Progress. I think.

The last few days have been a bit difficult. For the first time ever I am relieved for it to be Monday, I need the work distraction. 

I wrote the below towards the end of last week when I was in a better frame of mind. Reading over it though has picked me up. That's always a good thing... 

I've been single again nearly two months. I actually feel quite good. Sometimes I feel strong, but obviously sometimes I'm the absolute opposite. A lot has changed for me in the last couple of months. I've moved house, I've lost a bunch of friends, I've become a cat mummy and I've lost 16.5lbs. 

Losing weight has massively helped me feel better about myself. I feel a bit like my 23 year old self and she was really fun. She was fresh out of Uni and fresh out of a messy relationship. She didn't worry about a boyfriend or the future. I like to channel her sometimes. 

As much as I want to eventually be in a relationship and build a life with someone, I realise how lucky I am to have so many friends to share things with and so many friends I know will always be there for me. At the moment I would prefer to put my trust in them as opposed to some boy - it's a much safer bet. I am determined to date soon, I would quite like to get dating again asap to be honest (if only for the free wine). I will approach dating just as I have in the past, one date at a time. I definitely do not want to get carried away into another mess, I want to make sure I keep my heart all mine. I'm not at all ready to trust it to somebody else.

I've learnt quite a few things over the last couple of months. I'm definitely learning how to deal with my anxiety better, I'm living in the moment much more and realising I do not need to let my feelings have so much control over my actions. Of course I sometimes wonder about the future but I cannot let myself worry about that too much. I've been far too busy tackling my broken heart to even have the time to think about the future to be honest. 

Me, me, me, me

I'm alive. Amazingly I have survived my heartache. True to my word I have been focussing on myself. I have lost a stone in weight (Slimming World, not breakup induced anorexia), I've treated myself to a hair colour (money I would have spent on his birthday) and I have two new loves; two adorable kittens.

It's not been a walk in the park. I have had (and still do have) down times, where the feelings of sadness, embarrassment and foolishness are in full force. I just try my best to realise that they are just feelings, that they will go in time and they do. 

Funnily enough my difficult time of a couple of years ago has helped me get through the last couple of weeks. All the things I did to delay myself getting over Mr CBA I have avoided this time around. Momentous are ruthlessly gone, he is blocked from all my social feeds and I have not attempted to be casual by going in the bar. 

I realise that to heel my pain I need to get over him, forget about him and make him my past. A large part of me has done just that and everyday she gets more and more over him. 

Over the last few weeks I have even plucked up the courage to venture back to my old stomping ground, coming face to face with Mr CBA several times. Gratefully, two years on he still appears a little sheepish - maybe he does have a conscience after all. I can only hope that Mr Boy does, I'm not holding out much hope though. He still insists on waving hello to my parents when they pass him in the village. If he had any idea as to how I have been feeling he really wouldn't have the balls. 

In the first few weeks I read a lot of Mindfullness and anxiety books. They helped me realise I wasn't crazy for feeling the way I did and that it will take time to move on. They talk about feeling unbalanced and that when something is removed from your life you need to fill that void. They also really help me to recognise how and why I feel certain ways. When I'm having a particularly anxious moment I try to reason with myself as to why I might feel like that. 

One of my biggest realisations is that ultimately, in life, all I want is to enjoy everyday. I want to spend quality time with my friends and family and make amazing memories. I don't want to waste time crying and worrying. Being with me was no longer fun for Mr Boy, he has grander plans. Therefore I need to focus on spending my time with people who do want to have fun with me; friends, guys or whoever. Sometimes I feel excited about dating again. Not at all for the end result (a relationship - oh boy will it be hard to trust another dude) but for the purpose of fun nights out, lovely dinners and flirty drinks. 

My Broken Little Heart

A little over two weeks ago my world turned upside down. Mr Boy, my boyfriend of exactly one year and one day, told me he wasn't sure how he felt about me anymore, that a week at a festival with his friends had made him realise he wanted to be 'free'. My stomach had never flipped over so painfully. 

After three days of tears, a few text messages where he told me he 'loved me very much', explaining that he simply couldn't get his words out and urging me 'not to worry' we met up to talk. As I expected (and cynically prepared myself for) he still wasn't sure what he wanted, or more precisely how he felt about me. He said he didn't want to lose me but... But. Never good. In the end I had to draw the conclusion, I had to be the one to decide our next move. In the end I had to define my own break up. 

I wasn't sure at all how I would cope. I knew it was going to be hard, I had been there before with a guy I felt just a fraction for when compared to my feelings for Mr Boy. I cried hysterically to my Mum (my poor Mum, who always has to pick up the pieces of my broken heart). I barely slept and unusually for me, I barely ate. But, as per the age old saying and many a Pinterest repin, time is a great healer.

