A Chrysalis To Butterfly…?

So… The dark cloud descends again. I wish that it would find a hole to crawl in and stay there. But it won’t. It’s just decided to come back again – taking away that sense of myself that is already so fragile anyway. I feel like I am losing a lot, and its simply losing yet another battle in a war that can never be truly won. I now have no job, I feel constant pain, I’m exhausted and ill… I’m wondering when the good stuff is going to turn up.

I’m trying to do new things instead. I’m not sure exactly how well they’re going – but I hope for success in the end. This is hopefully where my stubbornness is used for good instead of evil… I can’t help but feeling I’m deliberately being stripped of everything I thought I once had and wanted (and I admit I didn’t really want all of them – the job, the life, etc; it just wasn’t ‘me’) – but at the same time I had some stability, security and understanding of the world through them. Now they’re going or they’re gone, and I’m not left with much. Maybe it’s to make room for better stuff, or at least different stuff. Maybe they’ll be things that will be more truthful and fulfilling to the life I really want… Who knows. It’s just a shame the pain, or dark cloud, isn’t something that’s also being taken. I could live without them.

At this moment, it’s hard to see the wood for the trees, to see hope or care about anything. That’s what the dark cloud does. That’s what falling down the rabbit hole is. It’s a dark world that doesn’t make sense, and strips away everything you thought once did. It comes for you when you’re vulnerable - when you’re tired, low, alone, and floundering. It helps you drown, and there seems to be no way out – no way to stop it from happening.

I feel like I don’t know anything anymore – everything that was once comforting to me, in its familiarity at least, has been taken away. Even hope right now seems like a distant ideal; something that can’t be grasped or even imagined. I’d like to think my life of being a caterpillar was coming to its end; simply that the chrysalis is being prepared, to wait for the natural phenomenon to occur and metamorphoses to be complete. To do so, I leave things that a caterpillar needs behind for the cocoon stage, only to pick up what I truly need after, when I have grown to become the butterfly.

… A flight of fancy, maybe. A nice little image to cling to. It would be nice if it was true. Of course, I don’t know that it isn’t true. But nice things don’t tend to happen to me. I’ve struggled always; nothing has ever come easy… So you’d think I should be used to it by now. Except I’m not. I’m downright tired of it. It is tedious to have to struggle for everything – even the simplest things that people should be able to take for granted. Like breathing, or walking, or eating. And if I’m supposed to learn something from my trials and tribulations, then the point is lost on me. I try not to think too much about it, put my head down, gather my courage, and keep on going through the storms. If I do try and think about it, I start falling apart. I’m tired of doing that, too. I write to try and get it out of my head and out of my heart – so the morose feelings can be given to the ‘page’ instead of letting it live in me.

At the very least I would like the hope to come back. The dark cloud keeps chasing it away; I wish it wouldn’t.

 

 

Lost

I feel lost… Everything I thought I knew wasn’t really to be that way. I feel like I’m at an impasse – nowhere to go, no clue where to look, and fear that I might not find it. I have an unshakable faith, almost a blind hope, that somehow the answer will come… from somewhere. Where…? Maybe only God knows – I cannot imagine it myself. But I know I cannot lose it. That is when that awful Darkness comes and leaves me virtually the walking dead.

I feel like I’ve been left with very little to break this surreal-feeling of this strange impasse. I don’t know whether I am even in this ‘negotiating party’ of it – I rather feel like I’m being left out of the loop of whatever is going on here. Each day I feel I wake up to nothing but pain and confusion; feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck during the night, with all parts of my body feeling at best achey and at worst in agony – and also with no idea what I’m supposed to be doing with my day. I feel I have lost some direction here, and what I thought I wanted to do isn’t really what I wanted to do at all, it turns out. I have little interest in it, little care for it, and in a strange twist, I’m stuck with it.

I was supposed to work for this company on a large project, and part of the contracted deal was to go on this course – a rather expensive one. It was supposed to be a career move, so I took the deal for less money because they would pay for the course. Unfortunately with just working days 2 days to spare before the end of the first month, they decided the whole project team should immediately go on the spot (decided on a Friday morning, the project was to be disbanded by the end of the day) because they had changed their minds about the project.

