Imaginary friend

I have constructed my whole life around you. Changing, moving, adapting, adjusting, learning, growing. It is why when you decided to walk out of it, I started to really struggle. Still, I wanted to facilitate even that, so I worked with you on the exit plan. Prepared you for the real world, for independence living, for the workplace, for self sufficiency. I was withering on the inside but I was teaching myself how to do the new seperation part through the loving still.

When you came that day last year, exactly as Tuesday, 12th December, and took your belongings away, it was as if you snatched a valve in my heart apart. Like a totally mad woman I went to your room trying to hold on to anything at all, I cropped the top of your pathos plant, a little stem with 2 leaves, one bigger than the other. I kept them in water until summer. Before I moved, I planted them in soil. Four new leaves have grown from it since. From 2, came for, always the 1 being source. 124 baby girl... This is how I make room for hope, one way or another. Something somehow always stems and grows... from even the cuttings!

My reality shattered, my mind going awry, my heart getting broke, my whole reality shifting and smashing is not on you. It is on your father, on Chris, on my sister, on her boyfriend, on my brothers, on our "family", on your father's "family", on my friends, on all the people I met and became part of our life. Nobody has ever done the work of doing their part of being in their role, all they ever wanted was to waste time and suck energy. I didn't know that, my lack of experience in life did that. 

Other people seem to be fine with how life was going and whom filling what role in their life. For me it was just never enough, I needed containment, I needed presence. The more absent they were the mare shame I felt the more my mind acted up. 

You felt it and knew it all, I didn't. You wanted out, I understood. But to do it in that most harshest, brutal way, that was on you.

The lack of empathy you showed, that was on you.

The inability to meet me half way like I was you, was on you. 

The fighting me like I was your enemy when was anything but that, was on you. 

But I'm not rubbing this in your face, the result of all of that must have affected you too. I told you it didn't have to be done that way, but you were 17 and wild, and thought that was the solution to the pains you had.

It's okay too, here we are. The more we know, the more we know. 

I'm to release you fully from my system since what you represented towards the end was eating me alive. Becsuse I had little boundaries, I did not know where I begin, where I end, how much to give, and for the life of me, never knowing how or what to receive, if at all. 

I told you on one of the last few times we met, "I don't know if it's I driving you crazy or you driving me crazy".

The truth is, we both did. You're crazy and sane in many different aspects and ways, so am I. 

Our life to the out looker could've seem perfect and sane. They envied what we had, but you and I knew the struggles. Year in, year out. Battling loneliness, deception, being outcasts, abscense of true loyalty in people, lack of effort and integrity in others, the nonexistence of our tribe / family / group. Many hardships too, but we battled through.

Perhaps you thought that if you things totally differently now, that the outcome would be different. Perhaps you sought happiness in I dependance from me. Perhaps splitting yourself from me would take away the you that was my daughter and pride, so you can create a total path of your own, unlinked to me. 

If that's the case, then I sure hope you got what you wanted. 

No effort being put to truly address the problem of our seperation was not on you, it was on the family. The very family who never gave two fucks about us truly. So, nothing new there. It was always going to be just me and you, they couldn't even reach the level of depth we use in communicating our issues, or the things that we address. 

I think I am only just starting to make peace with things. 

I think of you now as an imaginary friend, for the way it all vanished and disappeared as if it never really happened feels very much like that. 

Thank you for your visitation, it was nice while it lasted. 

Adios, my friend.

Sail away

Perhaps too I'm writing in an attempt to face the shame that I lived with my entire life. The shame of not being loved, wanted. It began with my mother who kept offloading me as a baby, though I had extreme health problems since birth. Going through my sister's rejection, then her and my friends betrayals, then my husband's constant cheating, his repeated abandonment, all of the failed relationships afterwards, leading up to the latest that exploded the can of worms... My own daughter's rejection.

I am writing so that I look at that shame monster in the eye, and tell it you don't scare me. Let it be known and out for people to see. 

I havent been loved, I don't even know what that feels like. My mind has been so messed with that the only safe territory for me in relationships is manipulation and abuse. That is familiar to me. That feels home to me.

I'm not ashamed for being mentally disturbed because it happened to me. I didn't do it. 

But then I started seeing what I did do myself, and I wanted to stop doing it. But it upsetted all those who were benefitting, and my waking up from my shame induced coma didn't suit them.

