A beautiful life

Ok, I admit it. I’ve not been taking my medication. My antidepressants. And it’s for no other reason than I keep forgetting. It’s been a few weeks now of having the occasional tablet.

Interestingly, no one has noticed. There hasn’t been a noticeable shift in my moods. I don’t feel much different either. I’d always hoped that once the stress of work had gone then I would be more like myself.

However, work stress hasn’t left me completely as I have said in previous posts. But that is not what this post is about.

I’ve discussed it with my sister and I think I’m going to lower my dose and try to remember to take them. It seems the best plan.

I’ve been thinking about the past year. It was just over a year ago when I had my anti depressants upped the first time. And then again when I was negotiating leaving my career.

I still can’t believe it sometimes. But – as hindsight is such a wonderful thing – I can see how unhappy I was there. In fact, I wonder if I ever was truly happy there. Convenience, and I guess success, made me stay there so long. But no, I wasn’t happy.

But what the academy did to me was worse, I realise that now. I lost complete faith in myself. They stripped me of my confidence and my self esteem. I have spent 10 months doubting everything I do. In those ten months I have put on two stone. I’ve stopped all the healthy habits I once had – like reading, facial care, taking tablets, sleep, eating well, exercise. I’ve stopped putting makeup on each day. And whilst a bit of make up doesn’t matter, what it shows is that I gave up. I gave up.

I was so proud of my weight loss and how it made me feel. I want that back.

I’ve had a disappointing week- my business has not taken off like I’d hoped – but I can’t let this haunt me or put me off.

This is just the beginning of the new life I am going to lead. It’s a very short period of time in my life and it will come and go.

I’ve had a beautiful life so far, despite everything. I had a full childhood and experiences that many have never had. I’ve been loved. I’ve been successful. I’ve had children. I’ve travelled. I’ve built relationships.

I could list the negative things, of course I could. But I won’t. That was my life then, and this is my life now.

I’m not giving up.

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Eating frogspawn

If you’re wondering what that is, it’s my breakfast. Yes, I know. Frogspawn.

It is actually chia pudding – chia seeds soaked overnight in fresh coconut milk. The rest is plum jam – I simmered home grown plums in orange juice and zest, some coconut sugar and cinnamon, blended the result and added chia seeds again to make a jam. Please tell me it is healthy. I’m led to believe it is healthy.

Yesterday was a baaaaad day.

Remember I told you about my detox diet? How proud I was of my efforts? Yeah well, I lost a pound. 1lb. That’s it.

Before you say anything, I know. It is better than putting it on. It’s more than I think. It’s still an achievement. But it really, really does not feel like it. I would have been happy with two – not ecstatic, but happy. I’d cut out meat and was having one coffee a day with a mix of almond milk and cow’s milk. I was having one square of dark chocolate a day. The rest was lots of fruit and veg, pulses and beans, water, green tea and nuts. Oh and the birdseed and frogspawn, aka quinoa and chia seeds. One pound. Let me say that again. 1lb.

I was devastated. Angry. Frustrated. I hated myself. My defective body with its flabby stomach, legs and arms. My inability to keep any weight off. My inability to seemingly lose any.

My motivation for this healthy way of eating was my one and half stone weight gain since January and my trip to see Wildcard in (now) two weeks time. My clothes are tighter, my stomach is bigger and I no longer look in the mirror and feel proud of my 3.5 stone weight loss. I’m angry I can’t keep it off.

But then, I did my usual. In a sulky strop, I baked myself some gluten free, rice flour and coconut sugar cookies. I ate loads of them. I had oven chips for tea, and polished off the remaining fruit pastilles of a bag my daughter had naively left lying around. If you are naturally skinny, you won’t understand this move. If you have struggled with weight, you will.

Last night, I was determined again. I can’t let this beat me. I thought about how I had lost the 3.5 stone. I merged that concept with the fact that I have bulk bought quinoa, chia seeds and other ingredients. I have come up with my own diet for the next week. So that is why I’m eating frogspawn this morning. Just for information, the coconut chia is bland and the plum chia jam is sour. It was just about edible.

Please feel free to message me with some delicious recipes for chia seeds.

If they actually exist.

Self esteem

As regular readers will know, and anyone who is on the plumpscious side will understand, being overweight seriously messes with your self esteem.

