Change is in the air

Its been some time since i blogged. Life seems to be treating me like shit at the moment. A speeding fine, another dice with trust issues with Rob and now i have handed in my notice (12 weeks!!!) and we plan to move back home to be with my eldest son again. I am sad to leave and i am torn by my decision. I have started my counselling/cbt treatment for my anxiety and depression and to be honest all i feel now is lost.

The decision to leave our lives here has been possibly one of the hardest of my life. I have gone over the option, desperate to find some kind of solution. I know what it will mean to go back. I know my marriage can’t survive there and i know that within months i will be on my own trying to work and bring up 4 kids whilst dealing with a messy separation and watching someone i love destroy themselves. Perhaps that’s why i am so distant to everything now, its like i am mentally and emotionally preparing myself for the future. 2015 will mean change for us as a family, i am not scared of change but i am scared of living in an unhappy existence.

For now all i want to be is get happy again, enjoy Christmas, plan for the new year arriving, get a job lined up and find a house. seems like an awful lot to do in 12 weeks! As i write i am dying my hair after months of trying to grow the colour out, perhaps being blonde again will make me happier.

I am in ‘therapy’ (I think)

Its been a tough few weeks. My annual leave was pretty horrendous as i expected.  Five days in i was halfway back across the country taking Rob back as he had decided that he wanted to be back in the north east when i got a phone call to say my Grandma had collapsed. The remainder of my annual leave was spent back and forth to the North East to visit my Grandma who ended up having open heart surgery to replace her aortic valve. Even with my training it was still a shock seeing her intubated and on a ventilator in intensive care. Thankfully she has made excellent progress and is now home and slowly trying to get back to normal although she feels ‘old’ now which is such as shame as she has always been very independent and you wouldn’t have thought she was 84. 

On returning home without Nathan (Sob) everything just seem to hit me; exhaustion, anxiety, low mood, shear panic, tears, anger, worry and lots and lots of heartache. I ended up in the GP surgery at 8:30am on Monday crying my eyes out. To be honest my GP wasn’t as sympathetic as i thought he would be, and suggested i just took a week off for now and got some CBT and counselling. I self referred myself and await assessment on Tuesday. 

My anxiety seems to be passing now, and i definitely have needed this extra time off work to rest my head a little. The thing is work is part of the problem. I feel like working full time and really working as a nurse is literally killing me. I feel stressed and the moment i get worked up my stomach pain starts. The past few days i seem to feel so much better in myself, although hiding indoors isn’t really doing me much good. My head is all over the place, Missing Nathan is breaking my heart, i wonder about him all the time and i feel like i am not a proper mum to him anymore. I feel like really we should go back and be a proper family again, yet i have a feeling that my marriage won’t last long back home. 

I have issues, lots of them. I do need to talk a few things out with someone who doesn’t know me and who gets paid to listen to me warble on. I have tried to use my blog as therapy but its not quite the same. I feel a bit american saying i need therapy. Us Brits don’t really ‘do’ therapy, stiff upper lip and all that. 

So right now i am up and down, i don’t really know what i want anymore, but i definitely feel like my mind is starting to defragment. Last week i was a mess, now i am just untidy. 

Annual leave blues

I have been desperate to start my annual leave and here it is, yet somehow i know its not going to be the relaxing break that i always seem to envisage. For a start i know that i am going end up having some massive arguments with Rob, caused by spending too much time together. We have very different parenting styles and this is going to cause problems for sure. Whilst i am generally very chilled and things still get done, but what’s the difference in waiting 10 minutes (and saving the need for war) for the boys to finish watching a tv show, or game of fifa whilst Rob will play holy hell if they don’t jump up and do as he says straight away. Language is also a massive problem, Rob uses profanities far too much and then wonders why our kids think it is ok to do so. I just know that there are going to be some heated moments and the relaxing, fun filled holiday i had in mind will disintegrate into tiny pieces. I can guarantee that by the end of the 2 weeks i will want a divorce.

Sometimes (actually rather a lot) i find my marriage to much hard work. I have been through a great deal over the past 11 years and i know for a fact many women would have walked away. We are just really different and its when we are together a lot that i realise just how many worlds apart we are. I wonder though if once our children are all grown up whether we will maybe have nothing to talk about, I am the one who talks, who is passionate about things whilst Rob, exists and has the odd day where he becomes stupidly immature, his jokes are not even funny and then he calls me miserable for not laughing at his silly behaviour. As i write this i am almost talking myself into a separation. He has been to complain about me already, he is watching tv but sees it as being stuck with the kids all day and night. This is the man who doesn’t work, wants too but does nothing to help himself get a job, expecting me to write cv’s and applications, with fake results and a series of short term jobs that he gained nothing from. I take time off when the kids are off to help him care for them, yet whilst they are at school for 6 hours a day i work 5 days a week and he sits at home enjoying the peace. Something wrong there isn’t there? 

