Writing Workshop!

Depression

Before you judge me, walk a mile in my shoes;

Before you tell me to ‘pull myself together’, live my life and for just one day;

For you to understand me, you need to see through my eyes, see the futility of my life;

So you can feel what I feel, fall into my black hole and see how impossible the task of climbing out;

Before you judge me, walk a mile in my shoes!

Sleep does not come!

The numbers on the clock shine green in the darkness;

4 a.m. and still sleep does not come.

The sheets of the bed wrap around me like a shroud;

I have tossed and turned, trying to find relief.

First this way then that, searching for a way to lie

That does not cause more pain.

My brain screams with the tiredness, let me sleep.

My eyes prick as if filled with sand, or is it tears?

Tears pricking behind my eyes, demanding to be let free.

I watch the green minutes in the darkness,

As they tick towards the new day, or to the moment

When I can take more pills and medicate the pain into oblivion.

Just before the dawn, I drift into fitful sleep,

A sleep that will bring no relief, no respite.

Too soon the green numbers tick towards day,

I awake to the raucous sound of jangling bell

And stumble from my bed with medication hangover

To face another day the prisoner of pain.

My body screams with resistance to the movement,

My brain screams with tiredness and lack of sleep;

I can cry with frustration at this ailing frame I call a body

Or I can fight through another day.

‘I’m fine’ I will say when asked, but they will not know

Just how ‘not fine’ I really am in my secret world of pain.

Life's a bitch

And then you die

ian59

I used to have a sign above my desk that said, ‘I love deadlines, I like the wooshing sound they make as they fly by’.  These days, I don’t have deadlines, it is the days that make the wooshing sound.

This sounds so good! I love writing and I find it helps me so much and I really hope that what I write helps others! I would love to share what I write! I'm just not sure if it is allowed as I post it all in a blog??? Here is an example of my writing :-)

Fifty shades of grey beats all or nothing thinking, any Monday morning!

Everyone loves to ring in the New Year! Champagne flows or if your me it’s more of the cheaper sparkling wine…spirits are high, not just the alcohol ones either! Everyone is in great form, in anticipation of the glorious countdown from ten to one… And when the clock changes and brings us a brand new year we all become ecstatically happy, clinking glasses and snogging each other!

Why do the majority of the world exercise such excitement and happiness as the old year fades away into a distant memory leaving space for a brand one. Because it’s not just about new experiences and new memories! It’s about changes and new beginnings. It’s about fresh starts and second chances. We can get out a great big dish cloth and get our great big dirty slate full of disappointments and failures and upsets and arguments and give it a big auld wipe till it’s squeaky clean!!! And we all love squeaky-clean slates! It’s rids us of all our negative feelings and allows us to start again.

New Years resolutions are made by millions of people right around the globe, in a hope to make positive changes to their life.  It’s a time of reflection for us! For us to really look at what’s going right or what’s going wrong! We decide to give up smoking, to get fit, to lose weight, to find that perfect partner, to find that perfect job…the list is endless.  Gym memberships, weight loss programme memberships, nicotine patch sales all sore!  However usually it’s not long by the time there all forgotten about and the cigarette companies are breathing a sigh of relief!!!

However for me I simple couldn’t wait for a whole bloody year to swing aroung again to start afresh! So I allowed my self a brand new start every Monday morning!! They soon began to be my New Years! They were my new beginning, fresh start and clean slate! If last week was a week from hell and everything went wrong for me well it didn’t matter, because Monday would come around and I could wave bye bye to last week! Hell even now I’m typing this drinking a glass of wine and munching on a yummy bag of crisps but in the back of my mind I’m saying ‘Feck it, I’ll start again tomorrow….after all it IS gonna be Monday….my new beginnings day!’ I start a healthy eating regime EVERY Monday!!! Or should I say ‘Restart’!!!!

But the thing about Mondays are, they only come about once a week! And I’m also a bit impatience about waiting an entire week for new beginnings! I mean what if my Tuesday was RUINED!!???? Then I would have to wait another six days to start again!! Another six days of wallowing in the ruins of my fresh start and clean slate that is now extremely filthy! For example what if someone came over on Tuesday night and I opened a bottle of wine and shared full bag of crisps and a share size bag of maltesers (begrudgingly shared at that!!) Then my healthy eating for the week would be RUINED!!!! So I would simply have to continue drinking wine and eating like a starving savage all week till Monday comes around again with it’s dishcloth to clean my gross slate!!!

No, Mondays are too far apart for new beginnings! So really and truly I think mornings should be regarded as new beginnings! Every morning is a clean slate! Lets just hope I don’t go opening a bottle of wine and a share size bag maltesers for breakfast though! Then I’d be rightly fecked for the rest of the day!!! And let’s face it twenty hours is a long time to wait for a new beginning!!!!

