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.

It’s too hard, this relationship malarkey. I expect too much, and then when he can’t fulfil my unreasonable wishes, I push him away and then wonder why he’s more distant. I have, as I feared, become the jealous, whining girlfriend, and I don’t know how to make it stop.

The last few days I seem to have put walls up all around me. I can’t handle any more rejection, not even a tiny bit, not even if it’s because I’m being unreasonable. I don’t trust him, I don’t trust anyone. I trust myself, that’s more than I used to have. But anyone else, no way. And I am so angry, because I know it’s not really him, it’s because of what happened with Ben. How can you love someone so much for 6 years and then just walk away and switch off your emotions and start again with someone else without so much as a backward glance?

If Ben could love me as much as he did, and I know he did, and then just leave like I was nothing but some silly mistake he made when he was only 21. If I could mean that little to a man who declared in front of 70 odd people that he wanted to stay with me forever, signed a legal document to prove it, had two children with me, then why would anyone else stay?

So I pick up on the tiniest things - that he didn’t say goodnight, that he doesn’t come to bed when I do, that he doesn’t cuddle me like he used to, that I have to ask for kisses, or to be kissed in the way we used to - and turn them into proof that he’s not bothered about me. And if he’s not bothered about me then he can just leave. And then it doesn’t feel secure, and I don’t feel safe, so I run away and hide.

And I am so sick of this. :-(

I’m eating again. Standing in front of the fridge, the freezer, the cupboard. Waiting for it - the thing that will stop the hunger - to jump out at me so I can stop the restless pacing. A couple of years ago I would have been beating myself up for being “addicted” to food. Why couldn’t I just leave it alone?

I know now, and I can see, I’m trying to fill an emotional hunger with something physical, and also trying to give myself a little pleasure when I’m struggling to get it in the form that I actually want it. It doesn’t work, of course, because I’m not hungry for chocolate biscuits, and the pleasure I get from them  isn’t what I want to feel. Sure, it tastes nice. But that’s it. The pleasure doesn’t even last the whole time I’m eating the damn thing. It feels pointless.

The most frustrating thing is knowing that there is no way to get what I want right now. For a start it’s not practical, and even if it were, it’d mean him giving up freedom that he’s not ready to give up yet, which would make me feel more guilty than good. And it’s not that I want him to actually give it up, it’s that I want him to want to move in with me, propose marriage, have a baby. I’m sure it’s not quite the truth, but I seem surrounded by people moving in together, having babies, getting married and it’s hard to not compare. And I know he does want to move in with me, get married to me and have a baby with me. Just Not Yet.

Gah. I just want to let it go, just enjoy what we do have, because I love what we have. I am happy to wait. Even if it means I have to put up with the incessant impatience. I’m happy to wait because I love him and I wouldn’t want him to feel pressured into something he’s not ready to do. So it’s not that I’m sat here wondering how I can make him want it. I just want to stop wanting it. How do you stop wanting something that you want so much? I’m not even entirely sure that I do actually want it. I think I might want it because I can’t have it. I mean, I do want it, I know that, but not yet. Not marriage and babies anyway. Moving in together and engagement, possibly, but not the Big Stuff. Not yet. But because he doesn’t want to, it makes my desire for it stronger.

I hate being in this position. I hate wanting more than he wants. Women are bombarded with warnings to stay independent and never to appear needy or to make it known that we want to live with our partners, let alone marry them or have babies with them. Be needy and lose your man. Whatever you do, don’t be needy.

So instead of acknowledging that that is what I want, I stand in front of my cupboards and look for something else.

Validation…

Gav says (19:53):
*I never thought of it like that, now I think I understand why it frustrates you sometimes

Ahhhhh :-)