Thoughts

I have a few different friends going through relationship stuff at the moment, I wont go into details as it's their private business  but they are all trying to find a light at the end of their current tunnels. I feel for them I really do, I've been there. What strikes me is why, when couples don't want to give up hope on each other, don't they really take the steps to rescue their relationship before it becomes too late. We all talk to our friends about what it is our partner does that is causing real distress and we tell our partner some of that but it seems to me that people don't really lay their cards on the table with the very person that they are supposed to be able to say anything to. Unconditional love can become all about conditions " I'm not doing this because she's not doing that" and " he needs to stop doing this before I will try that" It's crazy but we all do it.

There is a point where the hurting creeps in, where the boundaries are crossed and the resentment and dislike begins to build.What causes this?
I think it is a lack of honest communication, really honest down to the bare bones 'this is what you are doing that I don't like' talking. If one partner has built up more resentment than the other one, you then get the situation where one closes off and the other genuinely doesn't know why but is wounded and so closes off too. That person only finds out what their partner's problem really was with them when they become an ex partner and find that the previously silent partner is telling the world exactly what the problem was.
Then there is the situation where the other one does know what their partners problem is with them but doesn't want to or can't change what is hurting the relationship, which leads to a battle of resentment between the two that there is no going back from.

It hurts to hear criticism from a partner and it feels horrible to tell someone you love things that you know will hurt them but if that doesn't happen the problem builds and leads to the inevitable blurting out of nasty comments and in a lot more cases than many couples admit, physical fights. The whole thing is emotionally shocking, draining and it takes time to get over these huge upheavals to the relationship which is probably why couples try to avoid them at all costs but that just doesn't work. If a previously warm and loving partner becomes cold and disinterested or a previously mild mannered and easy going one becomes snappy and derogatory there is a reason for it! The frustration is when one partner won't talk "nothings wrong" "I don't know whats wrong, I'm just not happy" but these are just cop out avoidance phrases, they do know and if they don't then they owe it to the relationship and all the other family members to figure it out.

 One of the really sad things is when your partner just won't talk, won't change and wants to drift on as things are, being cold to you but not telling you why. Living like that is like a slow death, it can destroy you, rob you of all your confidence and leave you feeling depressed and unhappy with every aspect of your life. It's torture to see your partner happily interacting with work colleges, friends and extended family whilst theres a huge problem between the two of you thats not discussed. Sometimes it can be unbearably lonely inside a relationship thats struggling, especially if one person is struggling more than the other. The other very difficult situation is that if, on the whole, you get on well day to day. Home life is calm with smatterings of real happiness, holidays where everyone gets on great and family occasions that lull you into a false sense of security, which is shattered again when the problem rears its ugly head once more, which it always does.

Back again

I haven't written for a while. I made my Facebook Page public and added some personal Facebook friends, it was too soon, it stifled my writing completely. I hadn't expected that at all and it was because there was now a link to me telling my story and the people that knew me before. Having lived so publically and negatively like that for so long, I had for the past year and a half withdrawn and lived a life that no-one from my past had anything to do with or knew anything about. It was what I needed and in hindsight it was exactly the right thing to do. I have built a new world for me and one day I thought I would merge the two, old and new but now I realize that I just don't want to. More specifically I don't want 'him' seeing my words, knowing my feelings, there is just no need. I haven't written any of this so that he would know it. I haven't written it so old acquaintances would know it either, it's none of their business. It's funny how time changes things, how what seems so important at first isn't important at all when time has passed.

A Year and a Half Anniversary

Yesterday was my year and a half anniversary and I spent it right in the heart of my old village working at the Carnival! Scary stuff and have to admit yesterday morning I actually wondered why on earth I had volunteered to do it! But I'd taken all of my steps to 'presenting the best me I can be' which is something I've taught myself over the last 18 months. Its something my Councillor and I have been working on, ever since she asked me what unconscious body language message I was giving off to people. Hmm, I'd no idea.
I'd had to go 'back' a few weeks ago, right into the heart of the old party and I was stressing big time. I definitely didn't want to be treated like a 'victim' and I didn't want to be giving off that message subconsciously, not in that environment so we worked on the 'something different about her' message. I liked the idea that I would go back and be different, not in appearance but something they just couldn't quite put their finger on and not at all the old me that they had known. A new free person, ready to stand my ground in a place where previously I had hidden behind the main player. I hadn't been me for a very long time in that position, how can you be when your not living an authentic life, true to your values. I had become this frantic, trying to cope person and every ounce of the stress of it must have subconsciously shown. My Councillor wanted me to walk back in displaying an air of confidence, a calmness and inner peace that was genuine. I would be different on the inside and that would show on the outside. I hadn't liked the me back then and am so glad that I don't have to be her anymore, so I liked the sound of that!
I began to think of where that inner peace was to be found and wrote and wrote it out in my diary until I got my answers, then I decided to write my conclusions out into a plan that I could refer back to everytime I felt the heeby geebys coming on again. IT REALLY WORKS!
In couplesville you can loose so much of who you are, of what makes you, you and in the mist of the aftermath of a break up if your foundation is gone , your left utterly realling with nothing to grab hold on. I wish I had this plan right at the beginning of my break up and I'm going to put it in my book right along with the how to wallpaper instructions.
Soo back to the Carnival, I was nervous to see some faces that I didn't want to engage with. I was nervous to being pushed into conversations that I didn't want to have, ones that made me a victim, so I did some work on that too. I wrote it out, the questions and statements that could come my way and my response to them, I was prepared for every eventuality. It worked like a dream, made me feel much more confident, less vulnerable and that plans going in the book to!
I was touched when one group of old couples friends that I hadn't seen in 18 months took the time to acknowledge me and say hello, decent people so no questions, just a lovely exchange. There were other awkward looks, which I dismissed with a huge genuine inner peace smile every time it happened. There was the inevitable visit by someone I had anticipated and put my pre-plan into practice and didn't acknowledge her at all. The old me would have been so desperate to people please and prove myself, that I would have given her attention and allowed her to disturb my inner peace but this time I didn't even open up that possibility. I've learnt that this kind of deflection is essential to rebuilding and it doesn't have to be a nasty experience for anyone. Its so lovely to be on the other side of it all as I have a choice now and the choice is looking after the inner me first.   