But fuck this shit because I grew so fucking tired from chasing a dream, an illusion. Burning myself trying to give value so that I am approved, so that I am validated, so that I am wanted, so that I am loved...

Even the most default love that should come in naturally, the most basic, the most instinctive one, the love of a mother, the love of a daughter, I had to keep chasing it, burning myself, to no avail. 

It ends here, it ends today. Enough bleeding. Enough pleading. 

I'm just going to have to make do with imagining what it would feel like, look like, being appreciated, been taken care of, been truly loved, and receiving, so that I can start going towards that direction, and leave that most dried up, scarce shore. 

Ahoy! 

Whacko

The most ideal thing to do for my mind currently is write again. Somehow when I write I seem to understand things better. I also open my heart which is needed, for I had been closing it unknowingly, for living alone, in an eccentric and rather extreme way.

I've known with time and as I was getting older that there's something wrong with my mind. It took me very long to start understanding that the extremity of my emotions, my intense reactions, my boundaries, both the lose and the rigid ones, and the way I do relationshops, all relationships, was not ordinary. But then I understood with time and aging too my true making, so that being intense and what I thrive on and my standards and values made perfect sense when considered in the mix.

And then there was the well that was the traumas, which I only started to discover and truly understand in the recent years. Meaning that physically speaking, my brain could've have went through a lot of damages as a result, from a biological point of view.

Given I'm eccentric and crazy and whatnot, I always respected people's boundaries. Those who felt uncomfortable with me were given their space. I would always try to communicate my thoughts and my feelings and intention to make it clear and keep it straight forward and direct. The rather sad thing is that people would stick around despite that, because all of these screamed mental illness, and so people did what people do, they take advantage... 

Of course if I was to have any family at all, there would have been some sort of containment or a sort. Not having family, losing parents, then most narcissistic psychopathic abusive husband... I accepted everything and anything after that. I would accept and settle for breadcrumbs because guess what, I was famished by then. Any affection at all, any closeness of any sort, any kind of intimacy, any sight of loyalty, and hint of commitment, presence, continuity.... 

Of course, that was on me by that stage, I fucked myself up, by settling for anything at all. 

Even daughter, she would admire other totally brutal mothers, and I would be shocked, thinking what's wrong with that picture, she had a safe and pleasant childhood because of my softness, why does she admire these wild and manipulative sick mothers! I get it now, I represented the breadcrumbs mother. I was very insecure, very anxious, very traumatized, very scared and fragile deep inside, that the outside appearances meant nothing to her. She detested my guts towards the end. (Though I was a true protective and genuine mama bear through and through... But what I do I know, I seem to be always inside a world of my own, different priorities and different objectives and different values.)

Of course there's always the argument that our strong reaction to others is a direct reflection of what we are rejecting in ourselves.

And the argument that there is no you and I, whatever you do to others you do yourself... 

Etc. Etc. 

But I don't need to get there... I'm passing by, just wanting to say really, that my pain is very big, battling mental illness is extremely painful, I have dealt with it my whole entire life, not even knowing that there is an alternative, thinking all people feel so much like that, and get frozen.

But recently and after getting rid of more addictions, bad habits, weak decisions, wrong people, I am more able to see through it all, my mind isn't well. 

And when for the very first time ever I said it directly last year to her father and my sister whom were supporting her in her actions because of their own issues with me personally, they just didn't care. 

I cried and I begged them not to let our personal issues to get them to support her split from me, and that if they cared about her at all, they should keep our tie because she still needs her mother, and her age and situation is sensitive. 

Oh what a naiive I have been!

They pursued with it, until the very end. And I was cut back... 

And her, she has her own mental troubles too, of course I was on it on my own too, they just want to deal with her shell, for fear of having to face any of the real deal or their own shadows! 

But then there were all of them demons uniting, and what power did I have?! What powers do I have!? 

I've lost, they won. 

She got freedom from my "imprisonment". 

Her auntie got to live her motherhood fantasy like a lousy little child with her baffoon of a boyfriend whom she's using for her wife fantasy... 

And her father, well he saved himself some 5000$, simply erasing all the money he owed me over the years for child custody, just like that, because he can, like he did all the atrocities his entire life! 

I don't give a damn about her father or my sister, let them rot in hell for all I care. 

But her... She was always my concern, I was always committed and dedicated. 

