Home is wherever I’m with you

I have been thinking recently about what makes a home recently as HWSNBN and I are thinking about moving.

Our little flat is my haven. But sooner rather than later we are going to need somewhere a little bigger for my books and his magic the gathering cards (Yes, reader I married a geek) before our home begins to resemble Hoarders: the bibliophile edition.

I am dreading house hunting as I clearly remember the dawning horror as we viewed places a) we hated; and b) realised that we could barely just afford them. Our task is complicated by the fact we live in Brighton & Hove, a place so cool it rains glitter* (*LIES). Although we have both reluctantly conceded that to afford more than a shoebox we are going to have to look outside of Brighton, far outside of Brighton; I’m going to miss living here.

I wish I was one of those people who didn’t mind where they lived but I do. I grew up in a small town where there was nothing to do and nobody to see. I have done my time living with damp rot in the shape of Jon Bon Jovi’s head; or sleeping with a hat on to protect me from the wind whistling through sash windows; or endless bickering over bills. I’m going to be *gulp* thirty-one, I want to live somewhere where I am unaffected by the great Toilet Paper Rationing of 2008.

More important that physical comfort is feeling emotionally safe. Home has also been on my mind because for a variety of reasons I have chosen not to visit my family home for three months. I was twenty-one when I realised that homes, no matter how beautiful, can become cages too. I can still remember that sensation of opening the front door and waiting anxiety flooding through me as I listened for the sounds of somebody kicking off. It felt like living with a slow gas leak, and it wasn’t until I escaped travelling across continents that I realised how poisonous the atmosphere had become.

Since then it’s been really important to me that my home is a safe space. This month instead of feeling frustrated at the lack of garden, I lay on the sofa and looked around flooded by nostalgia for our home.

I remember the first night we got the keys. We were still living in my old flat which had little things like beds and chairs and working fridge. But we slept on the floor of our new flat anyway, the light seeping through the pinned up bin bags on the window to wake us with the dawn. We were so excited to set up home together.

This is the place where HWSNBN and I lived together for the first time. And although I know that home is wherever he is, the thought of losing those memories makes me sad. The thought that wherever I live next Lianne will never see it makes me feel a little sick inside.

But it’s time. We will start looking for a three bedroom house with a garden as close to Brighton as we can afford. Simple really, but the other things we are looking for are harder to define. A place flooded by light, that seeps across the floor like treacle in winter. A place where the eye is drawn outwards with inner horizons. A safe haven.

Easy, right? Wish me luck.

Any house hunting tips, let me know in the comments.

Smelling the flowers

I’m gloriously happy at the moment, happier than I can remember being for a long time. My cynical alter ego is squinting up at the sky waiting for it to start falling but the rest of me is enjoying lying back and smelling the flowers. In some ways it’s not a big surprise:

I qualified with honours in my dream career and, perhaps more importantly, got my evenings and weekends back;
I celebrated my first wedding anniversary with the love of my life HWSNBN;
I’ve recently returned from an awesome honeymoon trip to Cuba – full blog~~, when I can be~~ ~~arsed~~ soon;
I’m working on a new novel;
Plus there are a couple of exciting and TOP SEKRIT projects on the horizon.

Any one of these events would be enough to account for my happiness. What makes this different and blog worthy is that a couple of my closest friends are struggling through some very difficult times and I am so desperately sad for them. But although that sadness is present and I am mourning for them I also feel a surge of deep joy for myself and neither feeling lessens the other.

I can see some of my well-adjusted readers shrugging as they read this: ‘doesn’t everybody emotionally multitask?’

But this is very new for me. Two years ago I would not even have been able to register the thought of being happy when people so close to me weren’t. Like a human sponge, I had so little boundaries I found it difficult to separate my feelings from the people I loved. Can you say enmeshed, fucked-up and unsustainable? Last year I would have been able to acknowledge my happiness but only momentarily before the guilt would set in. How could I be happy when others were suffering?

