Bright Sunshine

Life has so many twists and turns. A maze of impenetrable hedges that are at times easy to step through. Moves backwards are suddenly revealed as moves forward. Changes. Surprises.

I realise every moment is full of intense energy that only I can turn into happiness or despair.

A scary thought. An epiphany. So difficult to reach it is hidden behind doors and riddles. It is day-glo orange neon fifty feet high.

Yes. I discovered the key to my own happiness lies within my own hands. My own blood, bones, sinew, flesh, mind, spirit.

When my personal life became so murky it moved like sticky mud, like hungry quicksand that I could not see beyond what was in my own head, I began drowning in confusion and anxiety and I could not seem to stop that slow, inexorable spiral downwards. Self-blame, harshest of enemies, slashed deep, drawing dark blood.

Someone became focus in my mind. Someone other than me. This is because it's what I know. This is because it's easier than focusing on me. This is because how it's always been. Without that focus, I am nothing. Insignificant. Who will look at me unless I am defined by another? Unless I am told I am happy by another? That I am sad?

I have been finding my way from cage to cage, each one a little less constricting, a little more open, a step closer to that wondrous freedom I can smell. Within the confines of the relationship I had and thought I wanted again - even on the level of friendship, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes and stepped into that abyss.

For a moment I floundered. I was free-falling. And then I caught ground. I was in a new place. Alice through the looking glass. Stepped into Narnia. Displaced person. But alive. Strong. Heart beating. Breath in and out.

I moved so careful, King Kong within, Frankenstein afraid and uncertain of what I could and could not do. I moved so very careful within boundaries and thought I was doing well. I thought, even though I was as a new creature to this world, I was actually doing what is normal and what would cultivate respect and understanding.

I was wrong. Not in what I did. But in expecting certain results. And with the realisation that someone treated me badly, without respect. Like they would a fly that lands on their table, flicking me aside without thought, with only half a dramatic script that was played out on his side only, I realised I did nothing wrong.

That realisation, along with the discovery the only one who can make me happy is me, was freeing.

I know I am not yet clear. I am still making my way along that path. But I have stepped forward. Found an easy section of path where wild flowers grow and fill the air with their sweetness and butterflies dance with magic and that evocative 'what if'. This realisation, this freedom, had made me realise I am in charge. My own destiny lies in my hands. So heady. So freeing.

Excitement burns through my veins.

So yes, I was smacked in the face by someone I loved, cared for, have only the best intentions for...and even now I cannot fathom the reasons behind his rejection of my friendship when that was all I thought was unequivocally on the offering.

For a moment I fell down, that mud and quicksand sucking at my feet, for how could someone who claimed they no longer had feelings for me also reject my friendship I thought he'd taken; withdraw the friendship I thought he'd offered me? That old enemy within started whispering dark words into my ear.

There's something wrong with you. He has discovered your hideousness. You are flawed and there is no hope...

And then I just didn't want to listen anymore. Because I knew I had done nothing wrong. Perhaps for one of the first times in my life. I had given it my all and even though I am like King Kong and Frankenstein's poor monster (so lost, so unsure of what I am meant to do), I had acted with decorum and dignity and compassion. I had offered forth nothing more than compassion and friendship and my heart in that most fundamental way: love of one human for another. I realised if he didn't want me, I had only offered him me, my friendship, whatever he wanted to take. All the wonder and uniqueness of me. I am so much more than he will ever know. It makes me sad to be rejected because I still feel that deep connection; not of love; of friendship (and that is still love at its most sweetest, most base). It makes me sad to see someone so scared when there are no demons lurking.

But I have emerged excited in my discoveries. In all the possibilities that lie within me. I am beautiful within, I am beginning to see it. I know too many wonderful people not to know that must be true. I am smart and interesting and talented and amazing.

If happiness lies within my hands. I can be whatever I want to be.

I think I know what I want to be.

I am very excited and happy to be with me. On my own terms.

14. Cage

With each new discovery about my past, and what affect it has had on me; is still having on me, I realise that for most of my life I have lived in a cage.

