Think Speak Run

Ok. So i just went through some emails – only half a dozen or so, dating back five and a half years to when I wrote my book. Am feeling encouraged and almost brave enough to be here again, after nearly a year, to try and keep turning up to say how ans who I really am.

I get very scared. Afraid. Disappointed. Confused. Unsure and overly-sure, and something in-between. I have more than I ever feel I’ll be able to share or have breath and time to say. Maybe everyone feels like that.

I just have been trying to build up the courage to a higher level than the fear, so that I might be able to write again, and reach people, and connect and maybe contact/be contacted/ be contactable.

I think I find it useful that I am so busy day-to-day (four kids) that I never have time to sit down and write or tweet or communicate beyond my immediate environment and contacts. But the thing is, the burning on the inside doesn’t go away. It builds and builds, and I get more and more ratty and tired and unfulfilled until I final burst again at the seams, and all the stuff inside me comes tumbling out. Some of it like a beautiful song; most of it like a roaring screeching scream, jagged rushing rough-edged never used so many hyphens in my life Train track twisted scraping metal carwreck shattering loud sound noise tumult.

So it probably won’t make sense. I catch myself a lot at the moment saying, “if that makes sense?” even when I know it makes perfect sense. So I will take the advice I just re-read in an old email from my schoolfriend Rosie: never doubt yourself, Mally.

Here I am,not doubting myself. You’re gonna have to listen to an awful lot of tears and strangled pain thoughts if you sit it out for the ride. Part of me can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to read this stuff. Another smaller voice inside says this is important. You would read this. You would hungrily devour every word because it offers such hope. That you are still here, still alive, still breathing…. That offers so much hope. If nobody ever reads it but me, I’ve done myself some good in allowing the page to be my listening counsellor. The place space where I can really show up as me, and really say how it is – how I am – and for that to be ok.

So I guess this is where I plunge on in. I get afraid of people’s judgments and comments. I get afraid that people will misunderstand. I get fearful about who I really am – the brilliant colours hidden underneath all the grey and slashed metal burnt used up ugly acrid heavymetallic scent taste on the air atound me around the pretty much trainwreck of my life. Yes God’s made something beautiful out of it. But I feel kind of removed from myself. As if, if there is anything good from me and from what I’m living through working through walking through still struggling to accept probably always will …..as if that must all be for someone else’s benefit. And it is, but can’t I benefit from surviving my own life???

I don’t know if all these thoughts should be different posts. I’ve been meaning to write again for ages. Some of the people I follow on Twitter have posted awesome thingsover the last few months. I’ve been burying my heart as tightly as I know how, hoping to stop feeling it beat vaguely to the rhythm of hope. When it does that, I know it’s just a matter of time before God has me on the front lines again, being real. I’d rather try to forget my past and just focus on the crushing physical strain of the present. Thing is, the emotional weight just gets heavier and heavier, like a wet cloth. I can’t ignore the exhaustion. Memory loss. Nightmares. Insomnia. Flashbacks. I know a lot of it is just the reality of C-PTSD. I also know that the symptoms and their effect lessen when I get help with any of it. I just don’t feel I’ve had time to get help. And there’s so much going on that makes my time and energy be split even more that I had to wait for D to have time off work before I could go to the doctor to have bloods done to find out what’s behind the current exhaustion, memory loss etc. when I write it down, it really really helps.

I was talking to a lovely counsellor about a year ago. But that had to stop as theydidn’t do evenings, and the only time I had ‘free’ was when the two littlest ones were with me. That was obviously not good- didn’t want to be working through things verbally with them around- kids understand so much more than they are given credit for. I was going to run the half marathon last October, to raise money for New Pathways, the organisation through whom I had the counselling support. Then I had a series of physical illnesses and setbacks, and so couldn’t run. I now know I will not be even attempting the half marathon until next year at the earliest, on the advice of my physio whom I have started seeing about my back. But hey, at least I’m making progress with range of movement and with strengthening. Maybe a bit like this: turning up to make progress with range of movement and with strengthening.