Horizontal life pause thoughts

So my 4 month summer holiday from University is coming to an end (I go back in 13 days!) and what a 4 months it has been, heck what a year it has been since my blog post last year about starting university! The blog post was called "Adventure is out there" & this is what I wrote.. "I'm off to York in 12 days and I am nervous but excited and feel a total sense of peace that there is where I am meant to be. It has taken a long time, and it's been a tough road but I've made it"  Well as I approach my second year I once again feel like saying "I've made it" (and not just through my own strength!) 

My blog is called "confessions of a pastors kid" so I guess it's time to start confessing..
The first term at university I absolutely LOVED! I was meeting new people, the course wasn't too intense, I was exploring a new town, I was going out and not having to inform anyone where I was, I could buy what I wanted to eat etc etc.. But then second term came and I 100% believed I wasn't going to make it into third term or second year. Everybody I had spoken too about going to university warned me; "second term of first year is a really tough time" and for anybody reading this who is about to go to uni - I'm afraid its true, but PLEASE hang on in there! Second term is the coldest winter months, where the days get dark about 3pm and it rains every hour of the day, mixed with having to make decisions with who you are going to live with for your second year, + for me I decided to get emotionally involved with someone who mucked me around big time, & then I failed a vital exam that was supposed to let me continue on my course. I cried to my mama (sorry ma) saying I was going to transfer to a London university & that I wasn't cut out for social work. (Gulp) 
But I got through! I got a massive kick in the teeth & I passed the exam with flying colours second time around & eventually summer term came and life was (kind of) smooth sailing again - even though the essays became extremely intense. 

So after whirlwind of a rollercoaster of first year it was my long summer holiday time! But honestly this summer has flown by so quickly & I've learnt a lot not being at university too. (I'm a strong believer in the education of LIFE) This summer I really feel like I've grown up (haha) but in the sense of I've worked a lot to earn my own money, I lived by myself for a week (I know, just a week but STILL) which I couldn't do when I was 18 because I was too scared of the boiler making strange noises and the cats jumping on me in the middle of the night! (I do however still cook pasta as my main meal) I've learnt that you have to make choices eventually in life that reflect your hopes and not your fears. I learnt that some people only enter your life for a short while & that it is OK to let people go if you feel they no longer benefit to your mental/emotional/physical wellbeing. I've also learnt that God always knows the right things for you & especially the right people for you & I feel I have recovered well from a bruise that was made on my heart. I've learnt to value the friendships I have up in York & what real adult friendships are about, and most importantly I've loved every moment spent with my family & that family unconditionally love you even when you do really stupid things (such as falling out of a trolley and so making them spend silly hours with you in A&E whilst you reek of last nights alcohol and sweat...)

ANYWAY.

I feel a mixture of emotions about the upcoming year... I have a lot in front of me; Which is SO exciting, because after a brief horizontal life pause (a nap) this afternoon, I awoke and thought how lovely it is that I have things in front of me to look forward too and that for the first time in a really long time I'm not looking back. I'm not looking back at things I wish I had done, or things I wish I hadn't done. I've stopped looking back and trying to win back people I've lost because I am genuinely just so ready to move forward and begin my second year. I'm going to be living with 5 of my best friends (which in itself at the moment is all fun and games and a bit of a novelty) +  I am embarking on becoming a "real life social worker" within my first placement. 

I know of course, that there are going to be challenging times ahead - I am such a home bird & love my family to pieces so leaving them behind is going to tear my heart a little, but the funny thing is I've missed the excitement of coming home. Whilst I live in York, I can plan my train journey's back home and count down the days & that feeling when I'm finally on the train and seeing my family again is indescribable and I'm quite looking forward to having that again! Not that I take my family for granted AT ALL, but absence really does make the heart grow fonder & as I have grown older I have come to realise just how much my family does for me. 