So, because it was within the first month, I was not only left with any payout for being ‘terminated’ (as if I was fired for negligence, when it was they who decided they simply didn’t want that damned project now), I was also left to cover the bill for the course, thanks to a cleverly-written loophole in the contract. The agency kept on at me from the moment the ‘termination’ was called for the money to be repaid, and they suggested so blithely that they just take it away from my pay. Which would have left me with almost no money to live on at all. These slimy toads I had to spend ages to convince finally accepted I would pay by other means – which I did a few days later. Lets just say I’m lucky to have an incredibly generous family.

However, this has now left me without employment, stuck taking a course – that’s been paid for by my family now – which has no relevance to my life anymore, because the point of it was to learn it for that specific project. A project that now is gone. I have no other interest in this course at all. It is not what I wanted to spend such money on, nor spend my time doing. Without the practical application in work that I was to have, what I’m being taught means essentially nothing to me – I find it difficult to do the work involved with it, to understand the work involved, and I find it almost impossible to care about it. It is not what I imagined doing with my life – I feel coerced into it solely to secure the job… and in hindsight I probably should have turned the job down. Clearly.

 

Now I feel lost. And unemployed. Let down by cold, corporate greed  and ruthlessness – by both the company I worked for and the agency that wrote the course into the contract in such a way I would be burdened with paying for it and going on it for the next 2 1/2 months, in my own time, with no idea exactly what they’re talking about – and virtually no interest in working with it. I’m trying not to resent it. It’s hard. But if I did start to, the Darkness will smell the fear and desolation from it and come back for me, to live in me again, no doubt.

I have enjoyed working in IT – but the corporate dictation of the companies leaves me cold. Even with non-profit and charities, the word on everyone’s lips is Money. There is no care in there for anything else. I’m not that kind of person. I don’t want to work just so others can create money, and for those who are so afraid to spend it they do it at others’ expense. Contracting brings it home even more: you are nothing but an expendable commodity, and we will expend you for our own sakes if required. They save themselves first, and you’re not even considered. This is the second project in a row I’ve worked on where the work and the data has been for nothing in the end because the project closed. I’ve wasted nearly a year of my life creating something that will never be used, never be seen; results disregarded. My work has been for nothing. This is not gainful or enjoyable employment – this has ended up being nothing but paid-for pointlessness. I got my money, delivered something – but that something was disregarded and ignored for reasons only the heads of these departments and organisations know. That was not a success. I have not experienced success for many years… Now I feel like this is not something I can continue to do much longer.

I hope that I will be able to turn a corner, work out what to do as this junction. It feels like everything has simply stopped. I no longer know where to go – where I’m supposed to go. I’m also trying to avoid the Darkness – if it comes back I really am going to be lost. I’ll keep hoping and praying the answer will come – and that it might be soon. I wish that I’d had the opportunity to put that much money into a course I really wanted to do – some from of writing would’ve been the best. I realise now that data analysis can’t really be for me – it’s company-directed, and it’s always only about the money. Not the work. I need do be doing something where people care about the work – the ‘fruits of their labour’ – and not just what money the company is getting out of it, or putting into it. I want to be somewhere where people are passionate about the work they do, where they’re good at it, and the production of work counts for something – not just discarded and ignored.

 

I’ll  have to carry on with that course. I still have my proofing/ editing course to finally finish up, which will hopefully be soon. Maybe that will lead me to something. Maybe together they will lead me to something… ‘God works in mysterious ways‘ and all that. I know that happens – I’ve experienced it before, and I’ve realised it in hindsight if not at the time. I hope and I pray… Perhaps something I could never have imagined come from this. Because I’d hate to look back and see that all this confusion and pain was for nothing.

 

 

 

 

 

Bring Me Home

Still living in a world without you…

 

The darkness still sits inside me. I think I’m over it… I thought I was over it. But it’s like the ghosts – the demons – still live inside me, and I don’t know why. It’s over – it’s been over for such a long time. So why am I still afraid?

The pain still feels like it’s tearing through me – but it’s been more than a decade since the knives sliced through my heart. I still feel like I’m there, feeling every stab and tear, feeling every word and tormenting ache. I feel like I never moved on.

