Tag: life

Looking back

The Indecisive Eejit16 Comments
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When I think about my time here, now going on for nine years, I can see that I have changed so much over that time. There’s been a lot, recovery from the alien leg incident, the Motherships dementia and her eventual passing and also all of the things relating to my own mental health.

The past couple of years have brought a new set of challenges, illness, COVID and changes to and the loss of some friendships. That’s one thing about life, it never stops and it is always changing, whether we are prepared for it or not. I turned 50, just a number I know, but still a significant one in terms of life, because while things have not always been a bed of roses, existing for half a century is certainly something to celebrate right? In my head I still feel like I am 18 years old and I get a little bit nervous when I am expected to adult, but somehow I manage to bumble my way through it.

Even though I am not here often, I love this place. It has always been a bit of a refuge for me, reading what my friends have to say on their blogs and also what they choose to comment on mine. We never really understand how our words might affect others, but there is no better feeling when someone stops by to tell you, as recently happened to me. Those words were something I needed to hear at that time, so thank you Joe for commenting on my about page, it means more than you know.

I tell myself I should write more, I know I should, but sometimes it feels like I just write the same things over and over. Occasionally I will read things that I have already written and I think, holy cow, did I write that. Other times I can remember exactly how I was feeling at that time, the moment, the place and perhaps even the music I listened to as I tried to formulate my thoughts into something legible.

I was never big on the whole social media side of things, that’s just not me, and as life changed I didn’t have the same time to put into it as I had at the start. That said, in the beginning I had no idea how much time writing a blog and trying to further it would take, that was certainly a wake up call.

I have met some of the most amazing people and there are also others who are no longer with us. People who made us think, or made us smile and undoubtedly left an empty space in either our heads or our hearts.

This is a fantastic community and there are no set rules as to what your place in it should be. Don’t try to be someone else, because the weight of walking in someone else’s footprints will be a heavy one. Just be you, be true to yourself and write what your heart desires, it will always resonate with someone, even if they do not stop by to tell you it did.

Thank you for still being here with me, despite the fact that I am not with you as often as I would like :)

WTF is it with…..

The Indecisive Eejit15 Comments
Photo by Olya Kobruseva on Pexels.com

…junk comments these days. It’s like they multiply. No matter how many times I empty the junk folder, it is always full when I return. Perhaps I should return more often, so this is kind of my own fault isn’t it. Anyway, moving on, that is not actually why I stopped by, it was just something that irritated me on my journey and I thought I would share it, because I am nice like that :)

How have you all been? The strange goings on in the world continue, the return to normality that some have been dreaming of is not yet here, albeit there is perhaps a glimmer of light in the horizon. Me personally, well I’m still hoping for a blended mix of the old and the new, fingers crossed.

So I was in hospital, that was a thing that happened, oh way back in May now. The dreaded gallstones decided to play dirty and introduce themselves to my pancreas. Clearly they didn’t get the memo about social distancing and decided this was a space they would like to muscle in on, thoughtless little shits. So I’m also sure you know that being in hospital comes with all the tests, bloods, scans, not just one variety, noooo I had them all, CT, MRCP and Ultrasound. Then after the scans come all the things that you didn’t even know you had, like a large mass, stranding / weird things around the gallbladder, a hiatus hernia. I mean ffs, I though the gallstones was enough to be getting on with, but apparently not.

The current situation is that I am waiting on the results of tests. I’m finding that consultants don’t really talk to you, they talk around you and mention things like tumours and anomalies, but don’t really tell you why or if this is something that you need to actually worry about, bearing in mind I have anxiety and worry about E V E R Y T H I N G. Thankfully for me, in the last visit the mention of tumour was preceded with I don’t think it’s a…. so I hope they are right. Anyone going through this, my heart goes out to you, it is a very unsettling time. There is something going on in my body though and I hope they find out what it is soon so I can at least have an explanation for the daily pain.

Being off work has been challenging for me. I am so used to working that for the first few weeks I felt an incredible guilt that I was letting people down even though I knew myself that I was not well, very little tired me out, and it took a while to build up my eating routine again. Thankfully this last week I have not been tiring as quickly, I can tidy a little bit more before I have to sit down, but I’m not yet at the stage where I can return to any kind of normality. It’s incredibly frustrating. That said, I am thankful that I am still here typing, another lady who came into the hospital at the same time as me with the same thing didn’t make it out again.

Being in hospital was a real eye opener. We hear all these stories of the fabulous NHS and the work they have done throughout this pandemic, but honestly, from the outside, we have no idea. Those nurses are incredibly busy, they never stop, I know for sure I could not do what they do, never mind anything else, I would not have the patience, especially for those people who treat it like a hotel stay. I’m incredibly grateful for the care I received during my stay.

