All change please!

I haven’t written in a few weeks, because I really have not had much to say, I’ve been feeling quiet low in myself and didn’t want to depress you all. Anyway I have decided a few things – first thing is dealing with the impending return of the ex, the one who broke my heart into a million pieces. I have put a few pounds on recently, mainly because of an illness I didn’t realise, I was very skinny as a child, teenager and up to about 25. I could eat anything and I didn’t put a pound on I didn’t count calories, exercise or weigh myself so as I’ve got older and stared to put weight on I have struggled with the concept I have never wanted to be a food obsessive but now the time has come.

I have 3 weeks to look fabulous, just to show him what he lost, I have a dress it may be a little shorter than I usually wear but it’s cute and not tarty but that means I have to lose a little tummy and make sure my butt and my legs are looking worthy. I don’t know if I can do it in 3 weeks but I can try. I have started working out which is hard for me and quite frankly hurts but what I have discovered is that since I’ve started – granted it’s only been a week but my appetite has shrunk and I crave healthy food. Maybe this could be a break through; I only hope it has the desired effect.

The second thing is that I have decided that I really need to get out of this town. I know I have said this before and even further back before ever saying it on here it has been flying through my head at random intervals for years, but I really, really, really want to actually do it. I feel like I’m suffocating so I’ve started applying for jobs, anywhere, although they jobs may be a little out of my league if I actually land one the only reason for not taking it and leaving would be stupidity.

So for the next few weeks I’m focussing on change, it may be a long road and by the end of it I might be very hungry but lets just see what happens. I hope one day I’m writing about a big move but I guess for now I need to be patient.

Ups and Downs?

So they say that life is full of ups and downs, I’m waiting for my up in fact I’ve been waiting for 2 years. I messed up the interview I had, totally messed it up, the questions were irrelevant in my opinion and nothing like I’d prepared for, one of the questions was even asking what qualifications were needed to do my clients job. How the hell would I know? I don’t do that job. The questions were so focused on not only my current job (which is nothing like the job I’d applied for) but she kept asking the same questions even after I’d fully answered it 3 times before.

I really don’t know what I did in a previous life to deserve all this bad luck, I try to live my life ethically, I put others before myself and I get nothing but crap all the time. I’m in a job I hate, I can’t seem to find anyone even vaguely interested in me and I’m skint! When am I going to catch a break? It seems I’m walking round those corners into huge brick walls.

I’m not happy because I’ve been so positive lately, I thought things would finally go my way but now it’s all crashing around me and to top it off the dreaded ex is coming to our office party in June! Seriously why? Why does he not just crawl back under the rock he crawled out from? I don’t want to see him, I don’t want to even breath the same air as him after everything he put me through. I’m so sick of the nasty people always landing on their feet and the nice genuine people just get kicked in the stomach.

I’m sorry I am ranting this week but really when’s it going to end? I realise my problems are trivial compared to others, my brother is going through hell at the moment and I know there are people in terrible situations and I empathise I really do, those people probably don’t deserve it either. They say life is what you make of it but are people just destined to fail no matter how hard they try?

The Sands of Time

I have realised life is a funny thing, when you are hurting or waiting for something it seems to move so slowly. When you are in pain you feel every second of every day, when you are waiting for the pain to ease or go away you feel it hurt even more. When you are happy you forget to cherish it, you don’t feel it every second you lose track of it and then it’s gone, it’s nothing short of a cruel joke that your mind plays on itself.  If anyone had anything to do with it the happy days would be longer and the painful days would fly by and be forgotten. The last year has flown by, quite the opposite to the year before that dragged on and on and on, the knife twisting every day.

I have commented before that it surprises me how quickly some people can find a new partner after a breakup and I have a new example. A friend of mine was devastated by her last break up which happen slightly after my last break up, she was as heartbroken as I was but she was in a foreign country away from her closest friends. I think it took her about a year to find someone else, someone much younger than her, but now they are married. Strange really I wouldn’t have put her in the hasty marriage bracket, she has never been the ‘must get married and have kids asap’ type of person, unlike me and one of her sisters, although it was hardly a traditional affair.

Maybe I get too hung up on things, maybe that’s why I am still on my own, maybe I need to move, try to tap a new gene pool. I give up, I don’t know what the answer is. Life is short and I think I live too much in the past, there is nothing you can do about the past, it’s gone, all you can do is try to learn from your mistakes. I am more positive lately and now nearly 2 years on from my break up I have lost the need for his excuses and reasons for his actions, in fact I never want to see him again and I certainly don’t want to hear anything he might have to say to me.