This obviously creates a myriad of problems and for me, in a cruel irony, makes it even less likely for me to lose weight: I’m an emotional Over-eater, a ‘might as well eat it because I’m disgusting already’ and a ‘well, you’ll never be thin so enjoy yourself’ type of a gal.

People tell me that I’m pretty. I’m not sure I believe them. I can’t see past my huge stomach and flabby thighs so how can they?

There are times when life has surprised me though…

I met my first proper boyfriend when I was 17 and I couldn’t believe it when he asked me out. He was older than me, more attractive than me, more confident than me… Yet, he chose me. (In the end, he turned out to be an absolute plonker that broke my heart then stalked me when I’d had enough of being messed about and refused to take him back… But that’s another story.)

Or in my 20s when I went on holiday with friends and I ended up with the holiday fling that everyone fancied. He chose me. I still can’t believe it now and was completely surprised by it then. Sure, that’s all it ever was and ever would be but he picked me.

My trip to Spain last year. The girls joked about how many men had come on to me… I was pretty surprised myself! I still say that it was because I was single and perhaps more open to if but it was a welcome pick-me-up after months of depression.

And then, Lost Soul. Oh Lost Soul! Undeniably attractive to many women I know, six years younger than me, and yet he was attracted to little old fat me.

I’m telling you this, not because I have a big head – it’s actually one of the smallest parts about me – but because I need to remind myself of this occasionally to drag myself out of my self hatred and misery.

I suppose I never really believe that men find me attractive until they openly ask me out or make a move. Sometimes I think someone may be interested but quickly my self doubt kicks in and I end up believing myself to be imagining it.

Take last week. I went on a residential course with a colleague. We entered the room and the host came over to greet us. As he left, my colleague and I looked at each other and said “wow”. He was gorgeous. I noticed, on the second day, that he seemed to looking at me a lot when he spoke to the room. Of course, I wanted to believe that he was attracted to me but I didn’t believe it. Wishful thinking, I thought. He’s looking at you no more than anyone else.

On our way home, my colleague mentioned that she’d noticed him looking at me a lot. I hadn’t imagined it then. Doesn’t mean anything – nothing happened – but it was reassuring to my battered ego.

Ah and there’s my crush, whom I have written about twice now. He is someone I have met through work but who works for a different agency to me. Oh he is delicious. He makes all my nerve endings zing and I’m so drawn to him when he speaks. God I hope he doesn’t notice that.

And when we do speak, there’s little things that he says and does that make me think… Well, daydream. The possibility, the explanation of things he’s said and done. Nothing explicit, nothing in the open, but enough to make me wonder. Like, giving me his personal number instead of his work number. Telling me I can call him whenever.

Am I reading too much into this? Maybe. Maybe this is how stalkers are created. ☺ There’s just something when we speak and I can’t believe it’s just me… A magnetism between us, somehow. Have you ever experienced that?

Anyway, in the high likelyhood that this is entirely in my imagination, all I can say is that I am really enjoying awakening those thoughts and feelings again. It’s making me remember how it feels to be interested in someone again. I like that feeling. I want to feel it again, and reciprocated. Maybe it’s not too late for me, maybe my weight doesn’t matter to some people, even if it does to me.

Maybe this is the positive jolt I need to start looking after myself again. To find love again. I need to keep reminding myself that I’m not as grotesque as I think I am.

Coincidence

I once read a book which talked about coincidences. My mum was very much into Spiritualism at the time and recommended into me. It was less about Spiritualism as such (mediums and clairvoyance etc) and more about our relationship with the natural world. They advocated spending time with nature, eating simple organic food, meditation…. And taking notice of the coincidences around us, messages from our guides. Putting the Spiritualism to one side, it was a powerful book even if you were not a believer. (When I remember the name I will post it in the comments)

Coincidences have the power to make the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Whether you are just simply attuned to them or they just happen and you are alerted to them, they’re pretty weird. From reading that book, I’ve always believed that you should take note of them: whether from an ethereal being or simply your subconscious trying to tell you something, it’s worth having a think when they crop up.

Last week, for the first time in about ten years, a pupil made a comment about my weight. He’s not a pupil that I know very well. I’m nowhere near as heavy as I was in January this year thanks to the Keto diet. I am however still a stone heavier than I was a year ago. I know I’m overweight. It’s quite obvious I’m overweight. And I’ve no doubt that there has been many a pupil that have called me all the ‘fats’ under the sun when I have had to sanction them. But, they’ve always had the respect to not to do this to my face. In fact, one of the boy’s friends, a boy I do know, openly said how “sly” it was after it had been said. In some ways, this actually made me feel worse about my weight – like it is something the pupils who I get on with pity me for. The other pupil irritated more for his lack of respect, not what he actually said.

