Becoming Me - Letting Go of What No Longer Fits

 I recently talked about a book called Butter and discussed societal expectations and how they change and effect you as a person.

There are so many influences on us, from a very young age.  It takes a very strong person not to be influenced completely and many of us fall by the wayside, by deciding to, or simply conforming to fit in to have an easier life.

Now that I am at a stage of my life where I feel open to being myself and who I am without feeling the need to conform, I have the chance to discover who that person really is.  More than that, what I really want from life.  It is important to realise what a rare gift that is.  But I have worked hard to get here.

Throwing off the constraints of society and the people around you, including sometimes the people you love; is a little like taking your clothes off when you come home from a winter's day into the warmth of your home.  You start small with the hat, the gloves, the scarf.  Then comes the coat, which you think is the most complicated part because it is so bulky and has many zips and fastenings.  But then you realise that the jumper that is by now stuck fast to your body is actually the hardest.  But every layer thereafter is much easier.  Until you get to pulling off your socks...

I think that this analogy works well because when you are working to heal yourself and find your peace, you are never quite done.  The things you think will be easy, are not and the things that you thought would take forever, don't.  You can never tell until you start.

I decided to try and make a list of some of the things that have shaped me, looking back with clearer eyes, in the hope that I can make new choices now.  

I was a fat child.  This was why I had few friends in primary school.  Let's be honest here.  Personality is secondary when you are fat.  You know it and I know it.  The only thing that can save you is being funny, and even then; you tend to get typecast as the fat funny one (hello Hollywood) but people know nothing else about you.  I am not particularly funny.

I tried everything to make friends and was “friendly” with some; but what I learned from primary school is that it did not get better. no matter how you tried.  You just had to be not fat.  The rest would follow.  The fact that I was naturally shy did not help.

This carried forward to secondary school.  Although I did eventually find a best friend there.  But I was still an oddity. 

The are two sides to being fat though.  One is being fat in school.  I do not believe that my experiences of being fat at school shaped me other than to point out the obvious.  Children like to find the odd one out.  Someone to pick on.  Children are cruel.  But even at primary school they know that staying in the pack and picking off the weaker ones is the best play.

The other side of being fat is the fact that you are not holding up your end of a bargain that you did not know you had agreed to.  At least in my case.

The bargain was, so I was told for decades, is that you have to be attractive to the opposite sex.  This is paramount.  Otherwise, why do you even exist.  

Attractive means not fat.  Especially when you have an attractive parent.  You must follow suit.  I did not.  This means, you are not good enough.  You have not made the grade.   You are not good enough even to be on the starting block. 

Another thing that shaped me was being the last in line.  My thoughts, my opinions, my feelings did not matter.  They were the last straw. So, I simply started putting people above myself and believed that I, on the bottom rung of the ladder, deserved nothing.  This has been a major controlling factor of my life, or was.  I never put myself first, never bothered making a plan for myself, or my life.  Because I simply did not matter.

One thing about writing that I love is that it is a little like real time therapy.  Except you are making the suppositions to yourself and answering them while you write.  Thoughts occur to me as I type and I discover new things about myself.

The last paragraph is a prime example.  A raw truth that I have never realised before or never fully understood.  I never made plans for my life, because I believed that I did not matter enough to make them.  

These days, I believe in focusing on the here and now.  Not looking back and using reasons from the past to interfere with my future.  But I can learn from it.  It needs no longer to cause me  pain.  Now there is so much that is positive about my life.  Finally. I love my life.  I am working every day on trying to love myself.

For me, my healing started with love.  A clear, true love that could not be denied.  From a person who could see right through me.  To parts that I could not see for myself.  Now, I can.

That love was the beginning.  I was finally on the starting block.

Now, I am excited.  Because now, I know that I matter.  I believe it.  That I deserve space in this world.  That I can create a world for me, of my choosing.  That world includes the person that I love and includes our wants and dreams.  But I have a person who wants me to find my dreams and go for them.  What could possibly be better than that?

I have always been a person who stayed stagnant, whilst occasionally making huge leaps.  I made a leap into plus size blogging, I made a leap to pushing myself to do things on my own (like travelling to London which I have talked about here before); I made a leap into commercial writing; I made a leap by giving up commercial writing in order to write about what I believed; I made a leap back into online dating.  My last leap was the most important, I tried a new way to heal, and in doing so, discovered myself, waiting there to be found.

So, after all of this time, all of the soul searching, all the time I have spent healing; who I am?

What I found is that I am the person that I thought I was.  I am, under it all, a happy person.  I see the good in people.  I am silly, I love to laugh.  I like to take care of the people that I love.  I know that that this is my nature, and is no longer just done in the hope of love.  I have a thousand opinions.  I love to write.  It gives me joy.  