Ten years since I left the pain; nearly thirty years since it started. So why does it still haunt me so? What is my exorcism to be, so I can finally leave it behind?

I know… It’s my life – it’s real, it’s true, it’s mine. I cannot run away from it. I don’t want to – not really. I want to learn from it, mature from it, be a better person for it. Instead I am burdened and tormented by it. But where it should be left is in the past. It has no place in the present. It has no place in my heart. The only place it has is in my history – and it’s been and gone and done with.

You’d think I’d be simply relieved it’s been and gone and done with. So why aren’t I? Why am I hoarding this poisonous toxin of agony to the point where it’s killing me? The residue of my past sticks to me and it feels like there’s no getting rid of it. I seem to have a personality incompatible with getting through this – obsessive, intense, analytical, introverted and socially inept… It’s not a constructive character to be able to bounce away from being dragged through Hell and expected to function well afterwards – especially when functioning wasn’t an easy thing to do in the first place.

But in attempting to get away from these “character flaws” (as I’ve seen them) I’ve attempted (on so many occasions) to mask them – be something I’m not. Without accepting what I am, and attempting to realistically modify myself and grow appropriately – without hiding behind smokescreens of fake interests. The only identity I seem to know is “Victim/Survivor”… So I suppose on some level it’s no wonder I continue to “fake” personalities.

…So is it strange I feel like I fluctuate between being super-obsessive and bossy – actually, dementedly overbearing – and slinking into a bland nothing of no opinion whatsoever, trying to be nothing but agreeable? I can’t find the middle-ground, where I feel I’m allowed my personality, my opinion, but I’m also laid-back about things. I have little – no - social skills… I struggle with interaction and guess what the “right” thing to do is – and I can’t seem to learn. I don’t really know how to behave around people.

 

There’s a part of my brain that says, not worry about it – it’s just who I am and if I want to learn, then I need to just be comfortable with this fact and then I  have a platform to learn from. I suppose by that, I mean that if I’m not willing to accept who (or what) I am, then I can’t really ever learn to expand on what I am. Instead I keep pasting over faked attempts at pretending to be like other people. And I’m not. A fact that frightens some intense part of my brain. I was bulled from the first time I walked into Playgroup because I was socially inept, different, quiet, academic. The kids started first, then from Primary the teachers enjoyed joining in. Openly so. It was not a pleasant experience, and I think – I strongly suspect – this is the reason I am too scared to be myself. It’s a little overwhelming when people are responding so negatively to you for who you are.

I know on some fundamental level what I am – but I suspect an equal fundamental problem is that I’m afraid of it. No, I’m not horrible or evil. That’s not why… It’s because I’ve always known (I suppose the right word is “suspected”, because I’ve never had it actually confirmed) that the reason for my lifelong torment at the hands of others. I think I’ve just got to the point where I simply rely on reacting to what’s going on, hiding myself behind it.

I’m somewhat scared I don’t even have a personality anymore – not a core one. I worry I never even had one in the first place. I’m scattered everywhere, stretching myself over so many things. I’m not sure what I truly like, what I’m good at, what I can do – and what I shouldn’t do. I feel like a chameleon without a home – just changing all the time, with rapidly-changing background to sync to. I’m exhausted from it. I just want to be “me”. Whatever that is.

But I feel – somewhere – like I do have a home. That I could have a home. A real sense of my own self… But it’s hidden. Like the centre of a horribly complicated maze. Trapped within the ruins of my life; the ashes of what has been. The fires of Hell long burned out within me, but has left nothing but rubble and ruins. I stand in those ruins, looking around me, wondering what’s become of me – of my life. My existence. Am I building or rebuilding? Am I creating a whole new life or am I having to create one from scratch, because I was too young when the fires started burning to have started one in the first place?

 

At end of all this, I just want me… Myself. Something that’s really real and genuine within me. I feel like dropping down, calling up and begging to be set free from myself and my questions, my torments. I feel like calling out Please Bring Me Home To Myself. 

 

 

Losing Control

Losing control… I would say that would be a fair understatement of where I’ve been for quite some time now.