It has taken two years of counselling but I have finally learnt the difference between feeling empathy and responsibility. I can finally let go of feeling like I don’t ‘deserve’ to be happy because people around me are struggle. It is one of the horrible secrets of life that if you look hard enough, somebody around you will always be struggling. It seems like such a minor change but for me it has been fundamental. If I lived by my old rules, it was never OK for me to be happy. So I am able to not only recognise but revel in how amazingly lucky and blessed I am at the moment. And I am fully conscious that this too shall pass and it will be my ‘turn’ soon enough. But until it does I am going to enjoy every moment. As my bestie Kurt says:

“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point “If this isn’t nice I don’t know what is.”
– Kurt Vonnegut

And in case that quote gives you the mistaken impression that I am cultured innit. Look, cat fonts!

Observations on grief

I wrote these scattered thoughts over the last six months. It’s not a real post. There aren’t any grand conclusions. But this was how I felt as I struggled through the mourning process for my best friend.

I publish these in the hope that somebody out there might go – ‘Me too’ and I’ll feel less alone.

The title of this post makes me feel like a scientist as opposed to the constantly crying person who regards any task (brushing my hair, washing, leaving the house) with an bone-deep exhaustion.

I’m not OK. Why was I expecting to be OK? Because I always have been. I have always coped and pushed the pain somewhere to be dealt with later. But those were rivers of pain and this in the sea. I cannot contain it. I have to sit in the pain and being not OK for as long as it takes and it is horrible.

Grief is unpredictable. Look at me I think acting like nothing has happened. When I feel like a walking bruise. Like a bombed house during the Blitz, the walls are still intact but inside there is desolation.

There are good days and bad days. On good days I forget and it is blissful until I feel the nagging like a sore tooth. She’s gone and nothing and nobody will bring her back. On bad days I feel like the waves have dragged me under and I linger on the sea bed. Everything is muffled and dimmed, and nothing and nobody can reach me.

People try and help by offering platitudes. ‘She’s with the angels now.’ Well, why don’t we ask the fucking angels to give her back? Oh we can’t… is that because they are imaginary.

‘Celebrate her life don’t mourn her death.’ Are the two mutually exclusive? Can I not do both.

‘Lianne wouldn’t want you to feel this way.’ OK, let’s take these in term. 1) Lianne is dead so we can never know what she would want. 2) Lianne was the most accepting person I know. She would want me to feel what I feel. 3) Lianne was also slightly evil and she would love me missing her like crazy 4) It’s not about her anymore. It’s about me mourning the loss of my best friend the only way I can.

Somedays, you will recognise that people say these things because they love you and that they do not want to see you in pain. Somedays, the unwarranted advice will make you want to punch them in their fucking face. Don’t do that.

Empathy helps. In my experience it is the only thing that does. I remember sitting in my first counselling session talking about Lianne’s death and I said ‘I feel like I’m going mad. What’s wrong with me?’ And my therapist said,

‘Your best friend has just died. Of course you feel awful. There is nothing wrong with you.’

I would have wept with relief if I hadn’t been weeping anyway.

Get a therapist.

There is no right way to grieve. Everybody grieves in their own way. And the way I do this is not the way other people have done this. That’s OK.

Grief is not linear, it’s not stages. Now months on I feel like I am moving out of the process but anything could pull me back under. I still miss her. I don’t think I’ll ever not.

Perception is all. The day of Lianne’s funeral was one of the most beautiful days of the summer. The sun shone so hard and the sky was so blue it almost hurt my eyes. But inside all I could feel was the crack as my heart broke into pieces. I expected the world to have changed, that there to be some outside sign that Lianne was missing. That’s the both simultaneously wonderful/cruel thing about grief the world keeps turning just the same. Only you have changed.

You get a free pass. Use it. Grieving allowed me to duck out of social arrangements, reinforce personal boundaries, wear random clothes, and lie in my bed eating cake for breakfast.

I have officially become the person that cries in my therapists reception room. Personal achievement unlocked!

It hurts. I didn’t know how much grief would hurt. But I know it wouldn’t hurt so much if I hadn’t loved her.

