I honestly have no idea how many times I have started this post and how many times I have subsequently deleted it. It has read as either too angry, too whiney or too pious so if you’re reading it as a published piece of waffle then yay for me!

I think the reason this has been a bit all over the place and not concisely what I want to say is because I’m not sure what I want to say. Over the last few months unpicking my thoughts has been a bit like having 12 different browsers open at once. Most of them are frozen, I can’t click out of the pop-ups and I’ve no fucking clue where the music is coming from.

Nowt new there then.

I guess I’d best just start somewhere close to where I left off last time and see where I end up this time. Might be an idea to go get a cuppa or something cos this might be a bit of a ramble…..

As you’re probably aware I took my fat little arse off into counselling at the start of the year and I’m very pleased to report that the fear and worry I had of the whole process maybe actually working for me and making a difference to me were proved to be really quite accurate.

Now, I’ll be honest here. I’m not about to tell you I have done a full 180° flip and have become all zen and at one with the universe and nor have I suddenly developed the patience of Mother Theresa (I will always have traces of my mum in me so that’s highly bloody unlikely).

No, counselling hasn’t offered a monumental shift in who I am or who I strive to be. What counselling has given me is an opportunity to really look at myself up close and be honest with myself and what that in turn has brought is simply a sense of peace.

As is always the case…..lemme explain.

I’m not now, never have I ever been nor will I ever be the most confident person in the room and that my dears is okay. All throughout my life I have second guessed every single thing that I have ever done, every decision, every act and every choice I have ever made and to a degree, that my dears is also okay.

It is okay right up to the point where this erosion of confidence begins to eat away at your competence and you slowly but surely begin to lose belief in your own abilities, your own self worth and your own right to be a priority.

The thing with losing confidence in yourself is that without it being a conscious choice and certainly without you noticing, you begin to put yourself and your own needs aside just to please others. You slowly but surely start putting yourself second, third or even fourth just to make sure you’re ‘keeping the peace’ and often you find that peace isn’t even yours to keep.

Before you realise where you are you have diminished and diluted yourself so much that when the ‘can you please…’ or the ‘would you mind…’ become ‘I need you to do….’ or ‘you have to do…’ you have barely even registered that the pleasantries, the niceties and the respect have all of a sudden vanished and it’s all just expected, quite often demanded.

And you accept it.

If you’ve read some of my previous posts you will be aware of how my life has gone through some monumental shifts over the last few years, I won’t go into them here but what I will say is that as I often clumsily navigated through those changes my priorities have had to change and I had to begin to put myself first. My life had uprooted by 80 or so miles and for the first time in many years other people were suddenly not the main character in my story.

This would then mean that I wasn’t immediately available to others to do their bidding or run their errands and unfortunately some people very close to me were deeply unhappy with that. This unhappiness would never be shown to me directly but I was aware of how they felt, how above myself they thought I was getting and how fucking awful that made me feel.

So whenever I was back visiting or planning trips home they would orchestrate ways of integrating their needs into the reasons I would be there and if for any reason I was unable to meet those needs there and then there would be tension.

And atmosphere.

And aggressions.

And combat.

And for me, anxiety and a self-imposed responsibility that my actions, or lack thereof had caused all of the above.

So I would try my best to walk a fine line of being obedient and acquiescent and not rock the boat. I would grit my teeth and just do whatever was required so that whenever I left to head back to Aberdeen there would be no reason for me to feel I’d caused tension or pissed anyone off. Always backing down, forever giving in just to ‘keep the peace’.

The thing is I would only do this with certain people but not with others. I would knowingly dance on eggshells around some just for a quiet life, even when I was fully aware I was having the utter piss taken out of me but if someone on the fringes of family or friendship tried to pull the same shit then it would be snip-snip-snippety-snip and off they would be cut, often permanently if I felt it was warranted.

Bit extreme I know, but never without good reason and never once with regret.

