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Some of the skills that I pride myself in my work are my problem-solving and decision-making skills, knowing all the facts and being able to act when needed quickly and efficiently and the fact that I can quickly problem-solve if things are not going as they should. I am particularly good at it, and I have always been perceived as a top achiever which served my need for validation and showed that my people-pleasing is on point. Made for customer service, I was. It helps that tools and processes are cause and effect. Easy, predictable outcome, tick the right boxes and this is what should happen. One would think that a person who can make a career out of planning and decision-making can easily navigate the issues of their own life and while some of them may very well be, those skills are not transferable for me. In real life, if something comes up, my mind starts reeling and thinking of all the scenarios that could happen and then I start trying to see what I don’t know and what is in the realm of the possible so, I go to Google. Three hours later down that rabbit hole, I am so hyper-stimulated that my thoughts are like runaway trains. All of my fears take hold, and I feel like I am collapsing on the inside. I start talking to myself, I do it aloud sometimes and in public. It might be a sign of mental illness but, sometimes saying things aloud gives them power and it helps me concentrate on one thing at a time rather than having five competing thoughts coming at me at the same time. I just start thinking about the facts and analysing, playing devil’s advocate with everything. I then started to consider that I have analysed things before, and I was wrong so how do I know I will be right this time? Even more so, I have a history of ignoring things just to get what I wanted in the moment and hurt my chances in the long run. I have blown things out of proportion before, and I have trusted people I should not have trusted so; can I know I am being right now? I know myself the best so, I hurt myself the most and I start thinking of all the times things have gone wrong. After this, I come to the conclusion that I may be …possibly… potentially… I don’t know…overthinking this? I try to focus on something else, trying to change the subject of myself. After some failed attempts at that, I realise that I am no closer to a decision but one person I can’t trust is myself and I have the overwhelming feeling that I need someone else to deal with it because everybody else seems to be better at it then me and no matter how much I split hairs, I cannot figure out the answers and protect myself from any bad thing happening. “Just stop worrying about it!” Aww, that’s cute! Why didn’t I think of that? Just stop worrying. Seems legit! I find it so amazing that you think that is an option that is available to me. I have three days of internet research deep, two anxiety attacks, one night waking up from my sleep when the thought occurred, and one important training that I was looking forward to but couldn’t concentrate on deeply. Your “when you think of doing it, don’t!” is a water pistol versus a rainforest fire scenario and it just says that you don’t want to talk about it, which is fine. Say you don’t care, say you can’t take it, say you don’t know how to help. I can respect all of that rather than slogans. I know I am unhinged and paranoid what helps is talking through things and being supported in figuring out what is a genuine problem and what is not. My brain flooded with every worry I ever had so I needed help in regulating, and I needed someone that would openly disagree with me. I am not interested in hearing what I want to hear, if you want to be a cheerleader for me, tell me what I need to hear and will me get genuine results. Sometimes, when one is drowning, and can’t be part of their rescue, the saviour renders the victim unconscious to save them. That is the moral punch in the face that is required. Be mean to be kind! I clearly can’t control my thoughts. Have you ever thought of something and then felt instant shame about the thought, looked left and right as if somebody was watching you and they could hear your thoughts so, you started to flood your own mind with white noise thoughts to confuse this imaginary mind reader? Do you ever think that something happened because you thought certain things and if you had thought something different, the outcome would have been different? Well, imagine saying that when your gran dies, certain situations will resolve themselves and then the next you get a text that your gran is dead. Can you imagine? I can cause that is what happened. #therapycontinues Trying to make it stop and just ignoring the situation just makes it worse. Even more when I then worry about how much time I spent worrying and I feel guilty for it. Everything in my body is telling me this cannot be ignored. The only way to make this go away is to address it and address it fully. All questions answered, all details figured out and every issue closed fully so this needs to come back on the table again. “You worry too much!” Look at that. Another piece of valuable feedback. Do you think that I don’t know that if worrying and jumping to conclusions would be a sporting event, I would win medals and awards at a global level? The problem is that this is what I have always done and while I am aware of it, it is not an easy nut to crack. There is a need to become aware of what overwhelms me and accept it. There will be negative emotions, and it will be hard but trying to pretend that ignoring them will help, is the worst thing that I can do. I need to sit with it and realise what my brain is trying to tell me. Why is this so uncomfortable? Why is it coming up again and again in my head? It is hard to decide what to do when you cannot accurately interpret facts. I used to go round and round in my head and punish myself for every single mistake and use it against myself which paralyzed me even more. One day when I kept on going on and on about what if this happened or what if that goes wrong, my therapist said “Stop! You know you get paranoid when you’re anxious.” At first, I was shocked I felt like “Really?!? Is that what we are doing today? Calling me out on my bullshit like that?” but it stopped me in my tracks. She then gave me the most important mantra “You took the best decision, at the time, with the information you had!” That is one that I repeat now over and over again so I can remind myself to be kind and forgiving to myself. Any decision has to be looked at as “Why is this important to me?” “Realistically, how long will this take to solve?” Making a list of everything involved in it, project managing it by breaking down all the steps which helps my need for control. Some tasks have to be completed before others can begin so, I cannot pressure myself for not starting early because not all conditions are met. Also, this brings to mind that some things I have power over, and some things are just out of my control. Deadlines, people’s emotions, someone’s opinion… all things that I can show up for and try to do my best to influence but I cannot control them in any way. All I can do in these situations is accept them as they come, see if I can understand and clarify but some things I just can’t change. Another problem with overthinking is that I start creating full scenarios in my head and I start to become convinced they are true, highly likely and I hurt my feelings with them and get myself in a worse state. I have been in that state before and I have been asked if anybody had told me specifically what the outcome would be. I am used to worrying about all outcomes preparing for bad news and making decisions on what I need to do. That is just it. When nobody tells me anything or I feel like I am missing facts, my mind tries to take back control and it is heavily filling in the blanks. I have no chill. I need people to be specific with their information. I can’t hope for the best. I can’t go with the flow. I need a bit more information to make sure that I work with facts, and that I have all the details I need to make the best decision at this time. The people who say, “Just trust me!”… I am sorry but I will need to assess our track record and see if that is based on a proven, consistent string of instances where you were reliable. Short of that, I will need people to meet me at my anxiety level. I will need to see some sort of detailed plan, Gantt chart, workflow, or anything to see what this relaxed attitude is based on before I decide if I want to be affiliated. It’s not you, it’s me. I have had situations in the past where I did trust, and the person procrastinating made me the villain for checking in and then came teary-eyed to tell me that they couldn’t keep their promise. From that point on, the only thing that helped was that I would be overthinking, and I would have several contingency plans prepared for these disappointments. Not everything is me being extra or me needing to chill. I do admit that I have issues so, please try not to be one of them. I think that at the end of the day, if everything fails, it is a matter of choice how one sees the experience. For example, after crying for ages and being completely freaked out about the entire experience of finding a flat, I managed to find one that looked like a princess’ room in a beautiful tower-shaped building. That would have been my castle so, I arranged a viewing. I got stressed out about being alone but confident that if this works out, everything else will work out. Well, it was a rainy day, a guy was peeing on the side of the building, the lock on the front entrance was broken so it was not a secure entrance, the building itself on the inside looked derelict, and when I got in the flat, my first thought was that that I had seen pictures of a different place on the website. I got catfished by an apartment. I left crying and disheartened, and I kept on crying back to my house. I cried for this being a disaster and then I realised that I should be proud of myself. The experience was an absolute dumpster fire, but I had never done that before and I managed to take myself through the entire process. While this has not gone well, I can build on the experience and refine the method for optimal results. The biggest lesson is to stay in the moment and not allow my imagination to romanticize a place, or a person for that matter until that bridge has been crossed and I have clear evidence of things being as promised. I wish I could say that there is an easy fix for overthinking, ruminating and my difficulty in making decisions but, it’s not that simple. If I just meditate, walk, or visualize, I am only dealing with the symptoms and putting a plaster on them, making my anxiety a little better but the real solution is in the awareness, knowing where all of this is coming from. The more I unravel all of the threads of my worrying, the more I get to a place where I can handle things easily and, in the end, I will manage to rest assured that whatever comes my way, I can handle it, I can fix it, and everything will be all right.

“Do what you want and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter won’t mind.” I have always loved Dr. Seuss's quote. It spoke to me about the freedom of absolutely being yourself and having the right people around you who love and accept you for who you are. That was not the situation for me growing up. If I said the wrong thing, my mom would stop talking to me, my dad would either start yelling or I would get spanked for it, my grans would have a go at my parents, and I would have their additional anger and shame from being told off by their parents. Another alternative would either be to be ridiculed or dismissed. Even in recent years, I have given my honest opinion, and I got told I am mean, although I have not been insulting, and I have paid attention to stick to the facts. I wanted to be accepted, so if the things one says get them punished or rejected, one starts to filter them. Don’t say what you think, and then things will be just fine. Just play along and fit in. I remember saying no to doing things as a child because I didn’t like the activity, or I was uncomfortable, and I remember that I would be in my room and my dad would sit me down and explain to me that mom had asked me to do something, and she was upset because I said no. He would say that she took care of us, loved us, and did everything to make us happy, and we shouldn’t upset her by disobeying her. He would ask me if I loved my mom and told me that I should just do what she wanted and make her happy. I remember having this conversation again and again when I was young. It was never a matter of things being explained to me or me having the option to opt out, it was always a matter of “if you say no, you are selfish” or “you will do this because we are your parents, and we say so.” I had thus been made responsible for my mother’s feelings, and I have been taught that her needs are more important than mine. The message boils down to people pleasing is a way to show love, and you will receive love in return. My dad was always confrontational. I would talk to him, and if we disagreed, we could have a full-on fight about it, shouting included. He would not be very shy about showing that he was displeased that I didn’t agree with him. His view was always that he knew best, and he would never apologise after a fight because, from where he stood, he was never wrong; I just needed time to see that he was right. Whatever interest I had that he did not approve of was looked at with contempt, and he would make comments to put me down. All of this I can dismiss though; this I can look back on, see where the issues were and let it go. Growing up, I could see that it was an attempt at control, and as I matured, I could rationalise that his opinion was not required to decide, especially when I became financially independent. My mom is not like that. For her, if I say no or reject something that she says, she just looks down, hurt. Her view is that she is big-hearted and always wants the best, and I am not being appreciative of that. She does not fight or argue about it; she just refuses to talk. She is the victim, and you are the aggressor. There are a lot of feelings of shame about engaging with her that still get triggered when she acts like this. If you don’t do what I say, I will reject you and more than that, it will be your fault for doing it. She never says “NO” herself; she just creates an environment where the conditions aren’t conducive for a “YES” to be possible. If we don’t discuss it, then I can’t disprove it and have my way. Something that both my parents share is that they will leave the room, if I am at their house, or they will leave my house if they are upset if they do not like the topic of conversation so, nothing can really be discussed or debated, and it just feels that everything gets pushed under the rug and it just breeds a lot of tension as nothing gets resolved. As I grew up, of course, I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be a part of the group, and that comes with going along with what other people want, especially since I was introverted, and my self-esteem was so low. I was the little girl who would start crying when she was upset, children would bully me because of it, and they would try to make me cry even harder, so, the desire to be accepted was so strong. Funny enough, I have never been one to give in to peer pressure, though. If it is not coming from my internal processes, I will not do it. I have no fear of missing out. It seems like it is still very much grounded in me that having an emotional attachment to a person drives the need to make them happy or feel ashamed if I were to disappoint them. I have found it completely amazing how many of these traits and self-destructive behaviours tend to be highly rewarded when I started working and went into the corporate world. I worked in an operational support function. My people-pleasing behaviour guided me to figure out what a person would like and adjust the output to match the person's requirements. I fulfilled the person’s wishes before they asked for it. Together with getting attached to people quickly, projecting my feelings onto other people, the constant need to achieve and prioritizing other people’s needs over mine, I got into a place where I have taken on more and more work and I felt that I had to make sure everything is taken care of immediately or otherwise it would be a personal failure. I have prioritised to the point where I had days extending to 12+ hours, and I would forget to drink, eat, and even move. I would be completely engrossed in what I was doing and lose track of time, I would be exhausted and emotionally drained, and then I would wake up the next day and do it all over again. As my self-esteem started to improve and I started to pay more attention to my self-care and well-being, I started to become more aware of how I was being treated and how my actions weren’t appreciated. My dedication, my effectiveness, and my going above and beyond were just seen as the norm, and people thought they were very much entitled to my time. I started to wonder what in the world could have made them behave like that. Why would they think that I am some sort of genie who is there to just fulfil their wishes? To the point where I was assigned tasks that were urgent and had to be completed that day, and then they would log off with the expectation for me to work overtime. The more and more I thought about it, I realised that the problem was me. I had allowed people to treat me poorly because I had convinced myself that we were a team and they cared for me as a person, cared about my wellbeing and had my best interests in mind just like I had theirs. I felt that if I wasn’t busy and achieving all the time, I was being lazy. I was pushing my physical boundaries and making myself sick. Even more, I was saying yes to things that I knew I shouldn’t take on; I would solve it, but the entire time I would be completely resentful for having to do it, swallowing my anger over it. I have spoken in therapy about it, and we explored how I needed to become more assertive and learn to set boundaries. