It turns out when you pledge to run 100 miles for charity you kinda have a lot of work to do...
Training. Planning. Researching races. Paying entry fees. And my least favourite of all, promotion.
Promotion would be relatively easy - by all means it's not 'difficult', just tedious - if talking was
a normal occurrence in my life like it is for everyone else.
You send press releases out knowing quite well there's even a slight chance the phone is gonna ring
or you're gonna have to sit in front of someone sometime soon and talk to them like you actually
know what you're talking about.
I have a habit of feeling like everything I say makes no sense whatsoever. Like, it's all shit.
I'm just talking a bunch of crap basically.
But promotion is over and done with. Flyers are pinned to every ad board I could find.
And I missed the phone call but thankfully did an interview via email
and my face is currently in the paper (...I know right).
I was unfortunate enough to have my face in the paper many times when I was a kid.
She thought it would help me, but she was wrong. Mainly, she wanted exposure for the
condition I had and she wanted more people to be aware and understand better.
But did I really need to be the poster child?
It was my face and her words. And as a child, it didn't add up to me. I didn't
understand. I just went along with it.
She kept all the newspaper cuttings in a kitchen drawer and showed people
now and again.
A few years passed, I hit about 11 and I no longer wanted to play nice.
I hated her from then on, for putting my face out there for the entire country to see.
It had been years of the same bullying, the same moving around, the same switching schools
and the same being misunderstood by everyone. And I just wanted to be better.
As far as I could gather, aged 11, nothing got better by my face being in the paper.
In fact, in the long run it made things worse.
I would walk into school to hear that they'd seen me in the paper.
And my heart would sink to the ground because I didn't want the attention it
brought. The only thing I wanted was for it to be gone. For everything to be normal.
She probably still has the cuttings somewhere.
Not much really changed with her. A few years later she agreed to taking part
in a documentary that I was filmed for but later would not air.
Even up to last year, she still did it.
She, once again, agreed to taking part in a different documentary before
talking to me about it first and before I know it I'm sat in front of a camera.
The whole thing has no logic in it and never has.
So I grew up hating her for that. The papers, the media.
If sitting in dozens of white, clinical, empty rooms as a very young child wasn't
enough. She then made me sit in front of people asking me questions I wouldn't be answering
while they filmed me.
You see what I mean about no logic being involved?
Above all, I spent a hell of a lot of years being bitter and frustrated at her
for putting me in positions I never wanted to be in and making decisions for
me.
If it was down to her she would still be making decisions about my life
and I'd still be not getting any better or moving forward in any way.
I'm still bitter and frustrated. But at different things that aren't entirely her fault, I guess.
I planned my suicide four times, which she's unaware about.
There's been dozens of cuts on my arms, she's never noticed.
I've cried myself to sleep every day for weeks and weeks, she's never known.
A stranger on the internet has literally saved my life with a song
(The Way She Feels - Between The Trees) and yet, she doesn't even know there's
anything wrong.
Our whole relationship is just lost. It's as though it's just floating through the air.
It's not connected to either of us and neither of us are trying to connect it and put it
back together.
It's just... open.
xo
Sarcasm at it's very finest is portrayed in today's post...
Let's use my amazing list-making skills and gloss over what has happened and what you're about to read
(..then you can decide if you just wanna read the list or the actual post. Convenient).
1. Monday bought a brand new breakdown that went entirely unnoticed.
2. My uncle died and we all pretended everything was okay. (a fine art we have
perfected in this house)
3. They're going to the funeral. I am not invited.
4. In relation to #3; she's leaving on mothers day and therefore leaving me here. By myself.
5. There is no #5 (...I have this thing about numbers. It would probably take another 10 blog posts to explain it. But there has to be a 5, basically)
It takes me a while to process things and I don't fully process anything that's happened until a time has come where I can just sit, thinking freely.
Considering I barely leave the house, have no job, friends or career you'd think that was simple.
But there's a storm in my head. And you have to wait for it to pass before you dare tempting fate.
Do you really wanna step out just to be struck by lightning?
You don't. I hear it hurts.
I don't have the clearest of minds. Things pass slowly through the day. They linger. Like clouds.
And at night, it's kinda like a motorway. Things are speeding past. And you catch glimpses of them and hope to hell there's no car crashes.
It's always busy, day and night. The only thing that changes is the speed.
And you have to decide whether it's easier to sit and think when it's slow and busy. Or fast and busy.
Because there's definitely no in between.
I crossed a motorway once when I was a kid.
We were homeless, momentarily living in a motel and my dad worked on the other side of the motorway.
Sitting down and thinking about things is like crossing that motorway.
I had to do it, to get to the other side. But there wasn't a single moment I thought I'd make it across.
Everything's so much bigger when you're a kid. And motorways are big anyway.
I have to sit down and think about things to process them. But do I really want to
add more things to my mind or visit my current state of mind? Not really, no.
So it happens at night. Usually when I can't sleep. I have to occupy my mind when I can't sleep otherwise
negativity goes round and round and round until it feels like the storm is coming back for good.
After a few hours, things get processed and I'm either exhausted or pissed off.
Sometimes pissed off that I'm exhausted.
When something happens... it happens, I feel whatever I feel momentarily, then I try and forget about it. And move on.
Except I don't move on. Or forget it. I just talk myself into thinking that's happened.
I don't think about it. I don't process it. I don't confront it.
It manifests in my mind.
It gets put in a much-taller-than-me pile of 'feelings you need to process'
that I try and shove under the rug until one day I trip over it.
The short version is... I internally exploded on monday because nothing was processed.
The internet then died and I cried for about 4 hours straight and went to sleep at 1:30am.
After all that, no one batted an eye lid and it's as though nothing even happened.
Which frustrated me even further.
I'm bitter.
My mother is leaving on Mother's Day and coming back fuck knows when.
The only thing she is bothered by is that it's Mother's Day,
not that she is leaving me here, by myself, when she fully knows I hate the very idea of it.
But I expected this. And I accept it more than her going away in May.
She's going to my uncle's funeral and I know that's something she has to do.
And I didn't expect to be invited to a funeral for someone I never knew.
So I won't be fighting this battle.
I can't fight the 'she's going away in may to visit my sister and leaving me here. Again' battle either.
It's not even a battle. To fight you need at least two people. And she is so completely oblivious.
This family is screwed. I swear.
It's like it's an invite only club and I never get the invite - Which is stupid because believe it or not
I'm actually a part of this family.
Or getting locked out of your own house and knocking on the door but no one lets you in (this has happened).
How does this family even work? I'm unsure we even do work. We're corrupt.
We're several different pieces from different puzzles and when you try to put us together it just doesn't work.
So, she's leaving. Twice.
And right now all I can do is hope every day she's gone isn't like last Monday.
If it is, I'm screwed.
The balance shifts when she's not here.
I purposely try to balance for her sake. I don't know why.
xo
F.H
