So today I woke up, exercised, planned my day, had a protein shake for breakfast, knocked some tasks off my to-do list, listed more than one item for sale on Facebook, shared my uncluttering progress with my Facebook group, spent atleast 30 minutes quality time with my husband and I still have enough energy left to journal about all of it… I reached all my goals for the day… And I’m almost sure it has at least something to do with that weird I like myself game I played last night… Who knew making him worship you is all about working on your self? It is such a weird concept for me… So the more I take care of myself the more I am capable of taking care of others?! Growing up taking care of yourself was almost like a mortal sin… Or something you only did when it was sure to benefit someone or something other than yourself… As I’m writing this I can feel the anger rising up in me. How many lies have I been told? How many lies have shaped the reality I currently live in? I wasn’t aware that I was angry about this or in fact that this is so wrong to do to any human, never mind a child?! until I wrote it…

I would like to write and publish a book. I think it will be called “trauma”.well, to be fair… I have already written most of it… See today I found one of my old journals from when I was growing up… 2010-ish… That wasn’t a good time for me. I can see it, almost feel it by just touching the words spilled on the pages. They are filled with dwindling hope, crashing desires, unrelenting pain, suffocating emotion and explicit cries for help. I wrote that just before my first and only suicide attempt. With “just before” mean in build up years before the big crises that finally broke me… I took a while to break, but when it finally happened… I swear I could feel my brain fry inside my head. The “glitching” feeling of dissociation, not being able to speak, to be physically present, never mind emotionally… It’s the speaking part that still gets me. It makes me so mad when I realize now how many times my voice was denied. How many cries for help was ignored. How many people rather turned the other way or took advantage of my vulnerable and desperate state. It still kills me. Everyday.

Anyway, I just felt today, when I put down the old journal… I should publish this sh*t. See, I’m not that girl anymore. I’m not the helpless teenager with the clipped wings and broken toes surviving off of the crumbs of life…

I’m fairly successful, fairly accomplished, fairly mentally healthy, as stable as one could expect someone like me to be.. A chartered accountant, a business founder and owner, a married woman. I’ve escaped my childhood “home” and I now live in a real one – a home, 5km from the beach. Not too shabby of I do say so myself… Especially when you take into account that I was never supposed to have any of those things.. I have fought tooth and nail for every single one.

I just think she deserves to be heard you know – finally – that girl that died in that suicide attempt.. She needs to know that she deserves to be listened to, that it’s not her fault, that there’s nothing wrong with her. She wasn’t born broken. She was born beautifully. She was beautifully broken by terrible people who were horribly broken and all of that is not her fault. So she can stop wondering, searching and start knowing… You know…

I won’t publish it with my real name although I’ve considered it… Too many people will be pissed off or hurt. Although at this point I don’t really give too many fucks… Not all people, I fact all people are bad and good not either or..

Tomorrow I going to get up, exercise, have a protein shake for breakfast, post at least one item on Facebook, knock 3 priority tasks off my to-do list, do yoga, journal and go to sleep happy.. Who knows I might even read more of the make him worship you course since it seems to be working so well… On me… Husband still looks pretty much unchanged, but I am better and that makes me better able to offer… More…

So apparently tomorrow I am going to wake up, exercise, plan my day, have protein shake for breakfast, knock some tasks off my to-do list, list atleast one item for sale on Facebook, share my uncluttering progress with my Facebook group, spend atleast 30 minutes quality time with my husband and still have enough energy left to journal about all of it… Yay me…. Lol. No wonder I’m exhausted at the end of each week…

I like Ariel Hopewhispers, I really do…

Ariel has a kindness in her that can change the world. The best thing about her is that, no matter what she goes through and she has been through a lot!, she has never stopped believing that she can change the world..

Ariel has pretty eyes with long lashes. Those eyes are sexy, cat-like and her husband’s favourite thing about her…

Ariel hair is the prettiest colour. It has natural highlights and low lights and frames her face in soft curls.

Ariel has an unwavering, unbreakable spirit. I respect her for it. Many people have attempted to break it, but by a sheer force of will, she’s never let them. It makes me think that she is unbreakable – like the warrior princesses she idolizes.