But then she freed herself from me, and I do honestly hope she's at peace. 

My pain is mine, however, my mental illness is mine, my problems, my pains, it's on me. It's not her fault she was born to a damaged mother, but it is her fault to cause me more pain when I was pleading... The lack of empathy is on her too, you'd have more compassion to a nanny that looked after you, almost alone, all those years, or even a pet... 

I didn't beg her for money or to stick around or anything at all... I only just cried out to allow me to lover her still, but even that even then it disgusted her. She wanted to control how I thought of her, how I felt towards her, how I handled her, what I said about my feelings, what I thought! She would come around knowing how desperate I am to keep our bond, but would only ever take and take and take, not even throwing breadcrumbs at me. Instead, wanting to hurt me to teach me, to change me, so she could feel empowered and good about herself, so she could make up for all the years when she couldn't stand up for herself. 

I have become my daughter's main enemy and burden! If this in itself isn't mental illness, I don't know what is. Distorted realities through and through... 

And I did lose her, and I loved her too much to be able to see her turning into a total sociopath... 

But I accepted it, because guess what, not being able to see it much earlier was my own doing, because of my unstable mind, it was on me! I blamed me again and again and again. 

A stable mind would've been able to spot it, recognize it, and alert me.

A stable mind would've preserved its person from being used and abused. 

A stable mind wouldn't have gotten me into her father, or back to him after all he did. 

A stable mind wouldn't have allowed my sister in my life again after all she did in the past.

A stable mind would have seen through Chris and all his games. 

A stable mind would've managed to keep my daughter with me... 

But I was outcast, because of that unstable mind, by the crazies themselves! 

There is nothing left to do, but to move on now. 

Find people and things that are good for my mental health and my nervous system. 

Try to stay away from manipulative and abusive patterns whenever I can. 

Write because that's the only time i get to truly love myself, by giving myself the space to express my thoughts and feelings, uninterrupted. 

Write because all I ever have is myself. I write, I read, I feel, I reflect, I heal. 

And if not, fuck it anyway!!!! 

 

 

A late night plea, and simple maths

42 - 24 = 18

When I remove the last 24 years of my life from my current age, 42, I'm left with 18. The age when my father died, the time when your father conquered! 

24 is the age I was when I gave birth to you. 

18 is your current age. 

I am soon to be 43, I was 23 when I got pregnant with you. Almost half my life with you...

But, I thank you, for wanting to put an end to what your father started. You're not game, I was not your choice, you're out, you've got it. I get it. 

The past 24 years chunk of my life is to be ended and removed indeed, and I am to restore my 18 years self.

But my father has just died, I'm 18, and you have just died, I'm 42, and I'm left with so big a pain inside of me that's shocking and choking. I'm not truly 42, I can't truly handle this, I'm an orphaned child, though my mother was around... But you know the story, big part of it anyway.

I will miss you so very badly, I miss you every single day, I cry every single night. 

This isn't for you now, this is for God: 

Won't you please help me restore whatever is salvageable of me. Either that, or please please please take me away... 

I can't take the pain any longer. 

Or at least make me forget. Remove her and the memories from my head, remove the memories from my heart. Remove those ties from my soul.

Remove the longing, the missing, the thinking, the feeling, the hoping, the wishing, the idiocy! 

Give me faith, give me strength, pretty please. 

Please... 

Please, 

Please!

It's not personal

Another heavy Sunday is here, I am grateful I haven't lost it. Though my mind is often wandering, though the thoughts are often destructive, I managed to not lose it. I managed to contain my own self. The emotional heaviness however, of a typical Sunday type, is quite a lot. I'm just processing it all...

I haven't had time to contemplate lately, the pace of life is very fast, the city life is very chaotic. On top of all, I don't have the luxury of wasting any more time. It's still survival mode, but a next new level now. And while I managed to do a mighty come back at work out of thin air, and despite all the troubles, setbacks, and turmoils, I am still to make any money.

I've sold the very few bits and bobs and tiny furniture pieces I have brought with me here to keep, after selling all of the house furniture back in Fanar. I got few more books, curtain rods, and some shelves, those have to go next week so I can survive until the end of the year. 

