the aimless

Hi there

It’s been a while, I’m sorry. All I have is the scribble and mess below. I hope you enjoy.

It was between rain and mist, just too soft to be the drizzle of misery and just too hard to be the ethereal fog plaguing the land. The silence of it all hurt her ears, almost more than the noises chasing her. She was tired and cold, but not enough to seek refuge, not enough to give up and not enough to go back there. She did not notice the end of the street, she only noticed the tree.

It was sudden and giant and all too much for her in her aimless and direct wanderings. She stopped and looked up, the skin on the back of her neck folded over and the damp skin there sent a shiver down to her toes. Her arms wrapped around her torso, fingers gripping to the back of her upper arms. She did not like the tree, its threat of comfort and safety was disturbing and she went to step around it. She looked back as she did and regretted it, the streets were empty, in ruin and silent. Only the soft shapes of a child’s body and a car burnt to an empty vessel.

She thought back to when that car was a carrier, back to when its doors were touched often, its seats warmed and its engine the reason people travelled and dreamed and planned. The days of travelling were long gone, she could not remember the last time she travelled somewhere to visit the place, the last time she went anywhere without walking her shoes off, the last time she felt the loneliness of going somewhere. She missed that loneliness; the loneliness of knowing that soon, she would be reunited with other souls like her own. She missed seeing them, she missed feeling their eyes and hearing their breathing.

She missed the person she had been with them, the warmth in her heart and the comfort in her stomach. Instead, she stood alone on a hazy, empty, desolate street; staring back and wishing she was moving forward.

She looked back to the tree, raised her head and glared at the branches above her head. She resented it for all it could see, resented its presence and its sense of belonging with the grass beneath her feet and the shrubs right beyond. She saw the tree line beyond those and sighed, she really hadn’t missed trees. She paused to listen, still hearing nothing, still hearing endless noise, still pretending that she didn’t. 

She moved on and she didn’t look back again.

 

It was several days later when she finally escaped from the trees. She had slept little, always looking up to the branches, the leaves, the obstructed view of the sky. On one evening, she had rested in a clearing that allowed the light of some of the stars to shine through the slightly sparser foliage and she had felt the world begin to awaken. She needed to be out of the trees before that, she had not rested since then.

As soon as she saw the bridge she felt her body tense; she knew she would rest now, until tomorrow at least before attempting the bridge. It was awe-inspiring. She did not know the words to describe it, but it was the biggest thing she had seen in her long life and she saw the damaged skyscrapers beyond it, she felt a strange sense of fear settle in. When she saw it all up close the following day, the fear was drowned by disappointment, desolation and exhaustion. She dropped to her knees and looked out over the destruction beyond the bridge.

She had heard of the ‘ambushes’ that bridges often accompanied but she knew there was no chance of it here. The last of the creatures had truly died in this land, the last of everything had died in this land. The bridge was impassable, the city a mess of only demolition dust and broken dreams. The bridge was mostly missing along the left side and any areas that could have been used for passage along the left was blocked by rubble and guarded by skeleton remains. The damaged skyscrapers were even less than that, some vague structural frames but nothing more and she felt nothing coming from the city.

Looking at the bridge, the way battlements had been constructed, she believed this city had once been a refuge, a safe place, but now it was a graveyard. Looking at the dust, she thought to label it a crematorium may be more apt. She looked to her left and saw the cracked and falling apart road continued. She moved from her knees to sitting and listened. With eyes closed, the smells and sounds came to her; the smell of dust and rust and rot came to her, vague and only half there; like their home. The sounds were less vague even than that, wind blowing through the buildings.

When she had been young, she had dreamed of hearing the air blowing through those skyscrapers, dreamed of staring up at them miles above her head and listened to the wind telling her stories of the rest of the world. Since then, the world had changed, the wind no longer had anything to tell her about. It blew into her ears, but it was silent. She was alone still. Her eyes opened slowly, the world was not awakening, it was still sleeping and would be still for many years ahead.

Standing, her legs ached but she knew she must keep moving, she needed to put the graveyard behind her and find something else to head towards. She walked on and did not look back.

 

When she found the animal, she no longer knew how many days it had been since the city. It was smaller than she was, maybe like a dog, or at least what she seemed to remember of dogs. She had already set up her campfire, it was a cold evening, and she did not move her campsites once it had been chosen. She prepared to fight off the creature, instead is warily approached the slowly building fire and lay down. Its dark eyes did not leave her face as it did and it turned its back to her shortly after lying down. She believed this was it showing that it was submissive, and could be trusted – She didn’t.

After cooking the last measly meal of the bird she had caught yesterday, she was preparing to wrap the remains when she looked up at the creature. It wasn’t looking at her, but it had turned slightly, as though it was drawn slightly forward. The eyes of the ‘dog’ were not closed, staring off to the way she had come from. She looked at the palm-sized piece of meat, it was the last from this bird, she would need it… The ‘dog’ wolfed it down and kept staring at her as it did, she stared back and then sat down. Built up the fire slightly and lay down, her weapon close to her hand and her eyes still on the ‘dog’.

