worth stressing over and so I forgot about it until I was in the shower. Whilst I was washing, I started to think about how some things appear to be acceptable for others to comment on, but somethings not. For example, I never watch TV. Anyone who has been to my house knows that I actually don’t know how to work my TV. And I don’t have Sky or Virgin, just the standard TV channels. People always comment on this. “You don’t watch TV?” As if I have some affliction..nope I don’t watch TV, not on a regular basis. If I’m not working I read or I catch up with friends, that may be in person or on the phone or via text. I don’t sit and watch crap on TV.

But somehow it’s socially acceptable to sit all evening watching TV. Or all day, and to judge me for not doing the same.

Lots of people spend all their spare time knitting, or like my Mum, crocheting. No one would ever dream of saying to them in a slightly acusatory and judgemental way “Oi Doris, all you ever do is knit” or “Brenda, you are always doing those jigsaws, can’t you do something else”.

What does it matter to anyone else if I’m on my phone rather than doing something that they feel more suitable and appropriate? How is me being on my phone different to any other pursuit, such as reading or sewing?

I don’t get a lot of time that isn’t occupied by work or childcare or other life admin; I keep in touch with those I care about using my phone. Instead of buying newspapers I read the news on my phone. If I’m reading, I often do so on my phone. If I want to watch a documentary I’ll do it on my phone. If I’m working, I can often do it on my phone. I really don’t see a problem with that.

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Riding the waves.

01 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by in Emotions, Friends, Life, Uncategorized

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I live life to the full. I pack in more in some days than others do in a week. I socialise, I work, I organise and plan. I plan and re-plan and change plans. If I’m your friend I will be there for you if you need me. I throw myself into everything and people always tell me to slow down. To relax. To take some time to be myself. To look after myself. But I don’t. I can’t. I’m terrified of not having people around me. Of solitude. Of having to face up to the demons inside of my head. Of finding the time in my life to look at what I am doing and working out where I want to be. Because, in all honesty I have no bloody idea.

I seem to lurch from one thing to another. No concerted plan or design. Rolling with the onslaught of waves that never seem to stop coming. Just as I pick myself up from one thing another comes rushing up to take its place, pushing me back over, throwing me back. Like a wind whispering in my ear “know your place” forcing back. And I’m standing here drowning and everyone thinks I’m doing a great job at staying in the water. Well I’m not.

I don’t know how to get out. I don’t know if I want to. Because getting out will mean examining all of the things that took me to this point, and I’m not sure I’m ready to do that. I’m not sure I ever will be. And so I’ll keep riding the waves and battling with the tide in the hope that one day, soon, it will turn. That it will run in my favour. That I won’t have to work so God damned hard to just stay where I am; on an apparently even keel.

And the pretence will remain, as will the illusion of peace. Because all the while no one knows you are drowning, they don’t have to reach out a hand to help you.

Temporary release.

16 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by in Emotions, Life, Uncategorized

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Sometimes, when life is going swimmingly and everything is all right with the world I struggle to understand why anyone takes drugs. I especially cannot imagine why anyone who has been to hell and back through addiction would ever pick them back up again. You know what it’s like both sides of the line and you know that it is infinitly better on the drug free side.

And then something will happen, it may be something catastrophic, or it might be one small thing, that, pulled on top of all the other small things just makes you forget the negatives. And you remember why. It’s like a switch in the brain that wipes the times you just wanted to die because you’d had enough of addiction, the craving, of being sick and tired. It erases the feelings of withdrawal and the constant nagging that used to sit in your gut wondering where you were going to get your next hit from, and it is like someone got a highlighter pen, or hit “control+B” to emboldened only the memories of the good parts and greyed out the bad.

You remember the way that the skin pushed against the tip of the needle as you gently pushed it against the vein underneath. The push of resistance before it pierces the life of you. You remember the colour and rush of the blood as it forms a cyclone as you hit the right spot, drawing it into the barrel of the syringe. It’s almost branded on your brain; the feeling of anticipation as you move to push back plunger. As you turn the tide of the blood and begin to push the golden brown liquid into your body. Knowing, as only an addict can know the nothingness that will inevitably, slowly, if only temporarily, come.

