When Black Becomes a Rainbow

Gosh!  It has almost been a month since I wrote my first post.  How time flies! I promised on that first post that I would let everyone see the real me.  To be perfectly honest, it is getting a little harder trying to explain things that are going on in my life without holding back.  I don't want to upset people; no one is to blame for what I have been through, it was meant to happen.  I don't want anyone to feel that things could have been different - if they were meant to be different they would have been! When I shared this blog with my classmates from school, many expressed guilt at their lack of knowledge of what I had been through. All I could answer was that I had no idea either! The clinical depression really only came to a head in sixth form and because it deteriorated pretty quickly, it would have been difficult for anyone in school to have been able to help before it got so bad. When I look back, I remember very littl...

My post on Tuesday brought up two important topics.  The first being the well know saying 'don't judge a book by its cover' and the second being my desire to explain where I am with my struggles presently.  I'd like to deal with the latter point here. Putting it out there as it is: I struggle with food.   I struggle with body image. I struggle with weight.   None of these I find easy to talk about.  Over the years I have come to accept that I have had clinical depression.  But I never wanted to admit that I had an eating disorder.  Maybe because the idea behind an eating disorder; the want to be thin, is not actually something I ever valued.  When I was growing up there was no pressure to look like a supermodel. I never really thought that being thin was an important ideal.  But what I did find as my depression worsened was that not eating gave me a feeling of control.  Control over my mood.  I found that the l...

I feel like a fraud. I have done for a long time. One of my biggest fears over the years was being 'found out'. People seeing the real me. As those who are closest to me can attest (namely my parents), one of my stronger qualities is acting. Showing myself to be fine on the outside, yet on the inside feeling so much pain. I would put all my energy into acting, purporting to be someone I was not. I felt so guilty for being two-faced. It got to a point that I didn't know what was me, and what was the 'pretend me'. It's something I am particularly struggling with now really. Well, maybe not to the extent I struggled 6 years back; but I feel I have built up a wall around me. A pretend Rivkah, who can be crazy, sarcastic and funny. Someone who doesn't think or worry. Someone irreligious who has rebelled without thought. Maybe I am just being my over-judgemental self, but I feel that I show myself to be this empty vessel and that saddens me. But that i...

Hey! I hope you can forgive me for the sheepy post from last night.  For some odd reason, it gave me some relief to be able to share my insomnia with the world at large.  I only hope that tonight will be an improvement (both sleep-wise and in my post on here!).   I hate not being able to fall asleep, as do most people I assume!  It really makes you realise how little control you actually have over your life!  The most aggravating part is that  the thoughts that come up at night are the ones that you can't do anything about whilst lying in bed.  So why worry?  I guess if it were so easy we wouldn't have the condition called insomnia.  But it is so important to remind myself again and again that worrying doesn't get me anywhere, especially not when lying in a horizontal position wearing my [Care Bear] pyjamas under my [extremely warm and cosy] duvet. Okay so I realise my biggest worry at the moment is about what my future holds. ...

Can't sleep. Count sheep? Has never helped me to be honest! But here is a cute little sheepy doing his calculations... An early reference to counting sheep as a means of attaining sleep can be found in Illustrations of Political Economy by Harriet Martineau, from 1832: "It was a sight of monotony to behold one sheep after another follow the adventurous one, each in turn placing its fore-feet on the breach in the fence, bringing up its hind legs after it, looking around for an instant from the summit, and then making the plunge into the dry ditch, tufted with locks of wool. The process might have been more composing if the field might have been another man's property, or if the flock had making its way out instead of in; but the recollection of the scene of transit served to send the landowner to sleep more than once, when occurring at the end of the train of anxious thoughts which had kept him awake."  There you go, you learn new t...

The beginning of another week.  A good week for all I hope. Following on from Tuesday's post (ya know, the one on paperclips), I have decided that I am going to post on here twice a week.  Maybe once at the beginning of the week so I can talk about what I hope the week will bring and once at the end of the week when I can reflect on how the week has gone. I am currently struggling to write what is going on in my head; there seems to be an awful lot of activity in there at the moment!  I'll admit that I feel the perfectionism creeping in, telling me that whatever I write won't be good enough.  I am not going to fall for that again.  And posting this will be another step in the right direction.  This blog is not something that will disappear just because I don't feel good one day.  That is letting illness rule my life.  I want this blog to stay 'whatever the weather' and I want people to see me in whatever place I am.  A ...

Well, I am feeling better than yesterday - I can tell by the lack of road rage when in my KA! My pledge to keep sending this blog out more is getting more difficult. I really want to be able to publicise it more - not for myself, but for the awareness it can bring.  But there is still that very scared part of me.  Scared of this openness and the feeling of being exposed.  Anyone who has tried to open up to someone will have felt that little bit of regret afterwards wondering if maybe they had said too much.  But I don't want to look back and regret what I write.  There is no judgement on here so nothing I write is right or wrong. I appreciate it so much when people text me or message me in some way to let me know that they have connected to something I have written; it makes me realise I do have a purpose and that opening this blog was the right thing to do.  It does feel a little narcissistic though!  But the purpose was never just ...

Not the easiest of days.  A day when I question everything about my life.  Where am I going? What am I doing?  It is days like these that make me wonder whether I have in fact moved away from my dark place.  I know in my head that I most certainly have.  I am nothing like I was a while back.  This blog itself is testimony to how far I have come. Only I don't feel it today.  Once again, I need to remind myself that it's ok not to feel happy all of the time .  No one I know is happy 24/7.  Being sad is part of being human and it would therefore be inhumane to fight it all of the time.  The more I fight, the worse I feel, so not really worth it.  And I'm just a little bit too tired to fight tonight. I was going to end off with an apology for being a little bit pessimistic; but I think that would defeat the purpose of this being the place where I can explain how I am feeling without reserve.  I hope you can manage with a...