I suppose what I am continually learning is that time flies by and that life goes on & doesn't wait for anybody. Beautiful and terrible things are going to happen to myself, and to everyone else but you can't unpack and stay in the terrible moments. You have too embrace life and all that it throws at you and know that whatever your facing is only for a little while. 

So here we go.. countdown to second year. Bring on the rollercoaster.

A year on

A year ago today I witnessed a young boy commit suicide and it shook me in such a way that I can't even put it into words.  I wasn't the only person who saw that horrific event that day, and sadly I won't be the last person to witness something like that- and I know that there are many horrible things going on in the world that people, including young children have to witness everyday and so I do not want to write this post for you all to feel sorry for me, because believe me I know people have it so much worse- rather I want to write about how that event has changed me as a person a year on and how I have managed to cope living with post traumatic stress disorder. 

The young boy we now know, due to a serious case review decided to end his own life because of family matters- he had stolen £500 from his dad that morning and as his dad had hit him before he did not want to have to go home and face the consequences of his actions. He was terrified and alone of going back to his own house. Now as a trainee social worker and just as a human being in general the thought of anyone not feeling safe in their own home makes me so sad... And I only wish he could of reached out for help and support. I do believe there must have been an underlying anxiety/depression illness that this boy had to decide to do something so drastic; however this is not discussed in the case review. 

The whole situation  in some way has influenced my decision making throughout my degree to where I may go on placement. When I went into social work I wanted to head down the children and families/ adoption and fostering route. However, life experiences (including witnessing this boy's death) made me become more open minded at the types of people out there and all their different needs. I had to write down where I would like to be based and where I wouldn't like to be based: and even though the thought of witnessing something like that again makes me feel sick to my stomach, if I can work with people who are suffering from these mental illnesses, who haven't had the blessed, happy upbringing that I have had and prevent at least one from harming themselves then I am satisfied. So that's where my first placement is; working in a mental health rehabilitating centre; I'm bracing myself for the challenging and emotional times, but as I wrote in my post on this last year- I truly believe every situation we encounter is to build us in character for the future chapters in our life & so maybe it wasn't a case of me being in the wrong place at the wrong time after all...

Obviously before the event I tried my best at being a "nice human being" but these-days I feel more of an overwhelming sense to be and to really try and treat each human being with kindness and be patient and show love to everyone even in the smallest of ways. I read a quote that said "be kind to everyone, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about" as well as "you never truly know how broken the person sitting next to you is." Imagine if one small, loving action of ours actually changed someone's mindset for the day or even healed their heart a little bit! 

Being diagnosed with PTSD last year was in some ways a relief because I had a reason for the way I was feeling but in other ways I felt silly because others had seen the same event and where supposingly just "dealing with it" I didn't sleep properly for a month, I cried everyday, I couldn't close my eyes without seeing him fall & I was and still am incredibly jumpy to any loud noise, and would avoid bridges etc at all costs. 

I also feel that there is lack of awareness for PTSD as most people seem to think it's what soldiers get when they come home from war, however it is a lot more common than is discussed, and there are many people out there walking around undiagnosed especially after events like 9/11 and the London bombings and goodness knows how many people in Syria or being captured by ISIS have it. So I know I'm not the only person to have suffered and be suffering but it is an issue that is on my heart and that I have the privilege of writing about. Depression and anxiety are the main mental illnesses discussed today and even though I know it is so important to help and care for the people suffering with these illnesses and raise awareness for them  I can't help but feel that many people believe someone who witnessed a tragic event will just get over it in a few weeks and then be ok, and that there is no need for a label for it. It can be a very lonely time and sometimes feel very unsupported and misunderstood and I know some people will think "why can't she just get over it already" 

I contacted the NHS 5 days after the event as I still wasn't sleeping and wasn't myself and I was fortunate to receive a round of cognitive behavioural therapy and was discharged after 3 months when they believed I could apply the techniques by myself. Anyone unsure of CBT it is a talking therapy which helps you manage problems and changes the way you think. CBT cannot remove your problems, but it can help you deal with them in a more positive way. It is based on the concept that your thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and actions are interconnected, and that negative thoughts and feelings can trap you in a vicious cycle. CBT aims to help you crack this cycle by breaking down overwhelming problems into smaller parts and showing you how to change these negative patterns to improve the way you feel. I still use these techniques today, and the flashbacks are now very few and far between- but this does not mean I do not think of that boy, his family, or that day. Everyday he crosses my mind and I know that July the 17th every year will be tinged with a slight sense of grief. 