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. Once you become aware of the behaviour, you become aware of where it is going to take you emotionally, then the motivation to change it becomes a lot stronger than the desire to continue the pattern. For me, it became painfully obvious when I took on projects that would help my development and the person I was working with expressed concerns that they would interfere with me accomplishing their tasks and went as far as asking me to drop my projects despite them being great opportunities for my career. I had done what they had asked, and they had seemed kind and grateful, and now that I was adding my interests to the equation, not only were they unhappy, but they were actively trying to get their way and remove me from those projects. I thought about this at length, as this was so far from anything that I would ever do that I couldn’t understand how people could be so selfish and self-involved. To be honest, the more I thought about it, the angrier I got, and it was a lot easier to set boundaries, to say what my needs were and to be reasonable about my capabilities. Once I stopped looking at them as friends who had my best interests in mind and looked at them as individuals who had their own agenda and would scrupulously pursue it, it became easier to stop seeing everything that went wrong in our interactions as a personal failure, something that I caused, and I was responsible for. One needed a place to start, and this was the easiest place to start. I have started to practice saying what is on my mind. Not everybody liked it, and some people were lost in the process, but, to be honest, I don’t need everybody on this life journey. In the beginning, it was hard, I would say no to something and when people started to try to convince me, I would start to feel uncomfortable; my first instinct would be to give in. I would feel my inside world crumbling, and I would feel a shudder. I would feel selfish if I were not doing what they asked of me. I found that whenever I said no, I would feel the need to give extensive explanations, and people would use this to try to convince me to do what they wanted so, this is when I decided that saying “No, I don’t want to” is explanation enough and my no is non-negotiable. This ensures that my relationships are more honest. Whenever I am doing something, I am enjoying myself more because there are things that I really want to do. I join in when I want, and I opt out when I am not feeling all right or when I don’t feel comfortable. I am doing a lot better with people who try to push their will on me. I can see the attempts and resist because I know that this resistance that I put up now will save me a lot of hurt in the long run. I also pay more careful attention to what I accept in the beginning, as the decisions I take at the start will affect the rest of the relationship. The problems continue when the person is nice and tries to be friendly, and then they come to me, and they act as if I am the only one that can help them. I then see how they come to me more and more, and they make conversation less and less each time, and then they push their needs on me, demanding my help. I took a step back in one of these instances and I saw that the person was insisting that I solve their problems and no matter how much I tried to stay neutral and explain to them that it was not something that I knew, or I could help with, they kept insisting and acting as if it was my responsibility. This still works as it is guilt-based but at the same time, it is still an attack on my boundaries, it still says that their needs are more important than mine and that I should be responsible for their happiness. I keep with it, and whenever this person comes to me, I make sure that I ask if this is something relating to what I do and if it isn’t, I do not give in. It is not easy saying no, it is not easy setting boundaries, it is not easy to say what I need, but I do find that it is getting easier. I take it one instance at a time, and when I fail to do it correctly or I find that I give in, I try to be kind to myself and learn from what went wrong. I realise now that saying no is also a form of self-care. Seeing value in my time and happiness, making sure that people know what I can do and creating the right expectations helps me go more comfortable through my day. Not only do I feel proud every time I show up for myself but, I know that it allows me to show up properly for other people too because I protect my calm and my peace, and I keep myself in a balanced state of mind. I can accept who I am, and I can understand my weaknesses but, the more I work on them the stronger I get, and I am on my way to making myself happy every day.

I must have been told this story a thousand times. My dad and my sister Ana came to see my mom and me after my mom gave birth. My sister saw how small I was, and she was quite disappointed as she was expecting to get a playmate, and I certainly didn’t fit the bill. When she passed through the maternity, she had seen a little boy who had been abandoned in the hospital. He was crying and alone, so he had drawn her attention. She noticed that he was older and bigger so, she wondered if they couldn’t swap me for the little boy. I think one can agree this was not the best start. I grew up with stories being told about how my sister was born. She was the golden nugget, and everybody was so happy and proud when she came. My mom and dad were both their parents’ only child so, it meant so much more to everybody when the first grandchild came into the family. My sister was the sort of child who cried all night and because my mom and dad lived with my grandparents on my mom’s side, they had to walk with her during the night and try their best not to disturb them. My mom claims that if my sister had been easier to deal with as a baby, they would have had me sooner. Over the years, I heard the stories again and again and then I noticed that there were so many pictures of her and barely any of me. One hears the “your sister can, and you can’t,” the “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” the “your sister is that and you are that” and that is where the rivalry starts to come on. We had our share of fighting, we chucked insults at each other, we threw hands, and I have to admit that while I was smaller in age and size, I did not plan to give up without a fight. Despite all of this though, I have always looked up to my sister. I enjoyed spending time with her. I enjoyed watching horror movies with her. I enjoyed the fact that she would make up stories for me about our hamsters. One of my favourite memories actually, is when I had fallen and I hurt both knees, both elbows and my pelvis bone on my left side. All those bits were bloody and bandaged up. I couldn’t really turn from side to side, and I was in pain so, I couldn’t fall asleep because I was so uncomfortable. My sister started to make up stories and she got me giggling until I fell asleep. There were these subtle ways in which I felt cared for, I felt loved by my sister, and I loved her for being the way that she was. My sister and I also went to the same school so, it was a matter of her taking me to school or picking me up from school if our schedules matched. She would feed me my lunch. Helped me with my homework until our parents came back from work. We would share the same room; we would sleep in the same bed. We would spend summers at our grandparents together so, we only had each other then. We were in each other’s faces all the time so when she got married and all of a sudden, she wasn’t there then I felt a little abandoned. Whenever our parents would fight with us, we would have each other and all of a sudden it was just me. I could talk to her all the time and now not only was she in another house but, she was in another country, and I could talk to her once a week as this was the pre-smartphone era. I understood that she had her own life to live, and that was never an issue but, I also felt sad for losing her as support. Her married life changed her. I would sometimes look at her and wonder who this person was. She looked like my sister, she spoke like my sister but, she was not the same person. She was living her own life, and I lived mine. We would talk from time to time, but it was not the same. She would mostly talk to my mom and then my mom would give me an update. There would be situations where my mom would confide in me about her worries and concerns and I got so upset at my sister that at some point, I didn’t even want to talk to her. My mom told me that my sister was all that I would have when they died and that I should make more of an effort. I did but, we were not that close. There was always this feeling that regardless of what I did, my parents' attention was always geared toward my sister. At first, because she was the only one, then because she was better and then, because she needed more help. As I went through everything and I started therapy, I started to think about my family, I started to consider the things that we were told growing up and I kept on remembering how they had said that my relatives are who they are, and you can’t pick them, and you have to make the most of them. It got stuck in my head and then this idea came to be: “I spend so much time and energy connecting with strangers and making friends. If I were to meet my sister in the street today, would I choose her as a friend?” I started to pay more attention to her as an individual. I tried to see the parts of her that I could relate to and the parts with which I didn’t agree. I tried to find common interests. The most important part though was to make a deliberate decision to let her in, for me to be vulnerable and share enough of myself to make a connection possible. Isn’t the universe a funny thing? How does it arrange things so that the opportunity arises just when you need it? I was talking to my dad, and I was talking to him about how we shouldn’t judge children by the sins of their parents, and I mentioned his own past and family history. I say talk, I mean fight. My dad changed the subject abruptly and started talking to me about something completely different. I was so surprised by it that I thought I had missed something. I asked what the link to anything and my mom spoke up that this is Dad’s new thing and that whenever he doesn’t like the conversation, he just changes the topic. Later on, he concluded that my sister and I were too weak and ill-adjusted to deal with things to the point that I needed therapy because he and my mom had protected us from even the slightest gust of wind. This was him taking responsibility and giving us words of encouragement. My sister and I had a call later on. I was so shocked that he would believe that. There was so much wrong with that statement that it felt like a hallucination that the entire thing even happened. I asked my sister if they really imagined themselves the perfect parents. Growing up, one of the questions that I would ask my dad again and again was if they didn’t want me, why they had me. My dad had replied that my mom couldn’t have had an abortion if she wanted to, even in communist times when they were banned, because she had medical conditions so, my actual existence was proof of them wanting me. Hallmark eat your heart out at this heart-felt, touching speech. As I was recounting this to my sister and telling her about that I felt hurt and discarded, the most surprising confession was made. My sister told me that when she was young, she thought that she might have been adopted and that is why they couldn’t love her. This woman that I thought had been stealing our parent’s attention and love from me, the person that I had been jealous of for so many years, was just as lonely and hurt as I had been. When I told my therapist about it, she asked if I didn’t feel better for letting this jealousy go and it was, but it was more than that. It was a shared experience rather than just empathy. It was confirmation that I didn’t exaggerate it in my mind, or I am not being dramatic, I am not making this up. From here on out, we had long conversations, 7-8 hours on the phone talking about our parents’ marriage, our childhoods, the things that we were told, the things that we had been taught, the things that they never gave us. A lifetime of things that I had said to myself, a lifetime that I built on these assumptions that were either wrong or partially wrong. Things that I have told myself to ensure that I can keep on living happily. Things like: “We discuss things in our family,” “My parents have the perfect marriage that I hope to have at some point,” and “We are a close family.” Pretty little lies that I kept telling myself to keep on thinking that I have a great life. I built my hopes and dreams on them. I just lied to myself.   Amongst all of those things, an even more hurtful thing came to light. That we have been lied to. We have compared notes on different things and some of those “Don’t tell your sister” stories had been recounted differently to each of us. Not secrets but manipulation. Some slightly changed versions, some outright lies. The wedge that has been driven between us was my mother’s doing, she had created the perfect environment where each of us was on her side and we were talking to her and supporting her but, my sister and I were becoming strangers. Even the bleeding-heart request for me to try harder to be friendly with my sister came after my gran told my mom that she should do something about it. My mom had said that it was not her responsibility what her daughters do, and my gran reminded her that once they were all gone, my sister and I would only have each other. What shambles. The image of the perfect family is now in tatters. So many hurtful things and our biggest problem was that we didn’t hear I love you from our mom. We are not an I love you family it seems. I say I love more to my dog in a week than I have said to all of them in my entire life. So, when my mother’s birthday came around, I thought I would try it out. I would say it to my mom and maybe she will say it back. We were on a video chat, and I was wishing her happy birthday, and we were closing the call I kept thinking that I should just say it, but the words would not escape my lips so, I never did. I then called my sister and told her all about it. She had said that she had had the same impulse and that she had written it in a text. My mom had addressed all the topics and never replied to the thing that mattered the most, never said I love you back. My sister sounded sad on the phone and a bit defeated and hurt. I could hear it in her voice that she was looking down. In the face of all of this, I have done whatever a sibling would do… I laughed in her face, said better you than me, laughed some more and then I told her that I loved her. If we can’t laugh about shared trauma what can we laugh about? It has been such a long road up to here but, I now have my sister travelling this road with me. We can parent ourselves and each other. We can now teach ourselves the skills that we have not been taught. Our friendship will change over time with life but, I think that this is a friend that is worth investing my time in. The two of us can start discussing everything and being completely honest. We can start one text at a time and one phone call at a time and turn this into an I choose to be your friend family. The two of us can make this an “I love you” family.

