I feel dreadful today. Angry, irritated, tired, confused, depressed, trapped.
I don’t want to do anything, not even move or eat or talk or anything.
Argh. This is not me. It is unbearable, and yet there is no escaping it.
Everything just feels awkward and wrong :-(

Or perhaps not oddness. Now I’ve put all that “out there” and cried even more, I feel better. I wasn’t convinced there was an end to that emotion, but clearly there is.
Now I am feeling slightly more positive about the future. Life is what it is, no point railing against it. Not that hearing that would have helped me an hour ago, but I believe it now.
I feel very lucky to have found Gavin, and to be able to look to the future and see a family unit, and to have his constant support even if I am a looper.
Now if only I could find a way to achieve something so that I don’t feel quite so stuck…

Rediscovered Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap this morning and have analysed the lyrics to death. I hate being depressed without knowing why. Usually there is a trigger but this time there hasn’t been anything suddenly bad. It’s slowly got worse since my team leader at work got fired so yet again I found myself with a new team leader, I’m not sat with my friends anymore, the pressure is increased. Maybe that was the final straw to an already overstretched situation.
And Gavin proposed, so we’re engaged (edit: probably not the best post to have announced this in!), which means I have to get divorced. Which is good. I want to be divorced. But I want to just press a button, not have to go through all of the stress involved with divorces, dragging up all of the emotions.
I am still insanely angry at what Ben did, the way it all ended, the speed at which he replaced me, the fact that our whole relationship and life together appears to have been disposable for him. I know he is very good at putting unwanted feelings in a box at the back of the closet, but there is just nothing. And I am angry that our friends have almost completely cut me out of their lives. Two of them had babies shortly after Ben’s girlfriend did, so they’re all doing the lovely new mummy thing together and I just want to scream and scream and scream. This isn’t fair, this is my life, how dare she steal it. And I’m here repeatedly picking up pieces on my own, like I am screaming but no-one can hear me.
I sound like a loon. I know. It’s been bottled up, it has to come out sometime. I should have done it all back then instead of keeping my mouth shut, being his doormat, caring so much about what other people would think of me. Looking back, I don’t think people would have been surprised if I’d have lost the plot a bit. I was seriously depressed and he just walked out after 6 years. Or rather, made me leave, so he got the house. Who the hell walks out on his wife when she’s so ill, when you have two children together, when you’re married, for someone you barely know, and then go and get her pregnant 6 weeks later, while your wife is still living with you?
I hate being angry. It’s so ugly, so unladylike. But I hate what he did, desperately hate it. It’s like he took my life, tore it into pieces and then demanded I carry on as normal, better than normal, on my own.
I have been over him for a while, but not my old life. I miss that so much. I miss being a stay-at-home mum, I miss being a wife, I miss living with a husband, I miss my boys. I don’t want it to be how it is. I hate this. I feel lost. I don’t have a decent/exciting/well paid job with any kind of prospect for promotion, I am not a “proper” (by which I mean full time) mum, I can’t afford to go back to college/university properly so I’m restricted to the OU, and that is only while I am living alone and get grants for the fees.
This isn’t me. I am not a Plain Jane who can just sit back and plod along. If I want something, I go and get it, but this time I can’t. I feel horribly stuck and can’t see a way out :-(

I’ve been thinking about going on the Women in Power workshop next year. I know it’s really expensive, but it looks fascinating. I was just reading their website and read this and thought, that makes so much sense.

When we stay loyal to our solemn promises never to be like the abusers in our lives, do we depress ourselves? With a seemingly big heart, many of us choose to wound ourselves long before we would risk wounding another. What patterns of violence against ourselves persist because we hold to these ancient vows: I’ll never be that brutal; good girls hide their fury; real women lead from gentleness.

That’s all for today.

Happy:  I am happy because I keep getting little moments of realising that he loves me. And because we have his daughter back this weekend. And because my car is fixed. And because I spoke to my sister and she made me feel better about worrying. And because I bought cream cakes. And because I’ve been thinking about what Kate said about boundaries, and realising that actually I don’t set boundaries in relationships, I don’t put myself first and it backfires. So I’m happy that I’m beginning to make progress in that area.

