Hey!

It really has been a long time since I’ve written anything for Dearest Someone, possibly the longest break I’ve had in terms of publishing blog posts. No excuses, just five months of ups and downs, stress, adventures and the whole trying to figure out life/get on with things type of stuff.

I love blogging, I love reading people’s stories, learning about others’ experiences, and I love writing about my own experiences. Recently although I’ve not been sharing my experiences I’ve been trying to get back into writing – writing allows me to articulate what’s going on for me in a particular moment, it allows me to reflect, and it allows me (ever so slightly) to understand my own experiences when I’m finding it difficult to figure out what’s going on. Lately a lot of people have been telling me to write more – maybe it’s blindingly obvious to others that writing helps me, but the truth is when I’m not feeling particularly great or if I’m not in a great head space then writing is always a little difficult for me.

I was having a discussion with someone the other day about how we treat ourselves when we’re not feeling particularly great – I have a tendency to somehow want to make myself feel worse if I’m already feeling bad – because it’s easier and it’s familiar to feel bad, more so than it is for me to work toward making myself feel better. Sometimes acts of self-care don’t come naturally to me, I can get stuck in a loop of feeling bad, and feeling like the only possible way I can feel is bad, so what’s the point in trying to make myself feel better?

If I’m feeling low, or tired or I’m stressed I almost always want to feel the opposite of that. But sometimes it’s hard to ignore the feeling that there’s no other way to feel, or that I can’t feel any other way. And sometimes sitting down and allowing myself to feel rubbish, and dig deeper into why I’m feeling rubbish really helps me to understand what’s going on. Other times I need others to remind me that I don’t always have to feel bad, and recently I’ve really started to allow myself to be honest and share and reflect on things with those around me.

Usually I’m annoyingly stubborn when it comes to people who are trying to support me. I go through a really irritating thought process that prevents me from articulating to others how I’m feeling – I convince myself that I’m just wasting peoples time, that I’m just saying the same things over and over, or that I’m unable to articulate myself well enough and that others just won’t understand – and it really makes it difficult for me to speak to others. Especially when there’s a billion different thoughts going through my mind, and I can’t focus long enough to find the right words to say or summarise how I’m feeling. Other times I get so overwhelmed, or numb that I simply can’t find any words to say, or I suddenly forget how to get the thoughts out of my head and into comprehensive sentences – sometimes I simply can’t talk about things. And if it’s annoying for those who support me, I can promise you it’s annoying for me.

Although I’ve not been sharing posts I started a month or so ago keeping a notebook on my phone, I bullet point things when I’m confused about how I’m feeling, or if I’m feeling overwhelmed. I started doing this partially because so many people had told me to write stuff that I thought ‘stuff it, so many people think this works for me, so I’ll give it a try again’, but… they were right. Making notes on my phone when I wasn’t feeling great really helped, it helped me make sense of what was happening in the moment, and it also helped me to explain things to others when they asked questions.

So, here I am… sharing my ramblings. I really enjoy writing, it’s fun, and I can’t explain how good it feels to actually find a way to articulate what’s going on when I’m unable to audibly voice what’s happening.