Some time later, an owl sitting in a nearby tree saw a rare sight in these days; a human and animal lying on opposite sides of a campfire, both fast asleep.

 

The ‘dog’ followed her the next day, she did not want the company. The ‘dog’ knew this, that didn’t mean anything to him though.

She walked on and did not look back. She was not alone.

 

 

I know this means very little, especially to me, but it’s something I have wanted to spill out for several weeks and in my current state, it needed to be shared. It does not do my thoughts justice, but the world now has it. Do with it what you will.

Happy days, or if happy is too much, “I hope you have a day.”

Kitten x

day twenty-four – decisions

Sixteen days to go.

This isn’t going to be a long post, it’s mostly about something that happened today and also a plea for help. If you do read through this and have any tips, I really would appreciate them in the comments, no matter how unusual of vague.

So, decision-making: I have no decision making skill – at all. This is possibly one of my least favourite features about myself, which is really saying something considering I’m a small ball of self-hatred and low self-esteem. I can see how much it annoys the people around me and the ways that it negatively affects them all and I absolutely detest it.

When it’s a decision about what colour I’m dying my hair or what I want for lunch, I have no problems making a choice even though I will sometimes ask for opinions. These decisions are things affecting me only, if I don’t like my lunch, it doesn’t affect anyone else really.

The moment a decision has the potential to even slightly alter someone else’s life or plans or feelings about me, I am incapable of figuring out what I want. I cannot stand this, I begin to panic and analyse every piece of information I have. I create a pros and cons list for every person involved and will back and forth mentally for hours, driving everyone else crazy waiting for me to confirm.

Once such situation happened today: I needed to go home. I am at work this week and the house I share with Mike is thirty minutes away. My coworker who lives near us was going home around the time I finish today. However he is coming in later than me tomorrow so I would not be able to a lift back in with him. Today was horrible though, so I asked Mike if he could bring me home later in the evening after I spent some time in the house with him. He said he would be fine to do so, the decision about whether or not I would go home was up to me though.

And so the anxiety and overthinking and nausea began. I didn’t know what to do. I looked at the pros and cons of me visiting in relation to me, then I looked at how it would benefit or inconvenience Mike, then considered if this would annoy my coworker because he has already given me two lifts this week and I was intending to ask for another on Friday morning. I thought about if my mum would be unhappy if I wasn’t here with her, I thought about leaving work an hour early (my end time is quite lenient depending on how much work I have). I spent from about 12h00 until 15h50 agonising over this decision. I asked for other people’s opinions and rationalised my reasons, bargained with myself to make myself feel less guilty or more comfortable with one option.

In the end, even though I used all of these methods, I panicked and threw up my lunch and had a dry mouth and sweaty palms for hours, I did make the decision alone. I asked myself a question and gave myself ten seconds to answer and right then I knew I had to go. The extra information and reasons why for yes and why for no didn’t matter, everyone else’s opinions didn’t really affect me.

I asked myself if I would regret not taking the opportunity to go home, and I knew instantly that I would. I went home for a few hours, had dinner with my boyfriend, went for a walk and then he drove me home. It was a short visit and I do still feel guilty asking for him to do that when he’s already tired. Do I regret going though? No, I don’t. I love my boyfriend and I love being in our home, I was glad for the few hours we got to spend there and hope that all goes well tomorrow so I can go home again then. I hope that I can spend the next few evenings with my mouse because then I’m stuck here for a while. In sixteen days though, I’ll hopefully be able to spend the rest of my life staying at home with him.

So, this story has a happy ending. The question worked this time, but I have tried that method before and it has failed. So I wanted to ask for advice, tips, suggestions on how to make decisions. I struggle and it ruins my life a lot. If anyone has any advice for me or experiences something similar, I really would appreciate some words in the comments below.

Thanks so much, and goodnight.

Kitten x

day twenty three – something

Well. Seventeen more days. And a week without posting. Some followers may have seen that I uploaded something yesterday, I did not like it and did not want it out in the world. As much as these posts are for me, I do not want to share that kind of negativity and the absolute lack of effort that went into that. I will address that topic again at some point – it was the topic of friends, and next time I will put together something that isn’t so broken and in pieces.

Today is a day of somethings, sort of, maybe. I honestly don’t really know. My thoughts and emotions are a little bit up and down at the moment. I can’t quite seem to focus, so I don’t actually know for sure what this post is about. I know I’m itching, and that is something. It is something different to the absence.

Let’s start with that: I have been absent, not just from this blog, but mentally absent too. I haven’t been engaging in conversations or trying to maintain relationships. My boyfriend and I had what I consider our biggest fight recently, because of this absence. I came home last Wednesday and was essentially unresponsive. I was there, and I was talking, but my conversation had been switched to autopilot. I was not trying to keep a topic going, I was not sharing thoughts or feelings and I was distant. I know that I was not in a good place, and I know that he suffered for it. I also know that the whole experience was truly horrible for me. Wednesday and Thursday passed in a haze and on Thursday evening, he called me out on it, I retaliated and things escalated quickly. I don’t like shouting at people and I don’t like other people shouting at or around me either, but I have never felt like I needed to shout at him as much as I felt it that night. I was a wreck, sobbing and trying to explain myself, defend myself for things that I did not understand, and couldn’t hear him trying to explain. I had never felt so far away from my own body, I had never felt that out of control. It was like I wasn’t even connected to my physical self anymore, my brain and body were acting separately and neither could communicate or explain what they were doing to the other. It was one of the worst nights of my life.

