Spurred on by the latest chronic babe blog carnival prompt, I’ve been thinking about my plans for the summer. Mostly I’d like to be more organised, but there are too many external factors for that I think!
Generally of late though, I’ve been feeling the need to try and spring clean. Not particularly my house (I gave up on that sort of thing some time ago) but my life and my mind.
It started when I started to think about cutting my hours at work from five days a week to four – I realised that I couldn’t carry on the way I had been, which necessitated a change in the way that I was thinking. I need to unstick some of the patterns in my head that were/are stuck going round in a big negative whirl – all the stuff about not being good enough and not achieving and the frustration that comes with that because I’m not acknowledging me, now. My mind is stuck 10 years ago in some weird place I didn’t like at the time, and still don’t!
So my tentative plan for this summer is to be nice to me. To be gentle to myself – but also to try and stand up a bit more for what I would like, and what is helpful to me and my health. Constantly rolling over because I don’t want a fight conserves energy in the short term but makes me feel pretty rubbish longer term and that isn’t helping, given that often I end up doing things I know I don’t have enough spoons for, and that stress makes my health worse!
So to that end, I have developed a little plan. A little list of things that I’m going to start doing that should hopefully put me on the path to feeling better about stuff.
1) I am going to find as many vouchers as I can for spas - and use the things. There’s nothing like complete relaxation and sitting very still for a bit to make all the bad things float away.
2) I am going to start trying to be more aware of my thoughts and my feelings about things. If I can notice when I start to think the weird things, perhaps I will be on the route to stopping thinking them!
3) I am going to investigate, sign up to and start going to a Pilates class. The physio says I should. The OT says it might help. The WW ladies think so too, from a different angle. Everyone says that it will be good for me, but I’ve been resisting ages now and I don’t really know why. It is a silly fear and I should just get on with it!
4) I will chase (and hopefully get) my appointment with the geneticist. Tired of having half a label that may not be mine now, I want to go back to knowing one thing or another.
5) I am going to make Dave and the kids understand the difference between “on” and “in” the dishwasher. It’s so close and it makes such a difference!
6) I am going to enjoy my holiday to Cornwall and I am going to breathe in the cold (I live in England!) salty air on the coast, and it will fix me. It will feel like going home and the crashing of the waves will make me feel peaceful inside. I will sunbathe in coats under blankets, and introduce the kids to hedgehog ice creams (Imagine an ice cream cone with Cornish clotted cream ice cream, smothered in clotted cream, rolled in hazelnuts. Heart attack territory, but the best thing you’ve ever eaten!). I will sneakily drink from the stream that I’m not supposed to because it tastes of childhood holidays. I will have baths and let Dave cook. I will take piles of books with me that I will fall asleep half way through. I will, in short, relax.
7) I will also clean my fridge. Small things.
I’ve just realised what a really random list that is – back and forth all over the place. Mostly though, I’m going to try to be happier, and as healthy as I can be.
Friday, 10 June 2011
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
Third Person Singular
It’s been drawn to my attention that I regularly refer to my body in the third person.
“I don’t think my body is going to be up to that”
“My stupid body isn’t working today”
“I wish my body wasn’t so creaky”
I’m not sure when I developed this tendency. It’s like I’ve put it in a third person box because I don’t want to own up that this stuff is me. I can’t say “I’m not going to be able to” I can only manage a “My body won’t be able to”. I wonder if I have separated it so I don’t have to own up to how it behaves.
I also don’t really recognise it in the mirror, which I don’t think helps. I was already at this disconnected place where I didn’t recognise it in the mirror having shed 75lbs and 8 dress sizes. I still don’t see that smaller person (see, 3rd person view again) and then it stopped behaving. I feel let down by my body and I wonder how much I can’t see that I am thinner now because I don’t want to own this new hurty body. I almost have more problems now getting dressed than I used to – which is quite possibly ridiculous. It is rediculous, in fact. *sigh*
I wish I loved my body. I wish I could put it back into the first person. But I can’t. And I don’t understand why. I wish I wanted to inhabit it. My house. My shell. My skin. My body. Me. Other people can see it, love it – want it even…
But I don’t. I don’t want it I almost want the bigger, healthier me back. At least then my attitudes to it would make sense.
I don’t know how to reclaim my body. I’ve this nasty habit of splitting bits of me up to make things easier to handle, and it’s a dangerous trait. If I’m not careful I’ll end up with an odd split personality again. It already shows in my wardrobe, a different, older, more ingrained split, admittedly, but still. I need to not split any more. I’m not sure I can be three people at once, and stay sane. Only, I wouldn’t be, would I, because I would be me, her and my body. Two plus a vessel to be swapped where possible.
Sometimes it feels like my body is trapping me. Pushing me in directions that I don’t want to go. Perhaps this why I can’t own it; it is in charge and I don’t want to own up that it is me that can’t manage 5 days a week in the office without breaking, that I am the one who can’t shop all day, that I am the one who can’t do all the things I want to. I can’t bring myself to own the failures and I don’t want to.
So I suspect that for the short term, I will remain firmly in the third person. It’s not ideal but until I can make this work for me, that’s the way it is staying.
“I don’t think my body is going to be up to that”
“My stupid body isn’t working today”
“I wish my body wasn’t so creaky”
I’m not sure when I developed this tendency. It’s like I’ve put it in a third person box because I don’t want to own up that this stuff is me. I can’t say “I’m not going to be able to” I can only manage a “My body won’t be able to”. I wonder if I have separated it so I don’t have to own up to how it behaves.
I also don’t really recognise it in the mirror, which I don’t think helps. I was already at this disconnected place where I didn’t recognise it in the mirror having shed 75lbs and 8 dress sizes. I still don’t see that smaller person (see, 3rd person view again) and then it stopped behaving. I feel let down by my body and I wonder how much I can’t see that I am thinner now because I don’t want to own this new hurty body. I almost have more problems now getting dressed than I used to – which is quite possibly ridiculous. It is rediculous, in fact. *sigh*
I wish I loved my body. I wish I could put it back into the first person. But I can’t. And I don’t understand why. I wish I wanted to inhabit it. My house. My shell. My skin. My body. Me. Other people can see it, love it – want it even…
But I don’t. I don’t want it I almost want the bigger, healthier me back. At least then my attitudes to it would make sense.
I don’t know how to reclaim my body. I’ve this nasty habit of splitting bits of me up to make things easier to handle, and it’s a dangerous trait. If I’m not careful I’ll end up with an odd split personality again. It already shows in my wardrobe, a different, older, more ingrained split, admittedly, but still. I need to not split any more. I’m not sure I can be three people at once, and stay sane. Only, I wouldn’t be, would I, because I would be me, her and my body. Two plus a vessel to be swapped where possible.
Sometimes it feels like my body is trapping me. Pushing me in directions that I don’t want to go. Perhaps this why I can’t own it; it is in charge and I don’t want to own up that it is me that can’t manage 5 days a week in the office without breaking, that I am the one who can’t shop all day, that I am the one who can’t do all the things I want to. I can’t bring myself to own the failures and I don’t want to.
So I suspect that for the short term, I will remain firmly in the third person. It’s not ideal but until I can make this work for me, that’s the way it is staying.
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