Anyway it was dealt with, calmly, and we move on.

This morning I woke up and, looking in the mirror, felt huge even though I have only put a few pounds on since Dad got ill. It’s the second day of my period and I’m going out tonight – always a source of anxiety for someone overweight (What am I going to wear? Will I actually be able to find something that makes me feel nice and pretty?) But, knowing that keeping positive is always the best way to stay on a diet and feel good about yourself, I chose some nice clothes to wear, felt good, and went out early to the shops.

So far so good. I even dared to think about whether I might see a handsome single man, fresh from the gym, browsing the Booths’ aisles at 8am in the morning. Fat chance. 😊

Instead I saw someone I used to work with twenty years ago. She’s older than me, 50 in a couple of days apparently, but we used to get on well and she even came to my 21st birthday party. It was nice to see her and have a catch up, and we laughed about how hard it was to shop with the kids (My four year old was being a little demanding) when she said it.

“Ooh, are you expecting again then?” to which I just patted my stomach and replied,

“oh no, I’m just fat I’m afraid.”

She was embarrassed and I felt sorry for her, rather than myself – at that moment anyway. Being honest, the comment has not left my head ad ever since.

Yes, I am overweight. Yes, the top I wore could be perceived as a maternity top (light, floaty and nipped in under the bust and designed to hide a belly, pregnant or not). Plus I had a young child with me and am still, just about, in child producing age.

Coincidence or just the world telling me to lose weight? Who knows but I know I need to listen.

Weightloss update

Just thought I would update my blog on my current weightloss and diet.

(These opinions are entirely my own. I am not a trained professional. I have simply researched and tried out what works for me. Always speak to your GP before taking on a new eating regime.)

From April 2017 to November 2017 I put on over a stone in weight. From November 2017 to January 2018 I put an unknown amount on, but I would suspect it was probably nearing another stone: mirtazapine, Christmas and depression will do that to a girl. I don’t know how much because of course I didn’t weigh myself. But every item of clothes I owned, even the ones that had been loose, were tight. I felt huge – the biggest I had ever been. I was bloated and uncomfortable.

Coming off the mirtazapine helped initially. Be it the side effects of the drug on my weight, or simply that I felt better, I started to lose weight. When I felt better, I weighed myself. I was two stone heavier than I had been in April – the last time I had been at my ‘low weight’ since a year of Slimming World and Weight Watchers. Put simply, I had put everything on I had lost and more.

Since coming back from Prague, I have engaged in a new eating regime. This has come from months of research and reading but also reflecting on what has worked previously for me. I will continue to tweak and monitor as I go.

1. Intermittent fasting of 16:8. My first meal is 11am and I have usually finished my meal well before my 7pm curfew. Results? I am certainly eating less: no late night snacking or binging and on some days I am only eating two full meals. This has made it much easier to:
2. Reduce and count calories. I have downloaded Lifesum and paid for the premium. I log everything I eat – and I mean everything. I aim to be below my target daily calories on the majority of days. I also track my water intake and have really improved with this.
3. Lifesum Premium means I have access to the Low Carb Ketogenic diets. I am currently on the ‘easy’ low carb diet which means I can have up to 100g of carbs a day. I eat very low carb at breakfast and lunch or brunch but have a small amount at dinner times on most days. If I can, I try to not to. Yet, I rarely go as high as 100g and am usually around 50-60g but I like that I have the option of more if needed. The app actually suggests not counting calories but I still do – I mostly eat less as said above. I feel this covers the likely hood of error.
4. However, once a week, I have a day where I allow myself all the carbs and all of my daily calories. I still follow the low carb and 16.8 in the daytime, but at night I will have a meal that I really fancy. I have read that it is good to shock the system with some days of low calories, one with higher and then average days in between.

So, the results.

I have lost 10lbs in two weeks. I have lost 5cm off my stomach and other cms elsewhere. My skin feels softer. I do not suffer with bloating anymore and so my large tummy is actually smaller: I look and feel like I have lost more than that. I get full when eating much less than used to. My sugar cravings are almost non-existent and manageable when they are there. And I am not thinking about food all the time!