I slammed our bathroom door shut and smashed my limbs into hard surfaces, my boyfriend had to remove me from the bathroom and essentially put me in a time out. This may seem like an odd thing, it may seem slightly controlling, but it is something that we have used in similar instances before, and it helped. I sat in the corner of the room crying, within ten minutes we had both calmed down and discussed the problem. Before eleven at night, we had resolved the majority of the issues. Unfortunately it did not resolve my absence, and that continued to affect us both and was brought up again that weekend.

I wish I could say that the absence is gone, it isn’t entirely, but there is now something. I am into my last three weeks, I should be happy and comfortable and planning excitedly for my freedom. Instead I am itching. Last night, I was up until two thirty in the morning from the itchiness. The way I finally managed to sleep was crying myself into exhaustion (which is something I have perfected and use as an actual sleep method…read into that what you will) and by changing my linen and pajamas. I had to move my dog onto a bed on the floor because fleas were itching through my mind (none of our dogs get fleas or ticks and are treated every two months to make sure of this.) I was then awake four hours later for work and have sort of dragged myself through the day from that. This is the physical itchiness, which I can half explain. Summer is starting here in South Africa, and it has suddenly warmed up very quickly. I don’t like heat, but can handle it, the problem comes during the sudden change from cold to hot. My skin feels like there are bugs crawling over it, my clothes scratch at me and my hair makes my head itch. This is something I have dealt with for several years and know how to handle.

Unfortunately, a mental itch has coincided with my physical itch. Mental itches are like bugs or like vape smoke: annoying, deceptive and impossible to get rid of without murder. There are small thoughts, that may not have even bothered me for several months, that will come creeping through my head and scratch lightly at the edges of my brain. They will persist and avoid my attacks and dig away at my sanity for as long as they can until they feel they have had their fun. Some of them will spend time scratching and scratching until they develop into monster cockroaches; ready to reveal themselves to me because they know I cannot kill them at this point. One of them, in particular, is pervasive enough to have turned the way I feel about a friend into very negative and hateful thoughts. Someone I was feeling comfortable with and beginning to trust, I no longer want anything to do with because of the f**king cockroaches scurrying through my brain, victoriously chattering and driving me closer to psychosis.

I am home tonight, for just one night, and then back to work potentially until Friday. I am terrified that the itch will ruin my short time here. I need to make it to the end of the week, and then just two more weeks and I will finally be done.

I know the itch will pass, once I adjust to the heat and am no longer stuck at my job and in my house at work. Once I finally get to live in my home, make it mine, clean it regularly and keep it cockroach free, I will feel clean again. Or at least, I really hope so.

Kitten x

day sixteen – something different

Well, yesterday’s post was long and very word-vomity and very much, an explosion of feelings rather than an actual piece of writing. Tonight will be different, tonight I want to create something. It won’t be something big or even something impressive, but it’s been so long since I created something myself that I needed to write. So, wish me luck.

Sunflowers, as far as the eye could see. From her vantage point, it was an endless tapestry of yellow and green, the grey sky above cowering under the colours and volume of the ground below. The wind was silent, the birds muted and the small pathway leading between the flowers whispered to her. She found herself following it, without the thought even crossing her mind. From her perch on the small mound, she had seen the beginnings of the path, and then it had disappeared into the colour, from the flat ground at the beginning of the path, she could not see further than to the next bend. She stepped out of the clearing, and into the maze. 

She did not look back.

It was early afternoon and, though it was clouds and greyness above, it was warm where she walked, enshrouded by petals and stalks. The warm smell of the sunflowers and the hazy air she felt like she was swimming between the flowers. Her feet easily found the pathway, as though she had walked it a hundred times before this. One of her hands would reach out absently every now and then to pull on a soft petal or brush against a rough stalk, before it would drift back to her side, hanging as though half asleep and drowsy. Minutes may have passed, perhaps hours. The light above her did not seem to change and the path was exactly as it has been when she started, but now it was friendly and laughing with her. When she had entered, there were nervous whispers and peaking eyes, now the softest of giggles seemed to follow her and small figures danced in the corners of her vision. She was being led, a group of friends calling to her and welcoming her with open arms.

She couldn’t see the end of the pathway, but she rather felt that it was drawing near. She felt the giggles and whispers and dancing begin to rise in volume and solidify until she was certain of what she was hearing, certain of the little figures flitting between the leaves of the flowers. She turned a corner and suddenly a wall of darkness stood before her.