Because every addict I’ve ever known has been someone who felt too deeply; who struggles to manage their own emotions. That’s one of the reasons they ended up addicted. The pull of absolution promised by the release from the struggles of life, is sometimes more than they can bear. So they turn back to the needle, to the quietness that they crave. To the almost irresistible feeling of momentary peace.

How many people can honestly say that they’ve never just wanted the world to go away and leave them the hell alone?

To know that you can not feel confused, scared, an emotional and physical wreck, and instead feel nothing is a hard knowledge to live with, because who wouldn’t, addict or not, occasionally just want release from all the pain stress and heartbreak of real life. As an addict you know better than anyone that that release is available. And that, unlike a lot of other solutions, it works. Once you know it’s possible, there’s nothing stopping you apart from fear of going back to addiction. And when you feel confused enough to be considering using, you probably aren’t in the right frame of mind to think that far ahead. You forget that one hit is too many and at the same time will never be enough.

So occasionally, not using, even after years of recovery, can be a life or death battle. And sometimes people don’t win it.

I’ve always been lucky enough to have people to pull me back from the brink. Who I can turn to to unload before I get to the stage that I’ve wiped out the memories of addiction and replaced them with thoughts of oblivion. And I’ve always managed to speak to them before I walked off the edge. Not everyone is that blessed.

So before you judge someone for relapsing, for turning back to drugs and all the turmoil that ensues, imagine that at your very lowest; if someone offered you a temporary release from all your problems, would you consider it? If only momentarily?

Under a microscope. 

17 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Body image, Emotions, love

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I’ve got a bikini bridge, a thigh gap, what looks like a fairly flat tummy with no stretch marks and a BMI of 18.6. That’s just in the healthy section for those who don’t know (I had to Google it myself); if I lost just over 1lb I’d be considered underweight. I wear a UK size 8. I’m fairly tall. So according to the popular websites and magazines I have all of the ingredients of “the perfect body.” 

This is me fully clothed the way others see me:   
  
I get told I’m lovely and slim by people I hardly know, as if it’s something I should be proud of, but I’m not. If asked to describe my body I would, like nearly every woman I know immediately reel off a list of things and it would go something like this: 

  • No boobs (despite them being covered in thin white stretch marks!?!)
  • I have bingo wings 
  • My teeth are too long
  • I have big feet and very skinny calves
  • I have saddle bag thighs
  • My nose is crooked 
  • One eye is higher than the other
  • I currently have a huge spot brewing on the side of my face
  • I have ugly hands
  • Did I already mention my saggy boobs…?

In fact if asked to draw a picture of my body (I daren’t attempt a face) it would look something like (excuse my appalling drawing skills) this:  

Hardly the image that the magazines would have you believe you will look and feel if you had all of the attributes that they infer that perfect women should aspire to be.  

I think there are a number of reasons for this, not least being the overly photoshopped perfection that we are constantly bombarded with. But also because when we look at ourselves we don’t see what others see; we concentrate on specific areas, like me with my saddle bag thighs; in my head they are huge, but unless I point them out people don’t really notice them. 

And my knees, well, where do I start, I had never really looked at them until fairly recently when I suddenly noticed that they seemed a bit saggy. I’m perfectly sure I’d never looked at them before and thought how unsaggy they were, but all of a sudden I am mildly obsessed with the fact that they might be making their way down my ultra skinny calves to get into a loving relationship with my ankles. 

No one has ever told me that I have ugly hands, I have just seen lots of nicer hands in my time, I’ve also seen lots of worse hands but I don’t compare myself to the ones who’s hands are worse than mine, I compare to those who s hands are beautiful. No one has ever recoiled from the sight of them, except me. 

In all reality who on earth else is looking at me in that kind of detail? Maybe a few, but I seriously doubt that even my husband, who has seen me naked more times than he can probably care to remember, would have written a list of my body faults anywhere near as l did above. My other faults maybe, but not all those specific areas of my body! 

The problem with the way we look at ourselves is that we almost never see the whole picture. We focus in in tiny detail on specific areas that we don’t like, thereby ignoring all of the other stuff that counters it. Like the fact that my  eyes are a nice colour and shape (or so I’m told) which is probably counterbalancing the fact that they are slightly crooked. 