With my Mother semi estranged from my father, i can somewhat feel her reasons for wanting to be alone. I know i would possibly find things easier at times.  I am hoping that i can come up with some ideas to run my own business in the future, but it looks like finding the time between entertaining the kids and keeping the peace i might not get much time to think. 

Can’t nurse for much longer.

Day off work today, back in for 4 days then finally get my 2 weeks annual leave. I can’t even explain the panic i am feeling inside, i just can not go on like this anymore, i am working in this career i truly hate and i feel like my stomach is churning already at the thought of working as a nurse for much longer. I know that i spent 4 years to get this far, but i admit it was the biggest mistake i have ever made. No person should feel like this, i pray to god, my angels, to anyone who is listening to help me out of this. I feel physically ill and i can sense this turning into a mental illness if i don’t take hold. I used to feel like i was the only person in the world that hated this but i know i am not, i have read posts from other people who feel like they made a mistake entering into this career. I feel so close to a breakdown and i just don’t know what to do. 

Lost: home or away

We have just returned from a weekend back home and i have to say i am even more confused than i was before over where i belong. It was lovely being with my grandma, awful being with my parents who to be honest are driving me insane with this stupid estrangement that really isn’t what it says on the tin. Then i felt that perhaps we were just an inconvenience for Rob’s family. 

My relationship with my mother is in tatters basically because i can’t bare to keep her company at the moment. She seems to have turned into a nasty person, an actual hard faced bitch. Gone has any of her warmth and compassion and instead there is this person i don’t really recognise. I can’t bare to have my family barked at by a women who to be quite honest needs to get a grip of her own existence and realise her life isn’t as perfect nor is she as perfect a mother as she thinks she is. 

If only i was in a better position with my eldest son i would say what i thought, but the fact is that i can’t make things difficult for him whilst he still needs to be there. 

On going we all felt like we wouldn’t want to come back here, that being with our families and the familiarity of our home county would assure us that we wanted to come back as soon as possible and pick up life in our comfort zone. Oh no, instead we couldn’t wait to get back to our little world here and that has left me feeling blank and pretty numb. I feel almost as if i don’t belong anywhere right now. I feel life isn’t how i need it to be here, yet it won’t be any better there either.

I feel like seeing my grandma and brother were the best bits and those are the people i miss the most, my grandma desperately wants us back there too which is such a pull, yet i just feel that perhaps we would be raking up things  we need to leave behind by moving back there.  So where does that leave me i wonder? 

Me and God

I think God might be desperately trying to get me to listen. I am trying, well if i could get some silence so that i could listen that would be great. I guess my relationship with God has been strained at times. I have been through my ‘angry’ moments with God, i have questioned the existence of God and why things have to happen that are so devastating to those people that are supposedly loved by God. I have wondered who God is…man/woman, a light, a floating gas, a feeling perhaps?  

I can’t explain and i have no answers, i just feel as if someone is knocking in my head, like someone is desperately trying to get my attention yet i am so busy getting through my day that i simply can’t still myself and listen. The trouble is that i no longer know what i believe in. I don’t know what religion i am! I believe there is God, the almighty creator of life on earth. I believe that we all have a conscience to that is somewhat controlled by our fear of God. I think that when we truly lose our link to God we make decisions and take actions that perhaps we wouldn’t have if we had allowed God into our heads and hearts. I believe that God forgives us everything we do no matter what. I believe that God helps us by allowing us to help ourselves and that nobody really ever wins the lottery by begging god to draw out their numbers! God lets you win the lottery if he thinks you have a lesson in life to learn regarding wealth i reckon. I believe that we are all sent here for a reason, that our lives are planned out for us as is our death whenever that may be. I also believe that every single experience we go through is part of our spiritual journey in life.  Yet i still don’t understand what religion i truly belong to. I was born, christened, confirmed and married a Catholic, however i no longer feel like i can be part of this religious following. I don’t really feel like i would fit in anywhere else either though and i have this fear that i would not be accepted as a catholic in a christian church, however maybe i should try. 

It was last week when i realised that God was trying to get my attention. I mentioned to a colleague and friend that i was praying for her (trying for a baby with trouble), it was such a shock that i openly admitted to praying that it sort of took my breath away. I felt like actually yes it was ok to embrace God if i wanted, that i didn’t need to do it in my own moments of frantic desperation, that i could openly be at one with God, because i wanted too. Not because i wanted something just because i could try and be friends with God now and understand what life was really about without fear or embarrassment. So my mission is now to find some peace, to listen with my head and my heart and tell god everything that i feel i need too (not that it won’t already be known). How on earth am i going to silence myself! 

