TATTOOS

In the past 3 years since turning 18 I have gotten 3 tattoos. My first was a few days after my 18th birthday and the next two were in February this year. I can't really remember the reason for why I wanted my first one but I knew I wanted one and I think it was the first thing that came in to my head! (totally not a permanent thing Tash...)

I have a stick woman on my left thumb and although when I got it there was no real reason behind it, I have since attached meaning to it - I am proud of the woman I am turning it to and it's a reminder to always be me.

My second one I actually wanted to get done first. I had had the image in my head since probably 2010 but chickened out of getting it as my first because it was kind of  big. It is a moon and woman on my left inner upper arm.

This one I got as a tribute to my grandad, my mums dad, as he was basically my father figure for most of my childhood. When he passed away in 2009 I would go outside when it got dark to look at the moon and stars and look for a sign that he was watching over us. 

And my third is a rainbow on my right thumb. Honestly I think this is my favourite one right now. Many people don't think it is real to start with as when it was first done and still really bright it looked like someone had melted crayon wax on my hand. 

I had possibly my worst month ever in January of this year and I am proud of myself for being able to get through as honestly I didn't think I was going to. This rainbow is a symbol to me that when you take the bad with the good you can still get something beautiful. My something beautiful was blossoming into myself and this rainbow will always remind me of that. 

(Also I can put my thumbs together so it looks like the rainbow is over my lady and this has become a way of me telling people at work that I am happy without using words... I get it I'm stupid)

I have so many more that I want to get that I can't quite believe I'm not back in the chair already!

Natasha

IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN

January just gone was the 6 year anniversary of my medical termination and every year it rolls by it normally wipes me out for the month meaning that by February I'm almost back to "normal Tash" again. This year has been completely different though. January was still a very hard month for me but for other reasons. I'd just had a devastating break-up, I was trying to quit drinking and smoking everyday and basically was trying to build myself a routine and purpose. I had to many things going on and to try and get in order that the anniversary went unnoticed to me until (of all places) I was getting a tattoo.

Laying on the bed looking up at the ceiling trying to busy my mind with anything to distract from the pain, the "what would my 5 year old look like" question came up out of the blue. It didn't leave my head all day and by coincidence I went out for drinks that evening with the would-have-been-dad. He and I have never really in-depth spoken about what happened and told each other how we feel about it until then - I think alcohol was a big helper with that!

Having had that conversation with him I think has reaffirmed to me that just because an opportunity presents itself that doesn't mean it is right for you, even if it is something you really want. Had I actually gone through with the pregnancy there would have been a lot that I wouldn't have done. I probably wouldn't have finished school in a better position than I did. I wouldn't be in the job that I am now and I probably wouldn't have come out.

So this year was different because I didn't need to mope about and shut myself away for an entire month just to get through it. It's actually been my driving force to better myself and achieve the things I want to. Ultimately, isn't that what you want from "mistakes" in life? To make you want to learn how to do things the right and best way for you?


Natasha

CUTTING THE "RECKLESS"

So today was the day that I cut the "reckless" out of my life. As of right now (9:05pm) I haven't had an alcoholic drink or cigarette in 22 hours. I've decided to start writing because it's getting to the point in the evening when I would be reaching for at least one of those and as much as I don't want to I don't quite know what to do with myself. I'm feeling more positive about this decision than I thought I was going to/have done when I've tried to quit in the past few months. 

I've only been smoking for just over 2 years but recently it has become something to fill my time with and I've gotten even more addicted to the habit than the actual nicotine itself. The thing that I have discovered today that made it so hard for me to cut down smoking or even quit completely in the past is that I feel the need to be busy 24/7. I need to have something to occupy my time with. 

The drinking I didn't really see as a problem until recently, even with some people raising their concerns. It was helping me be able to get to sleep without laying in bed for hours not being able to shut my brain off due to needing to fill every second of my day with something. This in-turn, I have just found out, was actually making me more tired as I wasn't able to achieve a deep enough sleep and I was waking up every day with at least a mild hangover. 

It also helped me with my appetite, somehow I had gotten to a place of only occasionally feeling hungry and if I had a drink or 2 say when I got in from work at 5pm then I knew I would be hungry enough by 7pm to make myself eat. I was a little anxious about whether or not my appetite would come back straight away however baring in mind that it hasn't even been 24 hours since my last drink I have had 3 meals today. I'm not going to lie I am proud of myself for that. 

With having just over a week off from work I have basically had nothing to do but to start kicking these habits and trying to develop a more relaxed outlook to free-time. I have had nearly everyone that I have spoken to over the last week tell me that I need to take care of myself more and to be honest it wasn't the words that they were saying that have forced me to try but it was the way that they were saying them. I hate feeling weak but what I hate even more is appearing it, and I guess I must be appearing weak as all I've really gotten from people is "How are you doing"s and sympathetic head tilts. 

This week off has really opened my eyes in to how very broken I am but also it has helped me to re-calibrate and achieve some very basic things that I really didn't think I would be able to achieve. So for that at least, I am thankful.

Natasha

NEW YEAR, NEW ME

"New year, New me"

That phrase is tossed around by most people at the start of every year. Normally with a specific goal in mind. This year I too am one of those people however I'm not too sure what my specific goal is.

It appears that I need to start my road to discovery of myself but I'm not too sure how I go about that. I know my basic self already and the expected normality of what the future will hold so I'm not too sure where this road will lead me and if I'm honest I'm not too sure I care.

I don't hold any expectation that this year I will figure this out and I'm okay with that, but there is one thing I need to learn and hope to be able to grasp it soon.

How to live for myself

Since the age of 14 I have been in relationships and always had someone else to think of. Someone else to focus on. I'm the type of person that would rather do something for someone else than do something for me and with the start of this year I no longer have the option to do that.

