YouTube

Yellow you,

Hope all is well in your world?

Here is my short and shameless plug for my vlog channel. If you've known me awhile then you'll know I used to do this on the regular about um... too many years ago and I decided I'd like to start it again. I'm enjoying the sharing and the creative process so we'll see where it goes from here.

If you'd like a geeze, here it is.

Nun night :)

A Handful of Ginger-nuts and Fear.

I often come on here to vent or process something I've been pondering for awhile and can't seem to get out of my head. So this might be a little mish-mashy but if you normally read this then that's probably not going to phase you.

I did two vlogs last week which have gotten no support vs plenty of angry comments. It's hard not to feel a little bummed about the feedback but then again I wasn't under any illusions that posting a vlog on body hair and women's choices was going to get many pats on the back. Emer O'Toole (the woman who brought about that conversation for me) showed her gloriously hairy pits on TV quite some time ago and my comments were based on that. She's an incredibly brave woman (although it saddens me that she'd have to be, to simply stop shaving her armpits publicly) and even responded to a tweet of mine. It was well worth it to hear her on my side and supporting me, with all the crap she gets, my YouTube abuse is merely a spec in comparison with what she has to deal with.

My other vlog was one for a channel I'm hoping to start about parenting (not judging or advising, just discussing) and the issues that I feel would have/still would help my partner and I as parents. I feel like there are so many things that aren't talked about and I'd really like to open a conversation up about them. I have a long way to go before I manage to make videos that are getting it right though, as I'm a rambler and need to learn how to edit right down to the point. So that's a work in progress.

Something else I've been thinking a lot about, which is a recurring theme for me in my blogs is self-sabotage. I am incredibly guilty of this type of thing, not consciously (most of the time) and it took me a really long time to stop doing it in my relationships. The thing is though, as I've been peeling back the layers and working on myself and everything that makes me messed up, each layer gets harder and harder to get through. My first one was probably being unable to be alone, I learnt how to enjoy my own company through months of solitude when I was 15, by myself, in France, unable to speak or understand any French, for a year. Steep but important learning curves. Actually what real learning isn't steep or dangerous or somewhat traumatising?

So anyway, after that it was probably about five years of therapy, pain, tons of medication, mistakes, mess, relationships, draining my parents, sadness, numbness, adventures, manic, debt accruing, madness that were my early twenties/Bipolar out-of-control-ness-ness. When I was somewhat stable it was relationship learning (that never really ends though) with my first real partnership with someone who was able to see me outside of my mental illness and not be scared. Then learning how to fit into a family that was already there before me as a Step-Mum, falling in love with a gorgeous three year old and creating a relationship with her. Then I was able to attempt to tackle my binge eating with a lot of therapy and nutrition education (I definitely still struggle with this but much like most of these lessons, I think it's one that will always be there, evolving as I get older).

Currently I'm trying to get through my deeply ingrained fear of exercise (so far I've managed to start enjoying going to the gym), but at the same time I'm finding it so frustrating. My relationship with food has gotten very strange, when I'm alone I want to eat and the self-sabotage is so crazy because I'm well aware of it. Perhaps I need to go back to the 15 year old lesson and learn how to enjoy being by myself again but without food to comfort me. I have to find things that I enjoy that don't include stuffing things into my face, because whilst I've managed to mostly keep out of binge eating territory, I'm eating for the wrong reasons. Yes I could just make sure there was only healthy food in the fridge but I don't think that's particularly fair to my partner and Step-Daughter (I already keep ice cream out for that reason) and it's not the what, it's the WHY.

After that many years of therapy I still can't quite get down to the why properly. I'm not normally scared of this type of thing but for some reason I'm scared of what I will have to deal with emotionally if my partner goes to work and I don't pick up that muesli bar, handful of ginger-nut biscuits and terrible romantic comedy.

I Refused Cake Today.

I refused cake today.

I refused lollies today.

I didn't add sugar to my coffee today.

I ate breakfast today.

I ate an apple when I was still hungry after lunch today.

I am 102.8 kilos (226.635 pounds) - kilos make me sound thinner - today.

I will probably be the same weight tomorrow, is what I'm thinking today.

I don't want this blog to become a weight-loss journey but I did want to write about this because it forces me to make it something concrete, today.

I will be posting my weight every so often, like today.

I don't think I have the guts (ha!) to post a photo yet today.

I may do that if I think it might help me or other people like me, another day other than today.

I'm done for today.

My Thoughts On Marriage.

I was/am one of the lucky few people in my generation to grow up with parents who were (and still are) in-love. They don't just love each other as companions, they didn't stay together "for the kids" (I know because they told me it wouldn't have been enough of a reason to), and somehow their love managed to stick around. I was always aware that it took work, that it wasn't magic, so I grew up knowing that it was possible but not always easy to find and keep love and that even some nights of a mainly happy marriage are spent sleeping on the couch.

In the last year or so I've begun to question what I believe marriage to be, more often questioning whether the ideals of marriage and in particular weddings actually suit me and if it is something I want to be a part of. I think it's often easier to figure out what you don't want to be a part of first, sort of like crossing out the options to narrow down and discover the ones you actually want. So my list is as follows:

1. I don't want to be a part of an institution that would have excluded me if the person I had eventually wanted to spend my life with was a woman. 
2. Or one that my friends and family are automatically excluded from if they love someone of the same sex. 
3. I don't want to carry on the sexist traditions which still symbolise that my female ancestors were once the property of their fathers and husbands. 
4. I also know that I don't want to spend the tidy sum of a house deposit on a glorified party (or just the dress). 
5. Nor do I expect my parents or partner's parents to pay for it. 
6. I don't want to plan said party to thinly disguise itself with claims about our commitment to our relationship but which rarely actually includes the person who makes it ours and not just mine.
7. I don't want to invite people who haven't actively taken part in our lives but who still expect that we will invite them simply because of genetics. 

All these reasons are logical but my feelings very rarely are. It's odd how you can grow up thinking that there are certain milestones you have to pass at certain ages otherwise you're a failure. I don't like the feeling that I might be missing out on something or regret having not taken part but I'm also not sure how relevant these milestones are to my life or how I want to live it anymore. The beautiful wedding with the flowers, the cake and the perfection isn't important to me as an adult as it was when I was a child. Maybe it's time to let those dreams go in order to be happy with my decisions now. 

My sister said to me awhile ago that she likes the romance of making the decision to be with her partner, the person she wakes up next to. I like that idea, because even when he pisses me off or has kept me awake snoring I choose to be with my partner every single morning. I feel lucky to have met and have him in my life every day. 

So, I suppose my final word on the subject for now is that if it was possible to remove the archaic traditions, extravagance, societal pressure, ridiculous expectations and general bullshit around marriage and weddings then I'd be keen as mustard. But as I'm not sure if it is, I'm not. 

Please Note: If you know me well enough then I won't have to say that the weddings I have been to and will continue to go to in the future have nothing to do with my thoughts on this subject. My love and support for those relationships and people goes far beyond the reasons I myself have against marriage, because it's about my reasons for me, not for them.