Sad: I am sad because I feel like I’m not myself and I’m tired of battling.

Afraid: Afraid doesn’t quite cover it. I am terrified he’s going to cheat on me. I don’t know what is it about me that he loves, so it becomes easy to convince myself that it’s nothing, and that he could get what he gets from me from anywhere. So if he has no reason to stay, he’ll just leave like Ben did when things got too hard. I’m afraid that she is a better friend to him than I am, or that she will be in the future. If he fancied her before, why doesn’t he fancy her now? So then I assume he does fancy her now. And he doesn’t want to have sex with me because he wants to have sex with her. I just remember reading about how he felt about Sarah while he was with Jenine, including one entry of him telling Sarah he loved her a month before Emily was born - granted he’d split up with Jen the day before, but still…, and there are so many parallels that I see between me and Jenine that I’m convinced it’s all going to happen again. I feel like unless I am perfect in this relationship, he will leave. He likes the easy life. I am catagorically NOT the easy life. At all.

Angry: I’m not sure where the anger is pointed. I feel angry but I’m not sure what about. It’s not rational, fair anger.. It’s immature anger, which is worse because I can’t express it, because I shouldn’t be feeling it. I’m angry that he doesn’t want to have sex with me, and I’m angry that he wants to be close friends with Sarah. I want to scream at him that it’s just so inappropriate to be close friends with an ex girlfriend. But I am almost certain that my reaction is unfair, so I just won’t say anything, then I feel angry at myself.

Usually when I get all wound up in the evenings, by the morning it has gone. It started on Wednesday night and the fear is still here. It was triggered by him talking to his ex-girlfriend. I am convinced he’s going to leave, but after talking to Kate (my therapist), she’s pointed out that I trust him to stay if it’s just us, but if another woman comes along, I lose all confidence. So having him be close friends with an ex-girlfriend is not safe or comfortable territory for me.

I felt sick all day yesterday, and feel sick now. I find myself forgetting to breathe, and coming up with the most ridiculous catastrophic fantasies. I just want to relax and find a way to be able to let go and trust him. It’s not losing him that I’m so terrified of, it’s the dishonesty. I can cope with the ending of a relationship. I can’t cope with dishonesty or secrets or untruths, not on any scale right now, not even about the pettiest of things. I hadn’t noticed before, it was something Kate pointed out. I’m usually quite strong and independent and intelligent, I don’t “need” a man. What I need is someone who is open and honest and emotionally (and in terms of giving attention) available. I would rather hear the painful truth, than be told what I want to hear. Sure it hurts in the short term, but life does, and if it’s honest then I can get over it. It’s the deception that damages my self esteem and makes me lose trust in my own judgement.

I hope this feeling passes soon. I don’t feel like myself. I feel like my normal, strong, optimistic self is trapped in cage, covered in a black cloth, screaming to get out, while this half-person with no personality, no strength, no self belief is running the show.

So today is not great either. I can’t focus, I feel sick. I just want everybody to go away and leave me alone. I just want to sleep. I don’t want to talk to anyone, or about anything. I keep bursting into tears.

There is a voice inside my head telling me to pull myself together and stop being so pathetic. Sometimes that works, but not today. I feel desperate. I don’t know what I am desperate for but it feels like desperation. I wish I could just take a whole load of cash and run away. I don’t want to face anything anymore. This is how I felt when I took the overdoses before, and when I cut. I am still here though, cut free and no drugs.

He just popped up on MSN asking if I was ok, and I said yeah, with a smiley face. I wonder what goes through my head sometimes. I mean, yes, I am ok. I am not dying. Things need doing and I carry on doing them (she says, scanning the state of her bedroom). So I am ok. But I’m also not ok. I don’t want to be a burden. I’m sick of whining at him. Sick of whining in general. He has deleted a girl he knows from his facebook, msn and phone because I am afraid he still fancies her. In my head, she’s the one that got away, the one he does all the “what if”ing about. So I feel guilty that he’s had to do that for me. I am thankful, but I feel bad. It’s not the “cure”, there are other girls that he is friends with that I also worry about that I am just going to have to get over, and I want to. I want to deal with my feelings, not just have the source of them removed.