I can no longer watch Steel Magnolias or Beaches, especially fucking Beaches. Turning on the radio has been like playing Russian roulette damn you Queen and Lady Gaga. There is no logic to what shatters my composure.

This is one of the most beautiful letters I have read about grief. In particular I loved this quote:

Fate can’t have any more arrows in its quiver for you that will wound like these. Who was it said that it was astounding how deepest griefs can change in time to a sort of joy? The golden bowl is broken indeed but it was golden; nothing can ever take those boys away from you now.

This letter is also a lie, a kind lie from a place of love but a lie.

Nobody can ever take Lianne away from me. She lived, she loved and she was golden however briefly she shone. And the fact that she is no longer here cannot take that away.

But I do not believe fate’s arrow is empty for me. When somebody dies the veil is ruptured between worlds and you stare into the void, knowing that this is the first. If I am lucky and live a long and healthy life I will lose more people I love or be buried by them. This is the first blow. There will be others.

Sorrow passes and we remain. Whether we want to or not.

Limbo

So far, 2013 has been very tough. I only realised just how tough it had been when the pressure alleviated and I felt like I could breathe again.

In early January I found out that somebody I love most in this world was seriously ill and it could be cancer. All I could think was not again, I can’t watch somebody else I love die. The universe cannot possibly be this cruel. While knowing that the universe is exactly this capricious and cruel.

I hardly told anybody. I was worried that if I spoke the words it would make it real. Even telling my best friends was so difficult. When I plucked up the courage to tell my counsellor, after 30 minutes of babbling about nothing, she cried with me. She knew better than anybody how devastating this would be.

I am not somebody who embraces uncertainty and unknowing. I am a bit of a control freak (with weekly, monthly, yearly and five yearly plans). But living in limbo seemed easier than hearing the worst.

I dreaded the test results day. I lied to myself that I was coping well until I had a crying fit about our fridge breaking and realised it was nothing to do with the fridge at all.

We got the results and it wasn’t cancer but something else. Yes, he would need treatment but he was going to be OK. That night I slept better than I had in months. When I went for a walk the next day although nothing externally had changed, everything had. I was no longer living in limbo and the relief was amazing. The storm has passed but it has left its mark. So I am going to hug the people I love very tightly, as if it might be the last time. I am going to breathe in and out until the anxiety lessens. I am going to live, fully and deeply and so should you.

2012: the rollercoaster year that was

2012 has been a real rollercoaster year. It contained the most magnificent high as I said ‘I do’ and married the love of my life surrounded by my friends and family. I felt so full of absolute joy that day I worried my body would not be able to contain it. I know it’s a total cliche but it really was one of the happiest days of my life.

But 2012 also hosted my lowest day as my best friend Lianne lost her battle with brain tumours and passed away this summer.

This world seems quieter, duller and empty without her. At points, I really wasn’t sure how I would survive the tsunami of grief. But somehow I have and battered and bruised it’s time for another year.

2012 ripped back the veil I had been hiding behind ever since I was a small child faced with my sisters accident. As children we don’t have the resources to conceptualise sudden tragedy so I decided that if I looked after people and tried to control everything I could keep tragedy at bay.

This belief was a comfort blanket but it cost me in guilt as people I love got hurt despite my efforts. Unable to realise that this is how the world works I thought it was my fault: for not planning better, for not loving more. This year I realised that no matter how many plans you make, or how much you love somebody, you cannot keep them safe. Life is random, chaotic and sometimes tragedy falls from the sky. You can love somebody so much and still they might be hurt or die. You can do your best and try with every fibre in your being but your life might still fall apart to ashes in your hand.

I had a full-on existential crisis. This was both very exciting (as a newbie counsellor I had read about this in books but to experience one first hand!) and horrifically painful and disorientating.

However as my mother, a very wise lady, reminded me it isn’t just tragedy that falls from the sky but serendipity. Life’s a rollercoaster and sometimes you’re at the top and sometimes you’re down and the only guarantee is that everything will change.

