Exhaustion : all these tears

I feel like I am going under today… A friend called and I waited to eat before returning the call but it went on for an hour and a half, and that was too long, by the time I got off the phone I had the spins and rain had started so its another day I didn’t get out with Jasper first… My friend’s marriage is ending and I think he needed to express some of his pain and he is the brother in law of my ex so we both know the difficult territory of having had a relationship with two members of a severely narcissistic family, that said there were warning signs for both of us when we got involved with our partners. The call also bought up the dark place that relationship took me into, but that said, I was in a dark place prior to it, living all alone at the coast, today it felt all too much to see what I put up with, not asking for better, not even taking steps to fight for or save myself. Just so darn sad….

That said I KNOW I have to move on from all of this past stuff.. So I got myself sorted and down to the market and amongst people for a while, but my digestion is all off as the long call put my timing off and then I ate the wrong kind of lunch… I just see more and more clearly how healthy boundaries lie at the heart of my problem.. and that if I don’t start changing and getting healthier ones, I am going to get sick. I cried all the way home in the car a moment ago, and I had the thought of how he pain of my past will always be like a pool that I have in the backyard of my house, from time to time I will take a swim in it but I no longer want to be inundated by it at every moment of the day…

This week brought up enormous grief, and I made the effort to invite my sister over for dinner on Thursday night but ended up waking up at 1 am with a massive anger attack the next morning, not so much at her but at the way Mum is controlling us from beyond the grave with this trust arrangement… I had a massive surge of fury as no one was there for her more in her later years than I and God did we do battle over some things… At times she wanted to cut my older sister’s sons off and I read her the riot act and then got in trouble for that, I used to get sick of one side of my family demonising the other side…she also took my living sister down at times.. Mum was a wounded child hiding behind so many masks and she could never really say a genuine sorry when she was in the wrong, she would always try to twist things around or use the collapse defence when things got too real… That said in order to feel better in myself it is important for me to realise that no one is perfect, life is not perfect and some of us just get a tougher deal than others and I am grateful for an income that can support me now even if, at times, I suffer guilt over relying upon it….If I had moved so far from family I would never have had to deal with so much of the illness that dogged the last years of my Mother’s life, and yet I gave that because I cared and wanted to be close…

Maybe all of the tears are good. Maybe finally acknowledging the painful reality is good..I met a friend yesterday who said she feels it is good for me that everything is coming to a head and that I need to try to take some of the emotion out of the inheritance issue, which I agree with…I will talk to my brother about how I feel about things in a few more days to get clarity. I know he is not out to hurt me but he had different ideas on the use of money and he doesn’t really like a lot of things I like, like older world places and inner soulful things….and I have been able to cry with my AA friend over how he probably will never be the close brother I longed for, that said he is who he is and I need to try to find a way to love him even if I find it hard to accept times… Life is just life, it so often just doesn’t accord with our wishes hopes and dreams.

We had a bit of rain fall earlier, Jasper ran off up the road after I returned from the market and went outside to bring the waste bins in..He probably had cabin fever and its better to let him go out and have his freedom as he always ends up making it home eventually… I do my best but on the days a lot is going on I just don’t always manage to walk him, at the moment I am just trying to accept that life is often far from perfect but that does not mean its not good enough… the sun is out right now and I feel better for having written and cleaned out my car and the waste bins…this afternoon I can relax and enjoy some quiet time, my soul just seems to be craving it at present.. This week was a really tough week but I did manage to come through it…even when it feels like its going to kill me life somehow seems to keep ticking on and I find moments of time to enjoy the good things, a cup of tea, sitting in the car listening to favourite songs, making a lovely meal.. Today I need to celebrate those gifts rather than let any further darkness drag me down… Hard as it is some days, I am very grateful to be alive.