As I have just typed up 6 months of my life in 2 days, the emotion it conjures up within is a strange one. I knew it would be hard to go back and I often ask myself why am I doing this? And I really don’t know or do I?
Maybe by typing them out I feel I will exorcise my demons, come to terms with my guilt and realise it wasn’t all as bad as I think it was.
On the other hand, could I be conjuring up the very personal inner thoughts & feelings that still haunt me and my biggest fear, reading things I did that are worst than my memories because let’s face it, a decent into alcohol abuse is not pretty, mixed in with someone who was not aware of their own mental health at the time and all from a very young and naive girl, the likelihood is your fear is going to be real, especially the more personal experiences.
I have also thought about just reading my diaries, not typing them out, and to be honest, at this moment in time, that is looking more appropriate, due to my journey into Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique session which hopefully will be in April. I feel that I need to go through these diaries sooner rather than later, as I feel I need to process this and work through it myself before I have the QHHT session.
Then there was my initial thoughts of wanting to type them out so that if I could help just one person going through what I went through as a young adult, to see that you can make it through the other side, then it would be worth laying my soul bare! A re-discovery for myself and a light at the end of the tunnel for someone else.
I just don’t know, and the reason I am so torn is because there has always always been a feeling inside me, since I wrote my poems and diaries, that there was a reason for doing so and who knows, is this it? One thing is for sure, in the late 80’s / early 90’s there was no social media or blogging in the everyday normal sense that there maybe is today and maybe that is why I wrote them, because I was lonely and had no-one to share my thoughts with. I mean, who would want to listen anyway???
I guess also part of me just wants to read them to see what happens, where my mental health all started and why I fell so hard and why I still hold on to some of those same deep thoughts about myself.
1987 – 1991 is the build up with adolescence, losing my Mum and starting college. Little did I know what was to lie ahead, those years were hard enough.
1992 – 1996 are the lost years where I am struggling with the world and with myself, finding what I thought was the answer at the bottom of a bottle, hoping to die, and thinking I was a poet!! I maybe had some thoughts of grandeur too but it was the only way I could release the pain and the thoughts going round and round and round in my head. My only escape was loud music and alcohol. The only way I could be comfortable around lots of people was with alcohol and playing the ‘always happy go lucky’ party girl. Early 1993 I felt something was going amiss and despite my experience with my first therapist after Mum died, I went to my Dr who arranged for me to see a therapist of some sort. On my first visit I took along with me my folder of ‘poems’ or some may say ‘rants and ramblings’, thinking if I show them these, they will see how troubled I was (how talented I was) and be able to help me because they were my inner thoughts that I could not say out loud or sober. I was also playing games and wanting to have someone challenge me. But, in my memory, the man just took the folder, said they were unimportant and put it on the table and asked me how I was feeling. The ‘student’ sitting in on the session when asked if they would like to say anything, said ‘yes, but we will leave that until I return from Australia’ (I was being ‘made’ to go as my Dad was visiting his brother and sister out there and wanted me to go out for the summer to meet them and it was my early 21st birthday present). The Dr and the student really messed with my head and I left for Australia hoping to die in the aeroplane, feeling there was absolutely no hope or help out there and drank myself through the whole ‘bad trip’ (poor dad, he was not happy with me and who can blame him) and that was just the start. I never did return to them when I got back 3 months later and I didn’t go to seek help for another 5 or 6 years, which was when I had a breakdown. Don’t get me wrong, I know I have done good with my life, I have achieved so much (which I don’t take time to credit myself for) and I am so happy in my life now, but inside I can still feel just as alone, confused, out of place and frustrated in my thinking, and I guess I just don’t understand why.
Surprisingly also as I re read them through, I can remember most as clear as day & I still resonate with my thought processing so in some aspects, I don’t feel like I have quite grown up at all, especially where love is concerned lol!! It seemed I flitted from one love to another in a matter of days without any form of proper ‘relationship’ and that was pretty much how it went, for years. Nowadays I don’t put myself in those kinds of situations but I have found myself in unwanted situations, when I have just been talking in a friendly manner, or thinking more of a situation than there was so it still confuses me. This could be to do with being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) and I am still learning about that. In fact, that’s another reason I wanted to revisit my diaries, to look back at those years with my knowledge now of being an HSP and see if I could understand my reactions to love and other situations from a HSP viewpoint rather than feeling it was always something wrong with me. I think that is a huge part of it to be honest. I always felt there was something wrong with me but I couldn’t understand what because I knew deep down I was a nice, fairly intelligent, kind, thoughtful and honest person but that didn’t protect me in the big wide world so I had to change. I guess since finding out about being HSP 10 years ago, the two things that I have never got to the bottom of was the fall out from the alcohol years emotionally and relationships with myself and with others and if I’m honest, kind of my last resort to help me understand was going to be reading back through my thoughts, written down in my own words at that time, ‘No fuckin frills’ as Skid Row might say!
Another part to all this is my love for heavy metal / rock music has dwindled these past few years and I feel I no longer belong to a ‘tribe’. Partly because since Covid, going to gigs has increased my anxiety and so alcohol seems to be the best solution, which I then regret for days after and so I hardly go anymore. Or is it because since starting my own business I have reignited a passion around theatre and supporting the creative arts and entertainment and I feel much more at ease with myself? See the thing is, I relate my love for that music to feelings of anger, fuck the world, darkness, pain and sadness (and lots of alcohol and schmoke). Not that I think the music is only about those things, it is a bloody amazing genre of music (and I still love to have a good ole music session and totally escape in the riffs and drums, screaming from inside, knees bent, head down and go), but it was the reason it appealed to me initially, a huge big statement to the world and one that gave me the armour to tell everyone how strong I was and that I didn’t care about anything. Of course my poor suffering Dad saw straight through me and of course I never let him know he was right lol but I am probably just growing out of it now if the truth be told, as he said I would!! Music is still part of my everyday, of course it is, but it is so hard to shed the leather skin of a life you devised to protect yourself because when you take that jacket off, you are so very vulnerable to the world, and I finally felt I belonged to a group! Now I just don’t feel I belong anymore, well until I am at a gig of course and I put my leather back on. I guess I just have to trust, as I did as a troubled youngster in my darkest days, and as my parents always told me when I was being bullied, everything is going to be fine, just be yourself!
So, do I type them out or do I just read them?? I guess we will find out, maybe I will just read them and maybe do a summary of each year, in two parts?
One thing is for sure, whatever age I am in life, I still have just as many questions, however many I find an answer to!!!
Where The Earth Meets The Water 