The Flip Side

To be honest, I haven’t felt great this year. Right from the start of January, I’ve been struggling and I didn’t feel as happy compared to last summer where I remember feeling the best I’ve felt in a long time. I’ve drawn lots but haven’t written for months, mostly because I had nothing new to complain about.

About two and a half years ago, I stopped taking my medication because I thought that I felt better and wasn’t depressed anymore. But feeling so low recently I decided to start them again, and it’s only this time that I’ve started to notice a change, not necessarily for the best.

The year that I stopped taking my medication, I set up my website and began drawing again and although I felt happy, I couldn’t hold back my tears. Now the tears have stopped but so have I. You can probably see that I’ve hardly drawn and I don’t seem to have the enthusiasm anymore.

Not just drawing, but other things. I used to be up early every day to get myself ready for work, blow dry my hair, full face of make-up and a smart outfit, but now the office is lucky if I’ve got mascara on. I was even up early on the weekend and would have all my chores done by 11am whereas now I’m not likely to even be out of bed by that time. At one point I couldn’t even handle my drink and that was depressing in itself!

I feel like I’m supposed to be taking these drugs to make me feel better, and I do in some way but I know that I’m not myself, that’s the flip side. Is it better to be productive, motivated and active but constantly on the brink of tears or to be indifferent, lazy and lethargic with the numb sadness of knowing that I can be a better me?

Looking back, I am starting to see my past self in a different light and I’m starting to understand my life so much better. Maybe over time, this will pass and I will be able to be the super me that I know I am, without the crying.

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Remedy

We all have our own remedies when we are feeling ill or down in the dumps. Some people like a glass of wine and even a cheeky cigarette, maybe it is a box of chocolates for some people and our favourite tunes, tablets to cure our headaches or honey in our tea for sore throats.

My remedy for most ailments is all of the above but more importantly, my friends and family. They are the cure for most of my complaints, physical or psychological.

They are always there at the end of the phone, they are always free when I need cheering up and no matter the problem, and they are always willing to help in one way or another. You can’t put a value on that.

My loved ones are my reason for living, and for still being alive. I think without them I wouldn’t have survived and I am always indebted to them. That is why, not only are they my remedy but I offer myself as theirs.

I hope that when they need me, they feel that they can call me, no matter the situation or time of day. No burden is too big to bear and I will always offer my shoulder to cry on in the same way they have done for me.

So, Happy Valentine’s Day to all the loves of my life! I hope your day is filled with all the love and happiness that you have given me, not just today, but every day and know that I am eternally grateful for your love and support.

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New Year

New Year’s Day I arrive back at my apartment, cigarette in one hand and a bottle of gin in the other, talk about cliché. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the door, tired, red-eyed, make-upless and hair that resembles a mad scientist. Bridget Jones comes to mind…

I fumble around for my keys and drop them on the floor, still useless from the alcohol consumptions of the night before and the previous 12 nights to add on top of that. The hallway is infested with sequins from my party and a single balloon floats around by my door. I release a big sigh of despair at the thought of returning back to reality.

Even though I wasn’t expecting much from the first day, this isn't how I envisaged that my 2018 would start and 5 days later nothing much has improved. I've listened to Celine Dion ‘Think Twice’ about 4,572 times, watched period dramas on repeat, used 8 boxes of tissues and consumed a box of Lindt and one pizza. Not the healthiest but I’m pretty sure I’ve lost weight, one resolution successfully achieved!

I haven’t left the apartment, bed or sofa and I’m beginning to question whether this cold is real or just a psychological virus. I pretend to be productive and make mental notes of what I’m going to accomplish but I’m only fooling myself, it’s the same things I said last year, only with less determination.

On Christmas Day I was blissfully unaware that I would be a midnight gooseberry, again. I've gone into the New Year alone for the past five years so it's nothing new and I shouldn’t be sad about it as I spent it with some of my favourite people, but I guess there was just that little spark of hope that this time it might be different, a bit more special. I only have myself to blame. I let myself imagine a picture based on a feeling and not a promise.

“Never absolutely, it was every day implied but never declared, sometimes I thought it had been but it never was. He has broken no vow…” (Marianne Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility).

Which only leaves one question, what are my New Year’s resolutions? Aside from the obvious, unachievable and overreaching which everyone else has, such as lose weight, eat healthily and only drink on the weekends (ppfftt), there is nothing. There was nothing I did last year that I wouldn’t do again this year.

Also, I am going to write a cookbook called “Random shit I’ve made out of the bizarre foods left in my fridge which taste surprisingly good”.

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Fool

I've been a foolish fool forever, and I’ve been made to feel a fool by other people more times than I would like to admit. More annoyingly, the worst part is, I probably only have myself to blame. I've let it happen time and time again.

I believe in people too easily. I believe what they say and take their every word at face value. I never question any ulterior motives that someone might have, because why would anyone be dishonest? What benefit does it have to them?

I get carried away. My whimsical mind runs before it can walk and fantasise over ideas based on seemingly thin air. But are they? Surely I wouldn’t feel that way for no reason? Is someone else to blame for planting the seeds, for saying the words that made me think those thoughts?

I let people waste my time. Not necessarily in the physical sense of waiting, by all means, leave me waiting at the bar, I can pre-occupy myself there no problem, but waiting for a text, a call, or any form of response for that matter. Send a sodding Pidgeon for all I care, I’m just waiting for communication!

When I don’t get it, even then, every time, I tell myself that there must be a good reason and I send just “one more message”, I call just “one last time”, I wait just “one hour longer”, I give just “one final chance”.