Ariel is incredibly intelligent. She can figure things out that mere mortals never would.

Ariel is creative beyond words. Her creativity and zest for life is inspiring.

I wonder if Walt Disney was perhaps a little bit borderline, because heaven knows I can dream up amazing things and MAKE them happen. I have the shear power through determination and positivity to do a lot of good in those world and the intellect to build profitable businesses from nothing. At the same time, when it comes to managing relationships with people, no one has ever been this clueless. It’s like splitting is hardwired into my brain. I get close to people, I’m the kindest, nicest person in the world… But then they do something horrendous and I can’t run away fast enough. It’s like it a hardwired into my brain.. Its not like I consciously treat them like they’re the best thing on this planet one moment and then the worst a second later. It’s that they hurt me and then I am scared shitless and will do anything to eliminate the immediate threat to my life… Like with my one business partner… We were very close for about a month, working together really well all day. Constant praise and motivation was a thing all day everyday. But then she did the unthinkable she manipulated company money out of me for her own personal gain not once, but twice. I tried to say no, in fact I did but she wouldn’t hear of it. The 2nd time was whilst I was feeling suicidal because of fearing for my husband’s life (I know I’m too much, over dramatic, over the top, over sensitive, I’ve hear it all. You confirming this won’t change me unfortunately.) and this just caused me to snap. Within minutes she changed from a supportive mother figure (that I never had because the person I had as a mother can’t be called mother) to the most evil, while, manipulative monster of a person on this planet. Have you ever cuddled a cute puppy and then woken up only to realise it wasn’t a puppy, its a black widow spider and it’s still there and it’s not going away? Me either, but imagine that that is the case. How do you feel? That is how I feel when “splitting” happens to me.

“Walt Disney filed bankruptcy 7 times and had 2 nervous breakdowns” Les Brown

Since I voluntarily committed myself to a psych hospital and started my journey with anti-depressants and a really great therapist I have forgotten what it is like to disassociate… That is until about two days ago. Two days ago my husband left 3 cigarettes by my desk and kissed me goodbye to go grocery shopping. About 3 hours later he still hadn’t returned and wasn’t answering his cellphone. After struggling for an hour I found out he was at the local pub. This would not be that much of a problem, if he wasn’t sick with pneumonia! And a smoker! I finally managed to speak to him when the friend told him to turn on his phone, but by that time I was so livid I completely lost it. All I could think was “he is going to die and leave me completely alone in this world”. Words cannot describe what a horrible feeling it was to have. One of this nasty feelings that digs it’s cold fingers into your heart, squeezes your lungs till you can’t breath and chills your bones like it’s the middle of the coldest winter, while it turns your brain into mush, turning time back into childhood when you were helpless, hopeless and nothing. Ugh, what a disgusting feeling. Anyway. After shouting at hubby over the phone I started sending him threats over WhatsApp (things like if you’re not home within the next 10 minutes I will walk to the ocean and kill myself), then I embraced my reckless side and decided to go for a walk. I walked for about 10 minutes, just listening to my own tragic heartbeat and mulling over my latest crises in my head, before I stopped, checked that he hadn’t read the messages yet, and promptly deleted all of them. My mind wasn’t made up as to whether or not I was really going to drown myself, but I thought it was definitely a possibility, but why should I tell him that? Nothing made sense at that moment and yet everything did… I absent mindedly considered whether it would be easier to just step in front of a truck. I wasn’t sure if I would be successful. What if I just ended up in hospital? No, thank you. When I decide to go it has to be permanent, 100% successful the first time, like everything else I do in my life, well, with the exception of relationships, I am not good at relationships. People scare me. I ended up walking halfway to the beach and back and sitting down beside a welcome sign outside the closed gate of the Vlei. I had picked a flower on the way which I was now twirling round in my hands, inspecting, trying to focus, but not focusing at all, crying but not too much, else I draw too much attention to myself. I was a wreck. It was at that moment I recognized the strange sensation of somehow not existing inside of myself. The slightly dizzying, slightly nauseating, slightly thrilling (for lack of a better word, perhaps hysteria?) sensations of disassociation was strangely familiar to my emotionally fogged up brain. This is when I recognised what was happening. Realisation only came much later once I had made it home, shouted at the top of my lungs,threatened, raged, manipulated, reconciled with my husband, blackmailed my husband into committing to go to therapy for the first time in his life (but long overdue if you ask me!) cried my heart out like a 3 year old throwing a tantrum and made absolutely certain that hubby wasn’t dying or going anywhere anytime soon (not necessarily in that order).