Wise words

As I was weeding the tiny front garden yesterday after all the excitement of the hedge removal, a neighbour that I haven't met before stopped to chat about the renovation I was doing to Ambleside. He voiced how he'd always wanted to buy an old property and renovate it and just the way he spoke about his dream reminded me that I'm not a women who's lost my dream, I am a women who has been given many other peoples dream and one that was once mine. All the time in my relationships I had longed for my own property to renovate as a project or even a career and now I have it. It's been a little overshadowed by my heartache, quite a lot overshadowed actually. This year and a half has been tough, adjusting to a change in my life that I hadn't wanted and it's still a shock that I left even after all this time. I still feel sometimes that I really ought to be going home now but it's a home I don't want, it's a home that isn't home anymore but neither is this new life. It's an odd limbo land I live in now and sometimes I forget that I have a goal, a purpose. Yesterdays conversation got me back on track and I suddenly felt very lucky in a week where I had been focused on everything that I didn't have. It was just what I needed. I have renovated properties before but never one as run down as this and never solely on my own. I have drawn countless plans for people renovating their properties and always felt envious. The joy that my dream had come true had been numbed by in all my emotional turmoil over leaving and job losses and the annoyance that my life was seemingly worse in comparison had crept in. Everything is perception, controlled by the thoughts in your head and what one man saw as everything he ever dreamt of was everything I'd ever dreaded to me this week. I saw the light. It's my baby, everything I do to Ambleside is my choice and when it's finished I will be so proud of it because I did it on my own. Because of finances it's taking a lot longer than I would like and even though I'm getting frustrated at living in such a mess, I must keep focused that it's all heading in the right direction. I may not be having holidays and meals in lovely restaurants and new clothes right now because all my money goes on Ambleside but I have something other people can only dream about and I should be really really grateful for that.

Changing Ambleside's Face at last

Huge excitement at Ambleside this week as I had the embarrassing front hedge removed. I didn't really have the money but I saw a man post a card through the door promoting his Tree Removing Services so I opened the door and asked him to give me a quote. He started at £150 to chop all the conifer trees that made up the hedge back to their roots, I made a face like that was too much for me and told him I really needed the roots removing and how much would that be? He said £200 to which I said I couldn't afford anywhere near that and I'd have to wait a few weeks and earn the money and I would keep his card to call him when I had it. He said he could do it for a bit less so I told him that I really needed to shake on a fixed price because I didn't want him trying to charge me more on the day or leaving the job half done. He said he could come back the next morning and get all the roots out for £150.
£150 was a doable amount for me really and I reached out my hand and shook his hand. I've learnt a lot about how the process of getting people in to do the job works by trial and error and I'd like to think I'm a lot more street wise than I used to be.A handshake is supposed to seal the deal. Famous last words, I was still nervous that I might be taken for a ride but I took the money out the bank that I had put by for something else (never a good idea but I'll worry about that tomorrow) and the man and his man turned up in a big truck the next morning and did a really good job. I was like an excited little child running from window to window taking pictures of them chainsawing at the hedge. The front of the house looks really run down and after a year of living in the house it had become quite a source of embarrassment to me that the outside world clearly could see that I didn't have the money to improve it. This was a big old shout out to all the curtain twitchers that I was still progressing. Vain I know but there we are. The roots proved as stubborn as I thought they would, having been there for years but the man had a cleaver hydraulic line on his truck that once wrapped around the root pulled them out in no time. Everything was cleared and carted away in the truck within two hours which was worth it's weight in gold to me as it was a job I hadn't a hope of tackling on my own. I spent the rest of the day looking out the window and smiling, especially when the little boys who live either side shared the excitement too. It's caused quite a stir in the neighbourhood and several people have stopped to ask what I'm going to do with it now it's cleared. That's the burning question with a very low if not non-existent budget!

hey you up there!