So I guess in the grand scheme of life, this is the next hurdle to face. Most days I am ok, and sometimes I cry, but I think that’s to be expected, I mean apart from anything else I’m probably being smacked in the face by the menopause too, so the fecking hormones are almost as problematic as the gallstones.

Anyway, what’s new with all of you, tell me a good story, actually just tell me a story, we have to take the rough with the smooth!

Here she goes again ffs……

The Indecisive Eejit17 Comments
Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com

The picture above has no relevance to this post whatever, I just liked it, so here it is….enjoy?

So there it is, and here I am, struggling a little it has to be said with the new blocks and paragraphs system for writing, but I’m typing away like a good un and hoping that by some miracle of modern something or other it will look ok when both you and I have to read it.

It’s that time of the year again. WordPress will very shortly tell me that I have reached another anniversary, this time 8 years I believe. This is perhaps the longest I have stuck at anything, with the exception of my job, although I am not sure that you could call writing perhaps one or two posts a year sticking at something. I miss it, writing that is, I miss it a lot. I also miss the way my old brain worked and my sense of humour but age and life has got in the way of both, so I’ve just got to suck it up and adapt.

Usually around this time I also have mental conversations with myself where I discuss whether to carry on or give up, questioning if it is worth paying for domains that I rarely use. Sometimes I think it isn’t and I consider leaving and then I log into the app and I go to the reader and I catch up on all the things I have missed and I see all the people that I love and I think, I cant go, not yet anyway.

A couple of weeks back I did just that and I logged in and I found people I had not spoken to in such a long time, and then I read posts from a few of the people who have been with me on this journey pretty much from the start, albeit with a few breaks in between and it was like someone had given me the warmest hug, it made my heart so happy to read their words.

I’m never going to be the world’s greatest blogger, and nor would I want to be, it’s like a full time job at the start ffs. What I do want to be is here, as much as I can. If I only write two posts a year, then so be it. If no one reads what I write, that’s fine too, it’s for me anyway, but as I have detailed in countless posts before, that is something I lose sight of.

So maybe I will stick around for another year. I might even try and get back into this, I just need to be more disciplined with time by making sure there is space in there somewhere to write, because it’s good for the soul.

I hope you are all well, and I hope to see you soon :)

It’s the Sunday before the Monday

The Indecisive Eejit20 Comments

Hello there, well I wish I had something really exciting to say or tell you, but I don’t so….eh…hello :)

I’m not sure what it is that brought me here tonight, I had a little time to kill and a cup of coffee in my hand and I thought why not.

The last time I wrote we were in the midst of the COVID pandemic, and now almost four months later we still are, with what looks like no end in sight.

This time around I actually know people who have been unfortunate enough to have tested positive and I think it was a rough week to ten days, that said, thankfully they have come out the other side, many others were not so fortunate.

Life for me has pretty much carried on, work still has to be done, along with the general day to day of looking after the house. You get so used to being inside that it’s almost easy sometimes to forget there is a whole world outside of these four walls. The introvert in me has coped not too bad with the situation, but even I have found that I need to get out once in a while, walk in the sunshine and smell the sea air, it really does blow away the cobwebs.

The hardest part of this for me has been for friends who in the middle of all of this have lost parents or loved ones. Not being able to attend funerals and give someone a hug is heart breaking. Not being able to be there to help them celebrate a life lived, or offer condolences, well it’s just not the same via text message is it.

The other end of the spectrum and stories I have heard are of expectant parents, who cannot enjoy the experiences of scans as a couple. Women having to attend appointments on their own while their partners miss out. All those little firsts, that can never be replayed.

I never in my lifetime thought I would see anything like this. I hope once it is all over, that we never do again.

But there is a lot to be thankful for, I am here and well and typing and you are here and hopefully well and reading.

I have missed you :)

Throwing Stones

The Indecisive Eejit12 Comments

What are the official timings of Summer, isn’t it weird that I don’t know that, I probably should. Be right back, I’m going to Google it……

…Hi, so apparently Summer ends on the 23rd September, so I’m kind of glad I checked because I was going to make an arse of myself by saying that it ended next week!

So, lets start again. Summers going to end soon, but it already feels like it’s over as I watch the brand new batch of children prepare for the first days of the new school year. It’s been a bit of a mixed bag weather ways but at the minute there seems to be more sunshine than rain, so that’s a good thing right?

