Hey you…

I’m off to bed but I just had to tell you this before I fall asleep… Today is the first GOOD day since I left him knowing that I won’t be going back… He is still trying to destroy me, this week I had to rebrand my whole venture and get all new sites and vehicles up and running while in lockdown because of it BUT I am enjoying my work… And today I was alone for most of the day for a change and I loved it. I colored, snacked, watched survivor, choreographed a bit, spoke shortly to my 2 best friends over the phone and WhatsApp respectively, played Theme Hospital 2 (it is amazing! 😍), and watched Liewe Heksir and Pinocchio (childhood TV shows) with the lady that raised me… And when I lay down on my bed just now and recognised that I was feeling sleepy I also recognized something else, surprisingly… I was feeling content, perhaps even 50% happy. At one point recently it had felt like this wasn’t possible anymore.. So I had to record this…

My baby bird escaped yesterday, he has a girlfriend though so I think I managed to successfully save my first baby bird… He has a chance time be a big bird now… Because of me.

Also, I need to remember that resting and doing things just because it’s fun apparently relaxes one… I know it feels like what is the point even when I am in full blast work mode, but I need to remember I am a human not a computer. I mean, just look at how good today was for me… I can try to be a little kinder to myself by allowing myself these activities a bit more in life…

Also I don’t think I am in love with the guy that saved me from my abusive husband that one time (the one I had sex in the park with that day after the divorce…) Which is surprising… It is good. I am realising that it is much easier to stay on track and see everything clearly if you don’t go through the ‘love bombing’ phase and I think I am perhaps at risk of love bombing myself if that makes sense? Because my need for people is so great it is easy for me to “get obsessed” with my new favorite person, but this is not healthy… For me… As it impairs my ability to see things clearly and to have ‘normal’ stable relationships… So here is to hoping that now that I’ve learnt this I might have accidentally made my first real friend… And perhaps enabled myself to start healing and start forming healthy attachments to people that are grounded in reality, with good boundaries… Fantasy is good, but not with other people. If I write stories in my head or fill in the gaps or write away the flaws of other people in my head, I must realise that this is how and when I get myself into trouble. Instead I am going to practice accepting reality and real people as they are… A mystery, not under my control, a blessing and good or bad just the way they are… They can’t be and shouldn’t be changed, skewed or tampered with. It was a hard lesson to learn but one I think will spare me Mich heartache going forward. I dunno. Let’s see…

Night you… 🤗🤗🤗

If you’re a borderline you know exactly what I’m talking about… If you’re not… Imagine a million tiny caterpillars suddenly hatched dead in the center of your heart and have now started to slowly eat away at your flesh. This kind of loneliness feels similar to that. It’s like.. You know if you hurt a certain part of your body over and over and over again… In the beginning there is hurt, then there is pain, then the pain slowly turns into more pain and when it hurts so much that you think your brain is going to short circuit… You feel numb (just before you pass out). It’s that kind of loneliness. It’s the kind of loneliness that makes you feel like you’re being murdered inside yourself, and you’re screaming at the top of your lungs, inside yourself… So no one hears.. And there’s so much of your blood all over the place it’s like a horror movie, but it happens inside of you so no one sees it… Ever. All that people sometimes see is… Years later… The remaining fear that flashes across a face and they won’t understand where it comes from or why it’s there. My parents have started their mental abuse and mindgames with me again… And this is what it feels like inside of me now. I feel stupid, I feel worthless, I feel judged, not good enough and trapped. It is so bad that I’ve even considered calling my ex and begging him to take me back… At least he was just one abusive person at a time… There are 3 of these.. And the worst is they don’t realize what they are doing… Or they do and they do not care. They’ve started planning me moving back into the house… Like we’re one big happy family… And I’m the retard kid that didn’t make it outside. All I know is ill rather die than stay here because staying here will mean death for me anyway. I told a friend about it today and she helped me identify the mental abuse and manipulation. She said they are trying to implode me so I won’t want to leave. She also said I should never let anyone kill my dreams. I deserve them.