And so my wish for you, all my readers and for myself, is sadly not that the year ahead is smooth upward climb for that is outside of our power. But that when the lows come you, and I, have the courage and resilience to hang on tight to that rollercoaster and get through that low until the climb begins again. And when all is going well, we’ll appreciate every tiny moment of it. Here’s to 2013 and whatever it may bring.

It’s my party, I can cry if I want to

All that lives, lives forever. Only the shell, the perishable passes away. The spirit is without end. Eternal. Deathless.

I turn 30 today. A little over a week ago my best friend Lianne died.

I’ve tried to write about Lianne dying a dozen times but the words won’t come. She was my best friend and I will miss her everyday. What more is there to say?

But it doesn’t feel enough, not for her, so I will try.

We became friends at 14 years old. I had seen her around before but she had a way of carrying herself that made her seem aloof, unapproachable and tall. Years later, we discovered that without her heels, she was only half and inch taller than me the shortass.

‘That half an inch makes all the difference’ She’d say looking witheringly down her nose at me. Even towards the end when she was very sick she would still give me that look and I would crack up.

We met through my best friend Debs at a Boyzone concert. While the other girls burst into hysterical tears as the band came on stage Lianne and I laughed. And that was it, we were friends. Lianne made friends like other people changes clothes while I watched on sceptical of these waifs and strays she picked up not realising I was one too. She was the glue holding our inner circle together.

Everybody has their favourite Lianne story, most of them too rude to print here. I remember bunking off school to go to London, using all of our money on the train, and then realising we had none left to actually do anything. Endlessly walking around Rowledge stalking her latest man obsession. Lianne was the spymaster general and stalker extraordinaire. Each crush had to have a codename.

She wasn’t perfect. She grossed me out as nobody else could with endless scatological descriptions. I spent what felt like years waiting for her, outside school, Elphicks and at her house.

We only fought once over a boy whose name I have long forgotten. Lianne would have remembered. She was our memory keeper, an archivist writing in her journals and collecting endless detritus. But there are some stories that only I will remember.

Like the time we got so wasted on a Thursday night that we ran around the rec in just our bras. Not being able to say ‘do you remember when’ feels lonely. Out of our group of friends she gave the best advice and was always the one I could rely to understand whether it was when I puked in a sink at a party or man trouble. This week I keep reaching for my phone to text her knowing she find the right words to comfort me, only to remember: she’s really gone.

And the world seems a little darker, a little duller and a hell of lot less lewd without her.

Who will call me a dappy hippie now?

I read a quote somewhere that there are some forms of knowledge one does not pray for. Grief is a knowledge nobody would pray for. They didn’t tell me it would feel like this. And even if they had I wouldn’t have believed them. Watching somebody you love die even from afar is an agony I would not wish on my worst enemy. But I would not wish the pain away. Grief is the price we pay for love. And it was worth it.

Lianne was worth it.

I’m glad I knew her even if it was only for a short time. Even if all those plans we made will never happen. We will never go travelling together. I will never meet her children, and she will not play with mine. We won’t end our days with our other friends at the same nursing home: chasing each other down the corridors, bickering over bridge and flirting with the male nurses.

Every pleasure brings with it the paper cut of grief like losing her over again. I burst into tears yesterday realising she will never taste a strawberry ever again. A strawberry, but I felt so sad. Tenses hurt as I have to remember it’s not Lianne likes but Lianne liked. I worry that over time I will begin to forget her and then it will be like she died anew.

It’s my 30th birthday and I am not in the mood for celebrating. In fact, all I want to do is hibernate somewhere til the pain goes away. Before, I had planned an amazing big kids birthday party for tomorrow. But all week I’ve been wrestling with whether I should go ahead.

Lianne taught me many things. The double bra trick: one to lift and one to separate. The fine art of stalking. But the most valuable thing my friend taught me as she died was how to live.

I watched Wrath of Khan for the first time this week in honor of Lianne who was a lifelong trekkie. (Although, I wish somebody would have warned me *SPOILER* that Spock dies at the end *ENDSPOILER* wibble. ‘I have been and always shall be your friend.’) In Wrath of Khan, Kirk says: ‘how we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life.’