A cage where I cannot bring myself to reach out to those I truly care about. A cage where the walls are soft but strong and all encompassing. Dark and reflective of the thoughts in my head, the dreams that swim within. For the longest time no way of seeing beyond and into reality, into the rest of the world outside.

The slow emergence from that cage has been fraught with mishaps, back-steps, stumbles. The first real glimpse of the rest of the world with me in it was my first session of therapy.

Discovering who I am, and why I am is not an easy process. It is like shedding my skin in public. It is like being a wild creature who knows nothing of how to simply be like all the others around her.

So frustrating to find I still don't know the correct way to act and be at times. So frustrating to find I tilt too much in one direction emotionally when I feel something, or perceive something is happening.

The progress down the path is always hampered by the realisation; that flat, hard, cold slap in the face; that the hurdle you cleared is only the first of many more ahead. Some seem so high I almost despair at the attempt.

But attempt I must.

I still reside in a cage at times. This one is made of glass and I can see what I want, what I need, I can see me just beyond the other side and I cannot touch, cannot quite work out the latch to reach what I must.

The sadness inside is overwhelming. The realisation that one thing in my childhood, a boundary violation, has messed me up greatly. The thoughts and memories of how that has affected me, how I have let countless others violate intimate boundaries because that subconscious lesson has always lurked there in the shadows, strong and so much a part of me I never questioned anything and now I see it for what it really is: wrong, misleading. It needs to go.

The despair over such a thing is like a flood. I drown in memories of what I have done, let others done; drown in shame, self-loathing, bitterness and hopelessness. Hopelessness that this will never end. I will never find a way out of this glass cage. I will never be one of the real people out there. The ones that function normally. Have all that I want but can't quite work out how to get it.

Deep breaths. I draw them down to my toes. Let the oxygen cleanse the old ways from my blood. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is painful, but it means I can know what's happening then implement changes. By simply being aware of one thing, so much is open to me to the realisation it is wrong. But wrong can be changed. And I know the change is already happening.

Simply by being aware of something I always let happen, and knowing the reason why, means I now have the power to prevent it ever happening again. I know I can do that.

This was an important hurdle; one of the biggest so far and I have cleared it.

The journey is still continuing.

13. An Elusive Thing Called Help

For me to ask for help is to admit my imperfections. I don't like appearing weak or lost or unknowing. In myself it is tantamount to ignorance, it is ugly.

I know this is rooted deep within the fucked up pages of my childhood. Time and time again I have found myself lost in my own self; scared, afraid, angry, sad, turmoil reigning: it doesn't matter; I am unable to reach out through the black molasses that surrounds me. I am unable to ask for help.

The agony this causes is like shards of glass down my spine. It is unnecessary. Yet instead of saying 'I'm angry, and I don't know why. It's not at you. It's because of something else I don't understand'; instead of admitting I'm afraid, or saying 'I'm confused by what I'm feeling', I get angry and cause pain and trauma.

As I move forward down this path I am heading further and further into swamp land with many hardships and pain. But the pain is getting cleaner, if deeper. And the light keeps breaking through. There are times I don't think I can handle it on my own, and those are times I walk around, tears constantly there, ready to fall if I let them, allowing constant waves of negativity to wash over me, unable to find the way to make them stop. Unable to reach out and ask for help from whoever is around.

Not my family, not my friends, not my therapist.

This is my wall. I cannot seem to break through.

Even in love, I was unable to reach out and ask for help, to admit I cannot do it on my own. I want to pretend I am that fantastic superwoman when I am scared and alone inside.

I can never seem to be able to admit I am lost, I am scared, I am confused by the tumultuous emotional sea inside me that has come from nowhere. And then I lash out, hurting the one I never ever wanted to hurt. A cycle that seemingly never ends. Different guises, different subtle touches, like tinsel, but the same old cycle.

I don't need to be like that, but I realise now that to reach out is to admit vulnerability, and to admit vulnerability is to allow further hurt. I know this time round, it wasn't someone who would hurt me, but I have been trained well to hide that vulnerability.