At the moment, this bespoke plan is working for me and it is doable. I don’t feel like I’m missing out just yet but it is very early days. I know that I can always reduce the carbs further if my weightloss stalls.

Next steps:

I need to research more meal ideas as I am eating roughly the same things. I will get bored if I don’t.

Once I have finally shifted this cold/cough I am going to start the HIIT that has been recommended to me and that apparently works well with lchf diets.

Plan how this can work when I am in school – I don’t have time to eat salad, egg, bacon and avocado for breakfast at work. Need quick fixes.

So, all good so far. Here’s hoping I have finally found an eating plan I can stick to.

The good, the bad and the inbetween

Hope you have all had a lovely Christmas – I know I have. 😊

My sister and brother-in-law and my gorgeous nearly-two nephew came to stay for a few nights. We had such a great time and I have laughed so much. My sisters’ commented that they had not heard me laugh I’m such a long time and that it was good to see and hear. I definitely don’t laugh enough. We played board games, watched films and sampled flavoured gin. Such fun.

As expected from the increased medication (and Christmas!), I have put more weight on and am also suffering from water retention in my hands and feet, another side effect of Mirtazapine, the anti-depressant that I am taking.

No-one likes to put weight on, I know that. I’m not vain but I can’t tell you how much this is getting to me. My self-esteem is fragile at the best of times but it is at rock bottom at the moment. I am seriously considering going back to the doctors to get my medication changed. When I had postnatal depression in 2014, I took sertraline which worked well for the short time I was on it. The downside is that I won’t get the help with the insomnia but the way I see it, my feelings about my size are not helping my wellbeing so this has got to help. I’ve actually ordered new clothes as I know my work clothes aren’t going to fit. I don’t want anyone to see me like this.

Other than that, I am starting to feel better. I feel like the dark cloud is all around my head rather than encompassing all of me. I’m anxious about work but more about how I will face people than the work itself.

So, for the next few days I’m going to do some much needed housework and prepare for my son’s eleventh birthday on New Year’s Eve. Progress then – no more sitting in a stupor on the couch for me.

Food and life

Food is my life and my life sentence.

I love baking and cooking. I love cookery books, full of interesting flavours and combinations. I love cookery programmes and competitions which feed my passion for new ideas and flavours.

Food is my hobby. I love cooking for people: a simple dinner, a three course special occasion or a cake. Seeing that people are enjoying my food makes me immensely happy. A night in with family and friends and tasty food is bliss, as is a good meal out at a bistro or restaurant. Treats and a good film is heaven.

But, food is guilt, torture and comfort too.

I evaluate every meal, every mouthful hating myself for any over- indulgence. When I restrict my food to punish myself for my greed I am unhappy and long for something else.

When I am tired, I crave salty-savoury. When I am hormonal, I crave sweet. I’m tired a lot. I have PCOS so hormones are an issue too.

I use food to comfort and food to overwhelm my emotions: often stood at the kitchen counter, sense-blind to everything but my anxiety or stress trigger. And then I come to and feel the food in my mouth and see the half empty packet in my hand, heart thudding.

I have been overweight for 27 years. I have tried every diet I can get my hands on, many times. I have searched the Internet for answers so many times. Food, diets, calories consume so many of my thoughts.

Breakfast is rushed at my desk whilst reading emails or guiltily eyeing the door to my office in case someone walks in and sees me.

Lunch is often rushed too at my desk or self consciously eaten whilst on duty. Tea is made when I am exhausted, often too hungry and tired to care what it is and under pressure to feed three hungry children with my eye on the clock.

I believe that the first thing that people see is my weight. I believe that people treat my differently because of my weight. I think I am probably going to end up alone because of my weight and the way that it has destroyed any self-esteem that has been hard won by a small weight loss.

Despite the many, many contradictions in the Diet World, I know I need to eat less to lose weight. I have a fair idea how to eat healthily. I love vegetables and fruit. I love variety. I have successfully lost weight but never enough and it always goes back on after a few years. I hate my body, I hate my greed and my dependence on food.

The scales has ultimate power over me. If I don’t weigh, I eat too much. When I lose weight, I celebrate or treat myself with food often subconsciously but not always. When I put weight on I punish myself by giving up or comfort myself by eating.

Twenty seven years of failure is enough to make you believe that you are never going to succeed. Small successes pale into insignificance compared to the huge amount I need to lose. Goals are never reached, motivation is depressing.