Lianne lived with brain tumours for almost five years, outliving her prognosis and two support groups. Even when she was so sick from the chemo she could barely move she never gave up. She celebrated her 30th in jaunty party hat, a friend’s baby on her knee. After her diagnosis she made a list of goals to keep going. And a fortnight ago she achieved the last item on the list: watching the Olympics.

The end when it came seemed sudden. I knew she was deteriorating but on Thursday Debs started forwarding the texts. Lianne wasn’t eating or drinking and she was slipping out of consciousness. I sat outside in the sunshine imagining her surrounded by white light. That afternoon unable to work I spent hours flicking through photos not as she was at the end but of her healthy and well. Unable to sleep at midnight I went on facebook and there were the others. The inner circle. We emailed keeping up a vigil. By this point she was already dead. She died as she would have wanted: at home, listening to music, and holding her mum’s hand. With a distinctive Lianne twist that made me laugh even through the tears.

Friends and family have been so supportive. But the one thing that puts my teeth on edge is when they say it must be a relief for her. They are just trying to be kind, but they don’t understand. Lianne wanted to live more than anything. The week before she died she went to the hospital to talk through her treatment options. She had been rapidly deteriorating as first her mobility and then her speech began to desert her. But she wanted chemo even though the chemo would kill her. She was too weak. Lianne would wanted.

So for her, as long as I can, I will live. I will feel the kiss of the sun on my face. I will search for shooting stars in the night sky and imagine she is sending me a message. And on Saturday, I will celebrate my birthday through the tears. I’ll raise a glass to her and pray that wherever she is Cher is playing, the Smirnoff mules are plentiful and the angels are hot Mediterranean men.

Farewell my friend and thanks for everything.

Don’t settle.

I learnt a lot of things at University the first time around, but not the things they wanted me to learn: about postmodernism, Spain in the twenthieth century and epistolary novel. Nope at University I learnt far more valuable lessons like: never drink in the club, 102 pasta recipes, that baggy purple jumpers are not my friend, nothing good happens after 4am and, most importantly, why you should never settle.

I’ve talked before about my personal happiness mantras but I thought that ‘don’t settle’ was interesting enough to deserve its own post. It was a phrase coined by me and my awesome flatmate Sam at University. There was a certain type of girl at Uni: gorgeous, smart, kind. Basically the type of person who only exists to make the rest of us feel bad about ourselves. This perfect girl would introduce you to her boyfriend and Sam and I would like at each other like ‘Him, really? She’s totally settling’*

*Except not out loud we weren’t that bitchy and judgemental. Yet.

Because despite all the aforementioned amazing qualities that girl was terrified of being alone. We were younger then and I don’t think either of us knew about the particular kind of loneliness that comes when you are all alone in a relationship. But we knew then that relationships were tough enough when you loved that person. And you were settling, not willing to invest everything you had? You were so screwed.

So ‘Don’t settle’ was a mantra we whispered to each when either of us was tempted to give up on our dreams and aim for something for more comfortable. Settling was one of the worst things you can do. It meant aiming for mediocrity wasting you potential on people and opportunities you didn’t care for. ‘Don’t settle’ we whispered as we kissed frog after frog and jumped from crappy job to crappier job.

And I listened and I waited and I never settled for anything else but love. But in my career? Guilty…

In Steve Jobs Stanford commencement speech, which you should watch, he says:

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

But I did settle. True confession: I’m almost 30 and I have never had a job I loved. Growing up, I never wanted to be one of those people living for the weekend. But until this October, I was. I’ve had a lot of jobs: good, bad jobs and jobs so horrifically awful its almost funny. I was the klutziness waitress ever for a short-lived period where I thankfully avoided scalding anybody. I was a crappy PA, double-booking meetings like there was no tomorrow. I worked in supermarkets and libraries, with the police and beauticians. Until I finally got a job, in my dream field, publishing.

Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to be a writer. However, until I made it I needed to find a way to buy quills and other writing accoutrements. So I settled for the next best thing editing other people words by aiming for a job in publishing. It took me two years but when I finally got that dream job, albeit at a non fiction publishing house, I was ecstatic.

