Are You Ready To Listen?

  Somewhere out there today, someone is making strong statements about something, maybe that person is you. Are you the one who's walking down the street getting all worked up about very small things? Is it you who's waking up every day and wondering why in the world you're making all of this effort when everything feels so thankless? Could it be you who wants to change everything around you and hope that in some way the changes in scenery will seep inside your brain and your bones and change the way you feel? Well, if you're hearing YES bells ringing out inside your head at this present moment I suggest you continue reading because this particular blog post is for you. I want to help you, but first you must agree to help yourself or we will continue walking around in circles for all eternity and no one really wants to spend their one precious life in such a conundrum do they? (However, if you're not ready to help yourself yet then I think you should leave this entry for another day. DO remember that it's here though and I invite you to come back to it.)

  So I see it like this. I used to be you. I was you ten years ago when I was eighteen and my first boyfriend announced he wanted to tour around the world with his band and I didn't really fit in with his plans. Same boyfriend went precisely nowhere… but I sure as hell did. I announced to my mother that I was going to go backpacking around the world on Father's Day 2005 as we were driving home from a visit to my maternal grandparents in St Helens. I remember the inner turmoil well, I needed something to focus on, something to aim for but more than anything something to drown out the upset that was raging inside me. I'd seen round-the-world -trips broadcast on the TV so naturally I was all up for the braided hair, walk along the shoreline, eat rice in Goa experience. My mother wasn't so keen and she pretty much said no to that idea but she did say that if I did want to have a gap year she'd accept proposals which were well thought out and researched, so I went to New Zealand a year later and worked at a high school and its boarding house facility. I found sleeping difficult in New Zealand and I was often homesick and sad. A few years after that another relationship ended and I took myself to the delights of Smithdown Road because a) Smithdown Road is closer to the city centre than my family's Crosby home, and the city centre is where I was working and studying at the time and b) I didn't want to run into my now ex boyfriend in our domiciliary hometown, nor did I want to regularly see 'our' places. I went off to Smithdown Road and promptly broke down after a few months. During this particular breakdown I announced to my mother during a car journey home from The Trafford Centre in Manchester that I was going to go and work at a café in Australia just as soon as my degree was finished with. She just issued a flat out no this time and it was at this point that she delivered some well thought out words of wisdom, this is what she said, "Helen you can't just keep running away when things don't feel good. You have to look at yourself from within and examine why this keeps happening to you." Or words to similar effect, I was in the middle of a breakdown you see so I can't remember her exact words; I just wanted to go to my terraced sanctuary on Smithdown Road, eat fried eggs and plan my next great escape. Things went from bad to worse and my father found himself in the GPs office with me hunting down some Prozac. Good times. Years went by and I got a little stronger and then I fell down and guess what I did when I fell down? You've got it! I went to Greece. Now that was a pretty good experience. I couldn't communicate with anyone in Greece very well and I didn't get along with my boss who spoke the best English so you can see how that worked out for me, but I did exercise a lot, I ate well and I lost a lot of weight. I got back to England in a good place on that occasion but I'd only taped over the damage, I hadn't actually confronted it so when unexpected things showed up I didn't cope well but generally speaking I was alright. A few months went by and I decided I'd go to live in Spain, I wasn't fed up, I wasn't depressed. I was fine; I just wanted to teach English as a foreign language again. I arrived and all was good for a few weeks but then the rot started to set in and I went well and truly off my trolley at Christmas time. I decided that enough was enough and I was going to address the matter. I visited my GP and she prescribed me with some anti depressants, I found an online cogitative behavioural therapy course and I don't mind telling you that it was the best money I've ever spent. It's been a tough old eighteen months life wise after the CBT. I lost a close relative and had a little go at grief, I met a man who had some interesting ideas about the best way to treat a woman and I had a rough time of it at work. Read on, the positive bit is coming up.

  BUT, I'm still here. I came back to Seville for a second year running when I really wanted to go and live on the beach, I returned to the same school and I came back to the same flat despite the fact it's outside of the city centre and a little bit on the pricey side. I wanted everything to stay exactly the same because I wanted to prove to myself that I could properly cope with life and all of things it throws at us without living in a constant state of change and I'm mighty glad I did because I believe that I've learned some valuable lessons in the art of Life Livement. Nah, things don't always go my way but I'm here and I'm living and breathing and I'm enjoying myself and I'm making sensible decisions. I'm not papering over the cracks anymore and choosing to  focus on a new horizon in the hope that it will solve any current problems I'm experiencing. I'm doing yoga instead, I've been doing CBT for weight loss for 6 weeks or so, I'm writing in a diary, I'm planning my days and my nights and I'm using anti anxiety techniques when I find myself getting unnecessarily worked up and tempted to reach for the Hagen Daz. I've lost 9lbs, but what's more important than that is that I'm stronger now in both mind and body than I have ever been before. How did I get here? I made peace with myself and I decided to allow the world in rather than just live in all four corners of it. I take each day one at a time and I relish the fabulous moments when they come my way. I don't make rash decisions, I don't allow myself to get in the driving seat and drive to unpleasant and frightening places and I don’t blame Spain and the cultural differences I've encountered here for any inner turmoil I might be experiencing. It's not Spain's fault that it does things differently to England, it is Spain's fault that customer service in banks is a disgrace but it's not Spain's fault that I struggled to cope with myself once upon a time. That was on me and it was on me to fix it.

  So if any of this does resonate with you and you do think you might need a little help but you're too proud to take it (maybe you've had help before and you think it's like taking a step back, I assure you - ignoring the problem is the step back. What did you learn last time? Is ignoring these things a good idea?) or too nervous to take the first step then you should remember that I personally think about people just like you each day and although you can't see me I'm still here, quietly celebrating each step you take towards being a happier and healthier you. But I'm not into papering over the cracks, using others as an emotional crutch or ignoring the real problem, what I'm very into and I very much respect are those people who take responsibility for their own mental health and keep working on it each day until they wake up again and think, 'my oh my. It's raining, my washing machine is broken, I can't get access to a cash machine because the one nearest me is out of order and someone nicked my bike again butttttt…. never mind, I'm going to make myself a lovely coffee and take a little walk to the next available cash machine and maybe I'll stop buying bikes.' Life doesn't need to feel so tricky, it's simply simple once you get the hang of it, and like I said, one day at a time. Make small decisions, encourage small changes, address and work through the actual problems and you'll feel the foundations underneath you strengthen and you also might notice light returning to your eyes and a smile starting to broaden again across your heart. Who knows, maybe you'll even be able to see the fantastic person other people see you as through your own eyes and believe the genuine things they say to you with your own ears. I think that would be very nice, don't you?