So the question is, why my sensational appetite for new beginnings and clean slates?!!!! Because I am a new beginnings junkie of course! Simple as! If something goes wrong for me I neeeeeed a fresh start at it, a new beginning, I want to wipe that experience away and move on, but with a clean slate of course! (Yes I’m a perfectionist also…more on this in another post….oh yeah that one needs it’s own floor space!)

I remember many times in my past letting this addiction really dictate my experiences! If I was on a night out and something happened at the beginning of it I’d be that spoilt brat that wanted to go home NOW because the night was RUINED!!!!

If I had a terrible class at work I just wanted the day to be over so I could crawl home and go to bed because the day was ruined!!! I could go on and on but I think you have got the message! 

I never really understood my junkie attitude and often got into a right mood with my poor husband over things being RUINED!! By goodness I can get into some strops! Lol! But I understand it now! I get why I need a fresh start. And by understanding it I can slowly but surely liberate myself from it.

It’s something I think we all can relate to a little but especially those of us who experience anxiety. It all boils down to our one specific distorted thinking pattern! Black and white thinking!!! ‘All or nothing’ That’s it!

Depression and anxiety can do funny things to our thinking, and they make us think that situations, events, experiences have to be all or nothing. Everything has to go well or guess what……IT’S ALL RUINED!!!

Such black and white thinking sets off a trigger connected to our good old flight or fight response, something goes wrong, an emotional reaction is needed, a decision is needed quickly on how to cope so we go ‘Nothing….choose nothing…..it’s ALL RUINED now…’ By the way words such as ruined, always and never are key words in the black and white thinking vocabulary so watch out for them!!

But this polarized thinking is harsh isn’t it. It doesn’t allow us to consider all that is going well or work on solutions to iron out any issues we’re having! There’s no scope on either side of the black or white! So if something doesn’t go our way we throw our rattles out of the pram and scream! But you know what, it’s not exactly our fault is it! No one told me until the past couple of years that that was what I was doing! Nobody mentioned this whole distorted thinking theory! But as soon as they did, I studied it, and then myself! Yes, it was true I was caught in this web of black and white new beginnings and it had been going on for years! I’ll admit it still is a bit but nowhere near as bad as it was!

For example years ago, if I opened a bottle of wine on a Sunday night I’d say feck it! I’d polish it off; raid the kitchen presses for anything edible and start being good again tomorrow! Seen as I started off the evening being unhealthy I may as well forget about it now! But tonight I can reason with myself! My anxiety has no voice here at all. Ok, so I opened a bottle of wine and I will enjoy a glass and then that will be it. I don’t have to force the rest of it down my neck (not that it was ever forced!) But my point is, I’m trying to live in between the black and white now! In the grey!

I’m not so sure about fifty shades of grey but I can definitely suggest living your life in shades of grey is so much better than confining your thoughts and your life to black or white! We need that balance to allow us some leeway in life. If things go wrong it’s ok, we can reflect then and there, on the spot, to see if we can turn the wrong around and make things better. And if we can’t we can decide then and there to live with it and move on. It can be an instant decision. Living in shades of grey means we don’t have to cling onto new beginnings the same way we once did! Yes it is nice to sit down and reflect on our life and where we are going and what we want but not every Sunday night and certainly not every night!

Trust in you journey and what you are doing. If you don’t like it do something about it. You don’t have to wait till next January! But one thing I would strongly suggest if you think you think far too much on the black and white side of life is to start living in the grey! Know it’s ok to find a balance. Look up ‘black and white distorting thinking’ for yourself and find ways to break the thoughts for yourself. For me, often it’s realizing what I’m doing and why I’m doing it and then slowly learning the healthier way of thinking! It takes time and practice but it’s worth it.  Because when I’m living in the grey Sunday nights are a lot nicer and anxiety doesn’t get much of a say!

Thank you for reading! x

Hi @Carinamc

Love it!!!!!!  More of the same please.  I love writing too, always prefer writing letters or e-mailing to speaking on the phone, I can explain myself best in writing.

I think it is fine to post this on here, I for one really enjoyed reading it.

Suncatcher2015

Thank you x 

I can't get enough of all your stories, poems, and thoughts! I am really happy to see that this is working so well! 

Please keep writing, I think it helps us all to see your creativity and commitment. 

Best,

Gilda 

Is your life mapped out? – Why do bad things happen to good people?

A friend of mine, whilst not a full blown Spiritualist, does have spiritual leanings.  She doesn’t view this as a religion, more a lifestyle.