Food is not greed, to me. Food is my poison, my comfort and my cure.

Food is my life. My hobby, my happiness, my habit; my comfort, my culture. Losing weight is not about eating less but about changing my life, changing 37 years of bad habits and traditions.

I don’t know where to start anymore.

Inner demon

“Look at the state of you. Yes, you are that big. Look at the size of your stomach! And your bottom! And your arms and legs! You are HUGE!

No one is ever going to find you attractive. Who would ever fancy you? Who would want to undress you? You will never find anyone who will want to be with you. And don’t even think of finding someone attractive who will ‘love you for who you are’. Ha! They wouldn’t look twice at you. They would pity you and your grotesque body.

You might as well eat that. Let’s face it, you are never going to be thin, are you? How many times have you tried now? Every time a failure. Every time you lose a little and gain a lot. You are pathetic. Greedy and pathetic. Be honest with yourself. You’re fat. You’ve always been fat and always will be. All you do is stuff your face. You are the fat one in your family – everyone knows it.

And, if by some miracle you actually lost the weight, just think what an absolute mess you’d be. Stretch marks, everywhere. Sagging skin. Flat, droopy boobs. Disgusting. You will never escape the fact that you’re still a fat girl. And then you would just put it all on again. Because you can’t help yourself, can you? You can’t say no. You just keep eating. Even when you have a good day, you ruin it by stuffing your big fat face with more food.

What a joke. It doesn’t matter how many black tops you wear. Pretty shoes aren’t going to change anything. All people see when they look at you is a big, fat, ugly blob. Your kids are embarrassed by you. You are an embarrassment. A big, fat failure.

Keep eating fatty: food is all you have got.”

Mirror Mirror

Two weeks. That’s all. Two weeks.

It has felt like an age.

First of all, my Internet router broke. And I refused to pay the £40 that Sky wanted to replace it. So I sulked and used up all my phone data then spent time realising how often I am Googling nonsense.

I also went back to work. I didn’t want to go back to work. Actually, it’s not too bad. I’m sharing an office now and am trying to get on with my new office-sharing co-worker. We are doing a very similar job and yet we tackle it so differently. I don’t dislike the woman but it’s not easy sharing a working space with someone who works so differently. And yet, we have the same favourite book: Pride and Prejudice. I’m hoping that time will help uncover more things in common.

The start of term is strangely unsettling. You are doing a job you do well and have done for many years. And yet, whilst your body is on a whirlwind of a travelator, moving continuously without a chance to step off, your mind is slow – sluggish even – and you struggle to catch up with the momentum of the day. At two weeks, I’ve run through my table, completed all the introductory lessons and am back in the swing. I’m working hard to get myself and my children in a good routine – we are doing OK, just a few necessary tweaks. For someone who is being medicated for anxiety and depression, I play the role of a strong assistant headteacher well. I actually find playing this part easy. At home, where I am myself, I find it hard to stay strong. I feel like a person whose mirror image does not reflect the original.

I don’t want to be on that treadmill again. Wake, dress, work, eat, clean, sleep. But it’s necessary. It’s modern day life. Yet, I want to live. I want my children to experience how wonderful this world really is.

From time to time, I think about how it would feel to be in a relationship again. To feel loved and wanted. To feel the heat of someone’s body as they lay next to me. To wake up and see their face smiling into mine: love reflecting back.

The reality is that I can’t bare to look at myself in the mirror never mind expect someone to want to look at me.

I have a full length mirror in my bedroom but it is still partly obscured by the ex’s belongings that have remained there for the past ten months (still nowhere near getting a house). Even if I could see myself though, I doubt I would.

In my bathroom, the toilet and sink are horizontal to the bathroom window. The window is in ‘quarters’ so that there is a pvc panel which cuts across the length and breadth of the glass. When you are standing near the sink, the pvc cuts you in half vertically bit strangely, for me, the two halves on myself fit together but with my chubby middle missing. And so, what I have, is the ultimate optimal illusion – the window makes me look thinner. Not like one of those weird mirrors that you get in a funfair – I look thinner, and in proportion.

It’s a cruel trick though. Even though my mind knows that the window mirror is not accurate, this image of myself deceives my mind. When I do, on rare occasions, see myself fully I am horrified by what I see.

