A conversation with me

Me: “What are you doing. You have work to do! Work you should be grateful for. Plus you need it, the sooner you finish, the sooner you get paid. plus you have another book waiting for when you finish this one. So you need to be responsible about that. What are you doing, reading blogs.”

Me: “It’s important. I like relating to people, and people in my life don’t share a lot… or maybe there aren’t as many people in my life to share with, not with me. I love reading people who are being honest and out there and speak of their pains and struggles or just nice things”

Me: “That’s fine I understand it’s important but do it later! In the afternoon, when kids are awake and you get sleepy so you can’t work anymore anyway”

Me:”I know, I should. I don’t know why, I want to read now”

Me: “Now what are you doing. you’re writing?? Why? You’re wasting time!”

Me:”I know. You’re right. I’m sorry. I just need to right now. Plus the little girl is coming over to stay on Sunday. And my son’s girlfriend, for the first time. And the Saturday before two very dear friends are coming over and we normally drink a lot and I am worried I won’t be very alert and awake on the Sunday but I worry they would get offended if I say I’d rather they didn’t come. Plus they have to bring my husband’s big desk, and we need that so we can get rid of computers on the dinner table. And I don’t know if our inflatable double bed is broken or not, and we don’t have a pump…”

Me: “Ohh Val just don’t think about that now! Just get some work done!”

Me: “Yes I know, you’re right, I must. I’ll just finish this off. There is something I wanted to write”

Me: “What? Just write it then, stop beating about the bush, just write it and get back to work!”

Me: “Yes, you’re right. I think it was that it’s a drag to be me. People are so nice here, so easy going. Come over, no worries, for me everything is a worry. I have to think of so many things. It makes me very tired. I can’t stop. It would help if I could talk to my husband more. But he’s exasperated. He still cares, I think, but his caring has become tolerance. Understanding has become not getting angry with me. But he never talks to me, we never talk.”

Me: “I’m sure that’s not true”

Me:” He would say it’s not true, then he’d get mad at me for saying it. I wish he wouldn’t get mad at me for saying that we can’t talk, that I can’t talk to him, because I can’t, partly because he gets mad when I say I can’t talk to him! Then sometimes he asks why I can’t and if I have a feeling that he’s not being rhetorical or argumentative but actually means the question I seek courage and I start to tell him and that makes him mad. The timing is wrong, not in the morning, my best time. Not over breakfast, another good time. We are separate. He gets mad if I speak about our problems. He doesn’t think we have problems. Our problem according to him is that I am unstable, anxious, and I need a diagnosis. That is already much better than before, when his solution to all our problems was “stop being such a bitch and you’ll see how everything is wonderful with us”. Of course he would now say he never meant that. No, he would say he never said that. So if he doesn’t remember saying it, he never did. Or if he did, he didn’t mean it. He is now so reassured about my outbursts, because he thinks they are all irrational and untrue, just the result of my anxiety, my wavy depression, my possibly undiagnosed BP. If I say that we don’t communicate, that I feel unloved, or loved for the wrong reasons, in the wrong way, or that I need more, he is now all happy because he sees no fault in himself, the fault is all in my chemistry. If I ever do overcome all the obstacles, the bad reception, the having to call at 8 to see a new doctor and start the whole diagnosing thing again, if I do get a diagnosis, how much credit will he give to anything I say then? It will all be “It’s the illness talking. My poor, beloved, wife, pat pat. It’s not her fault, it’s the chemistry. But more importantly, it’s not my fault, I do nothing wrong”. That’s what he would think.

Me: “You are overthinking everything. Just stop right now, get your work done”

Me: “There is so much more I need to say, I need to talk about, and so much I wish I could just shovel up with my hand like mud filled all sorts of crap from the garden and shake off and dump somewhere, out of my brain and into a gutter. I bore myself witless and I can’t stop.”