So what has this event and this past year taught me? Firstly that the human mind is a powerful tool. What you feed it is so important; feed it positive thoughts and you can heal- fuel it with negative and depressing thoughts and you will sink. Secondly to always believe in yourself, believe that you can overcome anything, that you can conquer whatever it is that's holding you back, and just go for things. Try things. Push yourself out of your comfort zone- make yourself face those uncomfortable situations because that's how you grow. Thirdly, that it is ok to experience a range of emotions & it is ok to talk about them, to not keep them inside as this is unhealthy and harmful. And finally that life really is a beautiful, sacred thing and even if you are having troubles or worries or suffering from an illness of any sort there are people out there who will love you and support you and want you to have the best life possible; do not let any event, experience or person make you not live this life to the full- rather take that thing that happened to you and write it in to the story of your life. 

Maybe its okay...

I was paying for my cans of cola in Tesco's earlier and kept thinking about how TOGETHER my life is when I noticed an elderly man at the check out next to me. He had kind brown eyes and that kind of grumbly low voice some old men get, a combination of a life of cigarettes and ageing. He was husky, but I wanted to hug him. 

I listened to him speak with the girl who was serving him. She smiled, clearly he was a regular and they’d interacted before. He was only buying two chocolate bars.

“For your wife, right?” She asked, but it seemed she knew the answer.

 He smiled, “You know it, she loves these things.

I think it’s so sweet you come and get these for her.”

His entire face erupted into the kind of grin that made me want to hug him.

And he said, so simply, “She does quite a lot for me. I'm more than happy to do this for her.”

And there, in tesco's, actually looking like a hot-mess special on why 20-somethings today suck and don’t know how to do anything, I teared up. Because it was so beautiful. He was just buying his wife chocolate. Because he loved her. And she loved him. And I realised I had approached this whole "letting go" thing in the wrong direction (for me anyway) ...

---

Love becomes an obsession when we lose it. I wonder if it’s a bit like water: something we take for granted when we feel as if we’ll always have it. We replenish our bodies with it. We swim in it. We can even drown, and if nobody is paying attention, we can slip to the bottom of the ocean. But when it’s gone?  It becomes everything. When drought hits, you remember how good it once tasted.

It becomes the ghost hanging out in your old messages. It becomes the dimming memories you desperately cling to, hoping they will somehow ease the blow of reality. It becomes the thing that makes you tear up in tesco's when you see it and realise you don’t have it.

For most of us, an individual sticks out when we hear certain words. Perhaps it’s the person you fear you won’t ever get over. Maybe it’s even someone you never got: a what-if that burns the back of your throat. There’s such a pressure to move forward and just get over it and let it go. (And one I have been writing about and pressuring myself to do) 

I googled ( haha) some articles that will give you tips and ideas on how to "let go"...

Move forward!

Go for a walk!

Date someone new!

Throw away items that remind you of them!

Take a quiz!

Analyse your personality with a free online test!

DO ALL THESE THINGS!

But words have a way of losing meaning. Advice, even when requested, becomes a soundtrack that fades a bit. We ask for things knowing full well we won’t listen. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s okay to not get over someone. Maybe it’s okay that they have left a mark on your heart. You think this is fault. You think this is you being foolish and stuck on a person who is no longer there. You become convinced you are the one in the wrong.