I find it so easy to take care of someone else. All my thoughts going in their direction, my mind preoccupied with what they need. I have a to-do list, and it keeps me entertained to think about how I can schedule my day to go to the shops and buy shirts once I know that they are needed. Know the size, know the cut, know the patterns, know what is already owned and buy something that will suit you. I bring them home and I display them, and it is a point of great satisfaction when most or all are kept. It means I have guessed it right and it gives me a sense of achievement. I approach each person with curiosity and fascination. I gather information about what they like, how they like things, what they dislike, what upsets them, and what motivates them. I observe the way they think, and I try to fulfil their needs and give them all they want before they even know they need it. I am very good at staying on track when it comes to living with someone and making sure that the laundry is done on time, that dinner is planned, ingredients are bought, the dishes are done, that dinner is cooked, that clothes are mended, the house is clean, gifts and cards are bought and made available, reminders are set for everything because he kept forgetting and double book things for himself. It’s called invisible work, I am a silent performer and although one might think that it will be appreciated, once you do things and tell no one, it just gets expected as normal and there would be no thanks, no real gratitude, just disdain if there is a disruption in the routine. I am good at catering to someone else’s needs as it was what I observed in my family. I have been told that you say I love with your actions, not your words so, serving others and making them happy should be the goal. People pleasing gave me a goal and it was somewhat comforting as I could look at it as a puzzle, a process that can be optimized to perfection. The sad part is that when I am single, I seem to find myself lost, confused and without a purpose. When I must wash someone else’s clothes, I will wash mine as well. I will have to cook for them, and I will try to make sure that the meals are diverse and pleasing at the same time, I will join them so, I will have set meals, at set times and I will have diversity. I still have my hobbies, and I enjoy them regardless. I enjoy my sense of self and having the solitude of my thoughts, I enjoy the freedom of being all that I can be, and I appreciate a person who allows me to be as peculiar as I am in their presence without trying to change them. The sad little truth is that I am not able to stay on track with taking care of my needs.   When I thought of the list of things I had to do, feed myself, drink water, exercise, go to work, keep the house clean, keep myself clean and looking well, make myself happy, make every single decision fast and move to make changes with confidence and determination, the task just seemed impossible. There was evidence there that I could do it. I had surely done it in the past. I had gotten up from the hole I had found myself in, put myself together and managed to evolve and grow stronger, a little trick called post-traumatic growth. I started with a good old spring clean. I looked through my entire life as it had been, and I consider what is still worth keeping and what it is to be let go. I finally packed all the clothes that I kept just in case I lost those extra pounds. I went through all the memories and keepsakes that I have amassed and decided which ones I am still holding on to. I had been nesting for years and I had bought things in preparation for living that life. I had furnished the house that I will inhabit. I had made traditions that my potential children could look back on and possibly model. All over now and I was moving on a different path now and all the things would not fit in it. I cleaned and not only did I organize my space, but I also organized my mind. The need for a clean house, office, and environment, speaks to my need for control. I could not control what was happening in my life, what other people were going to do and what outcome would follow. I couldn’t even control my thoughts and feelings, but I could control the space. At the same time, getting rid of things in the physical world mirrors me in organizing things in my mind. I found that I do a spring clean every time I end a stage of my journey and let go of everything that doesn’t serve me anymore. I never realised how much comfort I get when I take out the trash after I had a few days of depression. I chuck the bag in the dumpster, and I let all the bad thoughts that go with it, and I come back in the house a bit lighter. Garbage… baggage… the same thing at the end of the day. I thought that I would have the opportunity to lose some weight and start over. I looked online and I thought about healthy eating, stopping eating sugar, and drinking more water. I was going to be so good and stay on top of things, start cooking healthy things after eating takeaway for so long. It was a good plan except I wasn’t interested in food, not at all. I didn’t think of it and when I could stomach some, I would feel nauseous. Not eating unhealthy food was no longer an issue because I wasn’t eating any food. I used the My Fitness Pal app for a while to remind me to eat and for quite some time, I have lived on Greek yoghurt, bread and tomatoes or peppers on the side, eating cereal for breakfast, lunch or/ and dinner, eating crisps. The self-care in this might not be obvious but it is the compassion that while they might not be the best meals, they are meals, nonetheless. People kept on trying to tell me how I should do better, but they clearly didn’t understand where I was mentally at the time. They take the information, apply it to their lives and then add their desire to lose weight and give it to me as judgment. I don’t do well with eating alone, I am very poor at cooking for just myself, I have gone the entire day without eating or even realising that it was happening, while fully prioritizing Bruno, worrying if he has had enough to eat, if he has been walked enough and then coming to the conclusion that I haven’t drank or eaten anything. I don’t have the luxury of being picky so if I want cake for breakfast, I will have it I will enjoy it and I will not feel guilty for it. It’s cake or nothing. I will mostly eat things that I can make in 5 minutes because, on a depression day, I will not want to stand by a stove and cook. I always have fruit in the house, I mostly tend to eat salads, and I will have frozen pizzas as they are low effort. I will have cookies, crisps, wafers, something that I can have with me on the go so that if I forget to eat and I feel faint, I can just grab something. This is still living in fight or flight so, I am not going to feel bad about eating the chocolate cake, with cream on top. I am not going to feel bad about having juice with it because otherwise, I might not have anything to drink at all. I was trying to figure out if I would ever be loved again and trying to figure out how to feel connected to people again when I started to read Sarah Millican’s book “How to Be Champion”. In it, she speaks about how after her divorce she got an “I love you friend”. Since one would say I love you to animals, but they won’t say it back, she got a friend to do that for her and fill that void. We were never big on saying I love you in my family and I quite liked this concept, and my friends were happy to help. Saying it and hearing it back, made me feel more connected but I also missed the connection that is brought on by getting a hug. Being in pandemic times didn’t help the situation since we were not allowed to meet, let alone touch. That is when I happened upon a weighted blanket ad. Now, I watched a movie about Temple Grandin when I was younger. She is an inventor and expert in animal husbandry. She was autistic, I think she had had Asperger’s syndrome. After observing the cattle chute and seeing how it calms down the cows, she came up with a design for humans called the hug box. The machine allows the user to give themselves a hug with the pressure that is right for them. It is meant to calm anxiety and reduce stress by activating the parasympathetic system. That is what came to mind when I first saw the ad and I got one. It is without a doubt the best investment I have made. While it doesn’t magically solve my issues, it does alleviate my anxiety, and it helps shorten my depression episodes. There have been so many times when I wasn’t feeling confident, when I was anxious, and I had to push myself to do things. My version of fake it ‘till you make it is to put make-up on, dress in whatever makes me feel good and put perfume on. That is even if I go to take Bruno out or go to the supermarket. Just put on the armour to protect the tender interior. I can’t have a skincare routine because having a routine in the first place bores me and puts a lot of pressure on me instead of promoting relaxation. I will do face masks, I will do my manicure, I will do massages, I will buy myself perfumes, I will buy myself all the clothes that I had convinced myself in the past were not for me. I will wear a short skirt, and I will feel beautiful in it because I want to wear that skirt, and I will refuse to care about people’s opinions. Being me, being free, gives me confidence and makes me feel strong. Finally, self-care is everything that brings joy in one’s life and contributes to one’s well-being. I love music but I didn’t feel I could listen to my old playlist because too many had meaning and memories so, I have started a new one to be the soundtrack to the next stage of my life. I have started to dance in the house like nobody is watching for stress relief and I think all my neighbours have had a chance to see me. I have bought all the books that I wanted to read, and I just need time for all of them. I bought colouring books. I bought puzzles. I bought plants and learned how to keep them alive. I surrounded myself with things that I liked. I started making pillows for Bruno on a whim with no pattern or real plan and they turned out quite well, to be honest. I watched all sorts of movies and series, and they have helped me in some ways to gain insight and wisdom. I have accepted that meditation is not for me, but I do love a bit of journaling. I have taken so many wonderful naps. I have cut toxic people out of my life. I stopped going to things that I didn’t care for, and I made more time for things that I did. I try my best, but I must confess that I don’t always get it right. There are days when all of this goes out the window and my old patterns re-emerge but then I do the most important act of all, I treat myself with kindness, I forgive myself, I remind myself that I am doing my best and every setback is a learning experience. I am grateful for what goes well, and I gave myself little parades to celebrate it. There is no perfect formula for self-care, but I hope that at some point, I will get the balance right and I can commit to taking care of myself like I have committed to taking care of others.

Years ago, I was told by a friend that when she first met me, she thought I was so stuck up. That I was flicking my hair back so full of myself and then, I stood in a meeting and when asked to say something about myself I said I do not like talking about myself. It seemed hilarious to me that this was the way that I was perceived. The reality is that I was terrified. I was trying to hide the panic, and I was trying to straighten myself up. I was thinking that I should be looking put together and make a good impression. My hair kept falling out of place. No matter how hard I tried, it was out of place. I was crumbling on the inside thinking all these things and thinking how everybody else could have it together, but I didn’t. I had to get up and say things myself in front of 20 people I had barely met, and I sat up and spoke the biggest truth “I don’t like talking about myself”. The more I talked about myself, the more I would expose myself I thought, and this was not an environment I felt comfortable in. The outside image of overconfidence and self-importance and my inner world are polar opposites. As a child, I always got reminded that I was smaller and that I should let someone else do it for me since I couldn’t do it well. I tried to wash dishes, and I tried to polish shoes and all I got was a roll of the eyes and getting told that I should not have bothered. There was always this idea that I should be supervised, or I should let someone else do it for me. I got the sense that I couldn’t do things well enough on my own, even more so, that my efforts were not wanted. This creates a lot of self-doubt and shame because I thought I had done well, I thought I could be proud of the work, and it was clearly not the case. I was raised with the constant reminder that my parents have done as much as they could, and it is my obligation to improve, to do better, and to go further. Live the life that they couldn’t live. Everything was under scrutiny. All my report cards were looked at and top grades were expected while lower ones were questioned. If I got anything less than top marks, I would be told that I was being lazy and I was wasting my potential. It creates this belief that I should be great at everything and that I should constantly strive to be better. Achieving is expected and anything less is being looked down upon. Nothing impresses because one just meets the ever-increasing expectations. No academic achievement. No award that my work can give me, later in life. No personal show of strength. I try but there is always a never-ending list that needs to be completed. The problem with not being celebrated when I have a win, or the win being disregarded when it is not the right one is that I don’t really know how to win. It is not that I am being full of myself and putting other people down, it is that I get imposter syndrome immediately. I start thinking that I was lucky, and I got away with it this time but, soon enough they will know that I cannot do any of it. That I will be found out and exposed. It spirals even to the point where I start to think that I will get fired because of it. This is especially when I am on a downward spiral, and I am highly anxious or depressed. There is nothing more uncomfortable in this world than somebody raving about me or how good I am at something. I can take a “thank you”, I can take an “I appreciate your help”, I can take an “I couldn’t have done it without you” but not if somebody keeps going on because regardless of how hard I tried and how much effort I put in, it always feels like the praise is undeserved. On the other side, every single time I fail, I am ready to take that criticism, recognize blame and take responsibility. A loss comes as a confirmation that I was never good enough so, of course, something like this happened to me. I am my most vicious critic and I am on my case all the time. There is nothing anybody can say that can hurt me just as much as I can hurt myself. Even when I started to get myself together and I started to work out the solutions to my problems, I kept on saying how I had so much to do, and that I was so far from my goals. My friends keep on saying that I should look at how far I am from where I have started and how much I have achieved. I wish I could, but I still feel that no matter how much I try, if I stop everything will just fall apart, and I am going to lose everything in a second. I have this feeling that while I have achieved, I have not achieved enough, I have not achieved things fast enough, and I have not been efficient enough. I have this feeling that if somebody had helped me, and supervised me, I would have been able to do more and better. I read at some point this short story about a man who dies and goes to the great beyond and finds himself in hell. He is very surprised about this as he has always tried to choose the right thing to do and always tried to avoid harming others. In the process of having his life judged though, he is shown has he has avoided making decisions so many times. He wasn’t being judged for the decisions that he made alone, but he was also judged for the opportunities he left to pass him by, for the life that he could have lived if he only took a stand. I could find myself in that story. I have had so many dreams and hopes, and I had let them die because I was too scared to try, or I had convinced myself that I wasn’t good enough to get them anyway. After reading the story, I decided to keep on striving to be braver, to set goals and shoot for the stars. This is my biggest challenge. Allowing myself to be all I can be. Being kind and forgiving with myself. Being grateful for the success I get and seeing that I have earned it, and I deserve it. Being patient with the small steps I make towards my goals and accepting that it is taking time for some things to come to pass. I will allow myself to rest and understand that I still have worth even if I don’t achieve all the time. Even me writing this is a step towards me coming clean about my weaknesses and trying to become comfortable with the idea that all of them will be exposed. If I can recognize that I struggle, if I can recognize that things can take time and setbacks are a part of the learning process, If I can accept that failing is a part of the learning process and come to terms with them, I can reduce my anxiety around them and I can allow myself to perform at my true potential. I get a form of it whenever I start any new activity so, I have started to accept that as it is a new activity technically, I am an imposter but what I am investing in is time and energy to achieve my full potential by the end of it. After a few run-throughs, I can get better at it, and I will learn how to handle things. It will not be perfect, but it will be done.  Releasing my fears is a step around accepting all the parts of myself as they are without judgment and being proud of myself. Everybody talks about greatness and having main character energy but, the world is made up of regular people going about their lives and doing their best. My life is still unfolding, and I still have to learn and grow but, if I manage to help people in their time of need then that will light up my life and if I string enough of those moments along the way then that will still make life worth living. I don’t worry about how people remember me either because I don’t really think that people think about me that much but, I want to be brave, strong, and honest. I want to be unapologetically me and more than that, be proud of it.