Sidebar-knowing your being manipulated but letting yourself continually be manipulated then berating yourself for allowing yourself to be manipulated is emotionally fucking exhausting.

0/10, would not recommend.

In hindsight I do believe that this was partly my own fault for not having the balls to stand up for myself. Okay there were times when I absolutely couldn’t stand up for myself, the price would have been astronomical but I do think there were times when I could have and absolutely should have, maybe it would have sent a bit of a signal and put in some boundaries a bit earlier.

See, the thing is we teach others what is acceptable by what we quietly accept; the more you give someone permission to treat you a certain way the more they will continue to do so and until you make a change nothing ever will change. Christ alone knows though that in circumstances like this change is never easy and more often than not takes more strength than the payoff would seem worth.

Anyways.

While I might not be the most confident of people I’m not the dumbest either. When dad passed I had feelings in me that I found difficult to find words for. Not just the sorrow or grief that he was gone necessarily, there was also a simmering anger at things that had happened before and after his passing. Comments, judgements, the usual family bollocks that happen when someone passes.

Same when mum died, some very complex and confusing emotions that were difficult to verbalise logically and without bitterness or rage. Same again when we lost Billy and and had to tolerate (in my opinion) shallow platitudes and fake sympathies from those that knew better or just wanted some showmanship.

Sidebar- this whole period proved to be incredibly cathartic for me because while I did actively cut some very fragile connections and ties within my family I had the glorious opportunity to reaffirm and strengthen others and for that I am eternally grateful.

Anyway, we then lost Jasper and I’m comfortable enough to admit that this was the point where I completely buckled emotionally and had no other way out but to seek help with all of it. In then came counselling, or The Crying Appointments as they came to be known.

Right from the very beginning I knew good and well that counselling was never going to be the CTRL-ALT-DEL reboot for me, not a cat’s chance in hell of that. I knew most of my neuroses were too hard wired into my brain for that to happen and no amount of Freud or the Let Them Theory could ever begin to rewire me.

What counselling brought me were twenty little hour long sessions where I could just talk. Openly, honestly and candidly with no judgement, no retribution and no belittling and with someone completely outside of the shitstorm.

It let me explore a lot of why I am the way I am, make sense of why I react the way that I often do but more importantly why I sometimes don’t react the way that I think I maybe should.

Counselling helped me understand how I prioritise certain relationships and certain people, how I can nurture and feed the relationships that I do value but more importantly counselling confirmed to me that its okay to walk away from the ones that I don’t.

I learned It’s healthy to be vulnerable with others, often it’s actually very liberating to expose that side of yourself and give it air. Other times the best way to show up for yourself and protect your Self is to tell some people to just fuck right off and be fucking happy you did so.

You see one thing that I realised is that the most enduring and single most important relationship you will ever have in your entire life is the one you have with your Self. It has to be honest, authentic and valued because you will be in that relationship until the day you die. But what if it’s not nurtured? What happens when you’re not your own cheerleader?

If you treat yourself as less than because you’re too busy pleasing others then others will see this as permission to treat you the exact same way and make you worth less, just the way that you have accepted as normal. It goes back to ‘we teach others what is acceptable by what we accept’.

This wee nugget isn’t a green light to be narcissistic or self-gratifying but more a nod to how utterly crucial it is to develop self-worth or build self-esteem and get to know yourself really, really well.

Now I’ve said I am not be the most confident of people, I might never be and that is absolutely okay. What I do know is this: I am kind, considerate, caring, relatively funny and have a huge capacity for love. Even when there have been times when that love might not have been reciprocated or it maybe came with conditions I have still loved. Wholly, blindly and with absolute wanton abandon.

I am lucky to have the most glorious circle of friends, many of whom have propped me up over the last few years. I am in regular contact with some, others a bit more sporadically but I know they are always there for me and they know I am always there for them too.

