Contributing to the future of others…

I have said since my son was born that I want to make a difference in the world. That I wanted have a positive impact on peoples life, to make the hard times just that little bit easier.

It soon occurred to me that there is no plain and simple way to do this. There is not just one act that will help you meet this goal. Instead, you must do little things, all the time. These things add up, and eventually you will have impacted many lives in many ways.

Last night I was sat in my car and I wasn’t even paying attention to the radio until a phrase caught my attention. “Childhood Sexual Abuse”. Automatically I tuned in. The Truth Project were advertising for people to share their stories of CSA. So this evening I had a look on their website and read about what they do. They are working on the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse. All they are asking for is victims or survivors to share their stories with them so that they can gain an understanding of what is working well and what is failing in the current system. Their aim is to provide better protection for the children of the future, and of course have a better system to receive those who have been unfortunate enough to be a victim.

As difficult as it is to sit down and tell your story to someone, I signed myself up. This is one thing that I can do, to try to help the children of the future. One thing that I can do to help make the world a better place, for my sons generation and the generation to come. There are so many little things, that we could all do daily, that together, will make a difference.

If you are a CSA victim or survivor, please have a look at their page and see if you can help too!

Ps. I haven’t had much time to write lately, but I have set up a new Instagram with regular positive, inspirational posts.. Please follow it @beyourowninspiration_

Thank you!!

Until next time.

The greatest strength lies inside your mind.

If your reading this blog it is probably because your mind currently, or at some point during your life, seems to have taken control of itself and your life, and you feel like you can’t stop yourself from feeling a certain way or doing certain things.

I know when I was feeling my lowest that I thought there was no way out. I thought that the only way I could escape my mind, which had run free and messed up so many things in my life, was to take my life. It seemed impossible at the time, that the very tool which was destroying my life was also the only tool that could build up the life that I want to live. The mind is key to success. Whether that be setting up a business, pulling yourself out of depression or climbing mount Everest. You can’t do any of those things without your mind, a positive mind-set is a catalyst for success.

There are so many things that I do or don’t do in my life, that I want to do or to not do. Let me give you some examples. I have got much better at managing my money, ensuring that I am not left with absolutely nothing for any period of time but I’d really like to save and I’m not hitting my savings goals at this moment in time. There is only one reason why. I haven’t got the right mindset yet. I know what I want to save for, but I do not have the determination to fully commit. I have stopped myself from buying expensive things that I don’t need, but I still end up spending unnecessarily, usually on food. If I want to save money, I need to have the willpower or it will never happen and willpower comes from the mind.

Let me tell you where I have practiced this successfully. In some of my other posts I mention the break up that happened almost 2 months ago with my ex boyfriend. I kept saying, and kept thinking that I wouldn’t ever be able to love again. And, if I am to be completely honest I am still not sure that I will. However, what I have done is changed my mind-set, and I am using my emotions and heartbreak to my advantage. Let me tell you how. I am very afraid, to let anyone else in after all of the past experiences that I have had, but, it is my dream to have a loving relationship, to settle down and it always has been. I am a really family orientated girl, very maternal, and my idea of happiness sits comfortably in the family life regime. So why should I remain a single parent, with only one child, when my dream is to have more than one child and to marry? I shouldn’t. Just because I have had my heart broken, I shouldn’t run away from my dreams because if I don’t then at least I have a chance of reaching them right? Okay so this is what I have been doing…

In the 2 months that I have been single I have only felt well enough to talk to another male in the last two weeks. I discussed it with my councillor and she and I developed a few things that we should do in order to help me get back into the world of dating, but protect myself from making the wrong choices. One thing that I mentioned to her was doing things too soon, from getting intimate, to becoming in a relationship and introducing my child. So I have created a list of 5 questions that I must ask any man that I am seeking that kind of relationship with. It is not an interview so they will not be word for word, and I will be slipping them into natural conversations where they are applicable. This is to help me to identify at an early stage whether the person has the traits and personality that I am looking for, before things start to get to complicated.