I remember seeing him for the first time. We were looking for puppies and decided to go for a boxer. We were looking through ads and decided to schedule a few meetings to see the different litters. I saw his little face and saw that spot of white fur above his nose, and that was me. That was the moment I lost my heart to him. I kept being told that I shouldn’t get attached, that he might not be there, but I couldn’t help myself. We drove for ages, and we finally got there. Went into the house, and we met his momma. I petted her and as I was doing that, I felt two little tongues on my leg. When I looked down, there were two little puppies. There he was. The family was trying to get him and his little brother to play, but he was sleepy, and he kept wanting to waddle back to his bed. I loved that about him. His sassiness and commitment to do exactly what he wanted. While I was there, it fell on me to choose between the two puppies, and I faltered. I wondered which would be the best choice. Was I being selfish, or was I just picking him just because he was bigger than his brother? I just felt like there was something about him. A touch of destiny, perhaps. The therapy needed to address my being able to get what I wanted and second-guessing it… I listened to my heart, though, and I went with my heart. We got to take my dreamboat home, and this is how our story started. We got this baby, and he was the sweetest thing I've ever seen in my life. He was soft as velvet, and he had the biggest brown eyes looking back at me. Sunshine was coming out of his little bum. He was walking on his Bambi legs, which looked too long for his body. I had held him and cuddled him on the drive back, and he smelled of rainbows, happiness, and wishes coming true. I loved his smell so much, and I still breathe his smell in deeply now. Oxytocin gets released when a mother bonds with her child, and the same happens when an owner bonds with their pet. I did not doubt in my mind that I would do anything in my power to make sure that he was protected and that he was happy. I would go to jail tomorrow if anybody tried to hurt him. On the first night, we could hear him crying in the kitchen while we were googling and whispering under the covers, trying to understand what we should do. We tiptoed to see what he was doing, and he was crying and looking at his reflection in the stove door, that way, when you cry, you look at yourself in the mirror to see if you are suffering enough. He fell asleep and we could take some rest too, but not for long, cause he would be up shortly after. During the day, he would come to sleep on my ankles, and I put down the cushions for him so he could be more comfortable. I have taken so many pictures of him just living his life and playing with his little toy monkey. The next night, we knew that we couldn’t leave out water and food, cause that would make him wake up again and again. He was still in the kitchen, and there was a cardboard stuck to the door keeping him in. I could hear him banging against the improvised door, and all of a sudden, I could hear him crying closer. I went to check, and I could see my little Houdini crying and chewing on a sneaker that he found in the hallway. I put him back in the kitchen, without talking or comforting him, just like the internet said, and I went back to not sleeping a wink, worrying about him being ok. On day 3, we bought a crate to try something different. To get him used to the crate, we played with him in it, I got fully in and fed him treats, we put his bed in there, and he managed to sleep in it during the day, and then it was time to take it into our bedroom during the night. He cried for an hour, and then we all finally managed to fall asleep. I had my light on, and I was hanging halfway down the bed so he could see me, but that worked. He was happy that he was not alone, and he could see me, but I slept so poorly for months. I started to see him so much like my child. I worried about him being healthy, I worried about what he might want to eat, toys he might like, treats, and vitamins he might need to take. I saw him so small and in need of so much help. He had so much to learn that in the beginning, it was overwhelming. We would go into the back garden, and he would investigate the leaves, tripping over his legs and sniffing everything. A bit scared of the new environment while I was trying to encourage him to smell everything and try to be brave. His first time we played was in the garden, and a stick was his first outside toy. Inside, he had this quiet little monkey that he loved so much; out of all the toys, he took care of that one the best, and he would sleep with it. It is one of the things that I still have, that I will keep with me forever. His personality was so strong. He always wanted to join in everything, he always wanted to be around us, and he was a demanding little princess from day one. Plenty of times I have found myself in the bathroom and him kicking in the door like SWAT and coming in. He would just waddle in and come to fall asleep on my feet while I was on the toilet. As he got older, he would come and lick my face, and regardless of how much, I would try to tell him to get out; the most I got was him lying down and guarding me. I suppose it makes sense since I am connected to him, and I have to watch him every time he goes to the bathroom. I could live without him staring into my soul while he is squatting and his knees are shaking, but apparently, I am meant to give him cues in case he is not safe. I also don’t get to take a bath in peace, he would come in and try to drink some of my bath water. I would essentially be a giant tea bag for him. We knew from the start that taking him on would be our greatest responsibility. That training him right would mean that we would keep him safe since he was going to grow to be a big boy. We couldn’t roughhouse with him as a pup, we knew that we had to watch as he would be around children. He is a boxer, and his instinct is to hook around our hands with his paws and pull things in, he throws paws, and he stomps on things. I got chewed on, I was black and blue from claws since he didn’t know his strength, and I got hurt, but he learned. My baby is gentle as anything. Whenever I say “ouch”, he will immediately drop the toy and start sniffing me and licking me to comfort me and make sure I am all right. He will wait by the toy so I can chuck it for him. He will not play fetch for the life of him, but he will love to have you chase him. If you say drop it and you are holding the toy, he will drop it, but otherwise, he just likes to tease you. Potty training meant I had stepped in so many warm and cold puddles that I care to remember. We tried taking him out every two hours, and we tried to introduce the bells system, which he took to like a duck to water, but he was being so demanding with it that we decided to remove it as he was bullying us with impatiently ringing them. I had asked the nurse what I should do as he didn’t seem to make progress, and she said that by 6 months, he should be fully trained. That started to feel like pressure, and then like clockwork, when he turned 6 months, that was him trained. He must have been listening to the nurse, too. I have had to let go of the idea that my house is going to be perfectly clean and that this is an all-right price to pay to have him. He would drink water and leave a trail behind him. He would eat and then go around the house and wipe his face on everything I own. If you do not come and wipe his face, he will come and wipe on you. Guess who gave up on the idea of looking cute while walking the dog? He would pull like a fiend on the lead so my shoulder and back have gone so many times than I care to remember. To mediate that, I would let him off the lead, and when it rained, he would go, find, and lie down in a puddle, get the zoomies, and then try to body slam me to play with me. He would then growl like a demon dog and gently nibble on my sleeve. He sounds aggressive, but that is because he is so vocal when he plays. I called him a hellhound a few times, and he got the biggest puppy dog eyes when I did, and I swear the more I repeated it, he just got fluffier and cuter. The irony amused me every time. I became a true helicopter mom. Training him to stay alone in the house gave me the worst case of anxiety. While he was in the house, stealing our things and making a bed out of them to comfort himself, I was in town thinking of one hundred ways that he would kill himself alone in the house. There would have been a fire, and he would have been trapped. I forgot to remove his collar, and he will strangle himself. Everything would happen in this one hour while I was in the supermarket, and I wasn’t there to protect him. I would spend my time watching him sleep and wondering if I could ever make him as happy as he makes me. When he would wag his tail in his sleep, I liked to think that it meant that he had had a good day and when he would cry or bark in his sleep, I would think that maybe he was upset and had had a bad day and I would hug him and kiss him and tell him that he is safe, and he is loved. From time to time, I would cry at the thought that my perfect little angel would only live a short life, and I would lose him at some point. Life had a rhythm to it. Wake up. Take Bruno for a walk. Feed Bruno. Get ready for work. Put him in the crate or just say goodbye and then leave. Go to work. Come back. Cook dinner. Feed Bruno. Walk Bruno. Cuddle with him. He began to sleep in our bed, and while he slept between us in the beginning, he would end up sleeping with his head on my ankles first and then between my legs in a coil or spread eagle. I have spent so much time not moving for fear of waking him up or trying to figure out how to move around him so I can relieve some of my back pain. It had a rhythm, and then it didn’t. Then I was faced with the decision of keeping him or letting him go. I tried to figure out what I could do to keep the love of my life, and at the same time, I felt so much shame that I felt weak, and I could barely take care of myself, so I didn’t know how I could possibly take care of him. It didn’t help that I tried to get close to him, and he would run away from me. It seemed that he had made his choice, and it felt so selfish of me to try to hold on to him. I wrestled so much with these thoughts and when I left the house to start the new stage of my life, while I had not decided about us, I buried my face in his fur, and I cried all of my unfulfilled hopes and dreams about the life that we could’ve had, and I begged him to forgive me for being weak. I later decided I could not give him up, so an arrangement was worked out about sharing time with Bruno. We could give each other up just fine, but never him. I would visit him. When I would come to the door, I would be received with such joy by Bruno. He would body slam me and give me kisses, he would wag his tail, and his entire body would turn into this croissant shape, and I would feel so loved by him. We would go walking, and I was so happy to spend time with him, but I felt like we were chased, like we were on the run, like there would be nowhere to rest. All of a sudden, I couldn’t have him all the time. I didn’t have the freedom to choose what I wanted to do with him, I had to adjust to just having glimpses of him, even though I would see him every other day, during the pandemic. I was able to stay in the backyard and not only see him but all the other dogs that were in the building, and they made me so happy. So much joy from them to see me, and I was so happy to see them. They received me without judgment and love, and that made me feel so happy. The most honest of connections. I moved again after another 6 months, and I was able to have him for a week at a time. I felt more at peace. I could enjoy him without restraints, we could schedule our day however we wanted, and I made sure I took so many pictures of him so whenever I didn’t have him, I could look at them to get me through it. In this period, he also became a teenager. He started to try to push boundaries and see what he could do. He also started to get his hormones coming through, and he was maturing sexually. That meant he was becoming more protective of me. He was becoming more aggressive and trying to square up to other male dogs. I was very anxious, and that was being transmitted to him too. I felt that I was failing him as I didn’t know how to control this, and I didn’t know how to train him and help him through it. I became scared that I was putting him at risk, and if he attacked another dog, he would be destroyed because I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. We came together and we went to a behaviourist, and he confirmed that it was our fault, and we were transmitting the anxiety to Bruno and making him feel like he needed to protect us. We also decided that we need to neuter him so we can curb this behaviour and ensure that he can have a full life, to be able to play and be off leash rather than be trapped in this hyperaware state of mine and then getting tunnel vision and going for another dog. That helped, and he calmed down. Sure, there are still dogs he doesn’t like, and that is fine, but I know how to recognise the signs, to avoid a conflict, and how to calm him down. He brings me such immense joy from his beautiful face to seeing his ears bounce when he walks. I love the click-clack of his nails on the pavement when he walks at night. He makes me smile. I see him running around. The way he gets zoomies, and his head goes back as he runs off. The way he comes over when he is mad, makes a circle to get ready to sit down, stops, looks at me up and down, and then essentially chucks himself on my legs, landing with a sigh. That is the most discreet “I love you, bitch!” I ever got. I love the way his tail moves like that of a rattlesnake when he coils to go to sleep. I love to think that when I take off his collar, he is wild and naked like I feel without my bra. I love how he never steals food off a plate, but he just puts his face next to the plate and then uses his eyes to send messages that he wants the food. He will not cry, but he will drool, and there will be spit bubbles. The way he arranges the pillows when he sleeps is just like when he was a baby; he loves a cushion. Even his side eye and the way he judges my entire existence make me smile. He also triggers me immensely. I had days when I was falling apart, and I felt like I was not doing enough. I would walk him, and then he would take too long for my anxiety, and I would start telling him that he should hurry up. Or he would want to play more and would try to run away, while I would be depressed and wanting to lie down, having already struggled to get out of the house. If he came back into the house and started crying, every single cry would tell me that I wasn’t enough. That I wasn’t doing enough. That I was being selfish. That I am holding him for my benefit when I should let him be, and he would be happier without me. I feel I can never get sick because then there would be nobody else to take him out when I have him. It gives me anxiety to go out when I have him because I feel separation