I want to believe that someone out there will see past my rings of blubber and will love me for who I am. Life isn’t that fair though, is it? The chance of me finding a man that I am attracted to, has a good heart and good prospects and who actually likes me in return is very, very low. I’m scared I will wake up one day and it will be too late. I will be an old, fat lonely woman.

So, tweak my schedule I must. I must slowly but surely perfect the routine of my life so that I can be the best version of me I can be. With or without a man.

Defiant

I will admit it. One day was not quite enough to get my head straight.

Yesterday I continued to mope. I defiantly ate chocolate brownies for breakfast (no one is ever going to love me so I may as well eat whatever I want). I didn’t get changed and refused to get in the shower.

By mid morning though, the depression started to lift. Still clad in pyjamas, I began to drift about – tidying here and there- and trying to focus on something positive. On Tuesday, a big group of us are going camping in the Lakes; so for a little while, this occupied my mind.

In trying to find the right charger for the air pump, I searched through my bed drawer and came across an old journal. Knowing that I had written about Lost Soul in it all those years ago, I allowed myself a peek into its pages in an act of sheer self-sabotage.

I ended up reading all of it, knelt on my bedroom floor.

There were moments long forgotten alongside those memories that I still hold dear. But more than anything I was moved by the voice of my writing… its pain and desperation, the fleeting happiness and enduring hope.

“My head is aching with all the thoughts that are running through it. I wish I had a machine so that I could just extract it all…. Why am I so pathetic? Why can’t I just sort my head out?… He keeps telling me he loves me… He said he wants a relationship with someone just like me but not me as he doesn’t want to lose me. He said that I don’t realise how wonderful I am… I’m trying to gain perspective, trying to console my aching heart. He’s apologised for leading me on, hurting me.”

I was struck by the repetition of my thoughts and feelings. All these years on and nothing had changed. I became so angry: with him and myself. How had I allowed myself to fall back into this situation?

I still love him. But I am no closer to ever being with him and don’t think that I ever will be.

And rather than give blame to him or me for what has happened, I come to realise that this was always going to happen. The hope that I had long had, buried deep inside, was always going to come to the surface when I became single again.

Now, though, I had my answer. Hope is futile. It is never going to happen. So my grief over the past few days was necessary to – as I’ve already said in my posts – to purge that hope, and him, from my system.

I felt angry, yes, but defiant too. And dare I say it, positive too.

Now I can truly start. I have grieved my broken marriage and fought may way through the exhausted depression left in its wake. I have now mourned a love that I had put on the highest pedestal, somewhere which it probably did not deserve to be. I’ve survived it though; the crushing disappointment and the attack on my self esteem.

It’s clichéd, but now I realise that I’ve got to show myself some love. I’ve been battered by so many things in the past few years and yet most of them can be attributed to my love of someone – my parents, my husband, my lover. All that energy and love, although well spent then, has taken its toll on me. Sadly, I cannot say that I have felt the same energy and love coming my way because they were unable to for so many reasons. I suppose I could say, in some ways at least, that I have felt unloved but perhaps more precisely, I have not felt like someone’s priority. I have put my family, my children, my husband and my job first for so long that my mind could not cope any longer.

My body has bourn the brunt of this self neglect and abuse for years. I have talked before about my emotional over-eating, lack of exercise and just general lack of care.

People will hurt me for the rest of my life – it is human nature after all. Their misdemeanours will be forgiven and forgotten because that is what love means. But the same cannot be said for myself. Hurting myself cannot be forgiven because there is no excuse for it.

I can be a better mum, teacher, daughter, sister and friend- not by trying harder or working longer but by being a better me. And I am the only person that can make that happen.

There’s a powerful voice in my head that tells me that I will never do it. Or if I do, that it won’t last or it won’t make me happy. This voice has encouraged the chocolate brownie breakfasts and the scraping back of unwashed hair and the dry skin and the chipped nail polish and the ill fitting clothes. This voice has whispered my self imposed failings continually in my ear until my heart has recognised them as truth.

No more.

I am going to truly devote time and love to myself. I’m going to show myself the love that I show those around me. I’m going to give myself the quality time that I reserve for those I love. I’m going to give myself the little acts of kindness that I use to show someone I care or in recognition of a need in them.

This blog, this journal, is so important to me. Starting from the middle was created because I recognised that I needed to start my life afresh somehow – something was wrong or missing.

Now, I have an idea of how I will do this. The last ten months have been a long and arduous journey to the truth:

To be a better me, I need to love me better.