If, on the off chance I’m right and my mum is reading my blog… what?? Come on, leave me SOME mental space, please??

Hopefully I’m mistaken. *sigh* But I mean, who else googles “Lostinthought + ‘my mum’ ” from a mobile.

This is NOT COOL. And eight years of relative blogging peace may just have escaped down the drain. Sorry to any regulars here if I take off for a while.

… so why is it so hard to detach from the crazy things they do? My mum seems to think that as she has spiritual beliefs, things like psychotherapy are outside her remit. Because they don’t see the whole truth, blah blah. Err, no – they deal with the messed up behaviors one has developed since incarnating on the earth. Sometimes a helpful tool!
It’s a shame because I think she, like most people, would benefit from a good talking to by a therapist. Or, being able to talk at a therapist until they finally managed to ask her a few questions which significantly challenged her blinkered world view, to just allow her to stop and THINK. For one minute.

Argh. I’m not bothered just now. Isn’t it weird how nice it feels not having a date penciled in when she will be round again? Because we parted frostily, I said I’d drop her an email, and now I am FREE. Free! My week is my own. It’s strange how much an impact it has when a few times a week, someone strolls into your home for between two and four hours a time and just exudes self pity and negativity, with a bit of critical sneering mixed in. It’s also mental how we keep on and on seeing people because they are our family, because we have to, because it’s the done thing. I bet loads of families would drift apart without the convention to keep everything in its place. Instead for most people its just christmas when things really kick off, the spat between aunty maude and uncle gerald that threatens to get interesting. And for me, it’s twice a week on average, when I get to feel like a foolish little girl again and she gets someone to talk at.

I wish she would listen to me without always thinking she is right. Without a preconceived idea in her head. Without waiting impatiently for me to finish so she can launch into her response. I wish she would just listen to me at all. About anything. But I know she’s never been great at that, at listening. It goes with being deaf. You just check out, get away with the bare minimum. Even if I write it down, she will read it and see the words but not really hear me.
I want to say, you’re just a person too. You’re just a person, and you’re no better than anyone else. And she would say, I know that. I never said I was better. But she does say it. She says it every time she looks away when I am halfway through saying something to her, shutting off the conversation in one swift movement. She says it when her eyes flick up and down my form, and she smiles and pulls on her cigarette and raises her eyebrows in that way that says “Yeah? You want to know what I think of you? Just ask me, go on, ask me”. When people talk about my mum and I blush, because they refer to her as separate, different, shy, uninterested in other people. Aloof. When I was a kid, she used to sit apart from the other parents, smoking. Even then I knew, thought, why can’t she just be like everyone else?!

And she wonders why I can’t be her only social outlet. It’s like having tea next to a volcano. You’ll do it if you have to, but you don’t ever totally relax.

I have no idea how I managed to write so much last time I posted. I’m back to my usual speed of typing today, and don’t feel that the usb cable is plugged straight into my brain. I think I’m probably just too tired to post all the little things that are going on, some good, some bad. I probably have just enough energy to make a list:

Good stuff:
Someone I know has just had a baby, K&C’s eldest. I know him and his wife well enough to send them some ‘hurrah! you’ve had a baby!’ gear, and yet somehow not well enough to refer to them as friends. They are kind of friends. They would be friends if we lived closer. Or that’s what I tell myself.
(On a side note, it is terribly unfair that I don’t particularly fancy any of K&C’s sons, I could be married with 5 kids by now if so. I always envy people who marry someone they’ve known their whole life. Must be so familiar and comfy.)
I got some good bargains for my delicious small dude at the bootsale today.
I have hopefully bought a cut price bell tent from the netherlands, but we’ll see if they will agree to sell to me when they notice my order on Monday. Fingers crossed. If it arrives okay I am going to be mega excited!

Bad stuff:

The friend. Obviously. How can he claim I am his best friend? How does he think that? He plays games and then pretends not to, pretends even to himself. I think now he’s playing the ‘I’m going to punish you for having a family and being even vaguely happy at times by not writing back to you and being totally fake if/when I do” game. Not an unknown game, I think. He played it when I got back with R in 2006. I still don’t understand why some people get under your skin and others don’t. It’s not enough to see what buttons they are pressing and why. It still keeps happening. I don’t really know how to move on, I’ve known him in one capacity or other since around 2001. How do I function without being pissed off at him, laughing with him, the roller coaster of emotions that knowing him is, the sheer voyeurism that knowing him and his crazy life has become? What do you do if… you don’t like the person you have become when around a particular person, but you don’t know how to cut that person out of your life, don’t even WANT to? What if you know someone is a bad influence but you are hooked on knowing them, even if they let you down, make you angry, make you cry. It’s not like he’s THAT funny or entertaining when he’s manic. He’ s really not, I hate it when he’s high. I like the normal him but that person seems to be becoming a bitter, cynical and shallow man, someone I simply can’t admire. There is nothing left to like about him and yet… I’m still here. I still wonder if he will write back to me, I still wonder what he’s up to or what he would think of my son if he could meet him. Every communication from him results in a wash of negative emotion, so why do I go on with it all?
It doesn’t say very good things about my self esteem, that I’m up for that. Either there is a payoff for me that I can’t see, or I have low, low standards when it comes to friends. I don’t feel like I have. Maybe even too high standards, why I can’t be bothered to let many people in even though I like to have some friends. I just seem to have low standards when it comes to him. Me and my bloody white knight syndrome. Hey, if there are any counsellors or psychotherapists reading, do you fancy cutting me a deal for free extensive therapy in exchange for… me being your test subject?

That’s just wrong on so many levels.

I miss the girl I used to be. I liked her. Where did she go?

She used to take photos in bathrooms

Read more…

And was sillier, and more cheerful. And skinny.