He’s coming over later. I am scared because I feel so introverted. This only happens when I get ill - speaking to people becomes something to be afraid of. Letting them into my home is unheard of. And then I wonder what I’m talking about. Him being here will be fine. It’s not a big deal, we’ve done this hundreds of times before and it’s not a bad thing. It’s just irrational depression fear. I’m not sure what I am afraid of exactly. I am going to have to connect with him in some way - I can’t just ignore him, and it’s that connecting that I fear. Sounds stupid unless you’ve been there, I think.

Work is just the same. I am switched off, distracted, easily irritated and upset. I don’t want to talk to anyone there either. But again there is a flipside. I feel safe at work, I can connect easily with the people around me, they like me and we have fun. Sometimes I can even forget that I’m ill. Going there is a good thing.

I’m going back to see Kate tomorrow (my therapist). I am half looking forward to it and half dreading it. It’s only 50 minutes but it lasts for ages. I will probably cry, and I hate crying.

My head feels like a big bowl of spaghetti.

I miss him.

I know it’s just one night. I know if he came over and didn’t want me, it’d be even worse.

But I do miss him and I do I wish he was here.

It’s been ages, I know. The idea was to have all the private stuff in my private blog and keep this one just for food and fairy related posts but this one seems to have fallen by the wayside altogether. Oh well.

My appetite (physical and emotional) seems to be stuck in Nemesis mode lately. Emotionally - the responsiblities that I have right now are too much. I can’t deal with the divorce, the kids, being a single parent, working, being a fairy, money, worries over contact with Emily, my relationship with Gavin - or rather I can deal with it but (A) not effectively and (B) not without running myself into the ground stressing about it all.

Worst at the moment seems to be my relationship with Gavin. The trust thing is still causing issues, coupled with the fact that I seem to want everything more than he does, is having a major knock on my self esteem. I want us to be thinking about moving in together some time soon and he doesn’t. A year is not enough for him to have lived on his own, so I have to wait. That’s fine. Or would be fine if I could feel that there was some end in sight, but there’s not really. He doesn’t want to do it now, doesn’t know when he will and conversations about it just end in “Yes, but not now”, and my irrational, depressed mind can only hear “I don’t want to live with you”.

Any tiny amount of rejection just reinforces my fear that I am annoying, that he just tolerates me, that he could walk out at any moment.

I try not to push him away but when he rejects me my instant reaction is to push him away harder than I perceive him to be pushing me away.

As I write this I can hear the screams of so many self help book authors telling me I’m doing it all wrong, which I probably am, but if I knew how to do it right, I would. I can’t.

I’ve asked him not to come over tonight. I can’t bear any more rejection. I went to see a therapist a couple of weeks ago (next appt Weds), and we realised then I spend a lot of time just waiting. Waiting for him to talk to me, get here, kiss me, make love to me. And my life is a lot about pleasing him, and I can lose myself in doing that. I stop living for me and start living for him and his approval. I guess they do say you turn into your mother… *sigh*

If I’m honest, I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do about the whole situation. I don’t particularly want to be in a relationship where I am not physically appreciated, but then I think that’s a petty thing to get wound up about. I love him, he loves me, and I actually really, selflessly care about him. But then the bigger things - like wanting us to live together and be more of a family, or wanting us to eventually get married - and him not wanting these things… They aren’t the petty things. I don’t seem to have a sense of how a good relationship really works - my marriage wasn’t a healthy relationship, I haven’t been close to anyone who has had a good relationship so I don’t know what a good, balanced, fair relationship looks like. So I am quite scared as to how this is going to work out, and hopefully I can keep myself out of the fridge in the process…

Talking makes it better.