Wrapping up 2010
So it's not quite over yet. But I have a few minutes whilst my son is still relatively happy.
Twelve months ago I was living with my soon to be husband in a 3bedroom house. Twelve months before that we were each running 2 bedroom households of our own.
This year we are living in a 2 bedroom apartment, which has required considerable downsizing. Pieces have been sold, packed up, put in storage, or fitted into the tardis like space of our cupboards. It has necessitated spring cleaning on my behalf. Today I was trying to clean up from the Christmas pile of gifts and unpack one box that my husband claims is mine.
It held a mixed bag of items-financial statements that no longer need to be kept, tax items from when I worked overseas in 2001, two pieces of creative writing from the 90s (memory trip), a Russian Doll set, other knick knacks. It was very much pieces from the turn of the milennium, from my early 20s. But the thing that caught me most were some sheets of information about mood management-taming anxiety, and anxious thoughts.
And I'd had to write a journal entry to work through with a counsellour's help, where I had the question-"Did X stop being friends with me because I was depressed?". The friend itself isn't really the issue (our friendship seems from another life now), but the level of distress that it caused when we split. The anguish and length of anguish seems out of proportion, and I wonder how that tailspin could have started, and what could have been done to stem the grief so it didn't spill across half a decade. There's a lesson to learn here. It's the lesson I'm trying to learn-how to let whatever it is (grief, anger, bad luck, friendship problems, romantic mishaps) belong to the days it occurred on, now the years ahead. Because then you live the problem twice.
What was comforting however, was to realise that I had, somehow, managed to recover from that friendship breakup. No longer haunted by it in dreams or thoughts, no longer think of it. I found a way, at the time, to shrink their significance. Now I can just remember them as part of the times, and not think too much about when the times changed. I don't need to avenge anything, repair anything, give or receive an apology, repair or patch anything that remains. We're not friends anymore and don't need to be friends, nor enemies either.
It was empowering in a way, to realise that this problem no longer aggrieved me, I could talk about it without feeling upset, which is such a hard thing to do for the things I feel too strongly about and haven't yet worked out how to defuse. I also had been given a tip sheet on 10 ways to keep stress out of your life-was pleased that half of the tips I had already incorporated into my life. And so 2010 ends, even though it's been hectic and not all of it how I would have liked, overall I feel as though I'm ending the year wiser, and happier for finally having my little boy.
Must go-husband has reappeared in a christmas crown with a sleeping son.
Twelve months ago I was living with my soon to be husband in a 3bedroom house. Twelve months before that we were each running 2 bedroom households of our own.
This year we are living in a 2 bedroom apartment, which has required considerable downsizing. Pieces have been sold, packed up, put in storage, or fitted into the tardis like space of our cupboards. It has necessitated spring cleaning on my behalf. Today I was trying to clean up from the Christmas pile of gifts and unpack one box that my husband claims is mine.
It held a mixed bag of items-financial statements that no longer need to be kept, tax items from when I worked overseas in 2001, two pieces of creative writing from the 90s (memory trip), a Russian Doll set, other knick knacks. It was very much pieces from the turn of the milennium, from my early 20s. But the thing that caught me most were some sheets of information about mood management-taming anxiety, and anxious thoughts.
And I'd had to write a journal entry to work through with a counsellour's help, where I had the question-"Did X stop being friends with me because I was depressed?". The friend itself isn't really the issue (our friendship seems from another life now), but the level of distress that it caused when we split. The anguish and length of anguish seems out of proportion, and I wonder how that tailspin could have started, and what could have been done to stem the grief so it didn't spill across half a decade. There's a lesson to learn here. It's the lesson I'm trying to learn-how to let whatever it is (grief, anger, bad luck, friendship problems, romantic mishaps) belong to the days it occurred on, now the years ahead. Because then you live the problem twice.
What was comforting however, was to realise that I had, somehow, managed to recover from that friendship breakup. No longer haunted by it in dreams or thoughts, no longer think of it. I found a way, at the time, to shrink their significance. Now I can just remember them as part of the times, and not think too much about when the times changed. I don't need to avenge anything, repair anything, give or receive an apology, repair or patch anything that remains. We're not friends anymore and don't need to be friends, nor enemies either.
It was empowering in a way, to realise that this problem no longer aggrieved me, I could talk about it without feeling upset, which is such a hard thing to do for the things I feel too strongly about and haven't yet worked out how to defuse. I also had been given a tip sheet on 10 ways to keep stress out of your life-was pleased that half of the tips I had already incorporated into my life. And so 2010 ends, even though it's been hectic and not all of it how I would have liked, overall I feel as though I'm ending the year wiser, and happier for finally having my little boy.
Must go-husband has reappeared in a christmas crown with a sleeping son.
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