I yelled at the universe today, driving in my car yelling out of the windscreen up at the sky like a madwomen  " if your listening to the thoughts in my head I'm going to just stop thinking because its not working and your just listening to the negative. There are lots of very positive thoughts, I've told you what I want clearly, can you give me the positive ones for gods sake!"  I was fuming " are you listening???"
I was driving over to pick up my son for an emergency doctors appointment as an ultrasound has shown the lump he has could be cancerous. I'm sick of this, it's getting to the point that I'm wondering if any of this positive action and thought works as I feel like I've been running through mud and going one step forwards, two steps back for years! We're keeping positive right now, it seems to be an isolated lump and we still don't have it confirmed yet so no need to panic. That seems very cold but as a family there has been a lot of serious illness in the last few years and doctors and hospitals are familiar territory. I've had major operations myself with years of tests so I know the score. We've waited for news in the past and its been the worst news and I know there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, call it self protection or aversion to unnecessary drama because frankly we've had enough of that. My son is not disturbed right now, I am expecting a wobbly moment at some point when the news sinks in and I'll be there for him. I wonder if I lost my job so I can be there for him? I'll not be much use to him in jail because I can't pay my bills though will I universe! Are you listening??? 

For crying out loud

I hope that quote is true, I really do but I fail to see why whats happened today has happened. I was getting ready for work this morning and I got a text to say not to come in this week, completely out of the blue. I'm freelance in my job but even so to just stop me coming like that is really not right. If I don't work, I don't earn so it's gutting! I had written my little list of what the next four months money would be allocated too and was looking forward to being paid at the end of this month so that I could eventually, a year after moving in, have a normal bathroom again. It's so disappointing and I'm really fed up at the thought of trying to find another job too, when will this ever end! I had dared to look forward to spending decent money inside the house again but I don't understand what happening because my councellor and the book I'm re-reading now both tell me to let go of negativity and look forward to good things coming into your life. I was really doing that, planning the next stages and putting lots of positive thoughts out there about how my life was good and today I've gone backwards!! I've got to put up with that damn bathroom for even longer and I'm so fed up about it!

 I'd taken the polystyrene tiles off the ceiling when I first moved in as they were a fire risk. There are huge cracks and flaking plaster where there has been movement in the past and I was quite worried about it when I saw it but there is no cracking and movement to the brickwork outside so it hasn't been the walls moving. There has been some work to the roof and the tiles have been replaced (a man who was pointing next doors chimney told me) so I'm hoping that it was moving joists again that were causing the cracking and that's been fixed.

It's horrid to be living with this now, the floorboards are so old and broken that they can't be sanded and painted so it's a case of waiting until the new ceiling has been put in before I can put decent flooring down. This means that there's dust and dirt and the cats insist on jumping into the wet bath or sink and covering them with dirty paw prints, it really gets me down.

 The walls I spent days sanding down as they were pebble dash painted, it was a tedious dusty job but there's no point putting up wallpaper as the tiling needs to be done first.Theres cracking and blown plaster all around the window with some worrying 'lumps' that I'm trying to ignore.

I've always had lovely bathrooms and although I was fully prepared to ruff it a bit whilst I developed, I'm totally sick and tired of it now.

Not just me then

We've spent Easter redecorating my daughter's bedroom. I say redecorating because I'd already done it once but now instead of buying wallpaper for the chimney breasts we have new paper in her room and the chimney breasts will have to wait until next month! It does look lovey though. Why did I redo it you might ask?
She spent an evening at our old house and came home and broke down. I still haven't really got to the bottom of why but she had gone upstairs to her old bedroom and although it has a new bed, the wallpaper, curtains and carpet are still hers. A bit like me with the pillows, she was suddenly transported back and she missed it very much. She wanted her room here at Ambleside to look just the same as that room, the room she said 'where she was safe'
I suspect as well as missing the room, she misses the safety of her 'fake Dad' They had been very close and of course she didn't have the turmoil associated with the house that I had. By the end I had grown to hate it but to her it was home. He had clearly grown very tired of all of us over the last year of our time together and was relieved to be rid of us all. He packed everything up in her room within a day when I got the keys to this house while she was at school and he had her moved out and her room made into a guest room within a couple of days. It was no surprise to me that he could be that heartless but it really shocked her.
I think wanting her room to look just like her old one has something to do with letting go of those days and then also wanting to go back to feeling 'safe' as so much of her life is changing now as she grows up. She has begun driving lessons, she's starting work, the world is opening up and although she's excited, she's letting go of childhood too and she's stuck between two worlds. I was quite prepared to indulge her as I know just how she feels, as I am doing the same.I've chosen not to have a new relationship yet, I will when I'm ready and that is my future but for now I'm in limbo, no longer in the old but not in the new and I want to stay here for as long as I need to. If we both stayed 'stuck' that wouldn't be good but I won't let that happen.