Personally it is very rare that I would look at someone in that sort of detail. Generally I see them as a whole, and that doesn’t just mean their body part shapes or individual facial features, but to the whole including their personality and also their mood and emotions. I’m much more likely to refer to someone as “brown hair, always smiling” than I am to say “tall, with crooked teeth and saggy elbows, you know the one”. And in my experience that is how others see things too. My eye is drawn to the good parts and my feelings a about someone, and not one small imperfect part of them that I’ve examined in detail. In all honesty, who has the time to examine others as much as we do to ourselves? 

So in future, I’m planning on stopping examining myself under a microscope and instead I will try to view myself as I would anyone else, as a whole. 

      Papering the cracks. 

      14 Tuesday Apr 2015

      Posted by in Friends, kids, Life, Uncategorized

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      Since my last blog about splitting up with P I’ve been amazed at 2 things:1) the number of people who took the time to connect with me, to check that I am ok, to let me know they are there (thank you all), and 2) the number of people who said they were stunned. That they thought that we were a perfect couple. 

      It’s made me think about how social media can allow us to share the life that we want people to think we have rather than the life we actually have with our friends and colleagues. I mean, we have all probably done it; we have a day off, at home with the kids, it’s been a hell of a bad day, they have spent nearly all of it fighting or arguing over important things, such as who is going to get to sit next to Mummy or who broke who’s biscuit. You wonder how you could possibly have borne these Devils, You are just about ready to kill them, and so, in desperation you make them put on their shoes and take them to the park. 

      The only reason you are taking them to the park is the hope that they might put 100 metres between you and their constant bickering. This is not about fun, this is survival! It works, you can finally see the arguing but not hear it, and if you don’t look up you can pretend not to see or hear the constant whines of “Muuuumm, he, pushed/hit/punched/licked/looked at me funny!” Ignorance is bliss and so you sit back and enjoy the peace. And then it happens; they stop arguing for 1.5 minutes, the sun pops out for 2.5 minutes, and so you seize the opportunity to take a few pictures of them, in the sun, playing together like angels. 

      30 seconds later they are back to bickering and arguing and generally being little sods, what do you do? You retreat back to the park bench, you ignore the yelps and screams coming from the other end of the park and you upload those few rare peaceful moments to Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram. Look at how perfect they are, look how nicely they play together (Yeah right!). 

      The point is, I didn’t bother taking photos of them arguing, and I certainly didn’t post them to social media. Anyone who looked at my profile would probably assume that my kids and I had a whale of a time at the park, smiling and playing together. Which we did. I mean those perfect 1.5 minutes of not bickering or arguing, in the sun were indeed perfect. However I unconsciously edited my day/life down to those few small moments in an otherwise poxy day when I uploaded those pictures to Facebook. 

       Too many people accept that what people portray on social media is the reality of other people’s worlds. And that is quite a scary thought. If I was friends with someone who was depressed or not coping particularly well, they may well be under the illusion that I am coping perfectly, that I manage to be the perfect mother/wife/girlfriend/sister/employee/whatever. What they may fail to realise is that they are only seeing the highlights. The best bits. The parts that I want to show the world. They don’t see the me, snot hanging down my face, sobbing down the phone that I am a failure, that I can’t cope, that I am too tired, too sad to deal with this crap; because that’s not they way I want most people to know me. So those times get conveniently missed out from my Facebook feed and instead you see the times I’m winning at life, you see the good and I edit out the bad. To someone who is depressed or struggling to cope this can make them feel a failure, they may see everyone else’s lives through the rose tinted glasses of social media and this can make them feel worse. 

      And that’s how people form the impression that everyone else’s life is better than theirs. That they must be doing something wrong. They don’t see the cracks in the lives of their friends, they only see the paper that their friends have covered over the cracks with. But nothing is perfect, everything has cracks, and so you know what? Those 1.5 minutes of perfection, in the park, sun shining and kids loving me were the closest to heaven I’ve been for a while. And so I’ll carry on sharing those moments, however perhaps we should all bear in mind that what we see is not always a reflection of our full time reality, it’s the reality we’d like.