She believes that our lives are mapped out  - not the minor things, but the major incidents and the people that play major roles in life.  She believes we create a life plan before incarnation and include incidents that alter our direction, or have a real influence on our chosen path.  She believed that the people who take the major roles in our life such as family members, partners, teachers, or others who are key in shaping our personalities and destiny, are ‘pre-planned’ before we start a life.

She believes in reincarnation and that when we have déja vu or meet that person with whom we establish an immediate rapport, this is because we have walked that path before or this is a person we have met in a previous life.

I am a very private person, quiet and reserved.  I don’t open up quickly on first meeting.  (except on this site J ) When I met this friend however, we were on a three day course together and sat next to each other.  We went to dinner that evening and found ourselves telling each other our life histories – something neither of us would normally do with someone we had known for years, let alone a complete stranger.  By the end of the three days we were firm friends and have stayed so.  We are so alike, we could be sisters.

She believes we actually were sisters in a previous life and that the way we talked and talked at that initial meeting is explained by us ‘catching up’ with each other – a sort of, ‘this is what I have done since I last sawyou’ conversation.  Hmm, not sure on that, but it was unusual for me to be so forthcoming with details of my life.

While I found this all interesting and could see the logic in some of her explanations.  I really began to think that maybe she had something however, after a certain incident in my own life.

In 1983 I had a serious car accident.  My life has never been the same since.  It ruined my marriage, left me disabled, affected my children’s self-confidence and so much more.  I had four years in a wheelchair and my life has been affected in all sorts of ways ever since.  Eventually, I divorced in 1995 as a direct result of the accident. 

In 2006, having had to give up yet another job due to health issues from this accident, I started my own business to fit around me, rather than me having to try and fit into someone else’s business.  That business has brought me into contact with thousands of people over the fifteen years until I wound it up this year, unable to manage it any longer due to worsening health.

I can honestly say through it, I have touched lives and helped so many people.  I really think of all the things I have done in my life, if we do all have a life plan mapped out before we are born, then the whole point of mine was these fifteen years.

In order for that to happen however, I had to have that accident.  I would never have had this business or met these people otherwise.   Was it meant, was it pre-ordained? 

Well, one thing that makes me think that possibly it could have been, is this.  The accident happened in early summer 1983.  I had experienced a near miss the week before the accident, and one the week before that.  We all have those little driving experiences, where we think ‘phew, that was close’, but these were really bad near misses, the sort that leave you shaken and feeling a little sick, the sort that stay with you and you have a job to shake off, that you tell others about because they stick in your mind. 

One was when a car, having waited till I nearly got up to him, suddenly turned right across my path into a layby.  The other was a car overtaking an oncoming vehicle.  I rounded a bend to find him hurtling towards me on my side of the road.  I mounted the grass verge and the car stalled.  Other drivers stopped to see if I was OK, whilst the overtaking car was long gone.  So, both incidents fairly major.

The actual accident was third time unlucky!  I was on a long straight road when I saw a large lorry speeding up a left hand adjoining road.  It was my right of way, but something made me think he was not going to stop.  My attention was riveted on him, to the point where I couldn’t have told you if there was anything coming towards me – something that scared me witless when I realised it later.

Sure enough, he came straight out without looking.  I know he didn’t look because I was staring at him, willing him to see me.  I swung onto the wrong side of the road to try and avoid him, which is why it scared me when I realised I didn’t know if anything was approaching me.  If there had been, I would have hit them head on.

As it was, he swung so wide coming out of the turning at speed, he sideswiped my car, and sent me spinning up the road.  The traction on the wheels meant the car was tipping, ready to roll, but then somehow bounced back onto its four wheels.

The car was a wreck, the seatbelt saved my life, but broke my spine.  Broke my spine and turned my whole life upside down, all in the space of a few seconds.

Those three simple words ‘broke my spine’ don’t come close to describing the years of struggle, the years of pain both physical, mental and emotional, the loss of my marriage, my self-esteem, my personality due to the drugs and so much more.

Like a phoenix from the ashes of that life however, came these fifteen years of running the business that in its turn touched and helped the lives of many.

In my friend’s logic and beliefs are correct, I had planned to have the accident to make all this happen as my destiny was to have this business and help so many.  This is evidenced she thinks, by the fact that it took three attempts, but was successful in the end.  Successful?  Not a word I would have used!

If it is true and we plan our own lives before incarnation, plan the events that will shape our destiny, next time I am going to have a serious word with myself!!!!  I have told my friend if she is around at the time, she must sit on me hard to stop me signing up for such things!!!

No Matter

No matter the difference in search of self

or the teachings you know and follow

there will be more to learn today 

and joy to bring in the morrow

Whatever you believe and whatever you seek

Let us all share together

the wealth of knowledge and beauty

that resides with our being