The DIY shop that we bought her original wallpaper from went into liquidation so we found a very similar one and we have transformed her room into her old one. This could seem very unhealthily, worryingly disturbed but I prefer to see it as a very positive step, that she has self nurtured. She recognised what she needed and took part in giving it to herself. She did all the painting and has added different touches in new curtains and lampshades that aren't like her old room at all which is a positive step forward. I suspect when she's ready the wallpaper will be changed again and it will be interesting to see when that will be but for now she has her old room back and it's made her very happy. Isn't that what all this is about?

As usual we always have our little helpers :-)

Just write!

So how to write...it seems fairly obvious but sitting in front of a blank page and not really knowing how to write your feelings down can be daunting so the trick is..just start! Write the date at the top, as you will want to read it back one day and its important to know at what point in your life it was. After that start with what you've done that day, just the facts at first. You might do this for a few weeks until you begin to get the hang of diary writing and you will naturally slip into writing how you felt about the events of the day, even if all you put is 'that made me cross' or 'that made me laugh'. Pretty soon you will be overflowing with words, it doesn't matter if they make sense, often thoughts are coming so quickly you just have to get them down and not worry about spelling or grammar. I often wish I could write short hand as the thoughts in my head go quicker than my pen!
Also write things in there that you've seen or read that are helpful to your emotional life, to your recovery, then you can then refer back to it when necessary. Some people write as a letter with Dear... at the top, as though they are talking to a friend. I would imagine this works very well to get you going, although I wonder if you might be restricted as the idea of a diary is that you get out thoughts that sometimes you'd be utterly horrified if anyone else knew you had. My counsellor is wonderful but there are still some things I wouldn't admit to her!

I used to have a dilemma over whether diary writing is self indulgence but whats wrong with a little self indulgent time for yourself. I wondered if it was narcissism and unhealthy to be obsessed with ones feeling quite so much but current thought is that if you bury feelings its damaging and comes out eventually as stress related illness. I suffered with my stomach terribly for years, horrible cramps and pain and reading back over my diarys I can certainly see why! I was leading a life that wasn't right for 'the me inside' and the inside me was complaining. Now that I have inner peace its amazing the difference it has made. I now have constant back pain though so I need to get to the bottom of that but I suspect wallpapering and painting ceilings has more to do with it than buried emotional turmoil.

Its really good when your trying to deal with something new to be able to look back at other times in your life when you faced something similar and see how you felt and how you coped, or didn't cope as the case may be. I had kept diaries over the last 10 years and once the dust had settled it was good to be able to read extracts that have really helped me to stay strong and on track when I was having wobbly moments. A diary is your perspective of events, it may not be right in someone else's eyes, they may have a very different version of events but a diary is your reaction, how you felt. A diary won't tell you to shut up and stop being pathetic, or shout at you, a diary will listen and in time give you an answer that will really help. If you do read back and think 'hmm I over reacted a bit that time' then it's a lesson to tweek your reaction a little next time or if in my case you read back and think 'you stupid little cow what the hell did you live like that for so long for' then you know not to do that next time either.

You don't need to write every day, it shouldn't be a chore, just as and when you need to. Try to write on days that you feel really good too, put down what has made you happy, those inserts will be a real pick me up for you on dark days when you can read back and think yes there are good bits in this nightmare and you will know that the good bits will come again. I started to put a smiley face or a sad face at the top right corner of the page after I had finished each post, to make referring back easier. It goes opposite my date and because I'm a doodler they now have morphed into little faces with tears or cross faces, theres even one with its tongue out.
It's your book so you can do what you like in it. You are gaining a much greater understanding of what makes you tick and what you need for a happy life.

My diary, my greatest friend

What struck me last night was just how much it helped just to write it down. How I was feeling. Its not a suprise to me really because that's what I do, write, pages and pages and pages in my diary. But just how powerful it was at dispercing a fear was quite amazing. They say you should face your fears and doing that makes them much less powerful and in this case it did, by writing. I'm a big believer in getting it all out in my diary. Sometimes I write for hours, round and round in circles getting nowhere and sometimes I write short bits, clear as day and I do it because I know just how much it helps. It helps too to read it back, sometimes you just have to get the words out there, rambling writing that makes no sense but when you read it back, days or even weeks later, it makes perfect sense. Sometimes just bringing the feelings to the surface and giving them words allows your brain to churn it around over time and spit it out into perfectly logical sentances. You get your answer.I think I've spoken about my diary writing before but I never really thought to include the 'how of it' on here.
Its only fitting that it should have instructions just the same as sanding down a cupboard does because if this blog is an acurate account of healing with helpfullness and sharing in how to do it, then I firmly believe that diary writing is a huge part of that. It neednt take long or it can take a whole day, its really up to you.
I take the time to choose a nice book to write in, its important to have a specially allocated book and a pen thats kept with it at all times, your diary pen, so theres no excuse to not write. During this last year, I have bought four new books, all the same, with little clocks on them which I choose initially because my saying of the day was 'give the time some time' I love that saying as it seems to say just let the time drift by, don't rush it and all will heal, in time. I don't know why I bought the same book again when I went back for a new one, normally each book is different but as this story isn't over perhaps it needed to be told in the same books. It will be interesting to see when I feel ready to choose a new design.