But what if that’s not true? What if we carry pieces of everyone in all that we do and that’s not something to be ashamed of? You are atoms and molecules all vibrating around, but you’re more than that. You are experiences and heartache. You are loving and losing it. And finding it again. You are people you no longer speak to. You are people you will have forever. Even the most self-proclaimed crusty heart has something lingering inside that brought them to that conclusion. We are made up of moments that have brought us here. That’s not bad. That’s the inner-connectedness of the human experience.

So hey, if you’re afraid you won’t get over that one person, don’t worry about it too much. You are still living and breathing. It may have felt like your world crumbled apart when things broke, but the world around you didn't stop. And you didn't either. So keep being and pushing and living. Love again. Trust someone with your bleeding and scared heart, and if they drop it? You will be okay. Maybe you will be the dropper.

The point is, don’t stress if you are taking too long to move forward. Because sometimes, we don’t. That will not keep you from another grand love or a lifetime of satisfaction. It just means someone was important enough to make a permanent impression. You don’t have to get rid of them to make room. You have unlimited space for so many people. So cut yourself some slack. It’s okay to miss someone important. And what I have also come to realise is that there are always people loving people & loving you, even if they are not the person you want. There's still a whole lot of love out there. 

How we let people go

Once again I feel a tad unsure about publishing this post... but here we go!

I have recently had yet another lesson in the art of letting things go. This post may seem melancholy, but I do not want you to feel sad; I want it to be a story of learning the art of letting go & the warning to guard your heart above all else & for everyone to realise that each time you lose something you once held so dear, it is making room for something even more wonderful to enter your life. 

 There is an underestimated art to something one wouldn't consider a skill. It determines the ultimate strength of leaving someone/something you couldn't want more while knowing what you had and what you had hoped for didn't actually exist. 

You’re wondering now, how do you do this? How do you manage to forget about something that had all the potential to be wonderful?

It’s difficult at first. You struggle to forget the inside jokes you had, the deep conversations, the dreams and plans you discussed. You can spend your days wishing you were with him. At one point in time, you saw him as someone who needed to be loved and you couldn't see him in any other way.

But he could. He pushed you away. He uttered cruel words (whether intentionally or unintentionally)  that scarred you. He told you he felt indifferent, he threw insults around like it was second nature, he called you “bro” and he treated you unfairly because he refused to fall in love, yet, you still couldn't back away because that seemingly fragile image of him was all you could think about. No matter how unhealthy he was for you and how entertaining it was for him to hurt you, you still couldn't forget him.

Your best friend warned you, your mind warned you but your heart lay stubborn until you read a text message that finally broke it. You stared at the words too much and annoying and you knew you couldn't continue like this. It was here when this imaginative image of the male that you believed him to be was shattered. He isn't who you thought he was and you can’t change that.

You can’t force people to love you. You can only accept that they will eventually live with the regret of pushing away someone who only wanted to love them.

Now you wait a while, you swallow your tongue and hold your breath because each day you get a little stronger, and you get braver. You come to acknowledge the lessons you've learned of unrequited desire. You understand now not to give your heart away so easily. You've come to realise that in order for people to leave your life you need to let them. The more often you allow this, the easier losing becomes.

Then comes the art of letting people go. Letting someone go — when it is a necessary act of self-preservation, something that has to come if you expect to move forward in life; I personally regard it as a kind of victory. You have successfully overcome an emotional trauma that once surrounded you like a fog. People will tell you, always with the best intentions, that one day you are going to wake up and realise that you are okay, and your life is not immediately over because they are no longer a part of it. And this is true, although this positive does not happen as quickly as we would like. Because it’s not as though you simply wake up one day and proclaim yourself fine, suddenly hearing birds chirp after months of only your own oppressive silence. You simply start to forget, feeling the acute pain of the loss less and less as each day goes on. There will come a day when you don’t care, but you won’t notice it, because you will have other things to think about. You will be busy with a new hobby, or job, or a new set of friends. 