anxiety and guilt. His being sick is the worst. The last time, he was sick, and I thought I saw blood when I was cleaning up. I called the vet and explained what was happening, and she gave me advice and told me to keep him hydrated with a syringe. It was a Sunday, and the pharmacies were closed. I was panicking so much as I didn’t know what to do to help Bruno, and I was so worried about what it could be. In my highly anxious state, I put my finger in his water bowl and rubbed it on his gums like it was cocaine in Narcos. What that did was stick his upper lip to his gums and expose his four upper front teeth. With his lip like that, he looked at me, and then away, and then at me, and then away. I could see the wheels in his brain moving as he must have been thinking: “Have I… Have I just been assaulted here? Do I need to call SSPCA on this woman?” That thought alone made me laugh, and all of a sudden, I was relaxed. I knew that whatever would happen, I would do whatever needed to be done for him to be safe, and we would be fine. I might not have it together, but I will show up for him. Just as he triggers me, he calms me down. He comes and gives me kisses, he licks my face, and he cuddles with me. He brings me toys when I am down, he makes me go on walks, and by the end of them, I promise you that I am laughing, I am relaxed, and I have a good time. He is calm and forgiving. When I snap at him, he is disappointed, but when I come to my senses and realise that it is about me and he is not to blame, I apologise, and he will happily accept the hugs and kisses. We eat together, and I love to cook for him. He checks up on me when I have fallen asleep on the couch and comes to take me to our bedroom. If he is asleep somewhere else, he will eventually come and sleep in my bed. Looking at him makes me happy. Cuddling him makes me happy. Smelling him makes me happy. He has this calm way about him when it comes to people who are scared of dogs, and that calm expectation without judgment means that I lot of people who are scared of dogs are not scared of Bruno. He is so gentle and loving. He is so kind that a part of me feels proud that we have raised him right. He makes one feel taken care of whenever he is around, loved without expectation and limits. I am so lucky to have Bruno in my life. He is one of my soul mates. While people think that he is just a dog, for me, he is where all my maternal urges have gone, he is the reason I am still around. He is also the one who triggers all of my fears around parenthood. He is my teacher when it comes to living in the moment. He is silently loving and wise, showing me that actions are more important than words. Every moment with him is precious, and I try to capture as many as I can in these snow globe moments, like him playing in the snow, making a new friend, and him getting stalked by the neighbourhood fox. My time with him is so precious, and my little angel spreads love, joy, and laughter everywhere he goes and with everyone he meets. I might not know a lot of things, but believe me when I tell you, if you met him, you would love Bruno too.

It is hilarious how art imitates life. We all start with a basic character. Who we are and where we came from dictate our starting point strengths and weaknesses. We then start to explore the open world, and we make decisions that dictate the character and the stats that we will have at the end of our game. We unlock achievements and miss opportunities, all hoping for the best. There are simple things that influence us. Things like going to my dad and asking him if I am beautiful. He said no and started to laugh. Cue me crying in a therapy session over 25 years later that I never feel like the most beautiful woman in the room, that I never feel like the smartest person at the table. I recounted this story, and I could remember it so vividly even though I think I asked the question when I was 8 or 9. My therapist assured me that my father surely thought he was making a joke and if I were to bring it up, he would not remember that it happened. Would this have been the source of my low self-esteem for years? Potentially not, but it showed me that if you throw a rock in the pond, one does not know where the ripples will go. You then add years of being told you are too skinny or that you still need to lose a few kilograms. I was laughed at for being too white, laughed at for being a late bloomer and not having big breasts, compared again and again and found wanting. I felt fat at 54 kilograms, I felt that I needed to lose some more weight and tone up and maybe then I would be enough. I am 1.70m, by the way. I was considered underweight medically, but the brain is a liar. My genes kept me skinny so, for the longest time, I could eat whatever I wanted and not gain weight, I never starved myself. I then got to the point where I started to comfort eat to the point where I went to 81.2kg. I know the exact weight because I had decided to weigh myself and start going to the gym as a New Year’s resolution. It wasn’t just the weight, I kept looking into the mirror and saw that the eyes were most definitely mine but nothing else seemed like me. It started slowly, just one kilogram here and there. Eating to hide from the anxiety, eating to feed depression. Losing bits of myself, one mouthful at a time for 7 years. Just buy bigger clothes and hide the fact that I am losing respect for myself. Binge eating is truly a trap. Then my crisis came. Absolute panic stations. Depression, anxiety, boundless loneliness, insomnia, panic attacks. I would forget to eat, I would forget to drink water, I would forget I have a body until it hurt. I would undress, wash, and put my clothes on without really being aware of my physical being. I was just a walking tangled thought bubble. Surviving not really living. Then one day, I was just walking by the mirror, and I caught my eye. So much so that my eyes got fixed to the mirror and my body had to travel back into view. For the first time in a long time, I looked, and I saw that changes had started without me knowing. My body had changed, and I was starting to look like my old self. I was starting to shed the pounds as I was going through my thoughts, and I was shedding old beliefs. I was looking more like my old self and that made me feel good. I started a practice of looking at myself in the mirror to make sure that my mind keeps track and keeps in check with my physical body. Some things I liked right away, some things I had to accept that they are a work in progress, and I have accepted them as they are. I started to take pictures of myself. Partly because those were milestones and those were proud moments when I felt good, partly so I could monitor the progress. The funny thing is that whenever I look at them now, I never focus on the body, really. I focus on the eyes. The eyes always tell the story. They say how I was dead inside; they say how I came back to life and how I continue to become. The sparkle, the light, the inflexions. Windows to the soul and my soul had been in pain for so long and now it was reaching out for happiness. When I first started the journey, I had seen The Call to Courage by Brene Brown and what I knew with certainty about myself was that I had always been vulnerable, I have always shown who I am. In truth, all I have ever wanted was for somebody to truly see me so, vulnerability had come so naturally. It is not an easy path, unfortunately. Because one is so vulnerable, it is so easy to get hurt when you don’t pick the people to be vulnerable with wisely. I had always been naïve about it and trusted people immediately. Judged them by my own measure. I was honest so; I assumed that everybody was honest. I tried not to hurt anybody, and I assumed that people had good intentions. I always try to see people as they can be in their best version of themselves. I treat them as if they can be that. Most people will be awfully quick to prove me wrong and that is disappointing since I ask for so little but, it is so wonderful when people do turn out to be great. For that little spark, all the rest of it is worth it. With my new image being built and my ego still very fragile, I have started to look outwards. Observe the world and see that this template of what is loveable and what is not is skewed. There is no rhyme or reason, there is no right or wrong. There is no perfect recipe, and I can’t be fragmented constantly to please other people. I had been wrong before about so many other things and if I was wrong about them, what does that say about me? What I can remember from philosophy is that there are three people in every person, the one that you think you are, the one that other people think you are and the person you really are. Cue existential crisis. Who am I? I knew how to be somebody’s partner but what am I by myself? What do I like? What do I want? If there is a purpose for all of this, what could it be? So, I have started to put together a spreadsheet. I am both analytical and goal-oriented so, there must be a method to the madness. One creates a spreadsheet and within catalogues assumptions, things I know I am things am not sure of and things on which I can improve. I have started looking at each one and I tried to be as honest as I can in each of them in the quest for myself. Starting to see myself, starting to appreciate myself, starting to set small goals for myself and achieving them made me feel stronger, made me feel like I could do this like I can be all that I want to be. Boundaries had to come next. I can do anything, but I must do it in my own timeline. So, I had to start telling people what my terms and conditions were for engagement and stick by them. The first painful lesson was that some people just want to use you, and they will do anything that they can to keep you in place. I thought that I was being supported and understood by this person and then I found that I am only liked if I don’t say No. That there is no care, there is no understanding, there is only lip service to keep me saying yes. So, I had to get rid of the shame and the guilt around No being a full sentence. “I don’t want to” is a perfectly good explanation. It is all right for people to leave my life if they think that my boundaries are a problem. The next one was harder still. Realising that people don’t think of you as much as you think they do. Not even people that say they love you and when they hurt you and you confront them, they say they hadn’t stopped to consider your feelings. I understood from it that people will do what serves them and while I thought that their concern is also about my happiness, the same way I consider how I affect others and constantly try to figure out if I am being fair, that it is not the way that everybody does it. And with that fact, I understood that the only person I owe happiness to is myself. That I am the only one that suffers the consequences of my choices so, why would I live my life to please other people if it is not the life, I envisioned for myself? I have the power to make myself happy or unhappy if I accept less than I deserve. Still work in progress on that one but I am getting better. Next, I looked inward again and again and started questioning why I was not good enough. Why do I not feel better no matter what I do? I started to pay more attention to the things that I tell myself when I am at my lowest. You watch the ghost that keeps on yelling and the more you look at it, the more familiar it sounds. The brain tries to keep hold of it, but it is somewhat in the corner of your mind’s eye. And then one day it clicks. It is the voice of your dad. All the things that were said when he was angry, and they have all been taken over and now they are the things I say to myself to put myself down. But, still, not enough, that wouldn’t explain everything, and one keeps on searching and one keeps on drilling and thinking on it until, one day while washing my hair, the thought just surfaced: “You are never enough because you were never enough for mom” First, it comes as a surprise. What a strange idea. Where did it come from? And I repeat it in my head a few times and every single time, it rings more and more true. And then I just start to cry because it is the answer to something I have been trying to riddle for ages. It has been forever present in the back of my mind but, it has been pushed to the back again and again because it is so painful. It has guided and shaped me and now that I say it, I can be free of it. I try to think of a moment when I was told “I love you” and no matter how much I try, I can’t find any in my memory. I pay attention when I talk about my achievements, and I talk about the things that make me happy, I get nothing. Maybe an “oh, that’s good.” Or a “good for you.” It cuts deep but then after a lot of crying and depression, one accepts it. I accept that I do not need her approval to be happy. Just because she cannot participate in my joy, it does not mean there is none to be had, or there is nothing to be celebrated. And then life brings you a Ted Talk called “The Art of Being Yourself” by Caroline McHugh and everything just starts making sense. She said that we have one true note to sing in this world and our life goal is to find that one thing that we were meant to do. You have something that nobody else has and one should not compare to others because they have things that we don’t have and that is all right. People will like you for who you are. The right people will always show up for you. The right people, the ones that count will always cheer for you. They will be part of your sorrow, and they will be part of your joy. Above all else, you are your true ride-or-die. You must be kind to yourself. Accept yourself. Forgive yourself. Love yourself from the bottom of your heart. Be honest with yourself. We are born alone, and we die alone. We only have ourselves for the entire life and we are the worst with ourselves. Knowing all this the competition is no longer on the outside. You no longer compare to others, but you compare to how you were yesterday. I still struggle to see what I have achieved. When you are caught up in things, you can’t tell how far you’ve come, you can’t really see all the changes that have been made as they are happening. And then the universe just sends you another crisis and, in that crisis, you struggle, and you stumble and fall, and you feel distraught but, when you stop and look at things you realise that you have handled it a lot better than you would have before, that you showed up for yourself so much more than you would have ever done. And at the end of it, after not having slept for an entire night, after I had been so anxious that I felt nauseous and I had trembled for hours after I told myself that I was hopeless and things were just not getting better no matter how much I try, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I thought: “Look at you! Sure, your life is an absolute dumpster fire now but, you are gorgeous! That body. That face. Tragedy becomes you. Time for a nap and then back to sorting this disaster” And that is how I know that I am strong within myself. It is not always a beeline and sometimes I will struggle but one thing is for certain: “I AM ENOUGH!.”