The trees were giants, clearly ancient and weathered. There were small conifers gathered together, whispering into each other’s ears to the left of her and beyond that, the wall extended. To her right, the sunflower field crashed into the side of the forest. You could clearly see these were the sunflowers with slightly less sun; slimmer and shorter, some already bowing to darkness and preparing for an endless sleep. The sunflowers seemed to lead right up to the very edge of the tree line, and as far as she could tell, extended much further down to new places she had not found. She refocused on the path under her feet, it narrowed and faded slightly, but continued nonetheless; directly into the darkness. It led through a small opening in the brush. The smaller shrubs and young trees, embracing the shade cast by the tallest of the evergreens behind them, like big siblings preparing to care for their younger, weaker counterparts.

The path must continue between those giants, winding between their broad trunks and allowing the smaller creatures of the earth to wander and stare in awe of their size and age and beauty, their sheer magnificence. The path would continue into the darkness, it would leave behind the warmth and yellow and giggling of this world and welcome her into something wholly new. She looked up at the sky, it was maybe slightly darker than before, she looked towards the forest and knew that it made little difference if it was day or night in there. She saw the dancing figures though, she saw the way they seemed to light up the shadows. She took a step forward, toward the trees, just to see. The figures of light followed.

She sat and let her hands rest on the warm soil beneath her. She thought of all that was behind her. She thought of the ramshackle house of dust, the empty rooms and silent garden. She thought of the half waves and diverted glances, she thought of the murmurs and shaken heads. She thought of the sharp pieces, hiding in her house for her and of the lines on her skin, never to leave her entirely. She thought of the silence, screaming at her to do something about it and wrap herself in sharp things until everything was stained. She thought of the screams that woke her and the shivers that led her to sleep, she thought of the Nothing. 

She looked into the trees, she listened for a breeze – it was there. She heard the sighing of the forest and the shuffle of the leaf-laden ground. She saw the lights dance towards the opening and the path. She stood up and took a step forward, her feet sure on the soft ground.

She did not look back.

 

Twenty four days to go.

Kitten x

day fifteen – trust

Today marks 25 days to go. I have always liked multiples of five, there’s something very soothing about them for some reason. Today is also a big day – it is a Monday, I am back at work and while everything may seem the same, today is the day I have accepted that there are things out of my control. There are things that I cannot fix, or help with or contribute towards, and that is okay.

I have spent a lot of time in my life panicking. I have dealt with social anxiety for several years and general anxiety for most of my life, I cannot blame my own panicking on this though. I imagine worst-case scenarios for every situation I ever encounter, I over-analyse meeting people and the responses my messages or words receive, I worry about being annoying, or talking too much, or not talking enough and could not comfortably get through any interaction for many years. The first person I ever felt entirely comfortable and honest around was my best friend Kylie; she was dealing with similar problems and we bonded over this (and still do regularly over Skype from two different continents and two different points in life.)

The second person this happened with is the reason I write this post, obviously, it is my Mouse. This post is about him and about our relationship and the most important part of it. Since meeting Mike, I have always felt comfortable speaking to him. We first met at work, he was the IT consultant who came in every Thursday to check on our computers and would always stop in at my office. He was good friends with my Mum already, as well as the two other receptionists who worked here at the time we met. He would stop in and chat with me about our respective days or complain about idiots together. Later, he told us about the judo and ju jutsu classes that he attended or taught himself, inviting us regularly (we were always too terrified to go). Soon, it was discussions about his DnD party, he thought I might enjoy joining for a session – however my schedule never quite lined up for it. The first time I sent him a message was in June 2016, and from there conversation picked up slowly. By October of that year, we were speaking daily and our chats when he dropped in grew longer. He was one of the most interesting people I had ever met and I felt comfortable enough to talk to him about almost everything – it was terrifying. I was only nineteen at the time and he was a seemingly endless ten years older than me. The first time we made plans together outside of work, was just a simple movie in his flat, just the two of us with pizza. It came at a time when Mike was feeling especially alone and was looking for company from someone he could feel comfortable with. When I made the decision to offer my company, there was no hesitation or uncertainty, it was an immediate decision that barely even required consideration.

The rest of our relationship followed the same trend. Everything was honest and it was natural. The decision to start dating was an easy one, even if more consideration was required this time. Moving in together was a decision that we both naturally made separately and together. Every part of our relationship, the new things and the time spent together, was natural and so based in trust that I was happy to keep falling, trusting that he would be there for me. I would like to think that he felt the same, even if I would not necessarily be able to physically actually catch him in reality.

I do not trust easily, I never have and have always disliked the cliche of “opening up to people”. I don’t like sharing things with people, I don’t like admitting to my issues or revealing the problems I am facing. Within just a few months of dating though, I was sharing everything. I was giving as much of myself as I could and being as honest and open as I had ever seen anyone else be. With every new piece I handed over to him, I trusted that he would not use it against me. I trusted that every time I fell into darkness and began to drown in tears, he was there to catch me and pull me back into the light. I have often struggled to trust people to be there for me, but with Mike; there has never been a doubt.

Our relationship is one I can believe in, even if I didn’t ever really believe that one person could truly be happy with the same individual forever. It is one that I can look at and see the strength of it. I struggle with jealousy, not necessarily that he will leave me for someone else, it is a level of jealousy that other people can share the time with him that I cannot. The way I deal with this jealousy though, is I now look at our relationship from the outsider’s point of view. Before even taking into consideration all the little ways that I see that he adores me and I adore him, the small ways that our friends and family don’t see, the small ways that even I don’t see until later: I see the simple normal ways that our relationship is healthy and strong.