I really hope that I can one day meet a gentleman that doesn’t mind me being different, doesn’t require me to feel inferior in order for him to feel superior. I wish I can meet someone that can cherish and appreciate and enjoy me. I just want to have fun, feel safe an secure, have sex and raise his babies, in that order… That’s all. I wouldn’t ask for much. I buy my own bread. I make my own plans. I can take care of him just as much as he can take care of me. I will love him forever, be loyal to the end, walk through fire just to make him smile… Swallow my pride, swallow his cum, make him smile… Often. I just want hugs and sex and laughter.. Is that too much to ask for? And why couldn’t my ex-husband just have that with me? Oh in the beginning it was wonderful, I was wonderful, everything he ever wanted…until I wasn’t anymore… I wasn’t good enough anymore… Not at all. Daily kisses turned to daily lashings… I never got hugs anymore because he didn’t like it… I tried to masturbate in front of him once. He told me I was disgusting. He never slept in the same bed as me.. He liked to stay up late and usually fell asleep on the coach… I was regularly too much, too little and just not good enough at all. It was like I had tricked him into marriage. He didn’t even try to make an effort to sleep with me on our honeymoon… Instead he got excited about a stripper and I got a new physical scar that I will carry around with me for life. I have to tell you though… I didn’t just love him, I adored him, I justified for him, rationalise for him. Even when other people pointed out that he treated me like shit I would assure them and myself that they didn’t know him, didn’t understand him, like I did… But I didn’t understand why the kisses had stopped, I didn’t understand why I wasn’t huggable anymore, I didn’t realize until it was very much too late that he didn’t love me anymore. And that broke me. That was one of my biggest mistakes.

Why are good men, really good men, so hard for me to find? I know I’m broken and not perfect, but I’m also successful, fairly pretty, entrepreneurial, intelligent, adventurous, independent, passionate and a caring honest good person… But that’s not what men want, is it? What do men want? Does it have something to do with the fear of women that Jack describes in his post: https://jackcollier7.com/2019/03/13/the-fear-of-women/ ?

Is that why I was caught with honey, lured in with promises of endless kisses, just to have my wings ripped off, be thrown in a cage and degraded daily? What have I done to deserve this? And please to whomever allocates punishment in this life… Please, no more. Just send me a man like an angel, who will never stop kissing me… Please. I want to feel loved. I want to feel worthy. Maybe I was always the problem after all. If so, how does one even begin to work on feeling worthy and deserving of love?

It’s been 6 weeks since I walked out on you, 6 weeks since I got into an Uber and knew I would never return to you. The nights are especially hard. What’s also hard is not understanding how I haven’t even heard from you… Not once… Did you ever really care? Oh you said that you did – to everything who would listen for just long enough to feel sorry for you. You said you would do anything for me… Anything! But you couldn’t stop shouting, you couldn’t stop hurting…me. The one person who was just trying to love the shit out of you.

So I’ve experienced this twice now: being in a situation where even hard work and dedication like no other doesn’t matter… The one time was with beee when the university refused to interview me for my own job because I wasn’t the right color, the other one was my marriage. Life is not fair honey, I can hear my psychologist say from far away… It’s just not…

You know I hate you, but I could never hurt you, not like you have hurt me honey. You’ve broken my soul, my spirit and my body. What my parents couldn’t properly do, you did it. You finished the job for them. It’s a filthy job but someone’s got to do it?

Sigh, I don’t even know why I’m writing this post for you. You never knew of my blog and you never listened to me anyway… It was all about you. I was blind. I have to forgive myself for that… For loving you tooooo way too much, and for loving me too little… For letting the emptiness inside of me define me and rule me. For all the times I didn’t say no. For all the lonely nights I put myself through. I am so sorry myself that you had to endure that, all because of me.

I’ll be stronger now I think. I will try my hardest to health your wounds or at least understand them so we don’t fall into a trap like this ever again.. I will protect you. I will say no for you. I will choose the people around you carefully because I love you. But first we are going to kick that corona viruses ass. We are going to get better together, then we are going to choose better together, because you (me) we I am worth it.

So over the weekend I created and launched the #coloring4covid campaign, I continued to raise birdie (the Indian Myna chick I found on the lawn), I continued to support my family and friends…and yet… I feel like I did a lot over the weekend but today I woke up with such a migraine… And as I sat by the computer this morning I had to choose – give up and go to bed or suck it up and keep going.. Guilt is such a powerful emotion… It is able to strip us of all dignity… Needless to say I spent the day holding my head and attempting not to throw up too much in bed.. And I feel like shit for it… I feel that I should be working harder, I should be wanting to work harder, I should stop spending so much time on myself doing things I like.. But is that really me? Or is that the collective voices of all the narcissists (that I seem to attract like flies) in my head pretending to be me? Oh gosh and the nausea is back and I just ate… I think perhaps (from writing these ramblings) that I should attempt to be a little bit less hard on myself, maybe accept the fact that I am sick and human at the same time… Maybe I can even work out a realistic way to spend time on the things that I enjoy spending my time on… I’m such a naturally tortured soul though… Not sure most of the time if there is any hope for me… That is why it was good to have him… He kept me sane, alive, grounded, gave me someone and something to live for… And then he started taking those things away… Like a serial killer suffocating his victim slowly over time because he enjoys watching the suffering… I loved him so much. I would’ve never left him… If I didn’t have to… It wasn’t physically safe to stay with him anymore… I really hope I can become someone worth living for for myself, but until then I feel so lonely. I feel so hopeless, empty, like life has lost its color and meaning. I need to get over it. I need to find more color…

By the way if you’d like to download the free printable adult therapeutic coloring pages I created to deal with my divorce you can find them here: coloring4covid.wordpress.com

If you’d like to enable me to create more coloring pages like this for you you can visit patreon.com/coloring4covid

All proceeds from the project I’m donating to those who have lost their ability to generate income due to the lockdown due to the Covid19 pandemic… Send me your colored works. Would love to see them. Hugs, my friends. Thanks for being here once again to help me survive another lonely night. I hope that wherever you are as go are reading this you are safe and you know that you are enough.