Now I feel myself drifting away from my actual intended point here, the power of the mind, but methodology is important too. So basically what I am doing is taking things very slowly, and ensuring that I am finding out the important things sooner rather than later. If you have read my earlier blogs you may know that I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I want to explain a little bit about how that has affected my relationships, and particularly my sex life so that you can understand why I feel I have made great progress over the last 2 weeks. My experiences as a child made me grow up feeling like no more than a sex doll, sad, but its true. Now some survivors go the opposite way, they have a fear of people going anywhere near them or touching them physically and so become afraid of sex following the trauma. For me, the experience was very different. Due to re-victimisation very shortly after the first spate of abuse I entered my teenage to adult years feeling as though I was worth nothing more than sex. Like that was the only thing I was good at, the only purpose that I had. My brain had also programmed itself into believing that my opinions, my desires, what I wanted, had no significance. Therefore, if a male wanted me, I would often consent even if I didn’t truly want to. Many will say that this makes me a slut, but I am not offended by their thoughts or comments because they don’t understand what I went through and what it did to my head. I no longer have to be ashamed because I have discovered the issue, and I have addressed it and now I have put my plans into action using nothing but my mind. On every occasion that I have seen this one guy over the last two weeks I have gone no further than to kiss him. I regret to say that this an achievement for me. No matter that I had alcohol in my system, no matter that he was trying to persuade me to change my mind. I went into his company telling myself that I was not going to give any sexual contact and I stuck to my guns every single time. Part of this is to see if he respects my wishes, or whether sex is all he wants. Part of it is to make him chase and see him put in the effort. But do you know what the most important part of it has been? Showing myself that I CAN do anything that I set my mind to. I don’t have to be a slave to sex as the males of the past made my mind believe. I can be whoever I want to be. I deserve more than giving myself up straight away, I deserve to grafted for, but I have to make that happen.

The above example may be un-relatable to many of you reading it, but the point that I want to get across is that you can change lifetime habits, you can change habitual thinking patterns, cognitive distortions that have been instilled in you since a very young age. The key is the mind. You must use your mind, you must adapt your mind-set. The behaviours and everything else required for your success will follow once your mind has found the right path.

Believe in yourself, challenge yourself. You are your best supporter and your worst enemy. Once you unlock the full potential of your mind, you can be unstoppable.

I hope this post inspires you to test the powers of your own mind, success is like dominoes! Once you achieve one goal, you believe, and once you believe, you can begin to smash all of your goals one after the other in succession.

Good luck.

Until next time.

Off Guard

Its 3am in the morning, I have an early start, I should be fast asleep. Instead my emotions have been caught off guard and I’m stuck thinking about my ex, everything about him.

As I lay here in my bed I close my eyes and try to imagine the feeling of his mattress beneath me, the heaviness of his duvet. The smell of his room, of this aftershave. The feeling of his soft skin against my cheek as I lay with my head on his chest. I used to do that every weekend. That was my home. See the truth is, nowhere has ever really felt like home to me before.

My first house, where I grew up, was ruined by memories of my first abuser. I can’t think back and picture my bedroom without picturing him there with me. No matter what memory I have, it always ends up coming back to him. I remember being in the front attick room of our house, I had always shared with my brother on the floor below but the lodger had moved out and I could finally have my own room. All girly. I remember that room, one Christmas Eve, I thought I would be able to hear santa land on my roof because I was so close. A little girl excited for Christmas. But then I remember that same room, that same bed. I remember being completely naked laying on the bed beneath him completely naked. I didn’t have that room for long, so now that I think about it, my sexual journey started before I stopped believing in Santa Claus. What kind of a childhood is that?

The next house I lived in he also visited once or twice, and whilst not much happened there it was were I was living when I first spoke up about what had happened. My memories of that house are surrounded by police interviews and interrogation and upset within my family. It seems like all of the good memories I ever had in either house only come back very rarely but these ones I could relive every moment, every fine detail at any point.

The house I lived in after that, during my teenage years, where my mum still lives now. That was where I was living during my second episode of abuse. The bed that I layed in when I was 13 years old, with a man who was 24. The convincing rapist, the groomer. It’s no wonder I have no self esteem, and no ability to believe in myself when I let that happen to me. Why didn’t I stop it? Why didn’t I see that it was wrong?

I moved to my father’s house for a little while, which is where I currently live now. It doesn’t feel like home, not one bit. I think that’s just because I am not close to anyone here, apart from my son, but he will be with me wherever I go. It’s not mine, I’ve not been able to decorate my room, I’m bound by rules, I don’t feel free. More than anything I feel lonely, and when I’m lonely, like this very moment, my thoughts consume me. And I cry, I cry until I fall asleep.

Before returning here, I lived in a flat with my ex and my baby. It would have felt like home if it wasn’t the very place that I was attacked whilst pregnant. Full of raging arguments, a place where I often felt low and didn’t want to live anymore.