Time is irrelevant in the grand scheme of wasting. It’s the wasted thoughts that hurt the most and the wasted energy that leaves me bereft. I tell my friends that I "won't get my hopes up" but I already have, before I've even said the words they’re already in the clouds before I've even thought them they're halfway to the moon.

I feel like I’m always falling, falling for someone, falling for their lies and then falling for their excuses. I must seem like such a fool but there’s a small part of my soul that hopes each time that it will not be so hopelessly, so I keep falling.

Although I live in hope, it has left me with a bitter taste and a cynical outlook that no one has honest intentions anymore and that everyone’s words are laced with lies. I am a fool and I will always feel foolish for being one, but please don’t make a fool out of me again.

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The Ghost That Left

For years I had a ghost. He woke up in bed with me every morning, he sat opposite me when I ate my breakfast, we went to work separately but we would meet at home at half past five.

I would tell him about my day, we would go out to dinner together, or eat in, then we would go home. We would sleep together and we would wake up next to each other and start another day.

But he wasn't really there. He was just a figment of my imagination. No one could see him, but I could feel him. Everywhere I went, I wanted him there so much that, I could feel his presence.

I talked to him all the time. And although in the real world, he didn't really know what was going on in my life, I told him every day in my mind. It was only when I dreamt that he was really there.

After a while, the ghost left. It had been so long since the real person had gone that even the ghost that lingered started to fade away.

But he was in my thoughts, I could remember him. How he felt, the warmth of his skin, how he tasted, the sound of his voice, how it felt to touch him and love him, but I couldn't feel him anymore. He wasn't there.

The ghost had left and all that was left was the memory.

I knew that sooner or later even the memory would fade. But I didn't want to let it go because then I really would be alone.

"Yesterday, upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away...
When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn't see him there at all"

(Antigonish by Willaim Hughes Mearns)

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Belong

For most of my life I have wanted to run away, not just from home but any place that I was or even from myself at times. The feeling of not belonging anywhere, or even in my own body, is like being lost without a map. It felt like I was floating aimlessly in life with no direction or purpose, in the dark.

I didn’t feel like I belonged to my own home. Home has always been in two places and I wanted to live in my second home for years. It tore me apart every time I visited because I knew that I would have to leave again. For a long time, I tried to find a way to be able to live there but I couldn’t make it work.

I didn’t feel like a belonged in a temporary place. Wherever I was in general, I always wanted to be somewhere else. If I was at a party I wanted to be at home, if I was at home I kept thinking ‘I should have gone to that party’ and when there were two things going on at once, the grass was always greener where I wasn’t.

I didn’t feel like I belonged in my own body. Sometimes I even wanted to be someone else. I was a different person depending on who I was with and where I was. I changed my hair colour, the way I spelled my name, the way I dressed, the décor in my bedroom, all silly material things.

I never felt like I was in the right place at the right time. Nothing ever worked out, I was always too early or too late and things just didn’t fit. But recently something has started to change…

I don’t know whether it’s because I’ve grown up and learned how to belong, or whether the stars have started to align for me, but things seem to be falling into place recently. Everything is starting to make sense and I feel like I know where I’ve got to be, where I am going and what I’ve got to do.

Home is where I want it to be and now I take it with me wherever I go, so I never feel like I don’t belong anywhere. I know myself better and I’m happy with who I am more than ever, I belong to myself. I think that sometimes you have to be different people, even the ones that you don’t want to be, to know who you do want to be.

Belonging never felt so good and I’m the one who made it happen. I think it’s mostly down to my age and experiences but at the same time, there are certain coincidences that make me believe that there’s more to it… I don’t know the answer and I’m not bothered about looking into it too much because for now, I’m just happy feeling like I belong.

“If you don’t belong, don’t be long”.

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Change

A few months ago I found myself cornered. I was desperate for change but couldn't see how I was going to make that change happen. I spent weeks going round in circles, looking for an answer but I constantly found myself back in the same place where I started, where nothing had changed, where I didn’t want to be. Change seemed like a dream.

In reality, all around me, other people's lives were changing and I felt stuck. I couldn’t wait for the change to happen naturally, I'd already been waiting too long and there was no guarantee that it ever would. So I decided that I needed to force my own change otherwise I would be stuck forever.

Out of all my options, there was no obvious choice. None of them were easy and none of them would secure my happiness. After weighing up the pros and cons of each, it finally occurred to me that it didn't matter what I chose. Any choice would do because any change was better than none and if one option didn't work, there were plenty of others to try.

I plucked up courage that I didn't even know I had and worked harder than I had in a long time to set myself a goal. I took aim, I fired and to my own surprise, I hit a target. It was scary to take a risk like that but it paid off, not only because I succeeded but because things started to change.

The change in motion was a relief in itself because I knew that I was moving forward. I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. The weight of trying to make a hard decision and the weight of feeling like change would never happen.

Once the change was made, I took comfort in knowing that if it didn't work out for whatever reason, I could always change again because I had just proved that I could change in the first place. I proved to myself that I was strong enough, brave enough and smart enough to do what originally seemed impossible. And I'm telling you all this because I want you to feel the same.

If you are facing a hard decision in your life or wanting to make a change but don’t know how, then I want you to know that change is not as unachievable as it first appears. It might be scary but it's not and it might not be easy but nothing in life is. I'm sure you've done scarier and tougher things so there is no need to be afraid.

For all my friends and family reading this, if I can do it, then so can you. No matter how big or small, I believe in you, I know that you can do something incredible and I know that you will. If you take a risk like me and nothing changes, it just goes to show how brilliant you are for trying, but you need the take that chance to know yourself what you are capable of.

You have nothing to lose and everything to gain so I’m telling you to seize the opportunity, make the move, ask the question, send the message, take the chance and dive into unknown waters!

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” - Maya Angelou.

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