If I open up to you…

Like I never ever really do…

Could you heal me from the inside out?

And if you could….

Does that mean you would?

And if you could not…

Would you still try?

Please?

And back to embracing the positive white horse side of me… After my previous super sulky post I realised that I needed attention – and badly…and that I had the power/ the ability to give myself that attention. So I googled one of the main issues I identified from my sulky ramblings… and I found this absolutely inspiring and beautiful person:

And I listened to her. I can relate to the lack of identity and lack of motivation she is describing…and I think maybe this is part of what I’m struggling with. So I made some notes on her advice and I’m posting it here so it doesn’t become just one more thing that I’ve forgotten, because I tend to forget things…

So here it is… (A summary – her advice, my words (paraphrased)) – Sometimes I feel like I’m not even a person at all. How are you supposed to know what you want if you don’t know yourself at all? A sense of self takes years and years to build. Especially when you have literally no foundation to start off on -you find yourself, a young adult or an older adult even, and you have no idea who you are and nothing to work with. You have to build yourself from scratch, every time, and you are never certain if this self is the authentic one… This is the definition of fear. At this point you have to give yourself a reason to get better. If you do one thing for yourself – you have to create a life worth living (for you). Connect with people with similar interests. Get inspired. Do things that make you happy. If you don’t know what makes you hapyy, observe yourself, study yourself, what are you naturally inclined to doing?What makes you happy? What makes you feel ‘not sad’? Do more of that. Figure out what makes you happy and then work towards goals in those areas. Do it for you. Get help. Love yourself, because you have to, because if you don’t you’ll continue hating yourself and although that feels comfortable to you, it also feels really shit doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you rather feel some self-love for a change? Just try it. It helps to vent. Remember, that this is hard, and that is okay. You’re going to be okay.

Yesterday you asked me about three times how I was doing and I didn’t answer once. I didn’t want to, because I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think it was important. At the moment I have more important shit to deal with. I need to take care of you, I need to take care of my family, my business, my clients, be a good person, not forget…. But I woke up knowing that it was an important tell – the fact that I couldn’t answer.

If I think about it, I guess I’m sad, perpetually sad, generally sad…and empty. Each day I forget a bit more about who I was, who I wanted to be. I told you that it feels like I’m slowly losing parts of me…turns out it wasn’t happening that slowly and I’m now at a place, emotionally, where I’ve lost most of me. I’ll have to find me again, but I’m struggling to remember why that is important.

Each day here I remember a bit more about how to murder myself inside myself for the good of everyone else. I am learning, again, to live without boundaries, and to ignore my own needs. Self compassion has become a foreign concept. I can’t read myself, never mind others, but it’s like I instinctively feel their needs and react, without even realizing it, to fulfil it.

I am struggling to find space for myself,even when I (rarely) do I am not sure what to say to myself. I am not sure what I want, who I am and why I wanted to go back? I guess if I’m honest right now it’s easier to just…disappear…stop existing as a person on my own and just become an extension of my family.

But this can’t be good for me. Can it? I’ve lost a lot of the will to fight it. I’m not sure why I should. I’m naturally good at performing for conditional love…why mess with a recipe that works… kind of?

It’s like I know that I’m going through a divorce and I can remember some good times, some bad times and some neutral times about my 10 odd years in Cape Town, but I cannot sense it with my heart. This terrifies and numbs me at the same time. Is that weird?

I feel weird. It’s like I’m not me and I honestly can’t remember who I even am, was or was supposed to be. It’s frustrating. It’s like you said – I’m a Koala without a tree to cling onto. What will become of me? There are so many holes in my soul, so many scars on my personality, I’m not sure if I’m even truly functional. I know that I was fighting with all my heart and soul for something, but what was it for? Everything is becoming hazy.

On top of this…again if I’m honest about my shadow self…it’s getting worse…and I’m not proud of it. I judge myself for it constantly, but the passive aggressive side of my personality is rearing its ugly head – the desire to hurt like I have been hurt or maybe the desire to hurt like I am hurting? I am not sure I can’t feel my own pain.