I am not hopeful nor excited, I don't allow myself to let any emotions in when it comes to work these days. I just work, methodically, routinely, often time with total detachment. I risk losing a lot if I don't, for instance, getting back to Instagram! The followers, the stories, the likes, the tags, oh man, how are people still doing this shit!? It drives me mad! (More than I already am). Honestly though, Instagram is a number one cause of anxiety, all jokes aside. It's why I'm limiting all activities there and not investing much time on it. 

There is no avoiding the interacting with people when it comes to work, and so, begrudgingly, I am doing it. I feel utter exhaustion and overwhelm after the littlest of interactions, be it in the physical world or virtually, but I keep affirming myself that I am safe, and all is been taken care of. I only just have to take these very steps I have set up for myself now to come back to life, and out of that rot and emotional / mental mess. 

It didn't help much lately that, in order to deal with the stress, I had many binge eating sessions, mostly involving junk (basically crap!). In an attempt to balance my life out now, I sat with myself last night, and journaled, took notes and action steps to bring back some sanity again. I think the more I create and release things to the world, the more I will be confident again in what I am doing. But I won't worry myself too much with how what I make is being received, for I could very easily fall back to the whole mental and emotional chaos of it and I being seen, received, validated, accepted... or not. I certainly can't allow my mind to go into that terroritory now, I must preserve my mental health in whatever way I can! 

I have also been giving myself the occasional time and space to connect with others and have company. I can't say it's been always rewarding, and maybe perhaps because the triggers are so strong when I encounter others - I had grown so accustomed to being on my own. 

I often catch myself talking about the past, I haven't been able to be in the present yet still! The poor men who care about me even just a little, or just about our encounters, have to sit and listen through it all. I can't even remember anymore whom knows what details and how much, I just speak out aimlessly, it's probably a clear sign of my PTSD. After all, I haven't and I don't get to ever talk to people in my life, like normal anything, as usual... For there is no family, no friends, no nothing, so these guys basically end up getting their share of my pain processing in real time. 

I don't think any of them know the depth of the scars I am trying to heal, and that's fine, we come from very different backgrounds and life experiences (and expectations), and I am grateful when they show empathy, listen silently and attentively, and when they try to give me their own insight or piece of their wisdom, compassionately. Still, the pain isn't lessening with the passing of time or with all the actions taking place. In fact, sometimes I worry that all the distractions of life might be getting in the way of my healing. 

Sometimes though I just have to drop that weight and let go a little. Today's focus was on a plan to get back to my old routines. The 18 hours fasting again, my qi gong practice, my movements and dancing, my hobbies, my discipline with working hours and house chores. I started with the fasting today, and I get back the routines starting tomorrow. I gotta try to find a loop hole through that extremely noisy building and neighborhood. I don't know how, but I got to give myself a little bit of silence so that I can create, otherwise the stress from all sorts of outside simuli is really getting to my nervous system and stopping me from functioning properly. 

The sun is after setting just now, we had a clear sky finally after a very gloomy week. I am often finding myself missing my previous place, I visualize it, the details, the corners, the smells, the sensations, the feelings, and I cry. Not wanting it back, not stuck in the past, just reminiscing of a place that I truly put so much time, effort and energy in making it home, so much time, effort and energy in welcoming and hosting people, a place that was my most favorite of them all, but then having to walk away from it all, while I take it all down by my own hands, all that has made it "Home". 

The one year anniversary of her moving out of that house and my life was exactly 2 days ago, 8th November 2022, I have had a lot emotions creeping up on me and crippling me this past week, I am not sure if it was because of that, but what could I have done anyway?! Haven't I been processing shit since that day, and dealing with all the many hazardous repercussions? 

My problem is not that my daughter didn't want me after 2 decades of dedicating my life for her, lovingly so (not conditionally). But that the fact remains; she wasn't just my daughter, she was my sole and favorite companion, my confidante, my best friend, my only family. I also believed I was to her more than a typical mother, I was her therapist, her coach, her mentor, her companion, her friend, her cook, her number one fan, her art advisor, her business manager, her confidante... Was I family for her though!? Because, the irony! She never had it, they never were part of our life, and I filled up for everyone. She then goes out and drops me as well... And she never listened when I said repeatedly, I'm not her problem, if anything, I was the only constant and consistent person in her entire life. 

But then she slipped away... 