Recently one of those friends had gone through a tough spell and for once I got the chance to step up and be a support to them after a long period if it being the other way round. I got the opportunity to tell them exactly how much they mean to me and just how much I love them, and truthfully? I fucking relished it!

Whenever we get together we always say we love one another. Every. Single. Time. And with real feeling too. As genuine as that is, to have the chance to put into words exactly why I love them, exactly why they have made such a monumental impact on my life and exactly why this wonderful harbinger of chaos will forever be my ride or die is so gloriously delicious for me because our decades-long friendship means everything to me. It is where I learned the joy of unconditional, unfaltering, uncomplicated love.

It took me a long, long while to understand that my brain sees love as a bit of a one sided concept, I still do and probably always will but for very different reasons today. When I was younger I would fall in ‘love’ hard and fast, would always be the one to say it first and would go out of my way to make the other person feel loved, simply because I was craving that affirmation for myself. I wanted to be loved and be loved by everyone because I struggled to show it to myself.

In the last year or so I have realised that to me love is still a one sided emotion but one sided in that it is mine to show and mine to voice, not mine to harvest. I never used to be good at believing I was worthy of genuine love, I always used to question why people would say it but over the last few years I’m getting more comfortable believing it.

Mal goes out of his way to make damned sure I know I’m loved and feel loved each and every day and that blows me away each and every damned day. Never will I ever take that for granted, but because he shows me love in every single thing he does I can truthfully say it’s not something I desperately need him to say. (It is bloody lovely though and hearing it still gives me the fizzums).

What is important to me is making damned sure that those closest to me know just how much they mean to me, just how much I utterly adore them, just how much my life is richer for having them in it. For me, that is where the joy lies.

I think this realisation comes in part from learning that the single most important thing I can do for myself is to just be myself. Be open, be honest and be authentic. I know I’m an emotional wee soul, doesn’t take much to get me bubbling as I’m sure Mal would confirm. A wee cuddle from one of the cats, certain songs on the radio and I’m off like a leaky tap. Not sadness though, just sheer happiness, contentment and gratitude.

Gratitude that despite everything I still have the capacity to feel real love for others. Gratitude that I have the emotional intelligence to understand and process the complex feelings and emotions that I carry. Weirdly though, gratitude that I went through some fucking dark times so that now I can appreciate when things are full, glorious technicolour.

Since I have worked my way through counselling I have realised that one thing I am actually quite good at is ‘looking down’; Looking at the path I have wandered so far, acknowledging the difficult times I have had before and recognising just how joyous my life really is now. How simple, easy and peaceful my little world is and appreciating the people and the things in it that now make it so much more fulfilling.

Obviously the big things like being in a job that I quite like and am actually kinda good at; sharing a lovely home with the kindest, gentlest soul I could ever wish to ensnare; having a reliable old car to waft about in whenever I want to and without doubt the two little cats that have overthrown house leadership and rule us both with iron paws.

It’s the little things too though; farting about in the garden on a nice day with pruners and shears, pretending I have the slightest clue of what the fuck I’m doing; messing about with my model car collection and kidding on I’m not a massive geek or just sitting on the sofa in my undercrackers, a bag of crunchy Wotsits in hand watching crap TV with not one iota of a care in the world.

Simply because nowadays? Well nowadays I am able to.

Able to stop, able to sit and able to enjoy silence without an overbearing need to fill the void with tasks and distractions.

Able to do whatever I damned well please without the guilt of possibly upsetting someone else by doing the thing.

Able to not do that which I have absolutely no bloody interest in doing without the guilt of possibly upsetting someone else by not doing the thing.

Most importantly of all though I am able to sit inside my own thoughts, occupy my own mind without much of a spiral, no continuous flashes of guilt or doubt, no berating myself or tearing myself apart.

I honestly believe that counselling gave me a peace that I have never really had before and I really quite like it.

I think I’ll keep it.

For the love of Christ, maybe I am a wee bit Zen now?

Still swear a lot though.