I like to cook.  I want to learn more cooking.  I maybe want to study something.  I want to write more short stories.  Maybe a book. I want to travel more.  I want to go on this adventure in life with my partner at my side and see where it ends.

The future is mine and what I make of it.  The only limits are myself and I am done with limits.

The Curved Opinion Short Stories Part 8: A Witch's Curse

Today's theme I found to be an interesting one, here is what I did with it.

Write about a witch’s curse:

The woods next to the village of St Aubrens were dark and oppressive.  Sadness and pain seem to radiate out from the branches of the trees themselves and whether it was summer or winter, the leaves were always black.

The village itself was also a strange place.   There was a section in the village with rows of cottages that no one wanted to pass.  Misery seemed to hang in the air like an ever present cloud and the residents always looked like the weight of the world rested on their shoulders.

Whenever there was a celebration within the village, the festivities never reached those cottages.  Decorations were never hung, the brightly coloured lanterns were never lit, the people never seemed to smile.

Newcomers to the village never stayed long.  People were actively discouraged from buying in the area and the children who lived there moved away as soon as could.  This was not a happy village.  Because decades earlier, the village people had made a mistake, they had crossed a witch.

The villagers had always known about the witch who lived alone, or so they thought, in a tiny cottage in the woods.  Uneasy at the thought of a witch in their midst, the unspoken rule was that they left her alone and in turn, she would stay away from the village. 

After several years particularly bad harvests, the villagers started to mutter about the witch and about how she was bringing them bad luck.  One night, fueled after a night at the local tavern, those mutterings turned to anger, and the anger turned to fury.  The men of the village tore through the woods with torches alight, intent of burning the witch out of her home and getting her well away from their village.

It was only when they had set fire to the witch’s cottage that the villagers heard screams of “My children! My children!” coming from behind them.  The witch raced through the trees towards the cottage which was now fully ablaze.  There was no way anyone, even the witch, could have saved anyone inside.

The men had raced back to village, horrified at what had just occurred. 

The next day, the witch had appeared in the village square, stricken with grief at the loss of her children.  The smell of the fire was all around her and black smoke seemed to follow in her wake.   She proclaimed that every man who had entered the woods that night would suffer, that he would never know happiness again without pain.

The witch was never seen again.  Too afraid now to pursue her, the villagers never entered the woods again, and with good reason.  All the men who had entered the woods that night soon felt the consequences of her curse. 

Any feeling of happiness was followed by strong physical pain.  The sensation was described as having your heart pulled from your chest.  From a chuckle from a joke to a feeling of love or happiness caused hours of excruciating agony. 

The men soon realised that in order to survive the curse, they had to cut all happiness from their lives.  Their loved ones were sent away, they chose their food from the scraps left by others and they now each lived alone, on the same row of cottages in the village.

No one in the village knew exactly how long the cursed men had actually lived.  The years and decades passed and yet they still lived on.  Some said that they would die when the witch did. When her pain had died, so to could theirs.  

No one ever entered the St Aubrens Woods again.

Swipe Left on Love: How Phones and the Death of Nightclubs Killed Dating

I honestly am coming to the conclusion that there are two realities.  There is the reality we walk around in and see with our own eyes; and there is the reality that we seen and read about online.  Often the two seems to be at odds with one another.

Dating for example.  There are a lot of problems with dating these days.  This is going to be a two part post and I will link that post when uploaded.  

For this post, instead of talking about the usual issues (dating apps etc), I want to bring up another reason why dating is so much harder now.  You simply cannot meet people like you used to.  

I come from a regular size town.  Growing up and through my 20s and 30s the nightlife scene was amazing.  The local pubs for example.  There were three options within walking distance of my home, always guaranteed to have people in them and not just a couple of retired old men having a pint.  

I spent many a Saturday afternoon in one of the local pubs playing pool (badly) and having a flirt.  Or on a Sunday, otherwise known as "hungover, need McDonalds then pool at the pub" in town.  There were always people there to have a laugh and a flirt with.  These were regular haunts that people went to and relationships were formed as a result.

I may sound 104 when I say this, but having no mobile phone also made a difference in that.  No social media to check, no selfies.  No checking text messages, Whatapp, emails.  You were present.  Fully present, not looking at your phone every five minutes.  Even now (and unfortunately I am guilty of doing this myself) I am turned off when I am having a conversation with someone and they keep checking their phone.

Then you had the bar and nightclub scene.  You could go out on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday if you wanted.  You did not have to drink, although most did to be fair.  I still remember the route that we used to take.

