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.
