Usefulness of Blogging

On days like these it is invaluable to me to just unload onto the blog.   I don't remember ever being a complicated person or indeed a particularly deep thinker, worrier or much else before I had cancer.  I would never have run a daily journal let alone a blog. 

Blogs are cathartic because you can do a number of things with them - I imagine you could hone your writing and storytelling skills, you can use it for fiction or fact or a line somewhere in between.

You can tell the truth, half truth or lie.  You can run a journal of random thoughts a bit like this one or be more focussed on a subject.  

To me the usefulness of blogging is actually like today.  I need to go talk to someone or write it down to analyse it if you will.  I actually know that I'm meant to be following a path of not analysing stuff but somehow today was like going back 3 or 4 years to days of the Black Dog to days of real anguish and pain and suffering and well I shouldn't be feeling this right now I shouldn't be digging up the old stuff.  I thought I'd got away from all of that and I thought I was stronger than all that.  

Tomorrow it will be 2 weeks since I decided to change my life for ever to get rid of all the shackles that had bound me mind and body.  It is never going to happen overnight and without resistance to change - we are humans and we actually don't embrace change as well as we like to think we do.  In many ways there's a feeling especially for someone with my particularly "tight" ordered mind that you are launching yourself off an abyss, that is why it is so hard for me to do it.  The unknown doesn't sit comfortably with me, I want to know, be in control all the time and to be prepared to give up the things that make me, me is a huge ask.  But that's what I did for better or worse and so far it has been a struggle, it hasn't been plain sailing but then again, some of the rewards so far have more than made up for it.

Today is a flashback day, my body and my mind are fighting it out and my mind has resorted to dirty tactics.  Fighting dirty is I suppose one way and maybe if that's the last resort then maybe I'm on the way to winning but it is the depravity of my mind's comments the vicious way it accuses me and the torment going on in my head I don't like.  How can your own mind wish such wanton destruction on itself?   Don't get this wrong it isn't anywhere near suicidal thoughts or that sort of thing far from it.  This is a constant series of bullying snipes at my self belief and self esteem system.  It's as if you are being bullied all the time but it's in your head.

Stuff like, and yet it appears trivial, you failed at being a father, or you haven't had a job for a while because you aren't any good, you shouldn't have survived cancer, you are a failure and so many other things like this but some too distressing to put to paper.  Being told you aren't good enough for someone or anything to do with some sort of rejection are the worst I find.  These things aren't even remotely true and don't stand up to scrutiny - that's the thing they aren't even rational thoughts.  What they are, are a constant stream of negative energy eating away at me and my self confidence (what little of that I have) and its just intent on pulling me down - it doesn't want me to be happy, it nit picks on any slight doubt I have and goes for it.

So I have a doubt about something let's say, I was worried about something I'd said to someone and wasn't sure if they'd heard that right.  It would worry me a little but now what is happening is it gets blown out of all proportion by my head and suddenly its a full blown crises and I start to doubt myself.  I know what this is, I have to deal with it and now because whilst I've always had this constant "head battle" since I got cancer I don't need this right now, I need something different I need the real me to be talking inside my head not the demons.

I've never needed the real me to be there for me more than now, to guide and help me, to finally make me believe in myself and to "be me" to help me to form the right sentences that mean what they say and that aren't trite.  To look into people's eyes when I speak to them, to stop looking at the floor or elsewhere, to be self confident, to show the real me, to be the real me.  Now more than ever when I've picked myself up from all the cr@p that's come my way, where I've got something to strive for, to live for, to aspire to, now, when I need the backbone and the courage to get rid of my inhibitions and shyness, my lack of self confidence and low self esteem just when I get some way towards that - the bloody demons come and threaten to take it all away.  It's not fair and I feel it eat at my chest and my head like some poison not wanting me to move on and not wanting me to be free.

This is a pretty upsetting blog for me as it made me realise that despite all the good stuff going on in my life right now there is still so much inner turmoil to get rid of.  I can actually feel the stress as I am catching my breath a fair bit and feeling a little sick.  I don't think that this is like it was 6 years ago at all, it is just a lot of self doubt and not knowing how to handle situations using my heart and not my brain. 

It was never going to be easy to travel down a road that I am unfamiliar with - whilst all this is happening to me, I don't intend to turn away from it, good will win and I will conquer this - it's just and if I might address my inner mind here "I DON'T FFFFING WELL NEED THIS RIGHT NOW SO P!SS OFF AND LEAVE ME ALONE!!"  there, that's better.  

I need a hug :-)