I have always been interested in the intricacies of the human mind. I have always watched documentaries that explain how the brain works, how different chemicals influence emotions and how those emotions influence actions. I love watching true crime documentaries that talk about the life of serial killers, and documentaries about how the brain chemistry works and I always look for the nurture vs nature components that are at play. I found dreams interesting and how the subconscious sends messages to you, or your brain tries to continue to problem solve even while you sleep. I have always thought that words have power and that there is so much meaning in the words we pick, how we choose to order them, and how they are used to emphasize certain things. The right words can motivate and inspire, and the wrong words can cut and bring someone to their knees. Every choice conveys meaning and gives clues about the speaker. Listen enough and everything will be revealed. From this point of view, talk therapy has always intrigued me as to how therapists can pick the thread of the issues from the stories we tell. I am an introvert and an overthinker, so my instinct when something happens is to start dissecting it and introspecting to see what happened, how it happened and how can I assign blame… to myself, mainly. I have been on the brink of breakdown and despair many times and I have always known that I needed therapy. I kept on thinking about it from time to time and then talking myself out of it. While I was young, I knew that there would have been an expense that my parents would not have wanted to take on. When I started earning, I kept on thinking about it but, kept on saying that I have been managing to keep it together on my own so, I can deal with everything just fine. I think a big part of it was that I was still in Romania, and we still had this view that you are just meant to keep your problems to yourself, never air your dirty laundry in public and that one should just get on with it. I moved to the UK and the times moved as well and the focus on mental health has increased and still, I thought that I could be just fine. Regardless, of how hard I struggled I still thought I could do it. The idea of trying therapy seemed so big. I didn’t even know where to start. I kept on saying that I would try it and that I needed to work on myself but I still, didn’t do anything about it. After a bit of procrastination and going back and forward, an appointment was made for me. I have found myself in front of the building about 15 minutes early with no idea of what I am going to say for an hour. I do have two speeds, either too anxious about things that I arrive super early, or I get too relaxed, I underestimate how much time I need to get ready, and I am late. This time, my thoughts were racing, and the time was just expanding and dragging. If the social anxiety didn’t get me, the fact that I was given the instructions to a labyrinth would certainly do it. I get lost in a turnaround and I have two screens worth of instructions. I got this image of a skeleton in a corner of the building like in a cartoon, just bones and my outfit with a couple of daisies, no desert around me. I finally made it to the door with two minutes to spare. It gave me enough time to do everything that I should do. Should I knock? Would that be rude? Would somebody be in, and I would interrupt? I stayed there and stared at my watch, letting the seconds go by and I felt that this was an important moment, like standing on the precipice of something great. At the top of the hour, I took a deep breath and knocked. I was let in, offered a seat and given a form to fill. Just the usual info but at the very end was a section that required me to add an emergency contact. That part made me crumble on the inside, my hands started to shake, I felt so incredibly lonely, and I felt ashamed that I had to say it aloud. I have just very feebly asked if it were required to fill it in just then or if I could leave it for another time. She smiled and said that it would not be a problem and then we settled in our chairs and looked at each other properly for the first time. I made a mental note that she looked like my mother. She asked me what my expectations were of our time together to which I replied that it was to be guided to find my solutions. I am dramatic in all things, and I could not help doing a parallel with the Divine Comedy. As Dante loses his way, he finds himself in the woods and as he wanders around, he finds himself at the foot of a mountain but as he is attempting to make his way, his path is blocked in turn by a leopard, lion and she-wolf, aka, lust, pride, and greed. As he despairs, he sees a shadow approaching and it is Virgil, his guide through the Inferno, to show him the way through it. My beasts were anxiety, depression and panic attacks and my Virgil was using cognitive behavioural therapy to guide my path. I had been terrified that I would not be able to fill an hour but once we started, I had to be told that the time was up. It was pouring out of me. I never wanted to be judged and while I knew that I was being assessed, I didn’t feel any trace of judgement, even further, I didn’t feel any trace of expectation for me to act or be in a certain way. We started face-to-face and then, when the pandemic began, we switched to phone calls. While I was just a voice on the phone, I never felt so seen in my life. I wasn’t used to anybody listening, so I was used to talking to myself and I was most definitely used to being shut down when I tried to express emotions so, having someone to really listen, understand and validate me was incredibly addictive. I had my friend, Diana and I had my therapist and between them, I was anchored, and I had a support system like I had never had before. While other people turned to drugs and alcohol to numb their pain, I started to look at it as an enigma I needed to solve. I would watch documentaries, interviews and TED talks trying to understand what was happening. I was analysing myself and my emotions and then I would have my therapy session where we would discuss it all. In the beginning, I would count the days between the sessions and when the day came, I could unload everything. It felt like people were tired of talking about my breakup and my feelings and they either talked to me less and less or they would tell me that I should get over it, put it behind me, and stop talking about it. The positive thinking chat was brought up. I started to feel shame and guilt that I wasn’t getting better fast enough and that I was bothering people and then in my therapy session I could be open about how I felt, and I would get told “Everything you feel right now, it’s normal.” That gave me permission to feel my feelings and put down my burden. It gave me respite even for a few hours. We had a chat, and I was told that I had to feel my feelings. I thought I was or, at least most of them but I got told that I needed to feel ALL of them. All of them? There were so many and even the ones that were sipping through were extremely painful and violent. I have been told that I need to feel them as they come otherwise, they will surface and explode in my face at the worst times. Well, at the time, everybody was about the good vibes so, after watching a Ted Talk about the high number of suicides in the world’s happiest country and learning about people being happy by comparison, I concluded that while I have no good vibes to give, I can bring happiness to people because they would be better off than I am. This is the time when it was suggested to me that I should stop watching Ted Talks if this is the way they make me feel. Fair enough! I could see that it was working, and I had days when I felt a lot better so, I listened to my therapist’s advice like it was the word of God. It wasn’t easy to work by any means. Before every session, we would take the test that assessed my anxiety and my depression, and I was knocking it out of the park. My test scores were high on both accounts, which also meant that I was in quite a dark place. Furthermore, to start becoming aware of my patterns and my triggers, I started to rate my emotions on a mood chart. Not only would I rate myself, but I would write an account of what happened. It hurt the first time when I felt it and again when I wrote about it and reflected on it. We would then look at it together and see if we can gain any wisdom from it. Things were pilling on and on and I did go so far into depression that I became suicidal so, I had asked for help, and I also went on antidepressants. I felt that we had a very good rapport, which is very important but that doesn’t mean that emotions are going to be linear. There was a time when I felt anger towards her. I felt like I was stuck, and I didn’t know how to progress, and I felt resentful because it seemed to me like she knew and wouldn’t tell me. Why wouldn’t she just tell me? This would be so much easier if I just got a list, I thought. Of course, that is not how it works. Therapy doesn’t work at that pace and your therapist doesn’t lift the curtain on all your life problems for a grand reveal. Mostly because, one would rebel, reject the revelation, and never come back to therapy. These are feelings and parts of the self that have been hidden or rejected so, it would be quite the shock to face them all at once. I got crumbs, I got hints and then I resolved issues at the speed that I was ready to accept them. I was determined to make this happen so; I decided that if the subject is too easy to talk about it is not an issue. I wanted to make a real change in my life, and I couldn’t do that unless I fully committed and leaned into it. Nobody changes what they don’t consider a problem so unless things are ready to come to light, the subject will be dodged again and again. There is this thing called Kintsugi. It is a Japanese art form in which broken pottery is put back together with gold. The idea is that one embraces the flaw and that the imperfection makes it an even more beautiful piece. The gold makes it more durable, and more resilient. I felt so broken, and I was being put back together piece by piece, I felt that by the end of it, I would look like C-3PO. Slowly, things started to get better, I started to accept my feelings, and they started to get easier to feel then with my mind not being in a constant state of flux, I could concentrate and evaluate everything so, I started to test the waters with the new skills that I was learning, and I started to feel better. Days felt lighter and it was funny that sometimes I would speak to my therapist and Diana independently and they would give me the same advice or have the same opinion and now I had the mental space to appreciate the gift of both of them. I would walk with Bruno, and I felt that he was such an amazing dog to be around. We had talked about looking at my childhood and while I accepted in principle, I would change the subject insistently when it came to practice. There were a few sessions that were just chats, so I was asked if I still needed therapy and if I was still getting the full benefit of our time. I considered it but I still felt that I had a few things to cover. And then, it was time. I said that I was finally ready for her to let go of my hand and for me to step out into the world. There is always a final conversation in which we assess how it all went and also, one gets reminded that this is not a final thing, that life is full of ups and downs, that healing is not linear and if there is a need to come back, the possibility is always available. I had done 7 months of therapy at that point and by the end of it, I was so grateful for the help that I got. I had started this journey not knowing who I was and by the end of it, I had received the gift of me. I had reconnected with myself, and I was deeply in love with myself. This had been more than I could have ever hoped for, and this would have to be a goodbye… for now.