It took me two years to realise I was settling, 23 months longer than it should have done. I wanted to work in publishing so much I ignored that the commute exhausted me, the work bored /infuriated me, the pay was a pittance. In fact I hated everything except my colleagues who were lovely and saying I worked in publishing. Saying I worked in publishing made me feel like somebody and that brief blush of joy at achieving a lifelong goal almost made everything better. But then there was that other sensation like I was constantly holding a balloon after water, pushing myself to be something unnatural. I ignored the signs and if it wasn’t for one thing I’d probably still be there: the boss from hell.

He still is the worst boss I’ve ever had: mercurial, selfish and mean and I thank him everyday. Because if he hadn’t been such a horrific example of a human being I would have settled. I would have sacrificed a large part of myself just so I could say I worked in publishing, while everyday I died slowly inside. Instead I left for a better job where I stayed for years, colouring inside the lines not risking everything for another career as a counsellor because I could not bear it if I hated that too.

Yes, I was an idiot and finally I faced my fears and took the plunge. Best decision ever. Thankfully, I love being a counsellor and I don’t have to cut off or ignore parts of myself to do it. I’m no longer settling. Best.feeling.ever. But here’s the thing I still feel guilty admitting. Much as I love working as a counsellor I don’t just want to do that. Saying that one job is not enough, it makes me feel greedy as if the world is a cake and I’m demanding the largest slice. I’m almost ashamed to admit how ambitious I am. But I want so much for myself and I’m not going to tear myself apart pretending that is not true. I won’t settle not anymore.

So I’m putting it out there. I want to be a counsellor. I want write books. I want to blog. I want to be a good friend, wife, daughter and eventually mother. And I want to live a full life. And I’m not going to apologise for wanting all those things and so much more. Here’s to having ambitions goals and never settling. What do you want?

What’s your happiness mantra?

88101736430210693_bYz55VrJ_c — Happiness is a form of courage

Via Print pattern

I’m fascinated by happiness. If I can define what makes me happy and unhappy and start doing more of the former and less of the latter, my life will be perfect. Right? I jest, but if our emotions are the prism through which we perceive the world then it makes sense that I try and do everything I can to make mine rose tinted.

My personal happiness mantras really sum up the principles by which I try (and fail) to live my life. Like running my fingers over rosary beads, repeating these personal mantras in times of crisis gives me solace. So here are my personal happiness mantras:

Be Rowan

Via Advice to Sink in Slowly

To be me means knowing who I am and what I like and dislike. I like reading young adult fiction not Russian literature. I am remarkedly ignorant on world affairs but I know everything about Sweet Valley High. I am have the hand and motor coordination of a slug but am agile at writing words. Sometimes I really want to change these things, write a great work of literature, become a crafting genuis, dance like without falling over my own feet but this is just the way I am.

It becomes harder when we move out of the realm of the practical into the emotional. Can I accept my anger, my perfectionism, my addiction to cheap cornershop sweets? (‘Aaah sugar, my old nemesiseseseses’. I’m on week two of no sugar and it’s sloooowly getting easier) Accepting myself as I am: a flawed work in progress is terrifyingly hard. But do any of us really have a choice? Sing it Oscar…

Via Emily Mcdowell

Let be

I am limpet-like in my ability to cling to memories and concepts long beyond normal people would have relaxed their grip and let the waves take them. This is simultaneously a virtue and a curse. I perservere, I am a natural born tryer, but sometimes I need to give in otherwise I’ll break. This mantra has been stuck in my head for over ten years when midway through an English class in college I heard Hamlet’s last soliloquy. Yep, it’s quote time:

‘Not a whit, we defy augury. There is special providence in
the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to
come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come—the
readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows what is’t
to leave betimes, let be.’

Hamlet, Shakespeare Act IV II

To paraphrase the Dane, we do not know and never can what shapes our fate so why worry. Sometimes we just have to let be. Oh but it is hard.