After amazing support from truly amazing friends and family, I now realise he was never the guy I thought he was. This hugely helps me not to long for those nights snuggled together on the sofa or the adventures of our Euro Trip. All those times we spent together that I thought meant a lot to both of us turn out to mean nothing to him. After all, he decided to delete me from his life in a just a week of festival fun. I thought he was a straight forward, loving, caring person. I never thought he could be so cruel and inconsiderate, after all, he had insisted we were best friends. Funny that, I don't remember when I last broke my best friends heart. 

Because I understand life is short and I'm all Mindfull and stuff, I now realise that I now need to focus on myself. This is now about how I deal with this, how I interpret my feelings. I refuse to spend anymore time on analysing my most recent relationship failure. 

That was in fact my first lesson. I realised that was the reason to why I felt so sad. I felt like a failure and I generally do feel like a failure when it comes to the most basic human function; forming relationships. Second to that I felt like a fool, a nieve fool who actually thought this guy reciprocated how I felt about him. I thought what we had was really special, something I hadn't experienced in a long time. Fool. 

Lastly I feel angry. Angry that I have amazing memories from the last year that I no longer believe to be genuine, that feel fake, half arsed. Maybe that anger will fade and someday I will be able to think back to Amsterdam, Inter Railing and games nights without feeling like a mug.

My recent Mindfullness practice is bringing me peace of mind. It has helped me to learn that because I feel all these things it doesn't mean I am these things. My feelings of being a failure is my reaction to all this mess and it's ok to feel it, I just need to make a note that these are just feelings. After all no one has ever died from feelings. 

Over-sharing

The boy wants to read my blog. He's pestered me about getting the URL ever since we first started dating. I have always been reluctant to share it with him because I'VE WRITTEN SO MUCH SCARY STUFF. He says he feels I'm keeping something from him and he's kinda right. I'm keeping my history of disastrous dates, douche-bag dudes and days of depression from him and rightly flippin' so!  

It's funny in relationships. At the beginning you do your very best for this lovely new person to see you in the best light possible. You attempt to keep the crazy away, you dress up for film nights and wash your sheets before every potential sleep over. Oh how things change. Nearly one year and two holidays on, smelling each others morning breath, talking about toilet things and even spot picking is acceptable! 

If I can be so free and easy with all those gross relationship things then why-oh-why am I so reluctant to share my blog posts that I thought at one time perfectly acceptable to share with the rest of the Internet accessible world?  

I think it's good to be a bit aloof. I think it's important to keep an air of loveliness in your relationship. I may have let my guard down on some weird couple behaviours but I do have my limits, limits that I know many of my friends do not. Maybe me not wanting to share my posts is one of those limits? Maybe I want him to continue to think of me as this cool, older woman (haha) and not a sad, pathetic nearly thirty. 

Most likely, straight after reading my latest entry, he'll realise I actually don't harbour any juicy secrets at all, that all I really write about is chick-lit. So boring (I hope).

The Boy-Goss Catch Up

I've been quiet on the boy related posts these last 6 months. Well to be honest, I've been reluctant to spill the beans on my new relationship. This is due to a couple of reasons. 

One, because I didn't want to jinx things; to ramble on about this boy and then nothing materialise. Two, because believe it or not I don't like everybody knowing all of my business all the time. And three, because some things are nice to just enjoy and not write/moan/overanalyse about.

Over the last 6 months however I have attempted many a blog post to share my boy updates, they just never really made the cut (or I chickened out of posting at the very last minute). I want to use this post to give those lovely written sentences their 5 minutes of fame.

So here goes: 

13th November 2014

If you hadn't realised by now, I have myself a boyfriend. My absence in writing comes from a good place. A place where I was reluctant to share all my boy goss. Quite frankly, I was afraid of slipping into my usual routine where things cock up and I spend the next few months (and many blog posts) analysing what exactly went wrong. Instead of sharing and risking all that drama I decided to keep schtum. I also kept schtum because sometimes it's nice not to share.

I realise that boy-bipolar is much more fascinating to the outside world than a cute little love story. The interest in reading about my dating disasters totally out-weighs the popularity in reading about a lovely date night. Who cares how much I hold my BF's hand as we stroll about at the weekend and who cares that he has his very own toothbrush sitting in my toothbrush holder. No one. Not really anyway and that's OK.

8th August 2014

My Summer fling has returned to Uni - or as he calls it 'college'. He left last week, pretty much leaving for the airport from my front door. I spent the next ten or so hours following his flight on a plane tracker app. 