Here I am, in the wastelands of my own consciousness. I am in the eye of the storm, but for once, there is peace. I can see all my thoughts whirling around, the ghosts of the past clutching at me, and my demons prowling, ready to pounce at any minute. It has been such a long journey, and it all started with me willing myself off the floor. I was so small and so scared, not knowing what to do next. I decided that giving up was not an option and took the first shaky step into the unknown. I was disconnected from myself, a stranger for years. I looked in the mirror and I wondered who the woman was staring back at me. It was not only that I didn’t know her, it was not only that she was so far from what I thought she would be but, I saw her as wanting, as weak. I hated her so much and I tried to get as far away from her as I could. A troubled time followed, sailing the rough seas of my own failings. I braved the storms knowing that I would not find what I was looking for unless I kept going beyond the dark clouds. I braved it as could, but it all seemed endless. Just a wide stretch of despair as far as the eye can see. The shackles of this world were tying me down, pulling me under and the void was so alluring. The thought that I am just a speck of dust in the grand scheme of things and if I disappeared no one would know the difference, no one would care. Just a blip out of existence like I had never even been. I wanted to let go. For what was I fighting? For better? I have hoped for better and better seldom came and if it did it would only be temporary. Just enough happiness to hint at a possibility that I can have it too. It always came with a great fear that everything would just disappear in a puff of smoke. At this cross point, my guardian stepped up. Fearful, unsure of me but, with so much love in his heart. Two brown eyes watching me without a word. Waiting for me to make a move, to make a choice. I would pet him, and his soft coat would bring me peace. I would put my head on his fury chest and the sound of his beating heart would quiet the voices in my head. He would put his paws on my shoulder, and he would slowly and methodically lick my face, lick my tears away, making me feel taken care of, making me feel loved. Giving me his love when I had none for myself. Bruno was unassuming. He didn’t judge me for my past and didn’t question my future. He lived in the moment, and he accepted me as I was. He didn’t judge me for being in a low spot. He had absolutely no expectation of what I should be or how I should feel. He became the Cerberus, guarding my own personal hell. He has shown me love beyond belief. He has accepted me with the same joy in my best days and my darkest days. He has watched over my heart fearlessly and he has healed it at every step. He has allowed me to fall apart, and he has been there to pick up the pieces. It was for him that I held on. I felt that if he loved me like that surely, I could be loved. For him, I would be strong. For him, I would transform. I have always been fascinated with Marin’s Sorescu’s “Iona.” The main character is a fisherman who carries with him a bowl of fish and on a bad day, he fishes in the bowl to make himself feel better, to make himself believe that he has achieved. A giant fish swallows him one day and he attempts to free himself by cutting the belly with the hope that he will make it somehow. My mind always came back to it. I always pondered what it meant and why it was so important to me. I have thought that changing friends, changing surroundings, and changing my look will make a difference. I had thought that it all happened to me and that I had no choice or agency. That I am powerless in the face of destiny. The answer was always staring me in the face. The way out is within. I have looked inwards even harder, I have become a Phoenix, changing again and again, reinventing myself, analysing every permutation that I could, not knowing where I would end up but, knowing with certainty that I was becoming. I have killed my ego again and again, slayed some of my demons, and starred others in the face. I have taken the masks of those taunting ghosts of the past, given them a name, and freed myself of their power over me. I have grieved every single failure and allowed the wounds to bleed openly. I have been brought to my knees so many times but, I got up each time and I tried again, and again, and again, and again… I have tried to find some way to connect and fight the deep loneliness that stretched endlessly in front of me. All, I wanted, all I EVER wanted was for someone to look within and see me as I am. See all the scars and all the wounds and not pull away. The problem was that I was the first one to run from myself. I have pushed and pulled in all directions. I have tried to will into existence everything that I wanted, leaned into the pain knowing that it is the only way that I can make everything a reality. I have tried to pull my reality back together and held on to it with both hands. I have been struggling, fighting, falling apart, putting myself back together for so long and while I am growing, I am also growing tired. So exhausted of feeling that I don’t have any answers, that I have no real solution so… here I am, not giving up but, giving in. It Is time to stop and take stock. See all the lessons that I have learned, look again in the mirror, and allow my mind to adjust to who I am now. Not giving up, just safe in the eye of the storm, resting while the wheel of destiny keeps spinning.

Out of all the challenges that I must face in this lifetime, asking for help has always proved to be the toughest one. Nothing makes me more anxious or makes me more insecure than asking for help. It is feeling weak in the face of the realisation that I can’t just handle it myself and feeling guilty that I am imposing on someone else’s time. I should be able to just handle things on my own. It is seen as a sign of independence and great strength to handle things on our own. All we hear about is how this great person has done it all. In the face of adversity, they have stood on their own two feet and did not give up. Every story says strength is doing it alone. For me, it starts in the spiral. I try to think about what to do, and my mind reaches for support, and I think that no one can help me. Down, down the spiral I go, and I start feeling so alone and my mind keeps telling me that I am the only option, I am all the plans, and it screams at me: “Look at you… so pitiful… do you actually think you can handle this?” and I feel the sinking feeling and I start to put myself down. When I first started the journey, I was told: “You never know how strong you are, until you must be. “I didn’t know where to start and I was trying to manage everything at once. Find solutions and try to deal with it all. A place for everything and everything in its place. There were so many things that I didn’t know how to do and so many fears and every single time I tried to grasp it all in my mind, I could feel as if my entire body was being attacked at once. I would convince myself that I must do it and then my mind would scatter when I tried. It is very much like watching a bank of fish. Swimming along in the same direction, logic seeming to guide their actions, the hive mind taking them where they need to go and then once a danger comes, they just disperse. No aim, no purpose, just panic. We do not know where we are going but we do know that we don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be doing this, I do not want to be me.  What to do though? One can’t just stay still. One can’t just give up. There is no backing down. Things have happened, things have changed, and things cannot be taken back. Once the lid has been taken off the Pandora’s box and the evils of the world have escaped, they cannot be put back but, they cannot be left unchecked either. No going back, the only way is forward. I have tried for several days to put it all into order and then all that came of it was that I knew what the pillars of the situations were. I knew what aspects needed to be tackled and resolved. I knew what they were, and I knew that I could not handle them all at once. So, I have started on the path of deciding which one is most important. Which one must be dealt with first? I knew that I could not deal with it all at once so, I started to break it up into pieces. I will make decisions about what to do tomorrow and when the day comes, I will do my best to follow through and see how I faired. Just keep going, just keep swimming, allowing myself to fall apart, allowing myself to cry, allowing myself to waiver. I can break down as many times as I need to break down but there is no other option but, to keep trying. “It matters not how strait the gate, /      How charged with punishments the scroll, / I am the master of my fate, / I am the captain of my soul.” (“Invictus” by William Ernest Henley) Cry because you don’t know how to do something. Look it up. Cry because you can’t find an answer. Keep looking. Cry because you found an answer, but you don’t understand it. Keep looking. Mention it to people and see if they have experience with something. Get a clue. Find a little hope. Keep looking. Cry about having to look so many times. Find a solution. Cry because you found a solution, but it is something new. Start creating simulations in my head and think about all the outcomes. Think about what could go wrong, getting ready for the worst scenario. Experience all the negative emotions that go with it because one needs to be ready for when shit hits the fan. Cry over each single one of them. Start implementing. Cry at each turn because you feel overwhelmed, and you feel alone. Complete the task. Reward yourself with a cry to celebrate the fact that you were a good girl or grieve over the failure and have a good cry considering the lessons. One way or the other, there is progress. I am exhausted in both body and spirit, at this point. I look at my life and I try to find the reasons. One would be that when I asked for help, as a child, I either got in trouble for being in trouble or I got made to feel like it was an inconvenience. Getting told that I can’t do anything right. Getting told I break everything I touch. Getting told I don’t respect anything. Escalating anxiety all the while, guilt, and shame added to it. It just taught me that asking for help makes a nuisance out of me. I just need to be perfect from the start and then fix it myself when something goes wrong. My mind automatically goes to I need someone to help. I just need to tell myself again and again that no one is coming. That I am my own saviour. I have done things before. I achieved. I am fine. This is fine. Everything will be fine. The next issue is just talking about the problem and somebody saying that they will help. You ask if they are sure and, they are positive. You start planning around their promise and then you mention it again and try to see what they are comfortable with and the entire mood shifts. You realise that they didn’t think that you would take them seriously. They didn’t plan on helping. They have had time to consider it, and it makes them uncomfortable to help or it does not align with what they can do. This one cut even deeper. For needing help, shame for trusting somebody, shame for not being able to handle things myself. I asked my therapist why someone would offer to help if they didn’t mean it. It seemed so strange to me. I was told that it makes people feel good to offer. Saviour complex but, just offering is enough to make them feel good and gives them validation. Take some more shame in the shower because you thought they meant it. Because you need them to mean it. I have tried to share my problems and people have half listened to close the subject and then told me they were sure that I would find a solution. I don’t mind this that much. I don’t think that anybody owes me anything and I can appreciate that nothing is being offered when they are not comfortable offering help. I know that sometimes I talk too much, and I have no filter so, I am triggering for people. What I don’t understand is when people say that I should have asked for help because they would have stepped in. Would they? Would they actually? Is it a further message for me to learn my lesson or is it the passing of responsibility and washing away any guilt? No help was offered, no help was expected, no help was given, situation was resolved. Why the extra mention? If you could have helped, then why didn’t you say when I said I was struggling? Take some shame to go because you are not meant to be an island and we are meant to ask for help because not doing so, is not healthy. Still my fault. I don’t know how to ask for help. I am deeply uncomfortable with asking for help outside a work environment. I got forced to do it there. I felt extremely uncomfortable in my first job when I had to do it but, I knew that I couldn’t solve the issue unless I did. Now, I just ask, take millions of notes, and try to excel at whatever it is for me to become the person who can help. Trying to be calm when I show somebody else, try to not make them feel guilty for needing help, try to understand their thought patterns, trying to explain the logic so, they grow. There is nothing better than showing somebody what they must do and then shining with that knowledge, becoming the best that they can be, and reaching their potential. They won’t have to feel how I felt ever again. I talk about my issues, and I tell people what I am going through. I share my worries and my thinking process. I don’t know how to ask for help but, I give opportunities for help to be offered, and I am not ashamed to accept help. I know I can’t do it all. Sometimes people realise that I need help, and they try to find a solution with me. They offer an option. They tell me they see worth in me, and they want to support me. I feel so grateful and scared at the same time. Grateful that I am not alone, and I get advice or a solution, scared that it might not come to pass, or I might trust, and it will be taken away. I am lucky to have found a few people that I can trust all the time. I can ask for help, and they never make me feel weak or needy or like I am being a burden. People who understand that if they tell me the truth about their situation, I will understand. I can understand not being able to support someone when one is feeling down. I can understand someone being busy and not having time to help. They understand that I am scared, so they read the signs, sit me down and ask me what is wrong and how can they help. I am so endlessly grateful to those people. The truth is I know that in this lifetime, the only person who will get me anything I want is myself, but it is nice to be able to lean on someone from time to time. All I really need is a hug and for somebody to believe in me. It is hard and it takes a lot of preparation but, I now try to pluck up the courage to ask for help. I keep repeating to myself “It is fine. What is the worst that can happen? They can always say no.” I need to do this. I need to learn that it is all right to express my needs and that it is okay to be vulnerable and say I need help.