The most important part of a relationship, in my eyes, used to be independence and respect; being able to stay your own person outside of your relationship and respecting the other person for what they are – an individual. While these are both incredibly important in a relationship, and two parts that I do my best to keep in mind, the way I had been seeing it before was very separate. I did not see a relationship as a single entity, but rather as two separates who are joining together for a bit. After being in this relationship for this long, I see that we are two separate people, who have chosen to become a unit, a team. The only way for that team to function is with the trust that you have to place in each other. This isn’t just trusting the other person to not sleep with someone else, or trusting them to not go and tell all of their friends every small detail and secret about your life.

This kind of trust I am experiencing is trusting a person to try to understand you when you make no sense at all – be that because you’re crying too hard and monologuing, or because what you’re saying seems senseless and silly to your own brain. The trust that I have learned to have in him, is trusting that he will have faith in me for every attempt I make, but also I trust that he will be there if I fail. The trust I now know is trusting that we will be there for each other’s successes, for every time we get a win and will cheer each other on for it, but also that, in order to get that win, we will sit with each other until the dying hours to make sure the achievement can happen. The trust I have in him is that he will not suddenly decide that he has had enough; he will not turn around and simply dismiss me, he will not hold me up and help me get to the top, give up things and support me every step of the way, to suddenly disappear and leave me to fall and fall and fall. The most important of this trust though, is that he hopefully feels the same trust in me. I can’t ever know for certain that he does, and I feel that this is why the trust that I feel is the most dangerous, but the most rewarding of them all.

I just repeated a word a whole lot of times, I really am sorry. I also may have been kind of, a little bit, of a sap. He has been the cheesy one, the besotted one for so long though, that I felt like I needed to share some saccharine as well. I hope you aren’t all “stuck in amber”, to quote someone special, from the sap above.

I know this was long and very word-vomity, but I wanted to share this one. This was a very important one to share with you all.

Kitten.

day fourteen – burden

Twenty six days to go.

I’m sorry for not posting for the last few days, I have never excuse, I just didn’t feel like it. I’m currently still at home, I have to return to work this evening though, and will be there until the end of Wednesday.

Today is a negative post I’m afraid, I don’t think there’s going to be a positive message at the end today, or even the smallest little bit of inspiration. Today’s post is about feeling like a burden.

There are several ways and several people in each scenario of why I feel like a burden. The first is the most simple: I cannot drive.

I passed my driver’s test almost two months ago, but do not have my own car nor have I got myself to the testing station to pick up my permanent license yet. My boyfriend drives a company car and will not let me drive us anywhere until I haven’t permanent license. I cannot use the car that my mum currently uses, because it also is a company car from the hotel and because I don’t have a formal contract at the moment, if something were to happen, insurance would not cover it. This means that I haven’t had the chance to practise driving and am definitely not yet allowed to drive myself anywhere (even if I did have a vehicle to do so). Keep in mind: the hotel where I work and stay most of the week, is a thirty minute drive from my home with my boyfriend. Every time I come and go, either he has to take me or I have to source another lift. The latter is an option only available to me some days of the week – a coworker of mine lives five minutes from our house and will happily fetch me or bring me back when our shifts line up. Unfortunately this doesn’t happen often. Today, as I mentioned, I have to go back. Mike is very unwell and feverish, currently asleep under a mountain of blankets in barely cold weather. This is a state where I would usually do my best to avoid him driving, but because of me he’s stuck having to do it later. I have already checked in with the colleague and he is only going in at eleven tomorrow, three hours after I start my shift.

This leaves me feeling like a burden, like someone constantly needing assistance or demanding favours, but never returning them. I hate that I have no way to get back, especially when Mike is as unwell as he is and all I want to do is stay with him and make sure he’s okay. Right now, I’m struggling to find a solution to this and I don’t know where else to look. Public transport is not an option here, I’ve tried looking into transfer companies before and there is no one else I can ask for a friendly lift.

The second way, is applicable to my mum. I’ve lived with her my whole life and she and I have lived alone for the last six years. In twenty six days I’m leaving her and not coming back. At the moment, I’m home for three nights a week, eating the food from the house, mostly feeling separation anxiety from my home and not being great company because I’m so exhausted from work. While I know she feels the same about the last one, I wish I could offer more and make out last few weeks together good ones. While I’m sure that, closer to my departure, things will get better, I worry that I might ruin everything before then and she may grow to resent me and feel me as a burden to her for not contributing in any way. Even now, she’s trying to help me fix things and help make a plan for tomorrow and she shouldn’t have to. She shouldn’t have to worry about her Front Office Manager’s issues, she should be able to rely on her management team and, considering the majority of the rest of management are useless, I try to pick up where they drop things.