My ex’s house started to feel like home. Whilst we bickered about things and had disagreements we never had a fight, he never physically hurt me, he never raped me. It was the only bed that I layed my head to sleep on where I was safe. Whilst I never felt safe mentally, because I felt like the whole world was attacking me, him included. Compared to the rest of my life this was a safe haven. With more happy memories than bad ones. With more positives than negatives. One place that I actually felt loved and welcomed. I felt like I was actually wanted there.

I think of the feeling of his teeny tight curls between my fingers. I loved playing with his hair, it felt so different to any other head I’d touched. That’s why I liked it so much. As I squished the strands in my fingers I dreamt of having little babies with the same hair, that I would play with in the same way until it wasn’t cool for me to do it anymore. I think of how our lips met when we kissed, his were like a big soft cushion. Never had a kiss that felt so right before.

Now I can’t even reply to a text. Every time I engage in conversation with him I feel at rock bottom, and I don’t want to live anymore. I’ve had a long time to work out why my head is so messed up, and I know the causes of most of my struggles and emotions, but not this one. The only thing I know is that not talking to him at all has helped me to start seeing a future for myself, but clearly it does not mean that I do not think about him. It does not mean that I do not miss him. My councillor asked me last week what I wanted and I said I don’t know. She likes to remind me that I may well find someone else who treats me better than I have ever been treated before. Fills me with optimism. It’s true, I could. But how do I know? I’m afraid. I’m afraid to ever let anyone in again. I’m afraid to date, I’m afraid to let anyone fall in love with me because they may no longer want me when they find out what I’ve been through and how it affects my life. I’m afraid of abondonment. My ex felt like I caught him under false pretences. Clearly the way I was acting when he fell for me, the person I was then, I am not able to manage all the time. How long can it last? I may find someone else, I may be able to be the good me for a week, a month, a year. Long enough to attract them. But what happens if I come back to this place, what happens when I’m struggling, when I’m hurting. Even though it’s not their fault, they may leave me, again, because I’m not the person they thought I was. How will I ever attract someone if I’m honest with them at the start? How do you say to someone.. oh by the way, before you fall in love with me, i was abused as a child, as a teenager, subject to domestic violence when I was just an adult and that has made me fragile. I have issues with trust and sometimes i just may not want to be alive. Be lucky if they even pay half the bill and don’t run from the restaurant before finishing their food.

I don’t know. It’s all I keep saying, to everyone, to myself. I don’t know what to make of the situation. I don’t know what I want for the future. I don’t know if I’ll ever love again. I’m just stuck here in limbo.

Until next time.

The days we don’t want to talk about…

I’ve been deciding whether to write this post or not, but at this present time I feel stable enough to share it, and I think it’s important for people following my blog to know the truth.

Those of you who suffer with depression all know how your thinking can get to a crucial point quite easily. In the weeks leading up to my breakdown I would not say I was suicidal. I was very, very low. The thoughts that often went through my head were ‘It would be easier if I just died, if a car just happened to hit me head on right now as I drive down this road, and it all be over in an instant”. That’s what I wanted, an instantaneous death, that was no one’s fault, just an accident, too quick for me to feel, that would just end my suffering. I would along with these thoughts think about how it would only take a slight jerk of my hand at 60mph to throw me off the road into the ditch beside it, wondering if that would be enough to kill me and ensure nobody else was injured. These thoughts became more and more common, and whilst I was not making plans to end my life, I didn’t want to live.

After my breakdown, and my break-up, which was the icing on the cake and pretty much caused my break down those thoughts started to change. I continued to feel like I’d be better of dead, but I believed it much more than I did before. Before the break up I felt like I was clinging on to my life, and the rope was cutting my hands and I was considering letting go. After the break up I felt like there was nothing left to hold on for. By that I do not mean that my ex boyfriend was all I had to love for, because I have my son and he is worth more to me than anyone ever could. When I say I felt like I had nothing left to hold on for I was thinking of myself. I already felt undeserving of love, undeserving of friendships, undeserving of anything good in life, and the break up put a x1000 on those feelings. Now I definitely didn’t deserve love because the only person claiming to love me had just left me, why would they leave me unless I didn’t deserve that love? It’s a complicated web of thoughts that go on in there, bit the end result was that I felt even more worthless and I didn’t want to live at all. I felt so bad about myself that I believed my son would be better off without me too. It’s manipulative, depression, it brainwashes you into believing the most awful things. And I apologise to my son now, should you ever read this when you grow up, that I felt like my battle was too hard to fight even to stay by your side.