Also, the desire to hurt (myself) like I have been hurt before…just so I can feel something, one thing, that I understand and can deal with just for a few moments. That is back too. And I am shocked. I’m not a little girl anymore. I was supposed to leave that behaviour in my childhood and early adulthood. I won’t do it, but the desire is there. Just like the desire to smoke is still there, even though I’m not smoking for now.

Also, the desire for reckless behaviour, which I also thought that I had left behind at some point… I want to leave the house, forget all responsibilities, drink until I pass out, dance wildly, kiss random people, pass out…and do it again…until I can be sure that there’s nothing left of me. That’s also weird. It doesn’t fit in with who I am supposed to be I don’t think.

I’m scared that I will destroy myself. I am scared that I will let down all the very people that I want to and NEED TO look after, take care of, and keep alive. Maybe that is it? Maybe I should actively practice taking less responsibility for those around me, but its so difficult when I NEED to care so much about everyone and everything around me.

So I’m confused as fuck. That’s my short answer. Sorry for dumping ALL of this on you, but hey…you asked…three times.

Growth (real growth) is uncomfortable and love hurts. My need for other humans, to be seen, to be accepted, trusted, looked up to, embraced, taken care of, and perhaps, even loved, is something I have never understood, always been afraid of and battled against many a midnight hour. How is it that we can self improve, live, breathe, make our own decisions, suffer, fall down, get up and find strength somewhere to carry on, and yet…. Be left with this constant need of others… A need for a loving voice, a need for hugs, even kisses maybe, or just the strong but true voice of a friend guiding you like a lighthouse in the dark over many miles of uncharted phone signals? I am afraid of this need. I am afraid to need what I (possibly, likely, maybe, perhaps) can’t have. Food sources can be secured, wealth may be built, even education and wisdom can be stashed, but a constant supply of human affection… No… That will always be the choice of the other human to give. And that I’d what I am so desperately afraid of. In my black and white mind things are either all good or all bad, all yours or not yours at all. I am only now starting to will my eyes to see the greys and force my heart to accept the color as, not confusing, but comforting. Yesterday I listened to a webinar by a very successful entrepreneur and client of mine who was preaching that resilience comes from not only being comfortable with, but embracing duality. Bad things in moderation may be good, and too much of the good things may be bad, even lethal. There can be no yin without yang and the chariot card in the tarot teaches us that a vehicle only accomplishes movement by having a light horse pulling it with a dark horse whilst the independent conscious steers them both. The strength card teaches us that in order to build our strength and capacity we need to embrace our beast, stop fearing it, but tame it with kindness and love and then grow in capacity, being comfortable with growing both our capacity for good and bad at the same time. The presenter that people who focus too much on the light often end up doing a lot of bad to themselves and others unintentionally, whilst people who embrace their shadow selves too vehemently may end up doing some good after all. I am only sure of one thing: my need for humanity and my resistance towards acknowledging and feeding this need… That is my beast.

Did you know that when I was growing up I actually wished on some weird horrible mind fucked level that I would be raped just so that I could feel someone “loving” me? I bet you are shocked, but it’s true. Whilst other 13 year old girls were out being happy and holding hands with school crushes I wasn’t allowed to do much. Also I had no idea how to be normal with normal people. Compassion, boundaries, feeling emotions and dealing with them and working through them is something I knew nothing about… So I didn’t have friends of boyfriends. I didn’t have a mom I could have coffee with and open up to about my feelings. And my dad well get wasn’t available. Emotions were a dirty word and being loved meant being fed, having a roof over your head, clothes in your cupboard and if you were really good… some extra murial activities being paid for and transport for those activities being arranged for. So I had ballet and homework and gat was the sum total of my existence. I was destined to be someone great, but not yet good enough to deserve unconditional love or for that matter any sort of emotional support. Life, in that way, was hard I guess. I was constantly ‘difficult, emotional, sensitive, weird.’ My parents couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just be a good little robot child.

I’ve come a long way from being that nonexistent person… I’ve started to develop a personality, gotten to know and trust myself at least a bit, built the foundations for some very strong amazing friendships… And now I am husband less, homeless, living with my family, in the room that I had my first suicide attempt in… Friendless, not allowed to leave the house. Right back where I started and due to corona I have to stay here for the next 21 days and I’m scared. I think I might be starting to resent my parents aubconsiously, which is really bad because I am grateful so grateful for their financial and physical support during this divorce, but at the same time I think that since they know they can’t give me what I need emotionally to be a healthy human being they should at least have the decency to realise that if they don’t let me go so I can go find and source my own emotional support I will cease to exist and that won’t be fun for any of us.

The shocking truth is life is hard and messy and grey, so grey, not black and white, but I want and deserve a life worth living.