In the grand game of fight or flight, I am “freeze.” My anxiety tells me that I am not safe, that I should do something, that I should find a solution, and that I should act. My depression binds me to the ground, paralyzing me and it tells me that it is useless, that it is hopeless, and I should not even bother. My brain is firing up and getting overwhelmed while my body sinks into a sofa or sinks onto the floor. Before, I would try to stop all those thoughts. Don’t think about it. Just stay busy. Just distract yourself and all will go away. Don’t deal with it and maybe if you don’t deal with it long enough, it will resolve itself. The worst for me seems to be the fear of the unknown. Knowing my enemy allows me to prepare. I tend to overthink anyway so, I spend hours considering everything I know, and I emotionally cut myself with possible scenarios. I experience every feeling with the intensity that I would experience if the scenarios would come to pass and unfortunately, I don’t have an overly optimistic view of the future in most cases. If I already felt the pain, it is easier to handle. I can look beyond my feelings and focus on the practicality of the situation. I have tried to look at the big picture in the past and all the fears came crushing in. All the ghosts of low self-esteem, all the voices chanting that I am not able to handle it. It is not being focused enough to decide what I should do doubled up by not trusting my mind to make a good decision. Thinking that if I make a mistake everything will be lost. Thinking that I need to have one big solution to make it all better at once. I tried and I got paralyzed by fear again and again so, that I understood that it is not the way to go about it so, I have started to break it into pieces and look at them one at a time. I can handle things one chunk at a time. Anxiety shows up in different ways. It can come as this desire to procrastinate for a bit and take a break since the issue at hand is causing tension. Watch a clip, or scroll through posts on social media, again and again and again, with no real patience to watch any of them but unable to stop and do something else. The brain feels fired up and one feels hyper-aware of everything. A chorus of 1000 intentions coming in at once and they seem just out of reach and none a good solution. There is a sense of feeling unsafe. Something will happen. I am not sure where it will come from or what it will be but, it will be bad and my entire being needs to brace for it. I will not be able to control it. I am so tired that I can’t think straight anymore. All I know is that this feeling is here, and I need to make it better. It is urgency to eliminate the sense of urgency and danger. What’s wrong? Nothing and everything. My head feels caught in a vice. My mouth is dry. I breathe faster. The muscles tighten more and more as if something is trying to squeeze my ribs together. Either that or stabbing muscle pain until the muscles relax. My shoulders go up and my neck is tense. I get an itch at the base of my skull on the right side and regardless of how much I scratch it, it will not go away. My heart is beating fast and going faster because I am scared. I can feel it in the pit of my stomach, a mixture of rumble and nausea. I am restless and I need to move. Trapped in this place. Trapped in this moment. I need sleep but sleep won’t come that easily. No rest for the wicked indeed. I start to ask myself: “What are you avoiding?” “What are you burying?” There is nowhere to run. There is nowhere to hide. You can try and lie to yourself in the moment but, it will just come back in a different shape to hunt you. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be doing this. Please, stop! I just need to stop these thoughts from going through my head. They are galvanizing and gathering in my chest. It feels like they are sitting there as terror takes over me. They are too much. I am too small. I can’t handle them. I can’t cope. I am alone and I can’t fight them on my own. I can’t do this. I just need someone to help. I am so scared, but the enemy is within. My fingers start to tingle. They are starting to feel numb. I look at them and they feel swollen, and they are getting whiter. My legs are getting heavy. Cold sweat is running down my back. Heath is coming in waves down my arms as my skin turns red. I am feeling dizzy. I start to feel like my eyes are swimming and I feel intensely nauseous. I feel like I am about to faint. If I don’t stop it, I will faint. Take control! Take control NOW! Force a deep breath and then another. My brain is a liar. I am fine. This is fine. Everything will be fine. I breathe deeply again and feel my chest decompress as I realize that my body simply forgot to breathe because of the panic. Focus on scanning your body and cataloguing each sensation as it occurs. Nothing is happening, nothing is truly coming, and you are still fine. Open your eyes now and focus outwards. Find five red things. It can be anything, but we need to find them. Find things that are similar to what you know. This feels new but nothing is completely new. You have done this before. Just hold on and then you can go into the fresh air. Tick, tock, tick, tock and now you are free. It is fine. Deep breath and it is done. When I have long periods of anxiety, my body shuts down what it doesn’t consider important to participate in my rescue. I forget to drink, and I forget to eat. My brain forgets that my body needs anything in its pursuit of an answer to my problem. I lose weight without even trying, I just realize it in my clothes. The worrying part is that I get compliments for the weight loss. One tends to be socially conditioned and without a strong image of self, one starts to chase external validation. I stay away from those kinds of compliments because I could end up harming myself. When I was at my worst, I would use a calorie counting app to remind me to eat as it kept on reminding me that I hadn’t added data for a mealtime. That was my cue to have a meal. I also don’t bother restricting what I eat. I just eat what I like and brings me joy. I feel that if I were to restrict the food items that I have then it would be a sure way to develop an eating disorder. Anxiety hides in the back pain that keeps on coming back because one is so tense, and it sometimes shows up to rob us of our mental capacity. Brain fog. Isn’t it poetic? All the information is there and yet, you can’t find it in the fog. The fact that your subconscious is so busy dealing with the state of anxiety, stops the conscious mind from dealing with the issue at hand. So, attention is scattered, and memory is affected because I am not present mentally in the here and now. I get tongue-tied and I get in a state where I can’t remember words, I lose track of what I was saying, and I forget the point that I was trying to make. Decision-making goes out the window. You get paranoid and the mind is spinning out of control trying to analyse every single thing and just go over all the details. One can’t understand how there are gaps in the memory and anxiety just bridges all of that with the worst-case scenarios. If I can’t sleep because of anxiety then I can’t think straight because of being tired, always tired but hyper-stimulated so, one can’t sleep despite being exhausted, how can I be at my best? I have experienced times when someone looked at me pityingly and talked to me like I was dumb. I am analytical and rational; I like data and proof for everything. Informed decisions always and safe bets and then my anxiety comes and just pulverizes all of that because every fibre of my being is trying to take back control and stop my world from imploding. What are we protecting against? It doesn’t even matter. Just run now and find out later. I try to tell people that I am struggling with doing something and they just reply with “That is simple. There are so many articles on Google. Just follow them.” It is simple for you. It is not simple to me. It is not that I lack the intellect or that I lack the drive to do something but it can become overwhelming very fast when I start thinking about all of the details that I need to take into account, all of the back draws of each of them and all of the things that can go wrong, understanding that this is not something that I know and it is so easy to get it wrong without the confidence that if I make a mistake, I can forgive myself and I will be all right, it is paralyzing and debilitating. Somebody telling me how easy it is to do when I feel unable just adds to feeling horrible for not being able to cope. I know it is driven by good intentions and people are trying to tell me that I am worrying about nothing but, one has to consider that worrying is what I know, and it is my baseline. Some parts I am aware of and other parts I don’t even begin to fathom where they are stemming from. I have tried quite a few things to keep myself occupied. Walking helps and I walk fast because I do it at the speed of my thoughts. I just keep walking until my body gets tired and my mind starts to settle and then the present moment can be felt. The wind in the trees, the song of the birds, the smell of the flowers, the grass and then I am in the moment, present in my body. Work harder, longer hours and if I am busy with that, I won’t have time to think about anything else. Organizing helps. Cleaning the house from top to bottom to show myself that I am in control of my space so surely, I must be in control of my mind. Routine is a good one too. Make the same safe choices every single time and then you will get the same results. The one thing though that I am amazing at is numbing myself. Just push it down and put it in the back of my mind until I forget about it. There is a part of me that wishes that there would be somebody to save me. Someone who can just deal with it, and I can just relax. It was especially hard when I used to have a safe person that I could rely on and then my safe person was not safe anymore. I spiralled until someone stepped in and took on that role and just listened to me, gave me space, allowed me to go crazy, and still check in on me again the next day. Their belief that I can do it, makes me feel more confident and helps me act. I have had days when I was just crying on the floor with Bruno coming over to comfort me, forcing me to stroke his chest and licking my face to calm me down and I felt like I could not get up. What got me up was knowing that there was no one coming. No prince charming on a white horse on his way. There is only me and if I don’t do it, it won’t get done. I have to be my knight in shining Armor. I can have support, and Lord knows I need it but, I am plan A, B, and C, and I need to solve it all. Help can be requested but help cannot be expected. There is no going back, there is no surrender. I do not have the luxury to allow things to fall apart. I can allow myself moments of respite before moving forward. There can be moments of weakness and doubt but, at the end of the day, I have to accept that I need to do it all, slowly but surely. If ever there was a life goal, being free of anxiety would be the one to pursue. I need to become friends with it and see what it hides within. Life would be so much easier if I wouldn’t spend so much time second-guessing and overthinking, trying to prepare for the worst to come, and bracing for something that might never happen. It lurks in the shadow, it appears under so many faces, it watches from the far and it strikes unannounced but what does it want from me? What hides under this cloak of darkness?

There is a very real sense of pain that comes with a broken heart. My entire being feels sluggish, it feels like my body is not my own anymore but that of an old person because my movements start to slow down, my joints start to ache, and there is this feeling of being cold all the time and feeling tired. There is no motivation to do anything despite the knowledge that one has to. I feel weighed down and I feel the need to sit down, lie down, and cover, to cocoon for safety. My muscles are tense and tightened so I physically feel like my heart is hurting. I feel like a chasm opens inside of me and I am on the edge of it for ages trying to hold on, trying to avoid it. I start slipping inside of it. A sea of endless sadness finds me at the bottom, and it is so overwhelming, that it encompasses everything that ever was and everything that could ever be. I start to cry, and I let it all out, I accept that I am feeling like this now. Before I would try to put an end to it, stop it, run away from it, and I would make myself so busy that I wouldn’t remember what I was feeling, but now, I accept that this is my current state. I need to ride those waves of sorrow and remember that in the same way, happiness is not forever, neither will sadness be. There are moments when it becomes so hard to reach out to people. It is not that I don’t think of them, I do. I think of them, I think of what I want to say, I think of how wonderful they are when they talk to me, and how I would like to know how they got on with things from the last time. I want to be in their presence, even if it is virtual because they are so important to me but, then I stop myself. I consider what I have to offer when I am down. All I have is this feeling of emptiness. This feeling of being out of time and out of the normal flow of existence. I feel like my entire universe has slowed down and I am not a part of existence anymore. Life happens around me while I am very much wrapped up in my thoughts. The passage of time is surprising and there is this strong sense that life just passes by, uninterested in my individual story. What is a speck of dust in the grand scheme of the universe? It is not that I don’t want to talk to people, it is that I become convinced that I have nothing to offer but sadness. I am conscious of my energy and how I can pollute other people. The loss of energy also manifests outwardly. I stopped having the energy to clean my house so, it looks like an absolute disaster. My dishes go unwashed, my clothes are wherever I dumped them. My inner life spills outwards and I just let it be whatever it needs to be in that moment. I then start to feel that it is draining to be in a space like that. It becomes claustrophobic and I start to clean the house frantically. It starts with, I will feel a lot better if I just put this back where it belongs. Well, since I put that thing back, I should try to put another one that is in the same area. Fast forward to two hours later when I am scrubbing things at 2 o’clock in the morning because if my house is clean then maybe it means I am fine. I cannot control my life, but I can control my space. Completing tasks also gives me a sense of achievement so it helps with self-esteem, as well. The same goes for washing myself. When I lived with other people, I had times when I was planning to go take a shower for hours and another person just goes before me while I am totally paralyzed. I have had days with just sitting on the couch and looking like I am watching TV but in my head, I thought: “Go and take a shower. It is not that big of a deal. It takes only 5 minutes. Just go” I would visualize the entire experience. Walking into the bathroom, taking my clothes off, going into the shower, drying off. Knowing full well that once I will do it, I will feel amazing, warm, and refreshed. Watched the clock, decided that I would do it in 5 minutes, and then realized that the brain has been doing that for hours, and then this person comes in just out of nowhere, able to take a shower as soon as they thought of it. From the outside, it seems like I am a sloppy person when in fact, I care a lot about it. Sometimes, small things like that just get overwhelming. I started therapy, I have taken the pills, I have done more therapy, I introspected, I read books, I have accepted everybody as a teacher and the biggest lesson of all is that this is a process. This is not something that can be cured with a one-size-fits-all approach but it is something that can be managed better and improved upon. Today, I am well off on my journey. I have hard days that I accept and I know that tomorrow will be better. I have days in which I feel so bad that I feel like I have made no progress at all or ever. I can go from everything is awesome to none of this is worth it in 5 minutes. And then once the storm passes, I can look, and I can see that I have made progress. I noticed the signs sooner than before. I have stepped out of the pattern that hurts me and used the good practices that I have in place to get myself on the other side. I am fortunate that I have people that support me. That keeps me accountable and lets me be who I am. One of the most important parts of my life is my dog, Bruno. Some people say that Bruno is just a dog. Somebody implied that my happy-go-lucky, live-in-the-moment, big-hearted, beautiful dog is stupid. He is nothing but. He has shown me such immense love. He has accepted me as I am, and he has not given me any less love if I was happy or sad. He and his puppy friends have made such a difference in keeping me afloat by bringing me a toy to play with so that it breaks my thought cycle, and I stop ruminating and overthinking, to asking for a walk so, I get out of the house. I always feel happier when I see him jumping around and enjoying himself. He does this thing where he will be asleep in another room, wake up and he will come looking for me. If he sees me on the couch, he will come over and smell my face to see what my pheromones tell him about my mood and if I am all right, he will give me a lick on the nose and then go and watch the neighbours out the window. If he sees that I am down, he will get me to hug him and he will lick my tears to comfort me, if I resist, he will physically sit on me. That is his way of saying that he is there for me no matter what. That he is not giving up on me so, neither should I. I was with Bruno walking one day and I found these glass marbles. I picked them up because I thought they were a choking hazard. Bruno had smelled them, but another dog might swallow them. I was playing with them in my pocket while I was thinking about everything happening that week. As I kept on doing it again and again, my focus started to change to them. To the sound, they made as they ground together, to the cold feeling of them in my hand, their weight and size. A smile slowly started to blossom on my face. I had realized that for the past two years of my life, I had lost my marbles and here I was just having found them. The universe always has a way of reminding you that you are in the right place, at the right time. I am not sure where my destination lies but, I know that I have the full power of making my happily ever after a reality.