2 weeks ago I made a plan. It all got way too much and it wasn’t a well thought through plan, it was a quick last minute one that would have been devestating had I not been stopped. I waited for a Friday when I knew my little boy would be safe on the care of his father, I awoke in the morning and I put on a nice dress. I did my make up, and I did my hair nice, just as I did it in Paris because I wanted to do something different for my man. I wanted to look nice, on my last day. I packed my lunch bag for work however not with lunch. I placed a bottle of water and as many packets of paracetamol that I could find, any tablets that I had kept back, antibiotics, steroids, anything. I went to work that day, and I ate nothing. O ended up being sent home early because I was so down, but I didn’t go home. I went straight to the place that I had decided I wanted to be when I ended it. My phone rang over and over but I ignored it. I had arrived far too early, it was only early afternoon and people were about, walking there dogs, watching the birds. So I just slept, I slept in my car on and off for hours. I was waiting for it to get dark. I had so many nightmares, nightmares that I was running away from things, storms, the devil, but I was trapped and each time I couldn’t get away. That’s how my mind felt, I was trapped and everything was telling me to surrender. One of my friends found me just before nightfall, when she arrived I was looking down at my phone. She does not know this, nobody know this. I had already taken all of the pills out of their packets, I picked up my phone, that I had not been on all day, to have one last look through my photos, the memories I had made so that they would be the last thing on my mind. As she found me I was sobbing, looking at a photo of my baby boy in the day he was born. That was going to be the hardest part never seeing him again. She saved my life, had she not have searched for me and night had fallen I do believe I would have taken those pills.

I am nowhere near happy, I am not even reaching neutral yet, but I do feel like at present I am out of the danger zone. For how long, I do not know. There is one thing that sets me off, and I instantly start thinking on a very negative trail and that’s my ex. I am doing everything i can to try to avoid him, because I do not understand as of yet why seeing him, hearing him, talking to him is doing this to me so I don’t know how to control it. The more we talk the more I want to die. It’s horrible to say but it’s true. So I am trying my best to avoid all contact, but I have not mastered it yet and sometimes I slip up and start a conversation that never ends well for me.

Looking at the positives, and I hope o do not jinx this… 2 weeks later I am still alive. The nightmares are beginning to ease, although I’m still not sleeping well. But I guess my brain is starting to feel some relief, o have taken actions to reduce the things that were causing me to feel that way and there is much less pressure, which is allowing me to start to recover, very slowly. I have hope now, that I will get better someday.

If you have found yourself in that position, or you are in that position now. Please know that you can get past it. You will not pass it and be magically back to normal, but you will be able to see a future again instead of only seeing a wooden box. My heart goes out to you all, you are not alone.

Until next time.

Dead when your alive.

Does anyone get the feeling that they are already dead, just trapped in a working, breathing body, but lifeless in the heart and soul?

People must not believe me when I say that I feel like I am already dead. They see me walking, and talking, sometimes they will see me smiling and they think that because my body is completing those actions I am alive. But I don’t feel alive, I feel like I’m just existing. Like im wasting the air that I breathe and the body that I live in. I was thinking today about everyone that’s fighting a terminal illness right now and I just wish I could swap places with them. I wish I could give them my body to enjoy and I could take their loss of life.

People say it will get better, but it’s easy to feel like it’s already too late. I feel like the place that you go when you leave this world, it’s pulling me in. Day by Day that little bit closer. I try to think about my little boy, and that he needs me to be here to raise him and then I think about the little baby that I lost, there all alone, without a mummy or a daddy, without anyone that knows her or him because I was the closest person that they ever had. I have two babies and they are both in different worlds. I don’t want to leave either of them and I feel pained every single time I think about this. I am so very lost.

I have listened to this song since I was about 11, I always related it to what I went through even though it talks more about physical abuse. Each time I listen to I feel closer to becoming a concrete angel. https://youtu.be/KtNYA4pAGjI

Until next time.

My Dreams – Visualising my feelings.

I keep having these nightmares, every single time I close my eyes and sleep. Each time they are different but they mean the same thing.

Last night I had a dream that I was in London, my favourite place. I witnessed accident after accident, one straight after the other. People getting hurt, people dying. I was trying to get away, not to avoid helping them but because whatever the danger was causing the accidents was still there. But I couldn’t get away from it, and I too found myself in an accident. I lay there on the street, still breathing but in pain and my body completely bartered. I think the accidents before mine were a symbol of all the bad things I have seen before now. All of the pain that I have been through. The scene was chaotic, unorganized, too many things happening at once. Just like the thoughts in my head right now. I lay awaiting help but the ambulance never came. Those that did come didn’t get round to me, I was left there. Also a reflection of how I feel now, like I’ve been desperately running to get away from the things the bad but that they’ve caught up with me, they’ve got me and I have no way out. Help is coming but it’s not coming quick enough, there are not enough people to deal with the amount of casualties.