This too shall pass

I find this tragic and comforting all at the same time. When I linger in the depths of a black mood I tell myself ‘This too shall pass’ and eventually it always does. Consequently even when I am so happy my body cannot contain it I think ‘This too shall pass’ and that knowledge of the finiteness of the moment gives it bittersweet tinge that makes me appreciate it even more.

Enjoy the process

I love lists and goals and destinations. Which is why I have to constantly remind myself to enjoy the journey. To be present in the moment. To slow down and smell the flowers. Or the poo 🙂

Be kind for everybody you meet is fighting a great battle

I am not always kind. I can be sharp. I can be impatient. But I try and remember that I can never know the contents of another person’s heart. That person who’s just cut me up may have a sick child. Or they may be an arsehole. All I know is the smallest acts of kindness have made a major difference in my life.

First things first

Via designspiration.net

Or as take you shoes off before your tights, you eejit! Sometimes known as lessons I learnt from being hangry (not a typo hangry= anger caused from hunger, an affliction I suffer from mightily). If I don’t eat I turn into RowanHULK: ‘COMPUTER NO WORK, SMASH STUPID COMPUTER. COMPUTER DEADED. SAD NOW.’ So to mollify my inner Hulk I eat regularly, I make sure I get enough sleep. First things first means eat before an exam. Go to bed on time the night before a big meeting. By taking care of the little details such a sleep, food and drink I’m much better prepared to deal with whatever life throws at me.

And with that in mind, it’s time for an afternoon snack 🙂

Comfortably numb?

I am really enjoying the process of studying to be a counsellor. I love reading the different theories about why people are the way they are. The other people on my course inspire me with their generosity and willingness to share their experiences. And its indescribable how fulfilled I feel when I work as counsellor.

But, it’s hard too. Although I believe training to become a counsellor is one of the best things I have ever done, I am finding it incredibly tough. It’s not just the practical considerations of taking a massive pay-cut and fitting study and placement hours around work. What I find difficult to bear is the constant emotional upheaval. It’s not like studying engineering. As part of the course, we have to be self reflective, picking every thought and feeling apart. Some aspects of myself I was already so familiar with they seemed like old friends like my inability to say no and pathological need to make everything better. Others blindsided me, you mean everybody doesn’t spend their life in a constant battle to not feel so shit about themselves?

Self analysis is uncomfortable at best, painful at worst and some days I just want to exist on the surface not down in the murky depths where darker memories lurk like sea creatures waiting to gobble me up.

Before I started this process I was comfortably numb, under rigid control. Now like opening a Pandoras box feelings are emerging I’ve buried for years. I don’t like feeling this vulnerable and shaken. As if the foundations on which I have built my life are cracking and now I’m wondering what, if anything, I can save from the rubble. A fortnight ago as I was preparing to go to personal counselling I was so over it. (As trainee counsellors we have to be personal counselling throughout the duration of the course. Thank God!) In the past I had always started counselling at my nadir and talking made me feel better. But this time I started counselling when I was in a great place emotionally and digging up the past had started to make me feel worse. I just did not want to talk anymore. Then a friend sent me a link to this Ted Talk by Brene Brown on vulnerability.

And I knew I had a choice to make. I could continue to try to shut out my pain and inhibit my ability to feel joy. I could continuing existing, never really living.

Or I could trust the process and keep going. Accepting that paradoxically my vulnerability was my greatest strength.

So I have. One foot after the other, and again and again. I keep going because I don’t want to feel comfortably numb anymore. I want to be present, inhabiting every inch of my body. But, when shutting certain feelings out has become habitual how do you start listening to yourself again?

Well, on the advice on my counsellor I have been ‘checking in’ with myself. Yes it sounds very hippy dippy but stick with me. (Plus, with a name like Rowan, what else would you expect?) We use check ins at the beginning of our practical workshops at University. The rules are simple we go round the circle and you may share in a short sentence or even a word where you are today. The idea is that you can quickly gauge the emotional weather of the group. And also it’s really helpful to be mindful of what you feel in each moment.

