It’s been a very good weekend, despite being full of cold. At the moment my head feels like it is floating in outer space and my ears are ringing, the music I’m listening to is really quiet and I couldn’t taste my dinner. But it’s just a headcold and should be gone in a couple of days.
It’s been quite a rain free weekend too, which was great. Yesterday morning was the local pencil drawing group. When we started it, there were only about 6 members, but yesterday 18 people turned up and another 8 were missing. So it’s grown into a good group, very friendly people, but most of all for me, it gives me the opportunity to actually sit for a few hours and do nothing but draw! And chat and drink tea of course!
Later in the day I had a lovely sunny walk with Archie, although it was a touch cold, or maybe that was just me with my cold! Last night Marion went out to a big family gathering, leaving me to enjoy having the place to myself. And I did enjoy it. I was asked to go too, but i declined. Funny thing is that it was that event that got me thinking hard on today’s walk…
Apparently, there was great disappointment among her family that I wouldn’t go. I am being awkward, or unsociable or my depression is coming back….. Etc, etc…
But it’s none of those; I am simply tying to follow my own path.
30 years ago Marion saved my life. Sounds dramatic I know, but it’s truer than you think. However, since then I have been following her path, living the way she wants to live. I’ve always followed someone else’s path actually, always done what has been expected of me. Which ultimately is the reason I had my breakdown. Counselling is good insofar as it helped me to understand all of that, to work out why I behave the way I do and it all makes perfect sense. What counselling doesn’t do is to help me move forward from that understanding. It doesn’t tell me how to change things so that I can follow a different path, so now that I am trying to do that, I’m not having a lot of success. Every time I come anywhere near a confrontation or a major decision, I am too frightened to follow it through. I revert to that terrified child that is the root of my issues.
So when I do things that people near to me consider ‘out of character’ I can’t tell them that actually it’s not. The last 40 odd years was me being ‘out of character’!
When I was very depressed and needed someone to talk to, Marion’s family sent me a lovely card saying that I was as much their family as Marion is and whatever I needed they would be there for me. Of course, in the end, that wasn’t true. I, sure they believed it at the time, but as soon as I asked them for help, they backed off. In fact they let me down badly and it took me a long time to recover from that. So, now I would rather not go to their big family gatherings, pretending everything is just as it used to be, because its not. And every time I’ve tried to say that, it’s brushed under the carpet and my depression is used as the reason for my odd behaviour.
The path I want to follow?
Well, there are lots of choices of path. But before I can choose one, I have a major decision to make. I have two main paths to take. Either I stay as I am, life goes on as it always has and I accept that. Or I summon up the courage to start out on my own, make a life for myself and live it the way I want to.
Both paths are frightening for me. If I leave, I don’t know if I can stand the guilt of leaving the one person who saved me and who has controlled my life ever since. I am of course, very fond of her in my own way. She has been like my only family for most of my life and if I leave, I’m not sure shed ever forgive me, so I’d be cutting myself off completely.
If I stay, I sacrifice my own path. My life will go on the way it did before. Before the miracle, before I started doing all the interesting things I’ve been doing, before my breakdown! I can feel it slipping back into the old ways and I don’t know if I can accept that and do it.
Big dilemma, but it is entirely up to me which way to go. If I can somehow control the fear that the little girl in me still has, maybe ill make the right decision in the end. Or maybe I’m too old to change….
Off to bed now with a lemsip so I will be ok for work tomorrow.
With love from the timid, indecisive one 🙂
Barbara Murray Art 