~living this beautiful messy life~
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Without further ado, I’m going to do the “Take Stock” thing.
Here’s what’s going on with me right now…
Making: a bit of a tidier ‘nest’ for our daughter who is due to give birth in less than 36hrs.
Cooking: not much at all just yet, but it will be our ‘turn’ in the coming days.
Drinking: coffee always, and finally back to having the occasional tea.
Reading: 30,000 bottles of wine… Continue reading “stocktake [jun19]”
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Its been a wild ride for the last few weeks, and a ride that I’m still in the midst of, and I’ve gotta say – that some of it I’m not lovin’ so much!!
I’d been starting to ‘spiral’ a bit after I last posted, but then a series of events happened that just swamped me totally, and I felt like that wild ride was taking me crashing back down through the floor…
Firstly, whilst I was seeing some small advances with our joint counselling sessions, I was feeling like the majority of any getting-ahead was happening mostly only in the sessions, and wasn’t transferring to our real-world everyday Life.
And I was feeling a bit ‘played’, by that.
Then, the State that we live in which has been suffering from the most gut-wrenching droughts, where stock had been routinely starving to death, and Farmers were walking away from their Lands in despair – was suddenly engulfed in never-before-seen ammounts of water from weeks of torrential rains, then the resulting total devastation of flash-flooding.
The majority of the stock that Farmers had been able to hand-feed and keep alive – were washed away and drowned, and the Farmers have been left with mass piles of stinking rotting carcasses to try and bury / dispose of.
Some of our family members were in the path of that flooding, with our eldest daughter having to evacuate and her home being inundated with mud and water over a metre deep – which destroyed almost all of their belongings, including precious photo albums.
And then…
And then a friends husband tragically died in a freak accident, leaving her and her two small children shell-shocked and (obviously!) devastated.
The crazy circumstance of his death, his young age, the ‘unfairness’ of it all, sent my already wobbly emotions right over the edge!
I knew it was time for a solo check-in with my counsellor, and she thankfully managed to fit me in on fairly short notice.
I think I spent most of that hour sobbing.
But there were a few things that floated to the surface for me, that I recognised were of importance to me and needed to be ‘dealt with’, in some way…
The first was about the old adage of the days being long, but Life being short – and this one hits me more and more in the face, as each day, week, month, year passes.
We have one short, important, glorious, fucked-up, amazing, beautiful Life, which is gone before you can barely blink – and in some cases, is over with before it’s even properly begun.
This also becomes even more obvious on a daily basis, when you have a life-limiting illness…
The second thing was – that I have the right to make certain (reasonable) demands of people and to have and impose boundaries around how I am treated, and that it’s ok to not put up with being treated in a way that I find less-than-acceptable or inappropriate.
That evening, My Love and I had a big talk.
Wellllll – in all honesty, I did the majority of the talking – in amongst a pile of sobbing, sniffling and tears!
I laid out how I was feeling, as best I could, and explained in brief what I felt I needed.
Two nights later, my Love initiated a conversation.
It was a conversation of plans and intentions – and I’ve heard it a number of times before, but I am willing once again to see if this time around the intention will ’stick’, or if it will just fade away as it has before…
At only about 10 days in, we had our next joint counselling session.
I was in the midsts of telling our counsellor a very broad overview of what had been going on, and was explaining that although we were only 10 days in from the conversation that had been initiated by My Love, that I was feeling hopeful, and more trusting and respectful toward My Love, when our counsellor asked if she could know what the conversation had actually been about.
My Love said “no – not at the moment”, and it felt (to me) like that was right about the moment that the session came to a stand-still.
Our counsellor – bless her heart – tried to move it along, but everything after that was just superficial chit-chat.
At the close of the session, she reminded us that we needed to revisit our conversations and to keep having them, even though it would be hard work and uncomfortable for us both.
We agreed.
That was just over 2 weeks ago.
I’ve sent My Love an email about our session – but I’ve had no response.
And there have been no further conversations…
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It’s been a while since my last post (about 6 weeks or so), and I apologize if you’ve missed me – although it is the season for most people of busy-ness and stress – so it’s probably the case that you haven’t even noticed I haven’t been around…! :))
In days blog, I’m going to talk about arguing, difficult talks, and communication in general…
Not arguing isn’t a sign that you and your Spouse are deliriously happy with each other Continue reading “difficult talks”
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SO…here I am once again sitting at the airport, waiting to get on a flight and I’m southbound again to go and help with tidying up yet more affairs of my deceased Mumma and her very-much-alive Hubby (TnT) – who is now in Aged Care.