Me: “Stop, now, post if you need to to get it out, don’t think of possible judgers. Don’t think about who could read and think “I used to think she was smart, funny, clever, she really doesn’t seem like it anymore”.

Me: “I never was. I always over-thought, everything I always did was accompanied with heaps of thoughts, contradictions, maybes, pain, joy, hope, adventure, tragedy, drama. Everything and anything. I don’t mean moving countries. I mean going out for a drink with someone”

Me: “I know. But now. Stop everything. Get back to work. Be grateful for your work. Be grateful for your lovely house and kids and husband and animals and surrounding countryside and how lovely and friendly the Derbyshire people are. And just work”

Me: “Ok.”

Dark clouds dissipate under the threat of a cheerful and gentle blue sky.

Aching to share

How obvious it must seem, though it wasn’t obvious to me for years and so I must express it.
Our greatest tragedy is indeed that we feel different about each other and about stuff life, politics, life and death, friendship, etc.).
When I was younger (and I mean that as a very long time span, somewhere between 3 years of age and 40), I used to think all that mattered was to explain things enough, find the right words, and you could share a feeling with someone. Nasties would say you could convince them of it, but that is nasty people. I would say cause harmony through agreement.
As long as my incredibly stern and exacting conscience decided that a thought I had could only lead to goodness, everything in my system would try and express that thought to as many people as I could.
An increasing dissatisfaction and sense of powerlessness led me to reduce the amount of people I tried to convert (I guess is the right word), and occasionally to sink so low in my discouragement that I felt that common feeling so many people share: “Am I an alien?””I don’t belong here””Somewhere (else) there must be people who share my ideas and thoughts and feelings.”
I guess what I would now tell my younger self is actually, that place does not exist. You belong exactly where you are for as long as you’re there. No, you are not an alien. In fact, everyone feels like you.
I wish I had heard all this when I was younger, it would have saved me enormous amounts of trouble and pain. I am not saying I would have accepted it from day one, but I would have gone about it differently.
I would have tried to accept that we do indeed function differently, we are indeed all going to see everything differently. In some cases you might find someone who feels exactly the same as you do about, say, cooking. Or hedgehogs. But never are you ever going to find a person or a group of people that agree with you on everything.
Isn’t that obvious? You might think. Well, no, to me it wasn’t.
I know very well that the appeal I always had for men was that until recently you could never fail to see that part of me that was an incredibly needy (emotionally) child. I appealed to men’s instinct to protect but also to ravish. It’s ok, I have accepted that now and I am now learning to live as this new me, who is growing such indicators of age that it is very difficult to see me like that anymore. So what is left?
My ideas are no longer the cute ramblings of an insecure child. They are my ideas. I am no longer a strange creature that is happily teased (anything to cause laughter, even if it’s at my expense). My ideas and thoughts are the result of sooo many years and experiences in such incredibly diverse environments and circumstances, both mentally and physically, and I am starting to resent being teased for them.
And because I am no longer cute and no longer amusing or at least not always available to amuse, the harsh truth is that asides from very few people, or a in very few situations, nobody actually cares.
It is not my job, it’s not part of my persona, it is not what I am sought for. Me yes, my ideas, not so much.
So where does that leave me?
Where I started, long ago, except I should have known then and it would have saved me so much heartache and perhaps I would have been able to do more.
I am left writing.
Blogging while I wait to have the time to edit my novel, and then in my novel, and perhaps more to follow.
It is too late to become a journalist, or anyone whose opinion is respected. Too late to express it with the humour and coolness of so many people I know, who somehow are more authoritative and more interesting in whatever they say merely because of the way the say it.
I am not interested in the countless people who add you just so you go check out their blog and follow it. I won’t, usually, not because I am not interested in others, but because just writing this takes so much time away from everything else, that I will only follow you if I find you genuinely interesting to me (not in absolute), and if I have the time there and then (which rarely happens) to check out your blog.

As usual, this is for me, and for anyone who might share this or that thought and feels less alone for it. That would already be amazing.