The storm is passed now, but I find myself wondering inevitably… for how long? And what about the stuff I’ve lost I the process? In essence I lost a year of being ‘clean’ of this type of behaviour, ‘clean’ relationships with my business partners, my temper and the certainty I had ‘at least for a while’ that I was ‘stable’ ‘cured’. I guess at the back of my mind I’m wondering what ‘balanced’ part of my life will come down tumbling next? And how long until the next storm?

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“Even when I feel nothing I feel it totally and intensely”

I learnt something today that I should never be allowed to forget – my family comes first. If I don’t look after them no one else will. Don’t let people take you for a ride, take you for granted or take you anywhere for that matter. When it comes to money I have a habit of letting my self worth dictate how much I ask for/ how much I accept. I guess I would happily work for free if someone left it up to me. This is a weakness of mine that people around me are so happy to exploit it’s sickening. I will never again say yes to a request that doesn’t benefit me and my immediate family (currently just hubby). I am done with being walked over, being pushed around and not being paid what I am worth. If the people working with aren’t happy to pay me what’s due they can see how well they can get on without me. Fuckers. It’s so easy to ask, ask, ask… they feel like they deserve… But they don’t. They don’t deserve the food that’s supposed to go on my husband’s plate. I see now that my ‘better nature’ has caused me to literally give away his food, thinking ag it’s okay, we don’t really need it, there will be more… It’s only as you get older that you realise there won’t. Don’t take anything in life for granted. Fight for what is yours or watch your family die in front of you.

“All I ever wanted was for you to love me.” The words were honest, from a secret place inside of her that she had, up until that moment, never found. She had an inkling that it existed. She went to therapy to find it, but she had never before been able to access it. Now that she finally had, it felt sacred. If she could imagine the place inside of her where those words had come from, she would imagine it as a very dark corner, almost shy with darkness, inside a forest. It is a secluded space overgrown by lush green moss that softens the surface. There is a tree with dark bark and water mists the air, darkening the bark even further. From the outside it looks like a secluded happy little, slightly shy, magical spot. It’s only when one tries to access the place that one discovers the welted scar, old and crusted from where the bark tried to take back what was meant to be his, on the secluded side of the tree. That is where these painfully honest words are kept, where they whisper through the leaves of the tree when the wind picks up, where they dissolve in the misty water in the air and slip down the green mossy ground and into the nearby river. I am not sure if this will ever heal, I think, whilst empathetically pressing my hand against the healthy bark, right next to the welt, but I sure hope it does.

Omw what a day! I literally got up tired and I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing myself until I got my whole portfolio of work done for this one client. That was intense!I don’t really know I feel about it also. If I’m honest I do feel a bit good about it. I mean I did R21,500 worth of work today, but then also… I also feel a little bit irritated/ frustrated because I wouldn’t allow myself to rest. Like this voice in my head kept shouting at me that it still wasn’t good enough. It’s not good enough. Be better. Do more. Be better. Do more.I guess at the end of a day like this I should actively take some time to acknowledge my effort and be grateful for what I did for myself. For us… But how? Ignoring people saying… “Wow that is amazing. We’re so proud of you.” Kind of comes naturally to me.And at the end of the say I’m listening to the same old song… “I can’t get no… I can’t get no… I can’t get no satisfaction. ” “And I try… And I try… And I try… But I can’t get no… “How do I turn on the voice in my head that can say “you’re good enough. You’ve done enough. Relax. You don’t always have to try so hard. “? And more importantly what will happen if I do figure out how to turn on that voice? Will I turn worthless overnight? Stop working so hard? Stop being so nice? Stop trying so hard? Am I literally only the sum of the effort I put into each day? Am I?https://josiahharry.blog/2018/11/05/youre-only-as-good-as-your-last-win/