 

The grass isn’t any greener in the country

Oh Hell. I seem to be here writing for therapeutic reasons yet again. My mother has left my father leaving my little brother and i in a rather unpleasant stuck in the middle, slightly angry at the world position. I have known this has been coming for the past few years however i didn’t really expect it to happen. I guess i thought my mother might just be suffering with a rather wicked dose of menopause and that she was just having a bit of a midlife crisis. As it turns out she certainly seems to have made up her mind that she want to be on her own and her blame for everything that is wrong with her relationships, life and general personality traits lies with my grandma. 

Meanwhile in my life i am having a confidence crisis with my profession (but that’s nothing new) I feel like i have underestimated that hugeness of moving my family over 100 miles away from our ‘normal’ lives into a slightly unforgiving village and into a place that is aesthetically pleasing but just ‘not our cup of tea’ after all. Today i witnessed an old gray bearded man walking along the street with long ditsy floral skirt, straw hat and carrying a witches broom. This is completely normal for this festival town. Half the streets are closed off every week for some entourage of festival goers to wander about oblivious to the fact that some of us actually have to live and work around this chaos!  The truth is though that it isn’t the place that is really the problem, its more that we just want to go home. I am desperate to leave behind my nursing career and do something that i really want to do. I am really a girl who loves the arts and yet somehow the sciences kidnapped me and now hold me to ransom (or at least the lease car i am tied into for the next 29 months has). I know for sure that i want out but i honestly don’t know how i am supposed to escape what i have endured and become through default. I would love to write full time (not sure i am good enough, but i do love it) and i would love to work in a little team of hippy like people (similar to me in some ways) that wear what they like, paint their nails and are not obliged to work every Christmas or public holiday. I still want to help people but i just don’t want to be a nurse and struggle with the bureaucracy or the fear anymore.

That said we left for some good reasons and our marriage certainly seems stronger now. I think perhaps that having so much going on back home is what is really causing us to rethink our lives here. We have my parents to support, we have a new nephew on the way, and we have our son there who seems extremely reluctant to give up his life there and move here. Its just not that appealing to a 16 year old is it? Most people are over 60 and there are 3 …(THREE) Marks and Spencer’s Food halls across the whole of Cumbria. The nearest Primark is also a 2 hour drive away. The positives are that crime is low and the air is fresh ,except for on manure spreading days.

I just don’t know what to do. Up root my family again or stick it out and pray it gets easier to miss the people we love. 

It just isn’t good enough anymore

Today i am feeling much better. Having had somewhat of a heart to heart with my husband (and lots of sex) i feel like i am on the brink of change yet again. Anyone who has followed my crazy life antics on my blog will know i am obsessed with change. I get bored easily, i think i want something one minute and realise i have managed to wade into deep water with my crazy idea within a matter of days. I have spent my adult life starting diets that fail, having children and trying desperately to find a job/profession that i actually love doing, this has resulted in massive changes every 6 months. I just love the thrill of something new, the excitement of a new house or venture, the planning is always an elaborate explosion of project management and the failure is when i get bored and turn to the next big thing. 

One thing for sure is that i have managed to waiver between two things all my life. The Arts and Medicine. When i was studying for my GCSE’s way back in the mid 90’s i discovered Drama. I loved it. I threw myself into it, it was my talent. I remember after my GCSE exam my teacher approached me and said “Hayley, Its a good job i know the real you because when your in character i could slap you!” I was playing a rather wicked bitch of an ex girlfriend in a court case at the time. However my A* in Drama was never put to use because i ended up going to work in a dentist as an aprentice Dental Nurse. I was planning on doing that then bouncing up to be a midwife or a nurse, what happened was i was basically a victim of a married man who though he could have his way with a 17 year old. I escaped that job before i was made into some slut and went to college to study Art. That’s when i fell pregnant with my first son at 17 and my boyfriend of 3 years couldn’t be seen for dust. 

I left college shortly after Nat was born to work in an office trying to support him, that never really worked either. The rest as they say is history, but eventually i ended up back in college in my late 20’s and going to university after Noah was born when i was 29. I completed my degree in adult nursing in 2012 after many many tearful days of wanting to give up. I have been a nurse now for 19 months, i have a love/hate relationship with my profession. If i won the lottery i would be out of the job like a shot, its not that i don’t care about people, its just that the bureaucracy and disrespect of the profession makes me disillusioned. I have found myself sitting at the traffic lights looking up at offices that are holding small teams, wearing trendy clothes, with nice hair and nails and fruity accessories, laughing and enjoying their jobs, the pang of jealousy eats through me.