This afternoon I had a nap and I dreamt that I was flying somewhere. This time I was not alone but I had my boy with me. The pilot said that they had to fly very low due to an engine issue. By low I mean barely above house height. It was scary and I knew something was going to go wrong. The plane ended up crashing on to a building and it was just balancing there. It turns out it had been hijacked, as had every other flight, and every service. Evil people were taking over everything in the world and the rest of us were to be done with as they pleased. The woman wouldn’t let us off of the aircraft, not one single person. It was in a dangerous position, and should it drop half of the people on the plane would die. It had been split into two sections, and me and my boy had been separated. He was in the side that was in danger of death and I was in the side of people most likely to live. I was trying to do anything possible to swap sides with him but nothing was working. I was frustrated and upset, and I felt he was much more deserving of a chance at life than me. The plane crash symbolises my constant fear that bad things are going to happen, the world take over symbolises how I always believe that the whole world is against me. The separation with my boy, that symbolises the fact that I currently feel unable to give him the life that he deserves. That I fear I will never be healthy enough to be happy enough for him. That he is better off without me.

What will I dream about tonight 😔.

Until next time.

What is happening to me?! – the physical side

Here I am, laying in bed wondering what this night will bring…

Do you know I can’t remember the time that I last had a full night’s sleep without waking every few hours with a nightmare, needing the toilet or just pure restlessness. Last night was horrendous, I finished work by 11, came home and got straight into bed. If was asleep by half 12. It was a few minutes after 5 before I awoke fully. I had a few stirs Inbetween but this time I was eyes open and there was no going back. I had a pain in my inner upper right thigh, it was the worst pain that I have ever felt in my legs, ever. I laid there for a minute or two, trying to take it in but I thought it would just pass, maybe I’d just slept funny. The longer I lay there the worse it got, I was waiting to myself, and breathing heavy, feeling a panick attack coming on. The centre of the pain we as in my inner thigh, but I felt it begin spreading, over my knees and down my shin towards my foot. I went to the toilet and thought maybe somehow it would relieve it, I hobbled there holding on to the walls not being able to put any pressure on my leg. I came back to bed and the pain was worse than before, I was buying the pillow, to stop me from crying out as the pain took over my limb. What is this? Where had it come from? I felt fine physically when I went to bed. I started to Google it , as we all do. It came up with some kind of problem where you have pressure on you nerves in the leg causing you discomfort, but I have done nothing different to any of night so I don’t know why it would come on suddenly. It’s either that or a blood clot, according to the internet but I’m trying to rule out worst case scenario. I laid just a little longer, and the tears started to follow, not just due to the pain but I thought maybe this is the world giving me what I wanted. I wanted to die so maybe my body is slowly giving up on me and this is the last night I’ll hold my baby boy in my arms.

I decided to go downstairs and take some painkillers, it has to be bad for me to get out of bed when I’m tired on a cold night. As I came back into the room I turned my light on which awoke my little boy who said ” I don’t want the light on mummy”. So sweet an innocent. The painkillers started to kick in and the pain began to ease allowing me to call back to sleep. I’ve been taken painkillers regularly this evening, each time I’ve felt the pain coming back. I’ve no idea if it’s connected to my mental well-being so far, but it’s something else to add to the list.

What I have been suffering with for the last 5 or 6 weeks is what appears to be symptoms of IBS. The doctor won’t actually diagnose it as such until you’ve had it for three months, but I’m halfway there. My body alternates between constipation and diarrhea, sometimes it feels like I have both at the same time which I originally thought was impossible, I thought I was going mad, but it’s true. No trip to the toilet is normal for me anymore. I have severe pains in my abdomin after eating, they come over me like waves of contractions giving birth. My temperature rises, my head starts to swear and I feel myself wrapping my arms round my belly and clenching my sides waiting for it to pass. I feel gassy and bloated constantly, and I have the tiniest meals, less than my 2 year old boy before I feel full to the rim and start urging as I try to put more food down me.

Sleep, don’t even talk to me about sleep. I can go to bed for 10 hours or more and feel like I’ve not slept at all. I constantly feel drained, fatigued. Everyday functioning becomes a challenge for me, feeling like I’m running on empty no matter what I do to try and fill the tank. This just makes me moodier and fuels my low mood, anxiety, depression.

