Do you like walking in the rain? When you think of love, do you think of pain…?

I know how to make mistakes
Wasn’t grown enough to fake them
Everybody makes mistakes
Do we live and learn to brave them?

Writing, to some, does not come easy. To me, it comes perhaps a little too easy. Some would most probably say or agree, I talk too much. Generally, speaking about nothing of importance either…

Now, this might very well be true. But here I am using my little voice to be listened to, or should I say, read? With hope that someone may understand, sympathise, empathise, care, laugh, cry or even just be interested in what I have to say.

Lets just say, a lot has change in the past six months, no 8 months, since you last heard from me. When I say a lot, I mean I have been down to the bottom and back up to the top more times than I can count. I have been made to feel worthless and now I am learning to care less about what others think about me, as almost always, their judgement’s say more about themselves than me. I am learning quickly to believe in myself, enjoy my life, laugh more and love myself, completely and unconditionally.

No one ever thinks it will be easy, but I can tell you, no one, especially me, ever thought it would be so hard.
Now you are wondering, of course, what I am referring to.
Well obviously, I mean life lol.

We all have ups and downs, that is sadly, how life goes. Some of us have more ups than downs, and some of us know how to ride the downs better than others.

This is an art I am still after 27 years of life trying to master.

Along with a lot of people I confide in, confidence and acceptance seem to be key. The confidence, to accept ourselves and our fate as one. Sometimes I truly believe we get what we give in life. Then I think, well, if that is the case why on earth am I given such heartache. Then I get into a spiral of worry and fear that maybe I am not the nice person I proclaim to be. I know, I am unbearable sometimes. But I can honestly say, I never mean to hurt anyone with anything I do or say… But again, this is another story for a different time..

A good friend told me that confidence is what makes you be you. Without the confidence to walk with your head held high, no matter what decisions you have made – someone is always going to be negative and say you shouldn’t have done that – so why not do what makes you happy.
We must have the confidence to see our own beauty, I don’t just mean aesthetically, but the cringe worthy beauty inside us!
I am learning, that no one is ever going to love me as much as I need to love myself. I am the one in this skin, with this brain and crazy mind. If you can’t love me for that, then I honestly think that is your loss and not mine.

I am far from perfect, I know that. But I know I need to love myself the way that I love others. With all my heart and believe me, if I loved you, you would know about it so why am I not showing myself the same courtesy?

This same friend, who clearly talks sense, told me just to start accepting things for how they are. No one is ever going to truly understand are they? How hard it is to be ‘me’. WOW I do not mean that to be as self centered as it reads. But I guess it is true…

A lot of things have happened in my life that I need to learn to accept. The main three are so obvious I feel like it’s an insult to think you do not already know what they are.

My mental health
My Dad’s death
My Mum

All three of these are things that I put so much pressure on myself to have accepted by now. But everyday I find a new struggle with one, if not all of these things.

Now, I find it really hard to accept things.

Anyone who knows me well enough, will know that I do not accept or let go of things easily; usually because it breaks my heart to let go of things/people/memories that I love.

You are probably wondering how are letting go and acceptance are linked. But to me they are so obviously linked. 9 times out of 10 to accept that something that has happened, changed or whatever, you have to know how to let go of something.
In my life, I have had to learn to accept that the people you love, can’t and won’t stay around forever, this means letting go.

Death is an inevitability. Therefore it makes it somewhat easier to accept. To an extent.
I believe that I will never truly get over losing my Dad. But I am getting closer everyday to accepting that he has gone. I no longer wonder if I am going to bump into him, or if that phone call is him calling me. I wish all of that was true. But I am accepting the fact that this will never be. 8 years, and I am just starting to accept all of this.

Illness, that is not so inevitable. In the sense that yes, we all get sick and we all die of some illness. But chronic, long term, debilitating illness is not the inevitable. It also is not fair. Not fair for my Mumma to have to live the rest of her life sometimes not even knowing what day of the week it is, not knowing that her husband has died, not knowing that it is only going to get worse. Selfishly, it’s not fair on me either. To say it breaks my heart more and more everyday would be a massive understatement. My Mumma is always on my mind.
Even when I don’t want her to be….
It is getting to the point where I cannot sleep without having nightmares. Nightmares that something horrible is happening to her, that she is going to leave me completely.
I don’t even know how explain the pain this causes. I know, I need to go and see my Mum to put my mind at rest, but I just cannot bring myself to do it. I am genuinely scared. I don’t know what I am going to find and more than anything, I cannot let her see how much pain I am in right now.

These photos don’t show pain, in all three I was feeling really confident and happy with myself. Then suddenly, the next day, the next week, whenever it creeps up on me, out of nowhere I am a wreck. For seemingly no reason at all. Anxiety is killing me right now, I am my own worst enemy and I know I am hard on myself. But I mean come one, you would think I had got used to it all by now. Is my life that tragic, that I need to hide away from the world? Well, actually sometimes I think it is. Everyday is a struggle and I genuinely wonder what the next phone call is going to be about. What the next bad thing is going to be, and it is exhausting.

I am exhausted.

But what can I do? I have to carry on, I have to work through this, like I always do. Like I have to and want to. It would be so easy to run away right now, from everything. But honestly, I can’t can I. I have to carry on. At some point, running away is no longer an option. I have responsibilities. Oh and of course, the generic “Your Mum and Dad wouldn’t want you to be miserable, they would want you to be happy ” bull comes into play as well, because of course you generics are right they wouldn’t. And honestly, I don’t want to be a victim of my own mind anymore either. I want to remember my reasons to wake up, make up, and carry on.