Its been a pretty stressful time for the last fortnight, with the house having gone on the market, selling really quite quickly, then T initially not wanting to sign the contract, but eventually signing it, and then after the house became unconditional, he refused to sign Continue reading “southbound again”
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It’s different being away from home and being in someone elses home.
It’s a cross between a mini vacation and at times not quite knowing what to do with myself – then realising that I don’t actually have to BE doing anything with myself!
The downside though is – that apart from missing my Love – is that she is back there doing all the final moving of the bits and pieces that are still at the house in town, and I feel really shit about her having to do that without me helping – however minimal that is some days…
It’s also very weird for me to be so far away from home by myself – it’s just not something i DO!
My brother and sister in law actually live about a half hour out of town, so any time you want anything its a fairly mammoth effort to go to the store.
Which is something that I really like – but having been out of the habit of that pre-thinking, being that we now live so close to town, you get out of the habit of thinking of and getting everything you need or want, in one trip!
I didn’t go into the aged care home today to see Tony (my Mamas husband), as my sister was going to take him to church to see some of his mates, and church really isn’t my type of thing to be doing on a beautiful sunny Sunday morning, so I figured it was best if she just headed in on her own.
I ended up going into town as I wanted to get my brother and his wife a very belated housewarming present, that would be (hopefully) something that they would find was useful – and something I personally use about 5 times a week.
So off I went to ‘the big smoke’ and quickly found what I was looking for – which was an “Instant Pot”.
Well, it’s not actually the instant pot brand – but it does all the same things.
You can sauté, slow-cook, pressure cook, do rice, pasta and baking all in these little magicians – and we just love ours so much that we actually have two at home! lol
Right now – I am sitting on the verandah, home alone – overlooking miles of uncluttered farmland and the only sound other than the birds, is a neighbours generator, thunking away rhythmically in the distance…
Its pretty nice I gotta say!
Looking over the paddocks.
The full blood moon rising.
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Well the poor counsellor probably needed a bex and a lie-down after she had finished her first hour with me the other day!
It was pretty much like shaking up a coke bottle then flipping off the lid.
A whole damn lot of built-up stuff just came spewing forth filling up every spare space in the room.
The counsellor was a lovely lady and despite me having a panic attack on the way to the appointment – as I wasn’t sure I was in the right building or even in the right waiting room and I was almost late, which always riles me up no end – but once I was settled in on the little couch in her office, I quickly felt comfortable with her, and didn’t feel wary, judged or too vulnerable to be able to feel like I couldn’t speak freely.
All good signs.
Session #1 was pretty much a brief overview of birth to now, and as she said, she could see why I was feeling a little overwhelmed right now – and I think was a little surprised that I hadn’t got to the point of overwhelm long before now!
It was sort of funny watching her try and work out our family dynamics, and even funnier knowing that thus far, she only has the dynamics of my birth family, and my marriage and kids – we haven’t managed to get into any of the nitty gritty yet – like how my best friend is actually My Loves ex-husband! lol
That conversation should be extra entertaining :)))
Following the appointment I had to go back to work, which I had been unsure about prior to the appointment whether I was going to be able to do or not; as I figured that it was going to be an emotionally draining event, and I unsure of how I would feel after it.
Although I was incredibly drained, I felt mentally ok enough with going back to work, so I did – which ended up being fine, as I was incredibly busy for the rest of the day and therefore didn’t have time to dwell or think too much on what my morning had been like…
Needless to say probably, but I was emotionally exhausted by evening, but still managed to get more done when I got home from work than I had managed in the last couple of weeks.
I decided to take the next day off work, as not only was I still processing, but I had to fly out the day after as I was flying to Brisbane, hiring a car and then driving 2hrs north to meet up with family who didn’t know I was coming – and I wanted to get everything sorted at the Farm for while I was away, do some grocery shopping so that my Love didn’t starve to death, and get my bag packed.
I had only planned for carryon baggage, which limits me to 7kg, and with my laptop and charger already coming in at 2kg, that doesn’t leave a whole lot of wiggle room for everything else that needed including!
The amazing thing was though – that the day following my first session, I actually felt the best that I have felt since before I went to New Zealand.