So the hurt comes, worse than ever because I cannot show that side enough. I am learning. I was learning. It wasn't enough. I simply need to reach out with a single word. A phrase. Something or anything.

This is my beginning.

I am admitting I am not superwoman. I am not perfect. There is a scared, scarred little girl inside who wants to keep hiding behind the lovely facades she's built over the years.

But she is me. I am not those facades. And I realise now that the scars, the pain, the fear, they will diminish. Sometimes they will return to help me when I need help. But I am admitting here I can't do this on my own. I need support from others. I need understanding. I need love.

This is my first step to asking for help when I need it.

12. That Voice Inside

This is a hard time for me. Christmas is a time I usually spent with my family, but they are so far away and for the first time, I will be spending Christmas all alone.

So many things are whirling through my brain. That constant outward focusing is not taking its demise lightly. If I am not diligent, it is there, firmly ensconsed in my head, leading me down the path of safety and familiarity; a path that will not help me at all. Its devious role sooths while dragging me back into the murky quagmire of pain and confusion and the false self that came into being to protect me from pain as a child.

A few words from my mother hurls me headfirst into paranoia and the world of the black and white thinkers. Her world that, because I am her child, is my world, too.

Yet again, that place she had me is not where I want to be; it's the same place the outward focusing takes me to: away from my real self.

I constantly remind myself I am hurt and injured and I am so sad over that. Yet that voice pipes up every time I think about this, every time I allow the sadness to well within. It refutes my feelings, invalidates them. It tells me things weren't that bad, you're being a drama queen, you're into histrionics, you're exaggerating.

Before I would have accepted it, pulled myself together and moved on. Now I see how unhealthy that is right now. I now squash that voice, tell it it's wrong. It starts up again, but I'm beginning to notice, not so loud.

But the times I need to watch are when I am feeling down, vulnerable, already in a bad place. It then runs wild and sometimes I don't notice until the pain is much worse than it ever should be.

I am learning to retrain myself, to badger that voice back where it should be, a warning that I'm wallowing unnessarily. It's learning what's true, what's right. And I know that voice inside is the faulty one, not me.

If I look back at myself over the past ten or fifteen years, I can see the forward momentum. It may not be much at times, but baby steps are still steps forward, and the voice has slowly been losing momentum and power, and my choices in romantic partners have been improving as have the way I handle my struggle with intimacy and all the baggage I bring to it.

Even in this last relationship, though I was unable to control those seemingly irrational behaviours all the time; there were times when I could, times when I was able to explain this is why I'm the way I am. And that is something. A very big something.

I just need to keep reminding myself that the voice is faulty, not me.

Under this I'm a pretty amazing person. Unique and talented and someone worth knowing. I don't believe it all the time and I know I'll never be perfect, but that's just because I'm human, not a disaster, not a freak. But I'm starting to believe in my own self-worth more and more.

Because that voice is the faulty one. Not me.

11. A Word Is All It Ever Takes...

So strange the way it pans out.

I've been in a good place, but also bad. You think the power someone has is diminished but then...boom. You're in shards on the floor.

I am not talking about romance or broken hearts here. For me this is something more powerful. That might sound strange, but I am different. The truth and my own real self are hidden behind myriad shifting veils; some so gossamer light I can almost see through to the other side; others heavy like lead and all I know of the other side are the brief glimpses of clarity that if I do not hang on I lose them like sand. I am working hard to pull down all those veils so everything is exposed and there for me to see and understand. Romance and broken hearts are smoke, adding to the confusion. They must lie discarded for now, no matter how hard it is. Not for long, just for now.

I am still talking about the support and honesty and encouragement I have received, both from my friends and clients and strangers. This is something that has confounded me the past week, had me in turmoil. I keep going back and back to it, to make sure I take it in completely.

At first I wanted to cry. Those words were unexpected. No one thought I was crazy or strange. They understood. They understood. I felt touched, open, exposed, vulnerable.

And suddenly I was in pieces. A tidal wave of emotions so strong, so confusing, consumed me and left me there, lost and so alone.