During his last few weeks we both kind of avoided the big leaving-the-country-for-16-weeks elephant in the room. I simply didn't know how was I going to feel about it, so it wasn't worth worrying about.

His last weekend we made sure was jam packed with fun. We spent one day at the zoo and the next at a local festival with his friends. Needless to say we both got hammered. It was under the influence of bucket cocktails that he confessed he was sad to be going back to Uni, that he wanted to keep in touch and that we both admitted to having had amazing summers.

To be honest, during his last week I sensed a hint of dread hanging in the air the whole time. All I kept thinking was 'this will the last time he sleeps over/we have the day together/we'll watch crappy tele'. It reminded me of my Uni days and how I used to feel going back for a new term, leaving all my family and friends. I was sad to be honest. Even though we had both said we would keep in touch it's not quite the same. It felt like the definite end of our/my summer of fun. 

Mindfullness: The Basics

Recently I've been seeking ways in which to keep me grounded, excercises or thought patterns to break my sometimes neurotic ones. When I'm in a crazy mindset I recognise it's not right but struggle to pull myself out of it. This lack of solution to my problem, and some chitchat with my wannabe Yogi housemate, lead me to the practice of Mindfullness.

I'm not expert, I'm only four chapters into my self-help book, however I feel like I have the basics, the bare necessities of this practice and I wanted to share.

Firstly Mindfullness focuses on being in the moment. It believes that us humans fill our days with being busy and this busyness distracts us from enjoying the beauty and simplicity of actual life. Days, weeks, even years go by with us rushing through life focusing on the stress and the busyness. Sound familiar? It certainly does for me. 

The idea goes on to explain that us humans make our lives busy in order to achieve all those things we think are important in life; successful career, perfect relationships, a lovely home (or whatever it is that keeps you going). We use these goals as indicators as to weather we are on the right track, if we can tick off these things then we will finally be happy. 

The book I am reading helps you to understand the practice through the many excercises dotted about the pages. I spent a train journey to work the other morning focusing on my breath and the weight of my body on the seat. Yesterday I Mindfully drunk my morning tea, closing off my thoughts and simply noticing the cup, the liquid and the taste of my brew. It was a pretty flippin' good brew and that's exactly the point. If you focus on one thing, you reap much greater pleasure from it. Being busy spreads your focus too thin, resulting in your mind doing many different tasks but gaining only some satisfaction. 

To keep the whole Mindfullness practice basic, the strap line for the idea (come on, I am in marketing) is this; Human-Being vs. Human-Doing. 

I love that. It makes perfect sense to me. Enjoy the moment, every second, just be. Try your hardest not to get bogged down with all that self made busyness. 

New Year Resolutions 2015

So here goes the obligatory New Years resolution post. Ever since I started keeping my journal (online or otherwise) I have always made a note of my resolutions for the new year to come. I like to keep it as a record, something I can look back on to determine weather or not I achieved anything at all that year. Whilst writing this years resolutions I looked back to what I had written at the start of last year.

2014 meant a line drawn in the sand for me, the previous year had been a particularly difficult one. This time last year I made one solid resolution, I simply resolved to have fun. That's F-U-N. I wanted to ensure that the year to come was much better than the previous one and it certainly was. In fact I had lots of fun. 

This year, of course, is no different.This year I am continuing my New Year's tradition and I have made three resolutions. 

Resolution number 1.

To be more grateful. When I'm having a particularly bad day I always try to re-focus my mind on all the good things, to thank my God (whoever she may be) for all my blessings, all those tiny or mahoosive things I love about my life. Doing this little exercise definitely helps me out of my mood slump. This year I resolve to be even more grateful, to really see all my blessings. Hopefully one day my mind will be so good at focussing on the good that it won't even notice the bad. 

Resolution number 2.

To be kinder. I want to put more love out there, to put a smile on someone's face who's having a difficult day, to just tell someone how much they mean to me. I want to put some good charma out there. Imagine if everyone in the world did one good deed a day, imagine if everyone passed on their smile, it would be such a lovelier place to be. 

Resolution number 3.

A classic, sure to be on many a resolution list; to eat less and move more.  I know, so cliche but if anyone is in need of this on their list its me (again, I'm sure everyone thinks that). I've been greedily shuvling in the sausage rolls, Celebrations and Walkers Sensations since September (2013). I am so far off the wagon, I can't even see the the wagon, I can only just about make out the tyre marks left in the sand by said wagon and I only notice them when I'm not being distracted by deep fried brie wedges. 

Similarly to this time last year I don't really have much of a plan for myself/my life this year. I guess if I continue along with my resolution from last year and also start to focus on these new ones everything should work itself out. There's a leap of faith for you.