Inside my brain

This blog isn't about Oscar. Or his journey to health.

Yep, its about me. I'm going to be selfish and take advantage of you and this space that you have shared with me here on this blog. I trust you.

I've been making some bad choices. Even as I write that last sentence I want to go back and edit it and reshape the story. I feel a sneaky desire to tell you all about how hard it was being in hospital with Oscar and how I have lost my confidence and have been learning to live again, that I really have had to go back to basics and rebuild myself. Seriously though, BOO HOO! Enough already.

I do feel scared. All the time. My sense of self is all fucked up. I still think I'm that very ambitious, hard working, focused and very committed woman who worked full time while studying law at night and hung out with friends in pubs with bands and won pool comps. In reality, just dropping my kids off at school each morning and getting to work feels like a mini nervous breakdown that I repeat on a daily basis. Being a mum, letting go, trusting the universe are all terrifying to me.

The thing is though, they are only terrifying if I think they are.

True.

Fuck, I think they are!

So I need to change my thinking. Maybe you can help me.

Somehow I have to let go of this deep desire I have to be there for my kids each day before and after school and every other moment I can because I also need to work. I am a better person when I work. I actually lose track of time and escape into a place of complete focus and calm when I am writing and analysing and contributing to something greater than myself. This is actually who I am. I am still that ambitious, hard working woman but I don't follow through enough on the focus and the commitment because I feel at some deep level that to commit to anything other than my children is wrong (especially after what they have been through) and because that's just the kind of mum I am. I can't help it. I love being able to give them the consistency and nurturing that only I know they need. No one else can know what I know about them because no one else has been there every step of the way.

So here are the things I do and don't do - I don't commit to any decision I make in any full and useful way because I am so paralysed by fear I swing from one thing to another, I don't exercise every day even though I know it is the most important tool I have to deal with my anxiety and take my power back, I take an antidepressant every day that I don't want to be taking because every time I reduce the dose further the side effects are so horrendous I can't deal with them, I do mostly eat pretty well but not as well as I'd like, I do meditate every day (because if I don't I am up half the night with insomnia), I set my alarm to get up early to exercise but never actually get up (this is now a running joke with Pete and I - "Have you set your alarm so you can ignore it in the morning" Pete usually asks me) and I don't go to any appointments to fix my very swollen ankle (did I mention I am in pain every day from my lower back through to my ankle  - and that I just completely ignore it and live in pain). I don't take care of myself (and I really want to make another excuse here that when I was in hospital with Oscar I didn't do basic self care activities like sleep every night or shower some days or clean my teeth regularly because I was so consumed with getting him through whatever procedure or medicine or horror was planed for that day - and YES I am still, deep down, making that excuse because I really have to re-learn how to take care of myself).

Seriously, if I was outside my own brain looking in on the insanity of my daily life I'd give myself a good talking to.

Which I also do. Every day. But not in a nice way.

What I tell myself is that I hate myself for being such a head case and that just perpetuates the cycle.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not lazy! I work hard at this form of insanity, I'm very dedicated!

I am writing this confession here in this space because I trust you, my readers (even if no one actually reads this and you don't exist). I trust this space to keep me real and if I really want to improve its time I confessed to where I am at so I can move forward.

Here's how I talk to myself:

Thought 1: I know how to change my habits. I commit. I exercise. I eat well. My mood starts to improve which leads to more improved choices.

Thought 2: I'm exhausted already. Its such hard work on top of looking after the boys, trying to get them to eat well and behave respectfully and grow them into fully functional, well adjusted human beings.

Thought 3: Can you see the pattern here?

Thought 4: Hard work = an easier life in the long run.

Thought 5: I KNOW!

Thought 6: I know what to do I just keep failing to do it and I have been stuck in this place for YEARS now. Oscar finished treatment in 2012! Someone please slap me around the head and sort my shit out!!

Thought 7: See how I did that? I am asking for someone else to take over again. PLEASE. I want to be rescued by some magical being who can do the hard work for me.

Thought 8:ENOUGH.

I need to get real!

I wrote that last sentence over a week ago. I didn't finish the blog entry because I was really dizzy and I ended up in hospital. I'm fine but still dizzy and I am having some more tests. I thought it might be vertigo and looked up the metaphysical causes for dizziness to find the following explanation of the probable cause:

"Flighty, scattered thinking. A refusal to look"*

Yep, made me laugh.

Perhaps you can relate?

I keep grasping for something outside myself that I need to find inside myself. Or rather, I need to stop seeking and just be. Consistently.

Anyone who has been on the cancer journey has spent more time than they would like learning about cells. Its surprising how little attention we pay to them given that they are the natural intelligence that creates our human existence on the simplest level. Cancer cells are greedy. They mutate and then bombard and crowd out the healthy ones.

Thoughts can be a kind of cancer of the mind. The bad ones can crowd out and overwhelm the good ones.

A more evolved person than myself chooses to live in the pure potential of the moment, of the energy of creation and regeneration, of the natural intelligence. They don't seek but allow themselves to be sought and they trust themselves.

Maybe. Its worth thinking about! lol

Thanks for checking in on us beautiful people and for taking the time to read this long post. I have written it in spurts between dizzy spells and cups of tea. Be kind to yourselves. Love has its own natural intelligence and at the purest level you are that love, that intelligence. Much love, Cindy x

P.S. The title of this blog is uncanny as I wrote it a week ago and today my Dr has ordered me to have an MRI of my brain - so I can actually see pictures of inside of it! We are just ruling things out but I'll let you know the outcome. Xx
*'You Can Heal Your Life', Louise L Hay, p. 165