I am blown away by how much affect these mental problems can cause your actual physical body. Not only do you have to fight the mind but this too. Now I understand why people can’t go to work, can’t get on with their life when they feel this way because it’s harder than everything I’ve ever tried before. We all as hunan beings get annoyed and upset about things, we get angry and things may play on our mind more than we’d like. But we get over them, most of the thine, and continue each day as best we can. Can you believe that those thoughts in your mind can actually control your body too and stop you from living a normal easy life. Things are so difficult mentally that they actually make you ill physically too.

Isn’t it scary how it only takes people to get you into this state where your body starts to give up on you.

Until next time.

Being the Victim

Victim, I’m not sure I like that word…

There is a phrase that has been repeating itself over and over in my head over the past few days. “You always act like the Victim”. I have had a lot of time to think this over and I had never really noticed it before but I guess it is something that I do, subconsciously. See who I am and who I want to be seem to be two very different people separated by a loss of control over my mind. I know who I want to be, how I want to act, and I have all the right intentions. These intentions seem to travel from my heart, into my head, and there they are manipulated into something so far from how they begun. Like a game of Chinese whispers. I always thought that I was a selfless person, that I put others above myself always and that I was a very caring and understanding person. Maybe I still am, but just not to everyone?

Let me give you an example, on mothers day this year I went out to town with a friend who was at the time with child. She was so distressed and upset because her partner hadn’t got her a card or gift from “the bump”. Some people may not believe in this practice, but as a mother I know that parenting begins the moment that you conceive, and I wanted her to feel some sort of recognition for all the sacrifices she has already made. I am a single mum myself, and I didn’t have a lot of money. But I raced around, I bought a card and flowers, and some cookies. I placed them on her doorstep, knocked and hid. I will never know how that made her feel, of course she thanked me a great deal and I think that she appreciated it, as would have I. That’s the me that I feel that I truly am in my heart, and the me that I wish I could be every minute of every day.

Let me give you another example, another very close friend of mine found herself in a similar struggle to that of my current struggle. I wont go into any details because that is not my story to tell. That girl is my life, family that I wasn’t born into, family that chose me. I had a feeling that if I didn’t pull her away from the situation very quickly she would loose herself, and maybe I would loose her forever. I couldn’t bare the thought of my friend suffering any worse than she already was. Without even asking her I booked her a ticket to travel to the country that I live in and I drove 3 hours to pick her up. I took her away from a bad situation, and I knew it wouldn’t fix her, but it would give her time to reflect before making any rash decisions. I barely had any money myself, and I certainly couldn’t afford to do what I did, but I did it anyway. That’s how important she is to me. I would do the same for anyone that is close enough to me.

So why is it that when it comes to men this side of me seems to disappear of the face of the earth? why is it that I feel like I am still being the same person that I want to be, that my friends can see, but to men that’s not how it comes across. I always thought I made compromises in the relationships I have had, but maybe I didn’t. Taking a step back and looking at it, my feelings have always been my number one concern in a relationship and for that reason I have neglected the feelings of the other party. I don’t agree with that, It goes against everything that I stand for. A relationship should work both ways, so why do I feel like only I can set the boundaries? I am starting to see that I don’t always play the Victim, I am always the Victim. Maybe not in reality, but I am in my head. My brain processes all of its thoughts with me as the Victim, always trying to protect me. My brain thinks its self defence, but really its self destruction. Every day in a relationship it is telling me I am the Victim, just like I was all those years ago and that I cannot trust any man. Its not just men, but women too. Anyone new that I meet faces the same barrier, I have no self confidence, no self worth and that affects me with everyone I come across in life.

What I need to do now is focus on building self esteem, building that confidence so that whether I’m walking into a new situation or a new situation arises within a longstanding relationship, I don’t instantly believe I am the victim. I want to be able to be in that moment with no preconceptions, no worries, no paranoia. I don’t want to walk into a room full of new people and think ” why would anyone want to talk to me, I’m not worthy of anyone’s time”. I want to have the confidence to walk into that room and think ” I am going to start a conversation with as many people as I can in this room, because I am a great person to talk to”. It seems so far away, but I know I will get there one day.

I found it very hard to fall asleep last night, thoughts were running wild. But I did come up with something that has given me some excitement in this dark time. I have set myself a goal for the year ahead, and something special to celebrate with when I reach my goal.

Until next time.