This is also a segue on to another part of my burdening; I can’t make a decision or solve a problem by myself half the time. Sure, I always have ideas on how to solve problems and know what I want most of the time, but I can’t actually make a decision or choose a solution without consulting them for ages and annoying both her and Mike. All I can think of is the various ways in which my decision could affect them negatively or inconvenience them in any way. This has led to the only real argument my mum and I have ever had, as well as many moments of pure annoyance for my boyfriend. They both become exasperated because I flit between one option and the other, I look at the pros and cons but they don’t help and I end up asking for them to help.

There are a couple of other, smaller, ways I feel like a burden. I feel that much of what my boyfriend, especially, has to put up with because of my depression, social anxiety and paranoia, must be reason for him to break up with me. The very fact that he hasn’t left me for burdening him with these issues, surprises me every day and I do wonder what it is that I can offer that balances it out and makes him stay with me.

The biggest one currently though, is that big change in twenty six days. My boyfriend has people visit in the evenings sometimes, he games with his clan occasionally (not as often recently also because of me unfortunately) and spends time for himself…when I’m not there. When I am around, is the one time he can game at the moment, but he doesn’t feel he can do the rest of the things he does during the week when I’m not there. In just four weeks though, I’m going to be there all the time. Mike does not adjust well to change, he does not like it and panics when he has to change things himself. Me living here permanently will be the biggest change since we started renting this flat. Me being around all the time will mean that some of his friends may not want to visit anymore, they may not say it specifically but won’t make as many plans to see him and pop by and one day that might lead to the end of a friendship.

I found out a long time ago about one of Mike’s friends who had sent him a message telling him that she feared that he and I moving in together would affect their friendship. I still remember feeling insulted and blamed, as though I was making him move in with me when I wasn’t. I was still working somewhere with accommodation and probably would have managed just fine for a few more months without living together. I remember that the part that hurt the most was that Mike shared that fear. I worry that once I’m here all the time, he won’t be able to do anything anymore, he won’t be able to see his friends and will resent me for being around. I don’t want to burden him by always being around, especially because there may be a month or two before I pick up a full time job again. I don’t want to have to go visit my mum and stay over for a night or two every week so that he can have company or do his own thing. I want to be able to live in my own home, but what if the change is too much for him and it’s what destroys us? I’m terrified that we aren’t actually ready to live together yet, and that we should have waited another year. Maybe waited until I had had the chance to live alone for a bit and adjust to home life without my mum. Maybe waited until we were both more financially stable and not sort of pinching towards the middle of the month already. Maybe we should have waited until I found a new full time job in the area to make sure I actually can before I risked it and happily settled.

Maybe this is moving too fast and we’ve made a terrible decision, because I haven’t figured out to not be a burden and function as a normal person yet.

I know this is wordy and negative and very all over the place, but this is a lot of what I’ve been thinking for the last few days.

day eleven – a day of happenings

Twenty nine days to go. This is a big deal, this post is not. This will not be a long post I’m afraid and it is mostly just updates. I’m very tired again and left writing this post too late, so my inspiration is in short supply and my drowsiness is overflowing.

I am currently at home in bed, it’s just after ten o’clock and my boyfriend is in the lounge gaming, I can hear him chattering excitedly with his brother over Team Speak (I don’t know why I liken him to a bird when excited, it makes very little sense). There are some soft drops of rain, unfortunately they are intermittent enough to be vaguely annoying and slightly too loud to treat as comfortable background noise. Even so, with both of these loud and sometimes annoying noises, I am content.

Today was quite long, I ended up catching a lift with Mike into Nottingham Road so that I could get to Mooi River(a small town about forty minutes away from where we live, but only fifteen from my work place in Notties) in order to pick up my driver’s license. He was heading through for work and dropped me off at the hotel as my mum and I were going to head in together as she needed to pick a new bank card. Unfortunately her plan fell through, which is unfortunate because her card expired two months ago and the new one is waiting for her. Mike was willing to shuffle his schedule in order to come fetch me first and then take me through to Mooi from there.

There have been some fairly nasty riots and protests in Mooi River recently, the municipality has been closed twice now because of it. Unfortunately, it seems the riots affected more than just the municipality this time and the Licensing Department was closed. I was disappointed, but not entirely surprised.

While dealing with all of this, I was also in the middle of a job for Rev.com (an online transcription website where I earn extra money by transcribing files) and while I was waiting in the car for Mike to finish a job, I got through most of the audio file.

After passing the Licensing Department and seeing it was closed, we thought it best to drop me off in a restaurant to finish the Rev job and have some lunch while the mouse went through to get through a job which was predicted to take some time. (Side note: the Mouse is an IT technician and consults for many companies, establishments and schools; including the hotel where I work of course).

I sat down and got comfortable, I ordered my lunch and got my laptop set up. Shortly after my drink was brought through, Mike sent a message saying he was already almost done. This meant that I did things much faster than planned, I finished my lunch and ordered a takeaway meal for him and continued with my drink and transcript, waiting until he said he was leaving.