With the first one I bought a pen to match, with the same little clocks on, long since used up. I like pens, patterned ones, sparkly ones, ones with dangly bits hanging off the top, I've always been a bit of a stationary junkie so theres been lots of different pens. I keep my local stationers in business, oh and don't get me started on how many pencil cases and rubbers I have! Seriously though to take a little care over your book and pen makes diary writing an even more 'just for you' special experience.
After a while it becomes a little routine, you might find you slip into doing it at the same time everyday. It's something that you do just for yourself and it's for no-one elses eyes, ever, so you can write in it whatever you like, you can draw in it, stick things in if you want to. Always keep your diarys in a safe, secret place if you don't live alone, the whole idea is that you get your innermost thoughts into it, even if they're bad ones, especially if they're bad ones and you need to feel totally confident that your feelings are just for your eyes.

tears on my pillow

Today has been a very productive day! I have hemmed two sets of curtains in the kitchen which have been hanging there with raggedy bottoms for months glaring at me to finish them, so I'm very pleased that's done.

Also I made a new front door curtain out of bits of fabric that I cut off the bottom of some too long curtains years ago and have kept for a useful purpose, which today they were given. All very positive but there was a little unexpected moment. I'm very strong right now, feelings wise, it took a long time of wobbly moments, resolve and relapse but slowly and gradually the all consuming pain of break-up has faded away, so it was quite a shock today to have a 'moment'. Ever since I moved into this house and into my new bed almost a year ago, I have only had one pillow, well two actually, one on top of the other but still just a place for my head to lie. Theres always something else to buy so I've never really got around to buying more pillows to make my double bed look like a double bed. Theres been no point as its not been a double bed, its been a great big single one just for me. But I finally got around to buying some lovely squishy 'bounce back into shape' ones today so that I can make myself go to bed earlier and pile up lots of pillows and read or type. I brought them home without a care in the world, dug out more pillow cases, moved my pillows from their middle spot and put the new ones on......the right, where he slept. Suddenly my bed looked like 'our bed' and I was frozen to the spot. It felt surreal. I haven't been near a two person bed since ours and there it was my side and his side, I could almost see his sleepy little head lying there. It sent shivers down my spine. I don't regret leaving, it was the right decision, I would never ever ever go back, not that we discussed it, I don't miss him, I feel nothing when I see him, i have weaned myself off him well. But there it was all over again, our bed, like nothing ever happened and I missed us in it. Weird!
I loved going to sleep together, in ten years we never went to bed separately when we were both home. We had the same routine every night, lay facing each other in the dark, mumbled tired words, cuddling right up close, then just as he was falling to sleep I'd turn over and he'd pull me right up to him, arms wrapped around me, I'd hold his hand and he'd kiss my shoulder. I'd stuff my feet between his to warm them and we drift off to sleep. At some point during the night we'd separate without waking but we started every nights sleep wrapped up in each other like that and I loved it. Perhaps that's what it is, I've spent more years that way than alone and it was just very familiar or perhaps it was that he had been the only man I had ever been able to sleep that way with. I could barely stand to be in the same bed with my husband (when it came to the sleeping part of course) and I would sleep wrong ways up, on the floor and in the end in a different room but with him I didn't ever want to leave his side. I'm slightly anxious to go to bed as the time draws nearer, I don't want to feel 'it'...the pain. I haven't felt it in a while and I really don't want to lie there on my side and remember. I often wonder if I will be able to share a bed with another man, if I will ever have again that feeling of 'just us in our bed' that I valued so much, drifting off to sleep in his arms, listening to his breathing, loving him so much. Right now that still feels so wrong, bedtime was ours, against the world.