I’ve not been too far travelled this summer, mainly because I have been sick on and off. I finally, have hopefully got to the bottom of my 5 hour bouts of pain, that have been ongoing for the last year, I have gallstones….little feckers.

Most days now I am nauseous and sore but I’m still standing so that’s good and any anxiety I had about my impeding appointment with a surgeon, when it arrives has now passed as while in the midst of a bout of excruciating pain I often contemplate opening myself up to whip it out.

Who’d have thought that such a small collection of tiny things could cause such pain, and they do, oh boy they really do. It’s time to go my lovilies, it really is, because I cannot put up with you or the fear of the pain that your partying in my insides causes for much longer.

So I’ve been miserable, even more so than normal. Along with that there’s a higher than normal spike in anxiety and mild depression brought on by an over thinking brain that cannot seem to release the past, can I blame that on the gallstones too?? Probably not eh.

Work has been pretty non stop too, but thats been good because it takes my mind of the sickness except for the day I was hanging over my desk throwing up into my bin and crying with pain, that was good fun…….not!!

But it’s all good, it can’t last forever, hopefully it will all be sorted at some stage, until then I’ll just have to keep calm and carry on regardless.

Still there are positives in life, there always are and I’m actively trying to look for them. Right now it’s the sunlight on the showers and the smell of dinner cooking, the fact it’s the end of the hump day which brings us one step closer to the weekend, even if it is going to be a busy one.

Hope all is well with you eejits, what’s been happening?

Forgotten Details

The Indecisive Eejit6 Comments

There are many things that happen in our lifetime, some good and some bad. For me personally, I seem to be able to remember the momentous occasions, usually, because of the way my brain works, the bad ones. But there are also milestones too, not necessarily amazingly good things, but times that meant something or dates that had significance.

It seems though that as I get older the small but still important things become more faded, I find myself relating dates to before my leg injury and after, because that is a date I never seem to forget.

I recently found an old journal, it was not detailed descriptions, but more snapshots of where I was at that particular time. It jogged my memory and brought back a few names and locations that have long been forgotten. It was fun to read, but also difficult because it made me realise that my anxiety issues have been with me for longer than I thought.

Blogging for me was never about sharing all the details of my life, I tended to write when there was a lot going on in my head and I needed to clear some space. This means that I didn’t always note the smaller less important things and now I am beginning to wish I had.

It made me think about whether this is something I need to change in order to help me remember. Is my old lady brain going to progress from more than asking myself what I went into a specific room for, because that in itself is extremely frustrating sometimes believe me.

There has to be a benefit of noting down important things, like when and how I met friends and also sometimes how I lost them. Important places I visited and the memories that became associated with them. Losses and gains, they are all important in their own way to form the foundations of a life lived and also perhaps to remind my brain on its bad days that there were gains, not just losses.

I haven’t come to any firm decisions yet, but it’s something I might quite like to try.

Hey brain, here’s to making memories and actually remembering them.

What about you, do you journal to remember ?

Almost the weekend

The Indecisive Eejit28 Comments

I’m sitting here staring out of the train window into the greyness outside. It’s getting dark so early these days, a sure sign that winter is on the way.

Where has this year gone, it seems to have passed in the blink of an eye. Halloween approaches and already I have almost jumped out my skin with the cracks and bangs of nearby fireworks.

Shops have started to fill their shelves with all that glitters for Christmas. If you’re interested you’ll find that aisle right after the one with the cackling witches and bloody sculls that await to scare the bejeezus out of some poor wee trick or treater.

Right after Christmas we’ll be reminded of Easter with the timely arrival of Cadburys Creme Eggs…..in fecking January. Is it any wonder we have no idea where the 365 days in a year go.

Me, I’m just looking forward to Friday.

The year of things to come….

The Indecisive Eejit21 Comments

Dark Place

I’ve lost count of how many times that I’ve said a year is going to be different as the stroke of midnight blended the old into the new.

2017 started with great promise, it was going to be the year I got things done. I had plans to change myself, both mentally and physically. I was going to become a better person, buoyed by the counselling sessions I had been through. But as we all know, great promises can be broken, often times unintentionally.

I would say that neither 2016 or 17 were great years in my book. I’ve been battling a bout of depression, my first bad one since around 2003. Then I managed to pull myself together without the need for anti-depressants and this time I am trying to do the same, albeit there is a much bigger hill to climb and I am not sure I can do it without some assistance.

As with everything though, there were good times as well as bad. While not cured, I have changed. My counselling has been beneficial, in fact it quite possibly saved my life. This time, despite everything, there have been no thoughts of needing to hide a stash of tablets in case things got so bad that I did not want to carry on. These days I use the coping mechanisms I have been taught and while still there and sometimes severe, bouts of anxiety do not last as long as they previously would have.