That's why the romance and broken heart needs to be discarded. Rather than focus and deal with what I was experiencing, I reverted to my age old trick of self-protection and focused outward, on to my lost love. This in no way diminishes my feelings for him, but obsessing over someone instead of focusing on myself no longer works. I'm too aware, moved too far down that path to let myself slide comfortably back into those old, familiar, safe waters.

So I choose not to think about him and how I feel and all I did wrong (yes, hard as it is to accept, I know it always takes two, that he must have been at fault, too). Instead, I force myself to look at me. I shy away. Like I shy away from those who are good to me, who have always looked at me and really seen me, really listened to me, really asked me valid questions about myself and well being. The others are much easier to deal with, just like it's easier to project all outwards, like onto a screen.

But I am now becoming more discerning. As hard as it is, I want to surround myself with those who are good for me, with those who respect my boundaries as I discover and erect them, with those who will not put up with bullshit and me overstepping their boundaries. I want to enrich myself as I bring myself out of its hiding place.

I don't need to hide anymore. I know I can be vulnerable and safe at the same time. It's a difficult concept for me to take in, but I know it, I understand it.

My heart is beginning slowly to believe.

10. Fragile Flower

Sometimes I feel like a fragile flower, blooming, lying open, exposed, trembling in the wind and all that would like to destroy, yet still standing strong.

The thing that makes me feel my own fragility is not harshness, not threats or games or cold callousness: those I have learned to deal with in my sleep; it is sweet words of unconditional support. It is people who both know me and don't know me who reach out and give me empathy without patronisation, give me love without pity, give me respect and a shoulder if ever I should need it. They read my words and did not label me a freak, or damaged. They offered respect, told me my words were beautiful. They saw me for who I was and loved everything they saw.

Those things make me fall to pieces inside.

Yesterday I could not shake the anxiety from its perch within. The whirling panic of something I could not grasp, just taste when the wind was just right. I couldn't work it out. All I knew was I felt starkly alone. Pinned under a hot, white spotlight on a huge, black stage. All eyes fixed upon me.

My own inner spotlight found my insecurities and blew them wide open. It was like drowning. Still I did not know why.

Then it hit me. All those lovely words, all that love and understanding and respect was alien. it made me uncomfortable, like I stood before my execution board. All that was the thing I was not used to. It was why I panicked when faced with real love from my man.

Too much, too good, too ovewhelming. To accept such positive stuff means you take it with wide open arms, you take it by opening yourself up. That means you're open to pain, too. I learned that young.

I am not stepping backwards, but forwards. Seeing now the sneaky path the voice of doubt takes within me. This voice served me as a child, helping me through the minefields of my mother's life. But now it is only to my detriment. I am stringing lights in all the dark corners so it cannot hide much longer. The paths are becoming bright and clear.

Knowing and understanding means diminished power to all the demons, the doubts, the critisisms that are so deeply learned they are almost a part of me.

Not for much longer.

This fragile flower is not so fragile. If it can stand the hurricanes my mother launched and still come out intact, perhaps bruised, perhaps wilted, perhaps with a few torn leaves, but still functioning, still most definitely intact, then it can stand the sweet onslaught of love and positive emotion and feedback from both friends and strangers. It can stand the overwhelming honesty and power of love and open heart form the man who loves me.

What happened with him happened for a reason. For how could he understand what was going on with me when I didn't understand myself? Now I do. Now I know I have a much better chance of dealing with such overwhelming emotion.

I just need to learn how to accept without sabotage. I'm learning, though. Already the power of the negative within is diminishing; how can it not when you dig up all its secrets. Without secrets, the negative really isn't so bad. Just another piece of luggage to throw out.

I'm not talking about a clean sweep - for we do need some critisism, some doubt, some of that bad stuff we hate. But there is both healthy and diseased, and I am determined be like a white blood cell and destroy all that is diseased and replace it with the vibrant, with the healthy.

It is starting. Make no mistake.

Even when I am teetering on the edge I am now okay. I am learning the tools to cope. And the first, best and strongest is understanding. Knowledge means fear has nowhere to hide. Knowledge means the constant critic in your head loses power. Knowledge means the road ahead is not so scary and dark, but lit with bright torches that show the way, step by step.