Due to unfortunate issues at the school he was working at, there was another hour until he was done. In that time, my laptop ran out of battery (with eight minutes of audio file left) and I finished my drink. Uncertain of how much longer he’d be, I didn’t order anything else. When my very nice waitress brought the bill, I delayed as long as I could in order to hang around until I heard from Mike. It was at this point that I realised my phone battery was nearing 5%. I locked it, and started preparing to pay, thinking I could sit and read until I heard from him: no panicking was required. Suddenly though, I had my social anxiety set in and convince me that I could not stay after paying. I dragged out the payment process, I dragged out packing up my things. Please understand, the restaurant was not busy, out of about twenty tables, only three were occupied, so there was no pressure for me to release the table. But still my brain persisted. That is how I ended up sitting in the ladies bathroom, on top of my jacket reading my book for almost half an hour, my battery slowly dying and my panic slowly rising.

He did arrive to collect me, of course, and apologised for the wait (not that it was his fault). We got home, I finished the Rev job and continued with the evening.

Unfortunately I was slightly self-destructive again tonight, in a mental rather than physical sense, but between the mouse and I, we fixed me up enough to make dinner, have a laugh and get through. Looking back at the day, I don’t understand why I didn’t stay at that restaurant table, I don’t know why my brain sabotaged my comfortable spot with a very nice waitress who would have been fine with me sitting there for a bit longer. I wish I had.

I feel I have accomplished things today, I completed my first Rev job in several weeks and, while my grade was an 80% instead of the usual 90% or 100%, I am glad to have started again and I hope to start doing it more as my time at home increases.

As I said, this was not a long or interesting post, but I was glad to put something up. Tomorrow, I will write my post earlier and it will be released to the world with sense and hopefully a bit more structure.

I’m going to head off the sleep now, to the wonderful sounds of: “Yes, that was fucking beautiful!” or the repeated “GASP! Oh god that was close!”. I love him, I really do 😛

Goodnight/Good morning/Good day to everyone.

Kitten x

day ten – breakdown

30 days to go.

I wish I could say that today has been a good one, finally reaching double digits and having only a month left. Unfortunately it hasn’t. The day was long, despite how hard I tried to make it okay. The evening was difficult, unfortunately I did not try to make this okay.

It is a Wednesday, usually an okay day, today a great day because it was my last work day and the day that Mike would bring me home. I started the day ecstatic and positive and ready to take on the world. At the beginning of my shift, I had happy coworkers and pleasant phone calls. There was a small hiccup with our booking system, but the day was okay. Then I had a rude caller for a reservation, followed by more issues with our booking system. Then an incomplete colleague came on shift and I became frustrated, I felt the negativity set in. I wish I could say I fought it, but I didn’t. After two o’clock, with only three hours left but with no booking system and an exhausted brain, I gave up and let it overwhelm me.

That led to me being offish with my mouse, and short with my mum who was in a similarly bad mood. Unfortunately from the moment we got home, I made it worse. I distances myself and shut down and evaded every question and every topic of conversation. I needed to talk, but I refused to do so. The very thought of trying to verbalise what was happening in my head, terrified me and I couldn’t do it. The trigger was my own fault though, a mis-timed question with an accusatory tone, and I destroyed being home. I dug my hole and tried to bury myself, when I finally escaped to being alone, I clawed at my skin to try and get the dirt off and pushed away anything and everything until I could breathe. Then I started crying, and it was up to Mike to fix me (again).

Now, I’m in bed, I’m tired and I want to sleep. Now, I am ready to collapse and let myself drift off to nightmares or stilted sleep. I could not do so without writing this, because I need to note the lesson of the night.

I destroyed everything by myself. I dragged everyone down with me. This was a terrible thing to do and, honestly, I do hate myself for it. But to focus on what I actually took from the experience – the people who are there for you, will always be. Mike has told me that, and I trust that it is true. It should not always be on them to pick you up though. My support team is small but wonderful and I can rely on them all fully, but I rely on them (Mike in particular) too often. I have lost the ability to fix myself and to evaluate and solve without assistance. I appreciate the help that they offer and give so freely, and I know I should not feel guilty for accepting the help, but I’m challenging myself to fixing one issue, just one even if it’s small, by myself. If I can do that, I will task myself with a bigger issue, and then a bigger one, until I can cope alone. I know that I may not choose to always cope alone then, but to have the option seems kind of nice.

I’m sorry this one was badly written and a little blegh and darkness and very short, I really am tired and typing this on my phone (the sacrilege) 😛

Tomorrow, I will come out with something incredible, day eleven will be the day of wonders, or at least of eight hundred words that actually make sense – I feel like that should be enough.

Kitten

day nine – distractions

I played with a couple of different topics for today’s blog post. It took me longer than I would have thought to come up with this one, considering blog posts fall into this category.

Distractions are an important thing for me. I am an obsessive person and, when I feel negative about something, my brain will take it and obsess over it for hours and hours. It will spin and lie and shout at me about one particular thing in order to keep me from thinking about anything else; instead focused on the spiralling downward.