283163895290432416_eA0Cps6R_c — Albert Camus, graphic via Pinterest

So for the past week I’ve been checking-in with myself. Am I angry, sleepy, frustrated, cold, hot, happy, hungry, sad, tired, excited or overwhelmed? Mostly I’ve learnt I’m hungry and sleepy 🙂 Ah January, thou art the cruelest month. Joking aside, I’ve noticed that there are certain emotions that feel more familiar and comfortable (sadness) than others (anger).

The challenge for me has been simply noting what I feel and not doing anything with that feeling. Burying myself in activity is much easier than sitting with my feelings. If I feel something I need to, no have to change it. One of the paradoxes of change we learn about in counselling is only through acceptance does true change occur. But at the moment acceptance is a step too far. One day I hope I will be able to accept the things I don’t like about myself but for now naming and identifying those experiences is enough. Baby steps 🙂

2011: that was the year that was

I’m not sad to see the back of 2011. Although it’s been a great year for me personally, for the world in general what with the Japanese tsunami, earthquakes in NZ, London riots, the Arab Spring and the economic collapse, 2011 has kinda sucked.

I know a lot of people hate New Years Eve’s (NYE) too crowded, too expensive, too much pressure. But I love NYE’s: the chance to dance like an idiot, hug the ones you love and make elaborate drunken resolutions that last until tea on January the first. For me NYE is the perfect blend of nostalgia and hope. So I’m here are my 2011 highlights, as well as what I’m looking forward to in 2012.

Getting in to University

More than starting Uni, which involved work and lots of it, getting into University has been one of my personal highlights. I knew the process would be competitive 250 applications for 20 places . So I was already in a such a state of nervous anticipation that I messed up the interview, stumbling through the ‘why do you want to be a counselling’ question like a blabber-mouthed fool. (Which I am, but they didn’t need to know that). Afterwards they shook me by the hand and said I’d know in a week. Three weeks passed and I starting ringing Admissions everyday. Finally the Admissions guy paused and said ‘I’m not supposed to tell you over the phone, but I can say it’s very good news.’ I walked round in an elated haze for days. Since starting the course, I’ve felt enriched because I finally feel like I am doing what I was born to do. And come January I’ll start work with my very first client. Eek.

Planning our wedding

Technically we got engaged in the last days of 2010. But for me 2011 was the year this marriage shit got real. If 2011 was the year we planned our wedding, 2012 is the year we’re getting married. Squee.

I started blogging again

After a two-year hiatus in which I did stuff (what is life if it is not documented on the interwebs I ask you?) I started blogging again. As well as a chance to polish my writing skills, vent about everything and anything I’ve really enjoyed connecting with people I’ve never met before from the far reaches of this world as well as old friends. Thanks to everybody who read my blog, said they liked it, and left a comment. You guys are the best, group hug?

Going on holiday with my family

I and went on holiday with my family and nobody killed anybody else! I think is a sign we are all maturing 🙂 Also I went to Disneyland, spoiler it’s still as awesome as I remembered.

2011 wasn’t all sunshine and roses. I had some ongoing health troubles (damn you foot and hip), trouble balancing work and life, and one of my best friends has been fighting a major illness. But I’m still here and so is everybody I love so I’m going to count that as a win.

Looking forward I haven’t had much of chance to think about what 2012 will bring. The plan for NYE’s was to bond with my lovely new counselling friends. However I overindulged and spent the first couple of hours of 2012 vomiting in the gutter as fireworks exploded over Brighton. BEST.NEW.YEARS.EVER! I jest, but actually despite the puking I had a really good night. To quote the late Mr Wilde, yes I may have been {vomiting}in the gutter but I was looking up at the ~~stars~~ fireworks. HWSNBN was amazing he stood with me in the rain for hours until we could go home, missing the party and going to club later. So here is what I want to accomplish this year:

1. Continuing to get healthier inside and out.

2. Only connect.

3. Celebrate some big (3.0.) milestones and marrying the love of my life. (I don’t know whether or not I might have mentioned this?)

So bye, bye 2011 and bring it on 2012.

Rowan January

Believer that life is brutiful – half brutal and half beautiful