I think the reasons that I dislike thinking about what I want is either that I am too young to want it or I have too many thoughts of what I want that I don't know where to start. I want to be able to flash forward 10 years and be somewhere different and more "settled" than where I am now.

All I really want, and know that I want, is to be happy. We have no choice in being born and no real "big-picture" reason for why we are here (that we know of) so why not try and make the most of what we can achieve. 

What I think is hard for most people to grasp with me is that I am in many ways a lot older than my actual age. Having the prospect of starting a family at such a young age I feel that I have been chasing it ever since.

The things that I need to work on changing are the things that I have subconsciously put in place to push that reality further and further away. Who can happily start a family when they smoke, are borderline alcoholic and with someone that isn't ready for the things they want?

So I guess when I say that this year is going to be the year that I live for myself I really mean that this year I will stop self-sabotaging what I want and see where life can take me.

Natasha

THEM

Have you ever met someone and you want to tell them everything about you? Every single, minuscule thing. That you imagine them with you day-to-day just to get over that. Because who can really remember everything that happens in the day?

For all intensive purposes lets call this person to me "them" or "they". 

Its like I want them to be with me all 24 hours of the day and if they can't, because believe it or not we both lead separate lives, then I want to fill them in on what they have missed. 

Most of the time it's not even relevant stuff, either. It could be that I finally got around to booking that appointment I was meant to weeks ago, or something funny that happened at work, or even some weird thing that my body is doing. 

I have had this for the past 21 weeks. To the point that they went on holiday for two weeks and didn't have internet or signal for a good portion of that time and I sent them about 500 messages.

No joke

Heaven only knows what they must have thought when they got in to range of signal and another 50 messages popped up. 

The best part about that though, is that they always reply.

Natasha

MY RELATIONSHIP WITH FOOD

Its like I'm both aware and unaware of what I'm doing when I'm doing it. I can rationalise with myself either way. 

Do I want to eat? Or don't I?  

I've had issues with food for as long as I can remember. I've tried to figure out where it stemmed from because I know when I was younger I wasn't concerned about what I looked like or how much I weighed. I've come to the conclusion that it started when I was in primary school and found it hard to eat around the other kids that were eating too. I guess I was somewhat of a fussy eater as a child so if someone was eating something I didn't like the smell of it would make me lose my appetite. 

But from there it went on to secondary school where I would have just enough time in the morning to get dressed, brush my teeth and leave. I could never be bothered to pack myself a lunch the night before or get up earlier to be able to do it in the morning, so I didn't. I remember making a game out of it. Sitting in class and seeing how far I could push the table in to my stomach so that it would stop making noise. I'd make it through those 6 hours at school and then come home and binge on whatever I could find. 

For the two years that followed me leaving school it went away. Or maybe it went in the opposite direction - because all I would do is eat. I would have breakfast in the morning before leaving for work. Walk the forty-five minute walk to work (as I was 16 and didn't have a car) stopping off on the way to buy my lunch. Normally that would be some kind of ready meal and as many sugary treats as I could carry. Spend all day eating, walk home and have a snack then have dinner and do it all again the next day. 

Then came my current job, which I love but have never felt like it's an "OK" environment to eat in (it's a hospital). Between the variety of aromas I'm around on a daily basis and never really feeling like my hands are clean I just stopped eating on shift all together. It didn't help that I had started smoking and used that and coffee to get me through my day. 

Earlier this year I had somewhat created another kind of game where I would see how long I could go without eating. This meant that I was eating my first meal of the day at 10pm. Then that became not eating for a whole day and having a meal the next.

Looking back over it all I can see that my worst point was going three days without food. I was at work on the third day and had just about finished my 8 hour shift and ran down stairs to get a set of patient notes before I left and came over all light headed. I just put it down to the fact that I hadn't drunk enough water and carried on even though I could see black spots everywhere. I had gone up a ladder to find said set of notes and at the top my eye sight went almost completely. I came down from the ladder just in time to black out and woke up about 15 minutes later laying on the floor. I got the notes, took them upstairs and left without saying anything to the nurses that I work with (normally I bombard them with anything remotely medical I have going on). I also decided that it would be a good idea to drive home. From then I made a conscious effort to at least fit food in around my shifts. 

I still to this day don't know what brings on the feeling of not wanting to eat but I'm better at fighting it when it does rear its ugly head.

Natasha

METAL COMFORTS

I was never really a person who wore jewellery. I've always had it, just never remembered or could be bothered to put it on. Now however, I seem to have acquired a few pieces that I never take off.

I've worn the same ring for four years, just a simple silver band that sits on my middle finger of my right hand. I got it to wear to prom in 2013 and from that day it has never really come off. 

I have another ring that sits on my index finger of my left hand, this one I guess I've somewhat stolen. 

I wear the same necklace every day because I love it so much. It's a simple thin chain with a circle pendant that has my zodiac sign on it. I'm not a believer in the zodiac but the person who designed it modelled it after a necklace her dad passed down to her and I like that notion.

My last piece — and my favourite piece — is a bracelet. It's a very thing blue string with silver beads, the beads are different sizes and spell out a word in morse code. This again doesn't ever leave my vicinity , if it isn't on my wrist then its on my necklace as I can't wear bracelets at work.

I never thought I would find such comfort in a small amount of metal or string, but I do. Its like being able to carry around your comfort blanket wherever you go. I go in search of them no matter what my mood. I twist my rings around my fingers when I walk or have something to concentrate on. I hold the pendant of my necklace when I'm talking to people or am getting stressed. Its almost like they have become a part of me, just an extra limb to me now.

Natasha