I have taught myself to be happy for me and to realise when I am happy and stop to take it in. It doesn’t have to be something fantastic, simple things like waking up and the sun is shining instead of the rain and snow or sharing a joke with a friend. It is so easy to become consumed by hurt and anger and it becomes a big part of your life so much so you forget how to be happy. So next time something makes you smile stop and take it in one day you might need it to stop the sadness.

You’d Better Get To Living!

I’ve had a tough week, a friend of mine died in a tragic diving accident, he was only 39 and had a young family and although I’m still in shock it made me think of a few things he said to me over the years that I will always hold in my memory. He loved diving and he was experienced and it jolted me into remembering that life is far too short. I have wasted far too much time over someone who wasn’t worth my love or my tears and I am not prepared to let it affect me any more.

In life you make mistakes, you do things you regret but in my opinion so long as you can accept them and learn from them they can only help you become a happier person. The problem is it’s so hard sometimes to drag yourself up if someone has crushed you down, looking on the positive side of things is one of the most difficult things to do when all around you is black and white and silent. When you are so broken you don’t know how you can put yourself back together again. The thing I have realised is that the pieces go back together but not necessarily in the same way.

After the fog I decided I would try to become a more positive person, it’s not an easy road especially as life does all it can sometimes to knock you down but I think I’m getting there. After this week I have vowed to make the most of all I can, try not to dream of the impossible and keep the possible in sight. Someone I spent some time with once told me her philosophy for life was to ‘not sweat the small stuff’ and she is right, you can break your heart over something or someone that you cannot change and all it does is drain your energy.

My final conversations with my friend I will cherish and when I think of him I can’t help but smile and I will make sure that for him I will try to live life to the full, look to the future and not the past and I only hope that he will look in on me from time to time and maybe send me someone special.

The 10 Ton Truck

Sometimes the hardest thing to accept is the end of a relationship, how can the person you love so much just walk away so easily? The thing I’ve come to realise after doing hours of research on the internet and talking to people who have ended a relationship – they have been wanting it to end way before you have even noticed and ignored any signs. I think we have all been in the position where we keep hoping things will get better and have thought it will be ok once money improves or the project at work is done, we think it’s us that have the issues so we keep quiet. They think they have communicated this to you but because they haven’t sat you down and said ‘I’m thinking of ending this’ you have no idea and this is why it hits you so hard.

When this happens you are where they were months before and you have to go through all the emotions and acceptance they did whilst they still had you but without them. This leaves you with an idealistic view of the relationship and the person the ‘yes we had problems but nothing we couldn’t work out’ is a common misconception of the relationship you have just lost. Yes there were problems but more often than not the problems you are referring to are not the problems they left you for they are problems caused by them whilst they were trying to tell you it’s nearly over and distancing themselves from you by causing arguments or taking up new pass times or making new friends.

You are left with heartache because you will never really know the reason why and this gives you the idea that if you can just talk it will be ok, you can work it out. From bitter experience I have learnt that the hardest thing to do is what everyone advises you to do – walk away as easily as they did. The worst thing is you are only hurting yourself in so many ways because you know if you let go, walk away, live without them and enjoy it you know it’s over so you cling on for dear life because he might just come back and if you don’t he will never know how much you love them.

The thing is whilst you are focusing on showing them how much you love them you are pushing them and everyone else away from you and torturing yourself because you are not focusing on healing yourself. I only started letting go after I’d pushed my ex so far away from me he may as well be on the other side of the world and he was in another relationship. It was only then that I realised he was never coming back and I had to get on with my life you see whilst I thought he was still single and I was convincing myself he was finding getting over the relationship as hard as I was I thought there was a chance. A small glimmer of hope that he would come back to me, as soon as I found out he was with someone else I knew he wasn’t going to turn up on my door step begging me for forgiveness, so I started to let go.

Once I started the frightening prospect of letting him, the hurt, the anger and the pain leave me I became stronger, more positive and generally a nicer person to be around. A weight lifted and it was not a frightening thing at all, it was the thought of it that was worse than the experience which lets face it is what fear is all about. I am not going to preach, it’s all great for someone to sit here typing away at what you should do to heal the heartbreak or even get your man back but when you are in the hell that is a break up from someone you love you cannot think straight and you are certainly not rational. I absolutely believe that you can only begin this process when you are ready to and not before but once you do it’s the best feeling ever.

Just somebody that I used to know.

When you begin a relationship everything is amazing, everything flows, nothing is a problem. The relationship grows, you fall in love, you can’t imagine your life without them, they are everything. When the cracks begin to show you cling on, you fight for the love you have, you try to make it work because you love them. When the relationship fails it breaks you, you cry, beg, you crumble inside, you don’t know how you will go on, what is your life without them the great love, their touch, their smile, the look of love in their eyes.

