A Slice of Truth

Not going to lie, I’m currently sat here in my pyjamas with a brew, avoiding doing my uni work and feeling sorry for myself.

But that’s just a typical day...

My most prominent skill is avoidance (so much so I’m considering adding it to my c.v.). Avoidance of daily tasks at home, my health and my truth.

However, I seem to gravitate towards looking after others over myself, this is a positive trait or a negative one depending how you look at it. Technically this could be viewed as a method for avoidance as I would much rather care for someone else than myself.

One example being; (pre-warning: some deep stuff here) when my mum died, my dad was a wreck which is understandble, yet he forgot about his daughters (16, 20 & 24). Im the youngest, and I felt I had to step up for him and my sister (20), I cooked, cleaned, went to college like nothing happened, went to work, ensured that my sister and dad were eating ok. But what about me? I started smoking, started drinking, sleeping with weirdos but this was a whole other life that dad didn’t know about because he didn’t care. I learnt to avoid talking about myself because it wasn’t about me, as my auntie so nicely put it “your dad has it worse, he lost his wife and soulmate”.

Well... this constant situation of caring for others instead of myself resulted in my failing of 3 A Levels in my first year, which meant I had to change course to a Btec and only continue one A Level. When my dad found out about my grades, smoking, drinking and sleeping around, he took the approach of complaining that I was “rebelling”. Perhaps I was, but what else could I do? I was a teenager.

Ok that’s enough of my complaining for now. Lets get back on track. After spending 6 months, 6/7 days a week on my own during lockdown (I lived with my boyfriend but that’s a whole other story). I decided that I physically could not avoid myself anymore; I rang the doctors after my first week back at work (it was a disaster, being a waitress during COVID-19 is scary shit), I finally after 5 years admitted that I was struggling.

5 WHOLE YEARS OF AVOIDANCE... And finally I’m on a crazy ton of medication and living completely by myself, except of course the cat came with me.

So I have been toying with the idea of writing about life and kept telling myself that nobody needs my miserable being in their mind, but perhaps, I can make a difference and help people realise that avoidance isn’t the best method, and that there are positive things in life.

“Are you ok?” - “To be honest, today is not a good day, can we talk?”