Snakes & Ladders & Roller Coaster Rides

I almost deleted yesterdays posts as it was all emotion and self indulgence but then I thought, No I wont because this blog has to be honest and sometimes during this process there is moments of raw emotion when your still trying to figure everything out and doing that is just as much about rebuilding as slapping up wallpaper is. If I wrote a blog/book that was all sunshine and flowers it would just be another DIY manual and thats not what this is all about at all. Its about getting over the heartbreak of loosing someone in whatever way it happens, of rebuilding yourself and rebuilding a life that has been changed when you didn't want it to be. My story is about doing that through property developing as a way of restoring self worth and a sense of positive achievement when everything else has felt like a massive failure. It is tough process, it is a roller coaster and once the house is rebuilt and I am rebuilt there will be a happy ending but right now its still a work in progress and sometimes I feel like I'm back to square one.
I'm not of course, I've come so far and when the dust settles (no pun intended) I see that but when I'm in the midst of confusion and pain again its important to acknowledge it's happening, to be real and honest on here. This weekend I felt the need to connect with someone who had been through something similar. You can feel so utterly alone, like the whole world is living a wonderful life without you and over a year on from my separation could I really drag it all up with friends again?
No, I needed to find some answers somehow to help me get back up because I was drowning, so I sat and re-read a blog that had inspired me. A lady who's partner had died suddenly of a heart attack and she had begun her blog after a year of hiding in her flat, sleeping, crying, drowning. I didn't know she had done that as I joined her blog some time down her line when she had progressed it into a new business that had become about her beautiful photography, posted when she had recovered enough to open her front door and venture out, a little further every day, camera in hand. I had never really read the beginning posts as what I needed from her then was her photography skill and although I mimiked her with my photography blog as a way of connecting with my Father and Grandmother who had just died I didn't feel the need to go back into her pain.
But that was just what I hoped to get from her this weekend in an attempt to not feel so utterly isolated inside Ambleside with the curtains firmly closed on what was the warmest sunniest day of the year so far. And that is what I am hoping one day to give others from my writing.
I have formed an opinion of her from her daily posts, an independent women, five years on from her heartbreak with two books in publication, a new home and a new search for love. Could this women who I admire and strive to emulate have ever been as lost, as insecure, as broken as I felt and would her blog hold some answers for me? I went back to her beginning. For the last two days I have read each heartbroken, soul searching post that she wrote back then. I have read her words on her bad days, her words on her good days when she felt she was recovering and her words on the days she slipped right back to the start again.
This heartbreak business is like a game of snakes and ladders and to see her climbing the ladders and sliding back down the snakes just like me was as comforting as having great big arms wrapped around me, arms that I haven't had for so long and that I miss so much. To see that she felt the same way I do after a whole year made me see that I wasn't going crazy, that I was just still grieving for the love I'd lost. Each set back opened up all the cracks in the plaster that I was trying so hard to fill, just as it had with her and it was such a relief to read someone else going through the same thing, just as confused, just as scared. Because she was brave enough to put her innermost raw feelings out there all those years ago, she helped me so much this weekend.
It was wonderful to read her slow recovery, to ride her lonely roller coaster with her to where she is now and to know that if she can do it, I will do it too. One day I will be in her shoes ready to face the world again and maybe one day someone will be reading my words and it will help them too. I will write and thank her for her honesty at that time and for not going back and deleting those posts.

First Look at Ambleside

THIS POST HAS ENDED UP IN THE WRONG PLACE, IT WAS ONE OF THE EARLIEST ONES!

So when I left I was homeless, literally. I had no rights to the home we'd created. Yup stupid, it had been an on-going bone of contention for years and had driven a wedge between us greater than even I realsied. I first saw Ambleside on an Estate Agents website and it was perfect. It had had some renovation but still needed an awful lot of work, it had new wiring and most importantly new central heating. I can't live without warmth and putting in heating was expense I didn't need as there was no double glazing which would be the first expense. I rang quickly as I knew it was exactly the type of property a...

landlord would snap up and I think I was one of the first people to view. It was very run down but it had a lovely feel to it as soon as you walked in despite the first impression, even the Estate Agent said she had a 'soft spot' for the house. Everyone who visited in the first few weeks I moved in, when it was in its rawest state, commented on the 'good feeling' Having surveyed a great many buildings in my working life, I have experienced the 'feel' of a building good or bad when there are no obvious reasons for either. I firmly believe that buildings absorb the 'energy' that exists within them over the years and it was obvious this little house had had some very lovely times. Despite its outward appearence, inside it was still smiling :-)

The Cat's Tail

So the cat’s tail didn’t fall off and slowly slowly the world is going back to normal. The black fog rolled away again and today I can just about make out the sound of birds singing in the distance. My 44 year old self knows to wait for this to happen, to pull the curtains, to let the minutes and hours just drift by and to wait for the calmness and positivist to come back. My younger self would let the fear take over and I would kick and scream at it until I had drained the demon out of it and the life out of everyone who had caused it. Now I hear the fear and I know to wait, to walk away from those people, to nurture me and not fight them. I hear the voice inside now that says ‘its hurting me’ and I tell that voice it’s going to be okay, that I don’t have to panic and react.

That voice came last week after a row with my son over my asking him to help with the fencing, it was the last straw in a week where everything came at once, as things have a habit of doing. I could feel my throat tightening, my instinct to fight growing and I calmed it. I closed the door, physically and metaphorically on him and the events that were threatening my peace of mind and told myself, no, they will all wait until I have decided what to do. The world pushes you to act now, to make a decision now, that everything is urgent. It isn’t.

Sometimes I go to a very deep, dark place, it frightens me but I’ve been there before, several times and although the panic makes me wonder each time if I can climb back out, now I try to keep calm and I wait. Another voice inside me says that there is so much happiness and beauty still to come, that the world is a magical place and I have still got so much to see and experience. That voice is really quiet at first, sometimes I can’t even hear it but I give it time to surface. I give my voices time to talk to each other and I go into a kind of trance and just wait. A sleeping, sofa laying on, TV watching trance and I wait, I wait until that energy kicks back in and my inner voices are singing the same tune and my subconscious mind and soul figure it all out. I trust myself now and I let it happen.