I’ve been convinced by the demon in my head that I cannot exist with or without it… The twenty-odd years of 24/7 brainwashing has worked and I think I cannot shake this conviction from my heart. With its departure from most of me, my life seems empty… I am, I think, in effect grieving for the loss of it. I don’t know how else to explain that nauseating feeling of loss, and feeling very rather lost since I’ve taken its reins and banished it from controlling my life.

Its ghost is there, in the background, telling me I’m nothing without it, and I do feel that. Its been there since I was a young child of eleven. Possibly longer without my knowing it. How do I possible define myself now a prominent part of me is suddenly missing? I have to suddenly go out and actually find out what’s left and build it back up to be a whole person again… A tough task when you’ve made a dent into your thirties. After decades of fighting for survival against the demon, against trauma, against the world, the most taxing thing in my life is ensuring BT and the landlord get paid on time, and maybe what game I’d like to play. And nothing really intimidates me anymore – I’ve seen worse – the worst – and survived to care about nothing more important than whether I prefer Mr Muscle or Cillit Bang (… read it properly…!) … Its a different world. And frankly I do not understand it.

I find myself overwhelmed with this task of managing a “normal-ish” life, whilst also failing to understand how people find it taxing. There’s nothing big to worry about… Its probably why they invent “problems” like “am I skinny enough???”, “can I ‘have it all’ and still be skinny”, “I can’t afford to go to Florida AND Australia this year…”, or “oh dear, I can’t choose the best nursery for my little darlings”… After going to Hell and back, I do not understand how people can be so intense about making these frivolities “problems”. Me, I get confused why it matters and why I’m supposed to take precedence with things that – the grand scheme of things – matter not one whit, and is nothing you’ll be thinking about when its time to follow the light from your deathbed.

In the middle of all this, I also know that am not “normal”… I am internally battle-scarred and rather hardened, carrying cynicism and little sympathy for others who fall at even a minor hiccup. I do not, and I am not going to, play by these daft and pointless rules of society’s “pretty” existence – I’m not interested, as its barely a facade that keeps itself together. People go out of their way to live up to imagined expectations (I mean who made this “perfection” crap the “law”…). I cannot do that, and I will not – cannot – play their silly games. I’ve been through too much to feel such things can possibly be so important that they make you miserable. Find out what real misery is – then maybe you’ll have something to say that’s worth your whining… It may sound cold to anyone who hasn’t faced trauma or real hard times, or someone who hasn’t looked death in the face and then turned their back on it. But that is how it feels when people who don’t have it so bad go on about things that don’t really make that much difference in the long-run of life.

In the end all this makes me feel like I’ve totally lost control of myself and my life… And to be honest, like I never had it in the first place. It – the demon – has controlled me almost my whole life, and I have done some awful things to grasp some of that control back, but I never succeeded. I still feel lost; scattered to the breeze like I have been crushed into so many pieces I have no hope of being put back together again. Without my “arch enemy” to fight, I feel my life has lost purpose – that is has no other purpose… And, really, it doesn’t. Everything in my life as been governed towards fighting it. I thought being its mistress would lead me to peace – instead it leaves me feeling empty and without focus.

I honestly don’t know what to do without it. In gaining control of the monster, I seem to have lost control of my life.

It was very far from what I expected.
I suppose you should be careful what you wish for… It might just happen…

 
Now that it seems to have happened, its not the outcome I wanted at all. And I feel lost…

 

The Painful Truth…

 

Living with chronic pain is, to say the least, a right pain. It restricts what you can do, and in most cases you end up being reliant (at the very least) on strong painkillers to get through the most basic of tasks and the quietest of days – doing any more than that can require a huge amount of willpower and gritting of teeth, followed by pure exhaustion.

 

Personally, I am really tired of being in constant pain and having to treat my body like it’s made of bone China. There is barely anything that doesn’t hurt every second of every day, and even a slight pressure can cause a lot of pain which can border on agony if it’s already flared and sensitive. I’m tired of being always tired – from the effort of just living, I’m perpetually exhausted. My mind has to be continuously active in blocking out as much of the pain as is possible, and this drains me. I used to rely on painkillers until I became addicted to codeine – now I have mastered that, I try to stay away from them as much as possible and try to manage my pain by shutting it out of my mind, or just gritting my teeth and trying not to cry. Only when it becomes too much to bear do I end up turning back to the pills, and I control my consumption of them with an even firmer iron fist than I do the pain itself.