But maybe that too was all in my head, and I was blinded my whole entire life, for all she ever wanted truly was to get out of it all, and take and use as much as she can in the process until she does. She had to make use of it, you see, having me being a big part of her life and constantly around, when she couldn't love me. In her own words at one point, "she felt imprisoned"... It hurts, when all I had set myself to do since before she was born, was to love her. I grew with her, for her, for us. I don't get it, I still don't. I keep asking myself and others questions, they say, she's just a kid still. How very wrong they are, but nobody could ever fathom that thing that was and that had happened, not even I fully, but it definitely isn't just her being a kid! 

It is so very painful and against human nature to do life alone like I do these days, most especially after having dedicated most of my life anyway to the people I loved and cherished. This isn't a lesson, this is a spiritual cataclysm. 

I feel like a total failure every single day. How is it that everybody I know and around me have figured life out, and I'm the only idiot constantly shocked at people's behaviors, words, and actions!?! Why am I so thick?! Why is it not hitting me yet?! What on Earth am I missing!?!? 

Still, I can't complain, I shall heed the call. In fact, it's been done, I had no say in the matter whatsoever. Now I just ride the wave...

 And when there are ebbs and flows, I just observe, for I'll be taken whenever it takes me. 

The truth of the matter is that I could never make those, 

nor do people ever really make them themselves... 

None of it 

ever 

is 

personal!

The Letters

I thought and somehow have hoped life would end around now. It seems I was delusional, but you can't blame that weary mind of mine. Still, I am around and I am trying to make the best out of the situation, any situation at all really. 

I have been very watchful of how my mind loses its balance, ever so effortlessly, at the mere interference of emotions and the matters of heart. So I have been applying myself, doing all I could to try to self regulate. Mind, nervous system, thoughts, actions... 

In an ideal world, there would be switches you could flip to turn off one's feelings, or a simple wire cutting when ending an emotional contact with another being. But since that isn't the case, and since I am done reaching out sickly to people who have done me more damage than good, I am coming up with ways where I could feel the feelings I need to get in touch with when the emotions arise, and go with notions, and then release them. There is no need for the other to know about it, being contacted, or be part of this at all. This is after all merely my system processing what has been unknowingly to me at the time very traumatic events or periods. The signs of all I am and been going through being the pointers. 

I don't un-love, but I am learning to detach. While the latter is practical steps to take, follow, and stick to, the former is hard to live with. Not being able to unlove the ones we once loved so very dearly, means that it's still there inside, we've just decided to bury it. We is me, as they simply don't care, nor live the same experience as I do - or have done in the dynamic of whatever relationship or context that was. 

I have loved and still love oh so many people, most if not all had to get out of my life, for the way the lack of reciprocity and the extremely imbalance give and take dynamic we usually have set up is detrimental to my health, on all levels. 

I think that Letters would work as a mediator between my broken and injured attached self, and my newly born detached and free self. I am currently in the middle, and I feel a huge urge to connect with these people or the aspect of me that was alive and activated when I had them in my life. It is also a series of goodbyes, making since of what I was mostly unable to make sense of. And if it all fails, there would be at least the short visit of our memories, but also, most importantly, love flowing their way, for that heart of mine still does its thing, and what can a wearied human body do but oblige. 

The Letters are going to be a new series of posts I dedicate to the special people whom I encountered and cared very deeply for. It is a hello, and how are you, when the sensible thing is to not do that at all. Thankfully, writing comes once again to the rescue...

Spiraling with ARDH

For my sanity's sake, I released the work blog officially today. 

In my attempt to reconstruct something new, and my hope to be able to get back in the flow of work, I had to organize and tidy all the many different bits and parts of what I am currently doing and have been doing, so that I can pave a clear path for the future and my next steps. 

Of course I'm fully aware that by so doing, spending a huge amount of time editing, tweaking, modifying, changing, I would be wasting a lot and missing out on so much. Who in this time and age needs a blog to sell products? They'd laugh at you in the days of Instagram and Facebook shops, but, it's the only way I could do it. I had to build clear and proper foundation, and so help me God! 

I couldn't make do with the fragmentation from the last 5 years, I had to at least weave things together in a way where I can treat all parts and stages as a whole, so I could focus my energy on the honing process. 

Here I am, having (almost) done it. It took a whole lotta mental work, and boy am I tired! But, I shall release it for now, and will simply start building on from that. 

At least I could say I got myself a safe and somewhat stable "ground". 

Here's to ARDH124 my calling, my passion, my home. 

ARDH124