Does this sound familiar to you? So why when the pain has gone, when the wounds have healed, when you can once again live your life without pain do you sit back and think ‘my god what was I thinking?’. All of a sudden you can’t believe what you saw in them, you cringe at the during break up emotions you displayed, you can’t believe you spent so much time after the break up wishing they had changed their minds, hoping they will come crawling back. You have gone from not knowing how you will get through the day without them to dating other people and thanking you’re lucky stars you are no longer in that relationship.

I have lost years grieving over lost love only to recover and can’t believe how I felt and why it has taken me so long to come out of the other side. Maybe I have underlying issues, in fact I think I probably do but I wonder how many other people are like me? How many people find it hard to let go, to get over the rejection of someone you did nothing but love, care and prioritise? I am going to assume I am not alone in this and ask the question why do we spend so much time and effort pursuing someone who no longer loves us the way we thought they did.

I recently saw a photo of my ex boyfriend with his new girlfriend, the man I had spent over a year desperate to make things right with, I saw him and I didn’t recognise him. He did not look like the man I was in love with, he looked like someone else, and someone I didn’t know. I felt nothing, no pounding heart, no tears in my eyes, nothing and it shocked me because when I hear his voice (I have to speak to him regularly at work) I still get nervous and sometimes my heart is beating so loudly he must be able to hear it!

The thing is I have realise I have built up this dream in my head, the man I loved, the man I thought I knew, the man I want him to be but he is not that man anymore. You see it was not his physical appearance I was initially attracted to (I had known him for 5 years before we started a relationship) but to see him look so much different (he has doubled in his size and looked at least 8 years older than he is) has made me see him in a different way, as if he was a different person and the person who hurt me so much and I loved so much may as well not exist and the man he is now is just someone I work with like anyone else. If only I had come to this realisation earlier, before I lost my pride and dignity (texting whilst drunk, being overly nice, being absolutely horrible etc), maybe we could have remained friends and I could wish him well in his relationship.

Since seeing his photo I have felt a weight has been lifted off me I feel free and I think it shows. Now when I have to speak to him I see that photo and feel nothing and can talk to him like I used to, he has started speaking to me properly too (since we broke up I have been lucky to get more than a grunt from him). When I go out now people have commented that there is something different about me, more relaxed, maybe my taxi light has finally turned on and I have more energy to have fun because I’m not spending my energy trying to second guess him and waiting for him to realise he’s lost the best thing that has ever happened to him! Now I only wish I had know this or seen this before now and saved my energy for something important instead of putting him on a pedestal that he didn’t deserve.

Must be talking to an Angel?

I have thought about this for many years and yes I do believe in angels, I’m not convinced they are superior beings with wings but I defiantly think they exists. Have you ever had your life go out of control? Have you ever been lost? Have you ever had people come into your life at these times and disappear when you are ok? These are your angels, real human beings, no halos, no wings but amazing presence.

There have been times of my life when I have met people who without realising it have been a huge influence on my life, they have picked me up when I have been low, boosted my confidence when I have needed it but they have not realised what they did for me. Life moves in strange patterns of emotions, there are times when you need guidance and help to get through them and that’s when your angels appear. They don’t disappear to hurt you but just because you simply no longer need them, sometimes they re appear years later and sometimes you never see them again. They don’t have to be good friends, sometimes only a fleeting conversation is sufficient, sometimes they are friends you have lost touch with and they come back into your life but they are sent from somewhere I’m sure of it.

I have learnt over the years you are responsible for your own happiness, no one can make you happy, it comes from within but sometimes you just need a nudge in the right direction. I met a couple when I was working in a bar about 7 years ago, at the time I was feeling a bit lost, I had had two break ups in six months, I was living with my mum and I wasn’t happy at work. They didn’t do anything, we chatted during my shifts gave me good advice from their stories and experiences but more than anything they boosted my confidence, I’m still not sure how but they did. I left the bar and didn’t see them again until 18 months ago after my heart was broken and I was staying with a friend because I didn’t have a permanent address, I took a job in different bar and there they were, every Saturday and again they boosted my confidence (again I’m still not sure how), they talked to me, I listened to them and although we are not great friends (I no longer work there and don’t see them anymore) I am aware that they have appeared in my life when I have needed them the most.

I’m not saying it’s fate, the jury is still out on the ‘everything happens for a reason’ theory not everyone you meet is good for you and sometimes you are the angel, you are the one to help someone else and you don’t have to be intelligent, philosophical or amazing maybe you will never know what you did or what you said that made the difference. An angel does not put your life right but gives you the courage to put your own life back on a positive path. So next time you connect with someone and then they fade out of your life don’t feel bad, don’t be angry even if cross words are said be happy in the knowledge that there is a chance you were their angel or they were yours and than a life has changed for the better.