Sometimes I shy away from writing things. I’ll think about it for a few days, maybe even go as far as getting a notebook out to jot down a couple of sentences, but usually that’s where it stops. So instead of letting it out, I bottle it up.

I’ve said here countless times, that my writing should be for me and no one else. It’s supposed to be a tool to release all that pent up whatever the feck it is that is pent up inside me. Yet still I don’t do it, I tell myself I’ll do it the next day or the day after that but that day never comes and I find something else to fill the time when I should have been writing.

I think I have a fairly large bottle. I can absorb quite a lot before it becomes full. There’s my stuff and I’ve quite a bit going on. There’s other peoples stuff, because they like to think I am a fixer, that I can bring things back together no matter what it is. There’s the clown, because I have to wear a mask and make other people happy, even though I am struggling myself. Then there is the sponge, that magic place inside me that soaks up all of peoples problems, because it’s easier for them to offload than to actually deal with it. Oh look, here comes the fixer!

Do I and my many facets mind this? Normally, no. I like to feel useful, I like to be helpful and sometimes it’s also nice to be needed. But when all of those things collide and everyone needs everything all at once, well then my bottle starts to fill up pretty quick and I start to feel like I am drowning.

I can feel the quick fill starting. This newest anxiety spike will not give me peace. Between work and fighting an infection last week I am so tired. My brain pieces together all the little things people tell me I do wrong and convinces me I am the worst person in the world. Comments made, perhaps just in passing make me doubt myself and the things I do.

My magic sponge absorbs it all and I say nothing.

But here’s the thing. There are small changes inside me, little glimmers of hope that a few of my brain cells are showing signs of resistance. Perhaps that is what happens when ones bottle becomes full, you move from quiet acceptance to wanting to jump up and down while screaming ‘well if you don’t like it f*** off’ and believe me, there have been a few times this week I have wanted to scream just that. I didn’t mind you….well not yet anyway. As someone great once said, sadly, I don’t know who, ‘all great things start with small changes’ and that is very true.

Something else that is true is that I should write more when I need to, because it really is a good release. Better out that in, and now it’s out, I feel better already!