But I guess this happened:

And then more important than the fights, there was this:

And she got fatter, and more thoughtful…

And eventually she didn’t take photos of herself anymore, because she didn’t think she was beautiful. And also because she had found someone far more beautiful than she would ever be.

And so I guess she just slipped away. I didn’t see her go. I wonder if it is too late to get her back?

Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh, take me back to the start

Just finished watching Educating Rita again and it’s left me feeling wistful and confused. What will happen to me? I wonder this sometimes when I have time to think, and it scares me. My partner is almost 50; I am 26. We are like the professor and his student in so many ways, especially tonight when I had to tell him off for talking to me like I was a silly little kid. I suppose I must seem so to him, at times. We usually have an equal partnership though.

I get scared sometimes, and I wonder what will happen if we split up, like we did last year. Are we destined to split up and get back together again once a year on average? That won’t wash when our son get a little older. Will we drift along comfortably forever, or will I eventually do a Rita and outgrow him?
It’s not until I see that film that I realize how scared he is of that happening. No, he’s not scared of it – he knows it will happen. In some way, the age gap will start to become a problem. The person I was with before him was older too, and he was jealous and possessive to boot instead of just being a slightly regretful and afraid like my DP. He used to predict that I would run off with someone else, or that I would leave him. I remember once I showed him a flickr contact of mine who had just discovered they were expecting a baby with their partner. He was balding and she was a stunner. ‘She’ll leave him’ he said instantly, and I chuckled and shook my head, amused at his pessimism. I didn’t see that he was paranoid that I would leave him, too. As far as I know they are still together, and their daughter is way  beyond toddlerhood.

But I was talking about DP. I didn’t fully understand just what he envisages happening until I saw that film. Of course – it’s not just an age gap thing. It’s a stage of life thing, a personality thing. It’s not that he wants bad things for me, he doesn’t. He just doesn’t want me to change so much that I decide I don’t love him anymore and can’t go on with him. That’s why I always balk at changes, and turn away from them. It’s why I don’t have any male friends anymore, why I don’t care about having put on 2 stone, or bother wearing makeup anymore. It’s not because he doesn’t want me to leave him – it’s because I don’t want to leave him. I’m too scared of changing, of being so myself that I find I’m drifting inevitably into a life that doesn’t include him. If I stay the same, then we’ll stay the same. If I change, then we’ll change. If I get stronger, more opinionated, more secure in myself, I might leave him. I might decide that our relationship has run its course, and that we are no longer right for each other.

And then I think of my son, and I get scared. I remember those weeks in the town I spent four years in before moving back to London. How strange it was to life there again, but with a baby this time. How when you are a single mother, the people from the NCT look at you with pity, and others look right through you. How you feel like trash, how you are scared that if you slip in the bath and knock your head, there will no no-one to know and no-one to take care of the baby. The fear of hurting him, of ‘falling off the edge’ and getting PND without knowing, the memory of the depression clawing at me, beckoning me back. How I moved back here with him to escape it, because I knew it would swallow me otherwise. And how much I missed him.

I don’t want to need someone, and be with them because they need me and are scared I will go. I want to be with someone out of choice: like Rita. She had the choice of what to do. I always said afterwards, we’ll I’ve left once. Now I know I can do it again if  need to. But leaving once doesn’t mean that I can do the thousand and one other things that I’m too scared of doing, in case it means I change and split up the family. Knowing I could leave if I really really wanted to – it doesn’t help with any of that.

Maybe I need to change anyway, and fuck everything else. Maybe I should just be myself. Even if I have to fight at first against someone elses insecurities in order to do what I need to do to be me. Even if it’s hard. Perhaps it would be worth it, because then I would be genuine, instead of waiting to live.

I can’t believe I just wrote nearly 800 words without stopping. I should get myself a counsellor…

So, after a little while over at vicky.wordpress.com, I have now returned home to roost at my trusty old domain, lostinthought.net. It’s nice to be back!

I’ve also given the site a new look. Or rather, I have trawled through about a billion themes and eventually settled on one. We’ll see how long this lasts! So, at the moment I’m using a theme called paper by Amanda Hawkins. I miss my old Relaxation 3 Column by Clemens Orth I think it was. He’s no longer active online and the theme probably needs updating even if I could find it. So, this theme reminds me of Relaxation 3 column, it’s all familiar and stuff. I like it a lot.

See what putting off an OU assignment can do to me??

Latest update with ‘the friend’. Didn’t communicate with him over Christmas; I had to bite my tongue to avoid saying something mean and retaliatory which I would doubtless regret later. I think I am still a bit shocked by the last time he and I spoke on the phone, how he could reduce me to tears when I don’t cry a lot as a rule and am fairly happy. I thought I would be able to move on from that better than I have. In fact my trust in him has taken a real beating, and it shows in my unconsious actions. I haven’t once felt like calling him since then, wheras before I would always entertain the idea of phoning him up, even during the Phone Drought of 07-09 when I couldn’t phone him without inadvertently revealing stuff about my life. (Stuff like, oh hey I have a baby! Yeah, just little, minor things…) I do not want to call him right now. I’m really, really wary and kind of mentally curled up into a ball. He has no idea this is still an issue, so to his credit he might do more to make amends if he knew I was still stinging from his harsh words. But then again, he might not.

Sometimes I google things like ‘Friend with bipolar’ ‘toxic friend definition’. One tells you to do whatever you can to support them, whikle remaining healthy yourself and setting boundaries. The other says Run for the hills! I don’t know if he’s ill and needs a doctor or just needs to be left alone to be snarky to whoever is silly/trusting enough to give him the time of day. I don’t know if I can do either of those things.

Sometimes, I don’t feel grown up at all. I’m going to be 27 this year and I still just want an adult to come and tell me what to do. I don’t know whether that ever goes away…