I can do this of course because I live in my own house and I don’t live with another adult that is judging, pushing, intolerant to any disturbance, even when it is disturbance they have caused. If I had had this skill before now and it’s a skill my counsellor has helped me nurture, then calmness would have helped me walk away from situations that weren’t good for me much earlier and I wouldn’t have inflicted so much damage on myself. Yes I take full responsibility for that. The actions of the people weren’t good but it was my choice to continue to expose myself to those actions and that was not the other persons responsibility it was mine. By exposing myself again and again to something that had caused pain before and by continuing to have the same fight reaction with no positive result, the outcome was only ever going to be the same, more pain. I can see, reading back over my diaries of years and years, that I was half way there. I was doing the talking to myself part but only after the initial meltdown reaction when rawness and a natural instinct to ‘get back to normal’ was overwhelming. Like a child whose been smacked by a parent I ran straight back into the arms of the smacker so that love and normality could be restored.

I’ve also learnt that I’m an ‘endurer’ I put up with and live with and paper over the cracks of things that I should walk away from because they don’t suit the me inside. I try to change, to fix, to nurture and battle on with in the hope that the bits I don’t like will all melt away and my world will be sparkly and perfect.

Now I don’t have the time or the energy to fix anyone else, to put myself through it and endure. I have gravitated in my life towards people with issues, many caused in childhood and I have given all of my energy over to supporting them and excusing them and trying to heal them and I’m not doing it anymore, not partners and also after this last week not my son. I’m sure those people would tell you I did nothing for them, as they have told me over and over again when I was with them. Those sorts of people are spongers, soaking in and draining out all of the energy of the people they have chosen to be with to make themselves feel better but they don’t care what effect that has on the person they are with, they don’t even see the damage they’re causing and nothing you ever do for them is ever enough. I’m not prepared to be anyone’s clown again, anyone else’s sparkle and I’m certainly never again going to try to be anyone’s healer again. Now I’m fixing me and you can all go away until I’m done. 

I asked my councillor if I was in danger of alienating everyone in my life and that one day my door would stay closed and curtains drawn for good. She pointed out that I have lots of people in my life, some of them I have had for a very long time and she asked me to tell her what behaviour each one was displaying that I really shouldn’t tolerate, that wasn’t compatible with the me inside and that I should in my new calm logical state walk away from. That was a revelation, as I realised there were people that I had really healthy relationships with, people that hadn’t hurt me at all and that I had no inner instinct voice telling me to walk away from. I had relationships that weren’t hard, draining, a work in progress, they were just ‘right’ as they were. I wasn’t hurting those people because they felt I hadn’t given them what they needed, they were perfectly happy with me, most of the time, because they had chosen wisely too and nothing about me and my personality, morals or goals was giving them any real cause for concern.

Wow this is a new understanding, new ground for me and I love it. Sometimes the developing that I’m doing isn’t on the house, it’s on me and like I said I’m building us both back up to be structural sound.   

Developing Snobbery

I've done my fare share of DIY but tiling is beyond me. In my book there is nothing worse in a house than wonky tiling as it always seems such a shame when tiles are so perfectly square to then slap them on higeldy piggldy, its a crime! The men who came to start my bathroom, who have now disapered in a puff of smoke spaced the tiles using bits of folded up tile box instead of plastic spacers and they have been cut in the style of a three year old using a pair of blunt scissors, rather than a professional tile cutter. All in all they look hideous and will have to come off.

A buyer would walk in and think "I'll need to completely re-tile this bathroom" just because there is shoddy tiling around the bath. I'm livid. The tiles are cheep but the finish shouldn't be, theres nothing that devalues a house more than bad workmanship and they've made me an extra job and caused me extra expense that I didn't need. I'm not going to mention the drip on the back of the toilet thats running down and discolouring the kitchen ceiling or the fact that the sink has been fixed to the wall too high because thats where the old sinks waste pipe came out, which means the bottom is now resting on a pile of broken tiles, oh I just did.
Sooo the tiler I used to lay the tiles in the kitchen lays tiles for a countrywide coffee chain and I was guessing they didn't take on anybody who was going to do a slap up job but I was still nervous. I'd had someone lay very expensive tiles in a previous house that warrented them but the finish was awful and the jutty out bits tripped up several people who came to visit. Yes I'm OCD about tiles.
My tiler came and he wasn't impressed with the tiles that I'd purchased. I informed him that my partner and I had in our time bought very high end tiles for our home but that I was developing and tiles from such as  Pietra Firma would be rediculous in this type of house which was more suited to Tiles Direct  so he could just go on and lay those lower quality tiles and we'd say no more about it. It was a distatefull exchange and I realised that I had fallen foul of that developers curse 'pretense before profit'
My designer hackles were up and I was on the defensive trying to show him who I really was and how dare he try to make out that I was.....but hold on a minute what was going on here? I'd be in that bathroom showroom buying the most expensive tap they had before I knew it if I wasn't careful and then the penny dropped. Suddenly the fact that I'd bought those particular tiles and was putting them in this particular house signified my bottom rung of the ladder developing status. It was time to have a word with myself. Taking on this kind of project as a women alone was a brave thing to do and I reminded myself that I'd bought those tiles with my hard earned and what a clever girl I'd been to get such a bargin. Developing teaches you a lot more about yourself than just how to master DIY and I had learned an important lesson yet again. The tiling in the kitchen was fabulous, so neat and I was thrilled!