 

I must admit that I believe a life without it would not be my own – it would be unrecognisable as a life of mine, having dealt with this for most of my existence. I’ve had it for so long I would not recognise my life without it, and would take a lot of adjusting – not that I wouldn’t take that option in an instant if it were offered. I have incorporated it into my life and tried to work around it as much as possible, but this has been unfortunately to the detriment of other things – like fun activities. I loved yoga, horse-riding, walking – these are no longer a part of my life, except for a small amount of walking (and by “walking”, I mean long walks or treks in nice places, not walking to the shop…). My job is now working within IT and sitting at a desk – standing and walking for hours hasn’t been an option for several years, and I could never successfully do such jobs again.

 

In my darker moments I resent the hell out of this semi-prison I am in. I feel so restricted in so many areas of life, and I hate having to think twice before doing anything, and I have heartbroken hatred towards my body for keeping me confined in pain. When a light hit, or even a touch can leave me squealing and in tears, it drives home how much I hate what it puts me through. My bones, my back, my stomach, my legs, my shoulders, my head, my neck… There’s hardly an area that does not cause me endless pain day after day. Nothing but strong-ish painkillers can give me any relief – and even then it’s not enough to be pain-free… It just dulls it enough so I don’t want to cry from it. The real gem is that I can’t even take anti-inflammatory pills because thanks to a blood-clotting condition NSAIDs are out of the question.

 

In my more dramatic moments I feel cursed, angry and frustrated. The stress of having to cope with the unrelenting pain, as well as trying to focus on doing at least some daily tasks, and my job, plays havoc with my already disastrous and unstable mental health – which then also inflicts more exhaustion on my already-struggling body. This then causes more pain, as my body is made even more hyper-sensitive with tense muscles, tension headaches (or worse – full-blown migraines), and adrenaline hormones surging permanently through my bloodstream. To say that sometimes I really struggle to cope is an understatement.

 

Just a day, or a week, off would be lovely. To have a small amount of time that was pain (and painkiller) free would be a real treat. A restful night, followed by being able to get out of bed without at least wincing, and to be able to move around and do basic things without being reduced to frustrated tears or just plain not being able to move would be pretty awesome. It would be great to be able to sit at my desk without feeling horribly uncomfortable (instead of trying hard to concentrate on work whilst trying to ignore the pain shooting through abdomen, back, legs, and head), or play my beloved videogames without having to have giant cushions placed on the floor just so, to support my hips, back and legs (sitting any other way results in pure agony after just a few minutes).

 

Unfortunately, until real-life starts inventing real Fairy Godmothers with real Magic Wands, I am stuck with grimace-and-bare-it – and what will probably be a lifelong requirement for codeine consumption. Yesterday it was so bad, I bought Syndol – which has a tranquiliser that works as a muscle-relaxant. I had to drink coffee like it was going out of fashion to stay awake, but I was pretty pain-free (and rather out of it) for most of the day… Thank goodness nobody takes much notice at me, hiding behind my screens, at work!

 

Right now, at this moment, the pain is bad – the codeine has run out and my head is overwhelmed by the pain data flooding in from just about every part of my being, especially my back, hips and legs. It does make me want to cry (sorry to be all morose and all that…) – and I do try to cope by turning up the volume on my headphones (thank the lord in the rather insular world of IT world it’s a fairly normal practice to stuff music in your ears and concentrate on your work) and drowning out the “noise” that the horrible pain makes.

 

Eventually, I’ll give into it and pop another two pills – careful not to slip into dosing way above the recommended limit, like I used to. After the splurge of “celebrity” deaths following overdoing the painkiller addiction until you officially overdose, I have become very relieved that I have survived doing exactly the same thing myself, with no long-term damage done. It’s too easy to do – I know that as well as the next person doing it – so I am hyper-vigilant about it now.