You got off the bus at 8.00pm and hit the bars (fake names used for anonymity).  Firstly, The Side Bar.  From there, Yates, The Duck & Cover, The McMillan.  Then Pink Paradise, BBs.  By 11 - 11.30 ish you were heading to one of the five nightclubs available.  Remember, this was just a regular small town.  Five nightclubs to choose from, with a line that could take 30 minutes to get to the front of unless you knew a bouncer.

This was also a time when you could do all of it, plus a takeaway pizza and a cab home for £25.

There was so much choice in where to go.  And with that choice, so many people to meet.  Two of my good friends met their husbands in one of those night clubs.  That was the thing.  You met people.  You enjoyed yourself.  You chatted, you danced.  You were not attached to your phone.  You lived.  You were home by 2.00am.

I remember once saying to my best friend while we played pool on a Sunday "God I am glad that there is no evidence of last night".  By that by the way, I meant drunken dancing, a snog with someone that I regretted, or telling a boy that I thought that he was cute when sober, I would not have dared.

Now, it is different.  Our lives are recorded and put online.  Photographs, selfies, videos.  "Funny" stories told about your friend who did x, y or z.  There is no escape.  And more, instead of losing yourself on the dance floor for two hours dancing, now the idea of fun seems to be posing and posturing for young men and young girls with a bottle of prosecco and ten thousand selfies.

The art of conversation has died.  Banter has died.  No one knows how to flirt properly any more. 
Now, my town is dead.  There are still bars, one nightclub.  But due to the licensing laws changing, no one goes out until midnight anymore.  When they do go out, they stay in their own circles.  Selfies, group photos.  Posing. 

Or worse.  I went to a party recently for a 25th birthday and all the attendees went home at midnight.  Not even to a house party.  Home.  At midnight.  They didn't even seem to be having fun.  Girls, looking identical with their contouring and perfect outfits, but sitting their taking pictures of themselves.  Only when they got drunk did they dance, for the last hour.  Then home.  Home?

Bring back the nightclubs.   Change the licensing laws that close the clubs by 2.00am.  Stop taking your mobile phone out on a night out.  Talk to men. Talk to women.  

Live.  Have fun.  We have stopped living, except for the 'Gram.

The Perfect Life Is The One You Don't Have To Escape From

 When people talk about ambitions, they usually mean the big dreams.  The child who wants to be a surgeon, the walker who wants to one day climb Mount Everest.  We are taught from a young age that it is important to have goals in life, a plan.  Something that you want to be.  A career that you aspire to get.

That was never me.   To use a line inspired from Buffy, I was cookie dough for a very long time.  I was still baking.  As such, dreams and aspirations were not part of my life.  I was still waiting to see how I turned out.

That said, I always wanted two things.  Two things that you cannot train for, you cannot gain enough money to get; you cannot educate yourself for.  I wanted love, real, can't believe you are so lucky to have found each other, love.  And I wanted to be happy.  The latter, I prayed for.  It was like a mantra at one point in my life.  Over and over.  I just want to be happy.  I just want to be happy.

Although it was undoubtedly have earned me more money, a career was never something I really thought about or strived towards.  When asked in secondary school what I wanted to do for a job, I did not know.  Administration is what I ended up answering.  I remember some people laughing.  Others had answered, doctors, lawyers, teachers.  Then me, with no plan.

I have never been driven by money or success.  Although both would have given me a more advantageous life, would it have made it better?

The paths that I have chosen or have moved on are not is not one that others would have chosen.  I drifted in my life for a very long time.  But I do not regret the choices that I made.

I have a job that I love.  It will never earn me a lot of money, but I can sleep at night.  I have never experienced the Monday dread.  I enjoy what I do.  How many people can truly say that?  The money covers what I need and I am good at what I do.

In terms of love, everyone was a no, until the right one was a yes.  I knew the moment I met him that I had never met anyone like him before.  It didn't take long before I realised that he was the one that I had been waiting for.

I had accepted long ago that I may not meet that "perfect for me" person.  That he may not exist.  But I also knew that I never wanted to settle for anything less.  In that area, I am all, or nothing.  I could not imagine being with someone who I knew deep down, was not the one.

I never had a type.  My wish list was more about the person themselves and their personality traits than physical.  In terms of physicality I had a wide range of men that I called attractive.  Celebrity wise to give an example, everyone from Vin Diesel to Billie-Joe Armstrong.

But when I met my guy, everything fell into place.  My perfect for me person.

I was wildly attracted to him.  But also, and more importantly for a long term relationship, he was everything I wanted from a personality point of view, his morals, his code.  The way he made me laugh.  The way he loves me.

I feel absolutely loved, in just the way I always wanted.

So no, my dreams may not be like others.  I do not have a successful, money making job.  I am not wealthy.  But I have a job I enjoy and I found the love that I dreamed of.  I found true peace and a calm I never thought possible.

Because of that, I feel like I won the lottery.  Who can argue with that?