The fragile flower is not weak, but strong, yet fragile where it counts.

I think today will be a fine day.

9. Melancholy Notes

Today wasn't a great day. That grey pressure seeped in slow and steady. Dark clouds and drizzling rain that finds its way to your skin no matter what didn't help. But it wasn't that. Missing that special someone started in mid-afternoon. A sweet, keening note that plays over and over again through your blood. Wasn't that, either, that caused the sad, lonely ache deep inside.

Being in therapy has helped me greatly to focus, fine tune myself to all my shifting emotions and moods. It's helped me grasp what sets off an emotion and mood.

I sat on the train, damp from the rain, reading my book. That's when it hit. Like a deep, strident chord. The distant sound of a gong. I felt it. Tightening in my throat and chest. Within the pages something hit me full in the face.

The narrator was being, right then and there as I read, emotionally blackmailed and manipulated by her closest friend, the one she relied on, the one who was like family.

Just a small thing, but it stayed in my mind, stuck like drying mud. Playing over and over. Emotions welled up, slowly like water spreading over earth, darkening all it touches.

Sadness for this fictional character because I knew all too well what it felt like to have that happen. To be made to do something against your inner-most will. Resentful for someone ever doing that to another. Anger that people did such a thing. Frustration because when in that situation, if you're not coming from a healthy place, a healthy past, then it is seemingly impossible to extract yourself.

I felt alone and isolated like the rain cutting me off from the others around me. I felt the darkness without working its way within.

I thought about finishing the wine I'd bought the other day, but instead I worked on my room, putting my pictures up, creating art. That melancholy feeling stayed, thoughts straying to that man who has my heart. I missed his voice, I missed telling him everything I've been wanting to tell him. Sometimes it happens like this.

Still I worked on. I didn't write, didn't sit down and make myself think. It wasn't despair or depression or acute loneliness, just a few things that were sifting through my blood. I let my thoughts free form and these things came to me with ease.

But now, everything looking good around me, cat curled up on my feet, I am struck by how similar this situation was to one when I just started therapy.

My second session and I got home, feeling emotionally devestated. I locked myself in my room, wrote on my computer. Inside the wolves tore me apart. Emotions rioted. It seemed I would never get through the night intact.

And then I cried like I would never be able to stop. I desperately wanted to pick up the phone and call the one person I knew I couldn't. So instead, I wrote him a letter that would never be sent. I wrote out all the devestation inside of me. And the storm passed.

I realised then that it would always be so. Storms cannot be sustained forever, eventually they will dissipate, and blue skies and warm breezes will return, bringing with them the fragrance of hope and happiness.

Tonight, as then, I kept thinking of Lilo and Stitch, the Disney animated film. In it, a genetically engineered alien, designed to destroy all it comes across crashlands on Earth. He lives with a little girl who loves him, even though his badness levels are unusually high. Stitch starts to learn what love is because of the unconditional love this little girl gives him, and through love, he learns loneliness and the pain of not fitting in because of his background. He runs away to find family (though family, is of course where the love is, and that's with the little girl, Lilo).

I felt like Stitch. Alone in the forest, feeling lost, trying to find family, trying to fit in, to belong. It's such a horrible, frightening feeling. That moment has always made me want to cry.

Now I understand why. Stitch, too, is a product of his upbringing, his wiring wasn't his decision. And as he starts to grow past that, to realise different paths are open to him apart from destruction; it's painful and scary, but he fights all he learned, was wired to feel and act, and becomes someone who is fully realised, not only capable of love, but being loved and finds somewhere to belong because he finds himself.

I get that, too. That's why tonight isn't bad, just melancholic. I realised I am the one responsible for completely loving me. Finding myself means I will always belong. And I'm really getting there.

The rain is still out there, but right now I am warm and content. Listening to music that suits the low-key melancholia of my mood.

Each day is getting better. Because I realise, it's about me, no one else.

Not even my mother.

Just me.