 

Like everyone else in similar situations, it’s really just all about the bottom-line… You just want the pain to go away…

 

 

Starting Over & Changing The Game

 

The hard work begins here…. I have started on this (long?) road of my training with Chapterhouse Publishing’s course in Copy Editing and Proofreading, and I have just enrolled.

I will be waiting for the manuals with the tools of the trade I feel already quite familiar with to arrive, so I will finally learn the “proper” ways of doing it that other people will be requiring from me.

Working with Cat is always really straightforward – she’s a good writer and writes fairly short articles, which she then just emails to me and I edit on MS Word – or Google Docs, if I need easier online access. The mistakes are usually minor and quickly rectified, and the articles are always interesting and entertaining to read. All bonuses when it comes to these things! I rather think it will not be quite so easy when it comes to doing it professionally, though…

I am aware that a lot of copy-editing is still done on paper and requires specialist correction techniques so as those who receive the edited copy can adjust the writing accordingly. It’s learning this skill that will be important, but will also make editing much less straightforward than the way I edit Cat’s writing. Other than that I’ve had the experience of editing and proofreading copies for years, for so many things, so I think I’m ready for it!

What I am looking forward to (in the – hopefully – not-too-distant-future) is attaching my natural fascination and acquired skills with IT and programming to the learning how VBAs and analytical tools can be used to assist with editing. The SfEP (Society for Editors and Proofreaders) runs courses on these skills – as well as specific website editing courses – and it’s something I’m looking forward to doing when I’ve gained the relevant skills to apply for them.

I’m not really naturally inclined to handle paper – electronic and virtual things are much easier to use, manipulate, and don’t clog up space, and they also much more fun to play with. For me, it was the final pro-point to trying to start this up as a career, as I could “geek-it-up” and continue to use my IT skills with it, and learn new ones too – a huge bonus. I would love my main focus to be with on-screen editing, website editing, and using programs and software to help me do this job to.

My original dilemma was that I didn’t want to leave the geek-world of IT behind for “traditional” non-IT work. The only “old-fashioned” thing I embrace is reading real books – as in ones made of paper, not Kindles. After reading that these skills were becoming core skills, and were being coveted by the “clients”, I was finally convinced that I would be quite happy slowly transferring my career into this industry. 

After reading there were even specialist courses on doing these things, it was the final tick for my boxes, and now I’m excited about learning how IT programming and analytical tools can be applied to copy-editing. I will also enjoy this, as it will then mean I can still use my “toys” (IT software and programs) to work – something I would have sorely missed if they weren’t the way forward in this industry. 

To be honest, if I hadn’t read about them, I would never have even really considered it as a serious option as a possible future career. Now I realise how I can finally mesh all my passions together to do one pretty interesting job – and I will be really focusing on getting on with the training, and honing transferable skills I already have to something I pretty much to anyway.

I would also love to put these to good use within the IT or gaming industries – editing and proofreading for game writers or IT manuals… But that’s for the future. I’m still putting it down as a goal though!

For the first time, I may be genuinely looking forward to the future… 

New Ventures

I have decided to simply comemorate the eve of my journey into a new, yet still slightly familiar, career path. I have spent the evening beginning the skeleton concept for a site, and I will soon be learning how to hone my skills of editing and proofreading in a more professional capacity.

 

I’ve been working to try and make this something I can be proud of, and I mean to start as I go on. Because I’ve remained silent on the issue since it’s been playing in my head, this probably seems quite a surprise to some, although  I think anyone who truly knows me, my character and my interests would know that it was a rather obvious progression for me. 

I have also spent the evening editing (in my current “informal” capacity) more of Cat’s requirements – this time her Canadian CV. The travel writer is currently in Canada for at least a year and looking to make a few dollars with the odd administrative job as she finds various things to write about. She’s already written two or three articles having been out there, and managed to score herself a complimentary trip on an expensive 30-hour cross-country train journey in return for a good write-up – and I can confidently say it was a very good write-up that she gave them, too. I already wish I had had the time and money to go and take the same trip myself – it sounded pretty amazing!


I hope to also document my journey, the published work that I have edited for Cat, and my progression throughout my coursework and beyond. I know I will enjoy it – because I already do…