But in order to let that pain go, in order to remove this person from the place of power they have occupied for so long, you must let everything go. Perhaps in a very distant future, you will be able to pick and choose the memories you want to keep, but for a very long time, one memory will always bleed into another. You cannot simply think about the time the two of you stayed up the entire night, talking about your childhood and your dreams and fears. Because when you allow yourself to think about that, it will remind you of them as a whole, and will lead into all of the terrible things that happened after that night — not the least of which being their eventual departure. They exist within us as whole people, stories with beginnings and endings, and in order to let go of them we cannot choose the things we want to isolate for nostalgia.

No matter how hard it is we have to stop caring what they would think if they saw us, stop worrying about running into them, stop obsessing over the things we could have done differently to make them stay. And that means letting go of everything they meant to us, proving to ourselves , that life can be just as good &just as beautiful, without them in it. When you realise, long after the fact, that you no longer care about someone — that what they are doing in life has no bearing on you, and vice versa — it feels very much like a small death. Who they were with you no longer exists, and you cannot even preserve it in your memory, for the sake of your own mental health.

Of course, you never really forget anyone, but you certainly release them. You stop allowing their history to have any meaning for you today. You let them change their haircut, let them move, let them fall in love again. And when you see this person you have let go, you realise that there is no reason to be sad. The person you knew exists somewhere, but you are separated by too much time and too many new experiences to reach them again.

After all, who is more worthy of losing than someone who never understood what they had until they lost you – a person so worthy of keeping.

One foot in front of the other

"When you can't sense what God is up to, may you trust even more his heart towards you. When your journey is different than you would choose, may you see His invitation to make you new. When the storm rages overhead, may you know with everything in you, that new mercies are on the other side. And when you're tempted to overstate your problems and understate his promises, may you step back and find your footing again"

Okay. Deep breathes. This is going to be a long, rambled piece of writing and I am feeling quite vulnerable putting this out on the world wide web, but I have an urge to publish it. I havn't written a "downcast" blog for a few months now, but I have always used this as a place to express everything & share my hearts concerns and maybe it will help/bless someone else...

These past 3 months, I have been in a high state of anxiety. For a reason that is my own doing and my own fault. I was putting someone in creation before God and it has caused me to worry and feel anxious about many things and I feel I have wasted opportunities and I am feeling the repercussions of it now. You see worry is a distracted and divided mind. My mind has been this way for a good few months. It has affected life and choices I have made. I don't really want to go into too much detail but lets just say all my efforts and thoughts have been set on one thing for a few months, and my mind has been divided also because I have been battling between choosing a human and choosing God. I was starting to build a new life on something completely unstable whilst knowing all along it wasn't entirely right to be doing so and now its all collapsed and got pretty messy.  I know for some people reading this, that will be the most stupid reason ever to feel anxious, but anxiety comes in all shapes and forms and reasons and whatever your anxious situation it can overwhelm you, paralyse you, make you feel hopeless and cause a heck of unnecessary paranoia.

Growing up in a Christian home and being a Christian myself I have constantly heard the words "do not be afraid" and "do not be anxious about anything" but these words used to just be words to me. But, God literally is telling me to NOT be afraid, and he isn't saying this is in a condemning, angry way, but he is saying this because he's got me, he's with me & nobody is going to attack me (be that psychologically or physically) Everything has been in my head. And what I and those of us creating these anxious states for ourselves need to do is get out of our heads, stop having conversations with ourselves and start having conversations in a vertical direction with the One who has got your situation in hand.  We all talk ourselves into these crazy situations in our heads & make things worse whilst if we talked to God about our problems they would seem so small. 

God has got whatever you are going through right now and he is doing a new and beautiful thing within you. 