In recent years, I have come to see when my mind begins to obsess, and I wish I could say I had figured out how to fix it 100% but I haven’t. I do still spiral – often. I do still obsess – daily. But I know how to keep myself from being trapped there. I have found my own distractions and created them all to be as healthy as possible. For too long, I distracted and coped with unhealthy methods: binge eating, purging, self-harm or wallowing. While I do believe that a good wallow is needed every now and then, you cannot let yourself fall into it. I only ever wallow when I know that there is something coming soon that will help stop it.

I have replaced these unhealthy things with other such “somethings” that can distract from the issue long enough for me to either resolve it or move on. Binge eating is now consuming content rather than food. I will stream a series I enjoy or pick up a book – I try to make sure to not get lost in it for too long. I try to remain conscious of the real world – it is easier to do now than it once was and when I begin to feel that I can return without incident or further meltdowns; I slowly emerge, testing the waters as I go.

Purging, I have replaces with blog posts. Instead of sitting on the bathroom floor with a burning throat, I throw up words onto clean sheets of paper. I have over twenty drafts on WordPress which I do not intend to ever publish, but just the act of releasing the panic and sadness and self-loathing helps me to begin to feel clean and empty on the inside. The burn in my throat is sometimes there as well, with held back tears or from humming, it is no longer a burn though. It is now more a satisfying heat.

Self-harm was difficult to replace, and I am still working on this one. While I have been clean of cuts for over two months and have only had such situations enough times to count on both hands without using up all my fingers this whole year, it is the one that has been hardest to replace. I miss the burn and the slice and the colour. Instead of drawing on myself now though, I draw with pencils and pens and colours, creating untalented and uninteresting, but cathartic drawings and doodles and mandalas. I own a colouring book and while I often find myself drawing on my skin, craving the sharper feel of a real blade, the creation of other drawings is enough to let me get through an evening.

Wallowing, as I said, is not one I have eradicated completely. I do still allow myself to dip, sometimes it ends well and other times it, unfortunately, does not. I will let myself be sad about something, or feel frustration about something I feel is unfair. I will allow myself to dip my head under the water, to feel the ocean and remember where I came from. Most of the time, I can bring myself back up above the waves. When I cannot, I have my lovely mouse to reach out a hand or an oar and keep me afloat for a while longer. Mike is who I wallow to now, instead of dropping and dropping until I can no longer see light, I call to him and try to speak. Sometimes it takes dragging, and he has to reach over the side of the boat and pull until the water finally releases me, he will wrap me up until the shaking stops and make me talk. I will talk about my sadness or frustration or nothingness, I will try and vomit it out to him, paint a picture and consume as much of his comfort as possible to keep on going.

I have found my positive replacements, my distractions to keep me away from the negative screams of my brain. I will wrap them in my arms, keep them close for as long as I possibly can. I know that one day I may no longer need them as distractions, but I think I plan on keeping them all around as friends after that.

Kitten

lazy days – day eight

So, is anyone surprised that I failed miserably at daily posts?

I had plans, and I even drafted the beginning of a post one two of the days, but I got caught up with life and I realize that that isn’t a bad thing.

Day three and Day four, we’re both days where I was too tired to function. I had long work days, and ended up with the beginning of a headache on both days.

Day five was a lazy day for me. I was off and at home by myself. I binge watched Netflix and I reflected on life and, for the first time in a while, I didn’t panic being in my own home by myself. I even had a nap, outside, in our garden (granted it was accidentally) and that was what my boyfriend was greeted with when he got home from work. (He greeted me with sushi for lunch which was better than my own offering of a passed out girlfriend with the beginning of a sunburn.

Day six, was a wonderful day. We were lazy together and cleaned a little and had two of our friends over for the evening. When we finally took them both home just before midnight, I wasn’t drained and exhausted and ready for sleep right then. Only vaguely nauseous from eating too much.

Day seven, yesterday, was the day I had to leave home and come back to work. It was a very late return and I did consider writing a post, a nice positive one about rest and avoiding negativity and the support of your friendships. Instead I spent an hour doing things for myself, before passing out.

Today, I don’t have a grand plan for this post and I’m fine with that. It is mostly an update, a small apology for abandoning my plan but also appreciating that I’m allowed to let life get in the way of things sometimes. And also an acknowledgement that I’m happy that that is finally happening to me. For so long I did everything I could to avoid life and finally I feel like I’m willing to let it start happening.

I only saw it recently from a comment my mum made. She, as my direct manager at work, was chatting to our MD (director basically) and he asked what exactly I planned to do once I finished work (32 DAYS), to which her response was: “She’s finally going to actually live.” She explained it to me, that she saw that for a long time, I saw my existence as just that – existing the world. I trudged through everything, getting them done rather than DOING them. When I started dating Mike, there was a small change, apparently everyone saw it; all the people I had known since I was twelve and worked with since I was seventeen saw me start to look around at life and try.

I know that I will not be magically cured of all mental illness the moment I leave this job, and I know that life will not immediately become sunflowers and cookies, but I know that I will finally be able to appreciate the sunflower moments and taste the cookies properly. I will be able to look at life and welcome it to distract me from everything else, allow it to interfere with my strict schedules and clear plans. Frankly, I look forward to it.

In thirty two days, I’m going to see what life’s like. I’ll let you know what I think of it then.

Kitten