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

*untitled*

Its like flying and being out-of-your-face-drunk all at once.

You can feel every pressure point, tension and knot in your body and almost feel them coming undone.

Its like you're having a million different conversations with a million different people but you know you've been silent the entire time.

Its like wanting to take on the world and make it something completely different but also not wanting to move an inch.

Its like having the entirety of your personality release itself ahead of you and you're trying to catch up with it.

Its like you somewhat know whats going on, you just don't care about what it is to really know.

It can transport you into some other dimension and make you live in that world for what feels like forever.

It can make you think things you never thought possible.

It can make you feel things that you never dreamt possible.

That is... until the comedown.

Natasha

MATE.

Lucy Chelsea Erin mother-fucking Whiles.

You are something else, someone else.

Alright, so its quarter to two on a Wednesday morning. This is one of the very few nights that we have been apart in the past month and guess what... I can't sleep, so i'm just going to type and see what comes out. Here goes -

Without wanting to sound dramatic (but knowing I will) you have flipped my world upside-down. I've never felt like a real, happy future was waiting for me — that it would even be attainable — but you have shown me what happy is and how much it's been missing from my life. Its taken you three months to turn me in the person I've wanted to and tried to be for 20 years.

No amount of time with you is long enough, it always goes too quickly. Before I know it its quarter to seven in the morning and you're going off to work and I have to deal with not being with you for the next 10 hours. I feel like I'm just being able to catch my breath and realise just how real this all is, Because its more real than either one of us thought it was ever going to be. 

Trying to put down in words exactly how you make me feel and what you mean to me is proving difficult. And I'm an articulate person. You've got me stumped. Its like I could burst at any moment. You could look at me or smile or try to hide and its like my entire body is shouting "I JUST LOVE YOU SO MUCH" but it's not shouting at all because I feel so calm and at peace, Its like a really loud, comforting whisper that radiates through me.


You are the unicorn to my Agnes.

You are my definition of home.