In my last blog I talked about making mistakes and I have made a huge one; but once again, you fall you rise, you live, you learn. I've been hurt, but I'm alive and it is a precious thing to be alive, because I get to breathe and think and enjoy things and chase things I love. And sometimes there is going to be sadness in our journey's but there is also going to be lots of beauty. And we must keep putting one foot in front of the other even when we are hurt, because we never know what is waiting for us just around the bend. 

Thank goodness for forgiveness and second chances eh?

A catch up

I can't believe I have not written a blog post so far in 2015 & that it is already the middle of March! This blog took me to so many places in my gap years & I feel I have abandoned it quite abit... A lot of stuff has been happening the past few months at university but now I am home for the Easter holidays, and then I only have 5 weeks left of my course until I have completed my first year. I thought it was time to write a little life update on things that university has taught me and let me experience so far...

I find it laughable that 2 years ago in my blog I wrote that I didn't think I would ever go to university because I didn't see the point, I thought it was a waste of money & didn't know what I wanted to do anyway. I still have my moments of wondering if I am really made for university life and doing a degree (especially with social work being so challenging) But what I have come to realise through going to university is that it is so much more than just getting a degree. My mum always said this to me when I was in my "never giving university a chance" phase but I guess I didn't believe her until I started experiencing it for myself. 

University has taught me to be incredibly independent; not just with catching trains from the south to the north, or having to cook for myself and do my washing but in ways that I had never considered independence before. At university you are literally fighting for yourself, you have to push yourself to work hard, you have to grow up and look after yourself when you are feeling poorly but mainly you have to be more than ok with who you are as a person and be comfortable in yourself. You have to realise that its ok to say "no" when you don't feel like going out/or doing whatever and you don't have to give a reason. No in itself is a full sentence. 

University has also taught me a lot about people, and the people that matter.The people that matter are those who give you an equal amount of love that you give them, those you can feel you can truly be yourself around & those who are there for you during your highest highs and lowest lows. You meet A LOT of people at university and are thrown together with people to live with & you form really strong and meaningful friendships because they become your family. But it has also taught me a lot about the people you leave behind when you go to university, or even some of the people you meet along the way during your time there (whether those people you meet be back at home or at uni) and I have learnt that some people are toxic. But that doesn't make them cruel or uncaring, and most of them have good intentions. But some people can be toxic to us simply because their needs and way of existing in the world forces us to compromise ourselves and our happiness. They aren't inherently bad people, but they aren't the right people for us. And as hard as it is, you have to let them go - life is hard enough without being around people that bring you down and as much as you care you can't destroy yourself for the sake of someone else. Uni has taught me that you have to make your well being a priority, whether that means breaking up with someone you really care about, or loving a family member from a distance or removing yourself from a situation that feels painful, you have every right to leave and create a safe space for yourself. 

Throughout this blog I have always been open and honest about mistakes that I have made, and lessons I have learnt from those mistakes. I thought going to university for 3 years would mean for 3 years I was off the mistake/failure rollercoaster (hah!) because my life plan for the next few years was "sorted" but now I have learnt that making mistakes means that I am making new things, learning new things, learning, living, pushing myself. I'm doing things I've never done and most importantly, I'm doing something. Although I did a lot in my gap years, none of it was very fulfilling & it could be a dampener on the soul to not really be doing something that I thought mattered. So I am going to carry on making mistakes, gloriously amazing mistakes, and I am going to try and not freeze or worry or stop and think that its not good enough whether its in work or life or love. 

Finally, my course is challenging me and showing me that sadly no, I cannot change the world (as one of my lecturers said to me the other day "You can't save everyone Bethany") but I'm jolly well gonna try. My course has opened my eyes to amazing, scary and new things and I am pleased I am doing it. It has also been really refreshing to go to university and meet other people who still have no clue what they want to do after university and it's got me thinking that maybe its okay to not know where you want your life headed at the age of 21, and maybe as humans we like to complicate things a bit too much. Maybe all we need is to find what it is that makes us happy, and who it is that makes you happy & we're set. 

Until my next moment of inspiration,
x