So here I am now at my brother and sister-in-laws place, with a pile of family members; and we have spent the day firstly with my sister and I going and seeing my mothers husband at the aged care home – which was supremely taxing – and then she and I going to their house where we met up with the brothers, and dealing with the cleaning and just generally airing the place out ready for the real estate agent to come through and meet with us on Monday about listing the house for sale.
Its been a really tiring day and the introvert in me is squirming rather a big bit at having all these people around me 24/7 – and of course being away from my Love and being in a strange bed I am not sleeping terribly well – but it is nice to be surrounded by cuddly rellies that I don’t get to see very often – but I’ll still be super-glad to be back with my darling!
Oh – and the next appointment with my counsellor is the day after I get back – so that probably going to end up being perfect timing…
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I broke.
Plain and simple – i broke…
This past fortnight – my mind just couldn’t keep itself together anymore, and i broke…
I went to the Doctor back before we went to New Zealand, just for a general annual checkup; and when we were finishing up, I told him that there was something that I had forgotten, but I didn’t know what it was – so as I was paying my bill and leaving, I made another appointment (cos this guy is super hard to get into!) and that appointment date finally rolled around, and was yesterday.
It would have been great if it was a week or two earlier – but I’m sure glad I made it – even if I’ve had to wait almost 2 months to attend it.
The thing that I had forgotten at the first appointment, was the worsening connective tissue pain that I have been experiencing for about a year.
I am now at the point where raising my left arm above level, causes a huge amount of pain, and a range of other areas (elbow, wrists, back, hips) are all suffering various degrees of the same issue.
However, in the last few weeks, ‘Life’ has been getting on top of me more and more, and as mentioned in another post I wrote about “the blur” – where I explained that I could feel myself slowly spiralling into panic – last week that panic hit full-blast – and I ended up not being able to even manage to go to work last Thursday, and I spent a big part of the day alternately sobbing my heart out; and wading around the Farm feeling thoroughly hopeless and helpless with no idea what to do…
There have been a couple of red-flag moments in the last couple of weeks, and whilst this last week has been a big improvement on the previous two, I know that I can’t work through this one on my own.
Its been a hard realization – and it was even harder to tell our Dr/friend – who is so used to me being buoyant and bolshy, that I was drowning.
I didn’t particularly want to – but as I sat there with him, working out what plan of action we were going to take next to investigate what was going on with my body – I knew that I needed to ask him for help with sorting out my mind too…
So here we are at the start of a new week – and today I’m not doing so flash.
It took me until about lunchtime to do the dishes – something that I usually do as soon as breakfast is done.
I can’t settle my thoughts onto anything, and I keep realising I’ve started doing 10 things and forgotten each of them part way through, and only noticed that I hadn’t finished them, when I found them not completed!
GAH!
I also have a raging headache – even though I’ve taken two lots of paracetamol.
My brain just feels super foggy.
Late tomorrow (Tuesday) I go back to see the doctor, as he wants to do some more anxiety/depression testing on me and check on the reults from the bloods I had drawn last week, before I go to see the psychologist on Wednesday morning – which it seems I was lucky to get into so quickly, after being told by the Dr it would probably take a couple of weeks…
I also have work tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday – and right at this minute, I’m not sure how I’m going to manage with that – particularly as I am going to have to leave work to attend my psych appointment – and then (in theory) go back to work after it, as its a mid-morning appointment.
I’m also anxious about the trip away that I need to make at the end of this week.
I’ll be away for five days.
I need to go help my sister sort out and pack up the home that my mother and her husband lived in, until they went into the aged care home – and its something that I very much feel that I need to go help her do – and it will be great to see two of my brothers at the same time – but I’m not one of those people who enjoy being away from home, and don’t feel very competent at this solo-travel business – even though in my head I know that I’m perfectly capable of it, and did it very successfully loads of times, in my youth!!
Part of me feels like if I can make it through this week, I’ll make it through whatever is coming at me next – but all I can do for now, is to keep reminding myself to breathe, to concentrate on what I can do, and to let go of any expectation of what this week should ‘look like’.
Its an unknown, and I have to be ok with that, and try roll with it…
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One of the things that give me ‘anticipatory’ anxiety, is Mondays – the day before I have to go back to my paid job.
Whilst I am winding it down, and getting it to a place where I can hand it off to someone else; I need to stay in my current role for the time being – until we have a few more ‘ducks in a row’. Continue reading “this week”
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Recently – I have felt myself spiraling in panic.
This is not a ‘new’ sensation for me.
When parts of my life are not running smoothly and for some reason, Continue reading “the blur”
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