Money worries

Last week was one of the worst weeks I'd had in a long time, I'm doing some intensive work with my counsellor and she had warned me that I would feel 'unbalanced'. I told her that I didn't want to drag it all up again as it felt like I was making huge strides and I felt that there was no point but she assured me that all the feelings are still inside and need to be let out so that I can be freed. I liked the sound of the freedom part but I'm not liking the unbalanced at all. I don't want to feel angry, resentful, hurt again, I've had enough of that but I just cant seem to get out from under the cloud of it all and the cloud descended again last week - big time!
My car broke down on New Years Eve, a big breakdown that threatens to send it up to Mercedes heaven and although for the first month I was all positive and prepared to take the time to decide what to do, walking to work and back and researching train fares, it all came crashing down around me last week. We had a bad storm and all that remained of the battered fencing held together by washing line and hope in the back garden, finally gave up the ghost and an expensive job that I was hoping to put off just that bit longer needed to be done urgently. My neighbours have a three year old, two dogs and a short fuse so the holes in the fencing were a worry and a pot that was being to boil more fiercely as each month went by. In this country the rule is that the fencing on the left side of your garden is your responsibility and during my time on this earth I have concluded that nothing causes more arguments between neighbours than boundary's (apart from badly parked cars but we'll get to that in a minute)
So before the pot boiled over completely, and having heard my neighbour boil I wasn't at all keen to have it happen in my direction, the money that had made the car disaster feel not too disastrous had to be used to buy fence panels instead and to pay for a man with tools and strength to do the job. Well, I reasoned, still quite positive at this point, it was on the list to do and was all an investment in the house so the bathroom could wait another couple of months and I could carry on walking a bit longer as the exercise was doing me good.

But with a bad cold and bad weather getting me down that resolve had slipped last week and to top it off it just so happened that on the day I parted with that money, over £700 another neighbour decided to get nasty about where the recovery truck had left my unshiftable car and that helpless, alone, whoa-is-me feeling descended again like a tonne of bricks. Something would have to be done about the car - more money - and then just in case I had an ounce of inner strength left, the cat was bitten again by the neighbourhood monster cat which preys on every moggy in the area on a regular basis and before his tail falls off completely a large vet's bill could be on the cards. Great.

I went from feeling proud of myself, competent and capable in my new life to scared and shattered again in less than a week. Did I mention the gas and electricity bill?

Shopping for floor tiles

I got lucky with the tiles, my local DIY shop was clearing out their tile display to make room for a new one and were selling off tiles at £3 a box for 10! I took every box they had of two particular types, some for the kitchen, some for the bathroom, everything I needed for £187. They're not the best quality tiles in the world by any stretch of the imagination but tiles are something you can go utterly crazy on and blow your budget royally if your not careful. Its very temping when developing to choose the tiles that you like yourself or worst still choose the ones on the amazing displays in the shop but what looks good in the 40sq foot bathroom display in the high end designers showroom is going to look pretentious in a tiny terrace and will still cost you a tidy packet. Kitchens and bathrooms are a big danger zone when your developing. Of course the simple hot and cold small single tap looks nothing next to the great big shiny £600 designer one but its a question of self discipline. You have to take your designer head off and put your business one on. Your house has a ceiling price, that is what it will be worth when you sell it. Take the price that you bought it for away from the ceiling price that your house will fetch once its all done and your left with a figure. Out of that figure will come how much it has cost you to do the all of the work and whats left is your profit. If your like me your wanting to make as much profit as possible so that developing figure needs to be as low as you can get it without compromising on the overall finish.What I mean by that is that theres a standard of developing that fits each house, if you have a small terrace like Ambleside you wouldn't put in granite floor tiles, a house at that price level just simply doesn't warrant it. The people who come to buy that kind of house won't be expecting it, they'd be thrilled to bits of course and you won't see bigger smiles as they skip round but it won't influence their decision on how much money they would pay for the overall house. However if the buyers where looking for a higher end house, say a five bedroom family home and they walked into the kitchen and were met by cheep lino then that would make a difference and they would immediately be calculating what a new floor would cost them to put in. If this were to happen in several areas of the house then they would be looking to reduce their offer to cover the work that they would feel they had to do to bring the house up to standard. Its a tricky area of property developing and the one that a lot of people fall down on, its worth setting a firm budget before you even start the work for each room of the house and trying your darnedest to stick to it. You can visit a few houses that are on the market which are the same as yours just to get a picture of what that standard is if your not sure but don't fall into the trap of thinking "if I make my house look a million dollars than the buyers will want mine rather than the ones I've seen" They will but the benefit will be all theirs, you won't end up with a million dollars in your pocket, your pockets will be empty! Worst still the house will be so 'you' that you won't want to leave and won't be able to afford to leave anyway as you'll have no money to put into a new house.I know that all sounds dramatic and a bit preachy but I've done it. Sarah Beeny would be very cross with us!