In 2017 laugher was more of a feature along with meeting new friends and continuing to value those I already have. I’m not any better at social interaction, that still needs a lot of work, but not everything can happen all at once. The point is, I am trying.

Where work was concerned I had a lot of light bulb moments. I said goodbye to one colleague and welcomed a new one, through whom I am learning to have a better understanding of myself, mainly because we are so similar. We work well as a team and we have good foundations on which we can continue to build on in 2018.

Writing has been pretty sporadic, even by my own standards. I’ve been wondering if perhaps that is why I am currently feeling the way I do. Writing is therapeutic and also quite possibly something else I need as a coping mechanism. I’m still trying to figure out where the new me fits within the blogging world as I alternate between good days and bad, sad and happy.

I’m not going to make any grand promises for 2018. What would be the point. Instead I am going to go with the flow.

If you’re reading this, thank you for doing so and also for sticking with me for another year. Your support has meant more than you could know.

Happy New Year Eejits, let’s make it a good one : )

From darkness to light.

The Indecisive Eejit26 Comments

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When I write I never think, hey, someone might relate to this post and be glad they read it. Instead, I think, here’s another post that people can think to themselves ‘oh here she goes again’.

When I write, I never think that someone else might be experiencing the same feelings and take comfort from realising they are not alone. Instead, I think people will want to give me a good boot up the backside.

When I write, I never think this is actually good for me.

But. It. Is.

That’s my problem you see, I don’t write, because I worry what other people will think. I need to stop that, because this blog belongs to me and no one else.

Instead of worrying about what people are going to think of me when they read what is actually going on in my head, I should ask myself do they care enough to know everything about me and love the person I actually am, not the person they think I am.

I am many different things to many different people. Some good, some bad.

To myself I am a failure. Gotta love mental health.

I talk about things now, whereas I wouldn’t have prior to counselling. Talking is therapeutic. My talk though, is through my fingertips, because it’s still hard to do the face to face sometimes without becoming emotional.

I’m not in a good place right now, but the key to knowing how to get back on the road to recovery is recognising there is a problem in the first place. Perhaps it’s first anniversaries, or simply the time of the year. It might even be the lack of sunlight or maybe a lack of sleep, but there is something that is a little off kilter.

The good thing about the darkness though is that there is always light to balance it and that is something to reach for and look forward to, all I have to do is flick the switch.

And. I. will.

Days gone by

The Indecisive Eejit31 Comments

While catching up on reading the other day I came across a lovely post from Cathi over at Dear Anonymous Friend. In it she paid a wonderful tribute to her friend who had recently passed away and recalled memories from their childhood. It started me thinking about my own.

It would be hard for the younger generation (and I’m not that old) to understand that not so long ago there was life before mobile phones and technology. As Cathi alluded to in her post, the preferred method of getting your friends to come out and play was usually either banging on their door or yelling for them at the top of your voice.

Instead of mobile phones and games consoles there were fields, trees, rivers, streams and laneways that stretched for miles into glorious countryside which we were able to weave into any fairytale we chose.

Back then my games console was a kite donated to me by my Uncle. I would spend hours dancing through fields trying to make it fly, and when successful, watching it’s 60ft tail whip and whirl in the wind. Cowpats on the soles of my shoes were a regularity, because after all, it’s hard to see the ground when your eye is on the sky.

Our local shop had a vast array of sweets hidden behind a glass counter, sticky with fingerprints from people like myself eager to choose the best options possible for inclusion in a 10p mix. For anyone who remembers such a counter, Bazooka’s, Fish & Chips, milkteeth and Dracula’s teeth were my favourites.

I went to the shop on this little red bike which had the capability to fold in half. It wasn’t anything special, but I attached an old car Ariel to the back which I then tied ribbons to the top of. I must have looked like a right eejit, but back then I thought I was the bee’s knees as I cycled to meet my friends.

Even as we got older we still made do with what we had. The beach, the place which had provided so much fun when we were younger became the place we would visit to discuss our problems. Somehow everything seemed better under the roar of the waves from the rough sea.

Life seemed a lot easier then, more carefree, and it was, because by and large we had until that point been shielded from the complexities that life had to offer.

If only we had known then what lay ahead.

There are a lot of things I don’t remember about my childhood. They are locked in my poor brain somewhere and usually it takes a reminder from someone else to give them a jolt and bring them back to life.

Other things I remember only to well. Some I wish I could forget.

But no complaints here, it was a good life. Now I wonder where I put that kite.