I don’t even need an office i just need to be me, to stop hiding in a uniform, celebrate who i really am on a daily basis, be a face in the crowd that stands out. To find my inner queen, write without inhibitions, earn enough to survive but gain so much more in life experience. To visit places of intrigue and beauty, to listen to women’s hour without being disturbed, to pick my boys up from school and start an evening adventure. I would love to watch Shakespeare and listen to real music being played at festivals. To drink fruit cider in the evening sun without worrying i am at work the next day. I don’t want to buy designer shoes i want to watch the people who buy them experience them and then write all about it. I want to observe women, mothers, families children and express real life in a thousand words. I want to recycle and up cycle, and enjoy all the simple things in life. I want to find a way of destroying the commercialism of Christmas and teach people its ok to bring back the traditional family values and ditch the need to over spend to impress.

So for now i have to keep going to work but slowly i am going to switch and leave behind the nurse to discover the writer.  

I am poorly sick :(

Yet again i have let my blog slip behind and have been off doing other things. I am currently off sick to fix myself after a really poorly couple of days. I have been drained of all of my energy, i have wandered with a stitch pain in my side for days and i literally gave up the fight and succumbed to sick leave. I have had all of my blood taken and the GP reckons its viral. Wow i didn’t realise viral illness knocked you out so much! I am pleased its not Leukemia though which i had worried about, given i had lots of symptoms, I sound like a total hypochondriac, but  you have to get these things checked out i guess. 

I actually feel slightly more with it this evening having spent all day on the sofa in pain, dizzy, exhausted and grouchy. My new team have been extremely supportive and have told me to take as long as i need to recover. I will be going back to work on monday i am sure but the GP has arranged an abdo scan to check this pain in my side. Then i might be able to forget this whole viral incident. 

I am exhaused though, working full time is taking its toll on me and i am not getting any younger. I certainly don’t feel in my prime at the moment and i feel like i am slipping back into my old ways instead of embracing my new life here in the country. Maybe i am just not as happy as i had hoped. I miss my eldest child, and i feel like my family literally don’t give a shit about me. My mum never phones me to see if i am ok, yet Rob’s Mam phones everyday, it hurts a bit that my parents just don’t even bother. Its funny that i barely saw my brother and his girlfriend but now i desperately wish i was there, just close enough to pop in and have a coffee with. I was wondering how i will cope when my brother has kids of his own, i don’t want to be miles away from him. I certainly never considered any of this before we moved here. I got caught up in the excitement of the new life and i forgot that we would perhaps make ourselves outcasts. Will we manage to make a life here work in the long term? One thing i do know is that the air is clean here, its calm and crime is practically non existent.

I am battling so much with who i am, i am not just being who i am anymore. I have let everything go by the weigh side , my plans for a new life, my passion for objects of beauty has gone, and i have lost my ability to form friendships. Some how i need to rediscover what it is i want from this experience and start living it instead of hiding behind my busy life. 

My new life – the chips feel down

I didn’t realise i hadn’t blogged for so long!

We did it we moved across country and have a settled (or squashed) into the cottage. The honeymoon period lasted about a week, then we went into this funny period of arguing, hating it, loving it, loving my job, hating my job, feeling lonely and feeling indifferent.  The boys love it here, they have a lovely garden to roam, they have made friends they seem happy at school, their confidence is soaring which is amazing and i couldn’t have hoped for a better transition for them.

Rob is bored, and remains in a love/hate relationship with the place.

I feel homesick really bad at the moment. My new team accepted me with open arms and they feel i have slotted in without any dramas, I feel like i have joined a lovely team but also a team who are frightened perhaps of standing up for themselves, they desperately need someone to advocate how they feel, i don’t know if this is my role in the team as i have only been there 4 weeks!  I feel like the village is clicky and that although some people are open and friendly there is a select group (mainly from the pub) who don’t seem so tolerant of new comers.  I miss my son too who is still over in the North East. Everyday i think i sort of question whether i did the right thing, but at the same time i also think if we had never have come here we would always have wondered ‘what if’. I knew it would take time to adjust but my worry is that i moved here for a work life balance that meant i could be with my family more, and have activities, unfortunately i feel like working full time is too much and then the extra hours soon start to add up.

I am also trying to lose weight. I have lost 4lbs this week (my first week) and i feel good about that. My attitude to food has to change thats the only way i am going to get where i want to be.