Honest Lies – Page 28 – "Okay, so I'm the dragon. Big deal. You still get to be the hero."

Welcome! Honest Lies is the personal site of a 26 year old graduate electrical engineer living in the UK. Covering every day life, books and various other randomness. Read more about me and the site here.

“This helpless heart and these scars”

I went to the doctor’s today for my monthly review. I was supposed to go to see my usual doctor on Monday, but I slept through the appointment so I was stuck seeing another doctor that I don’t like today. It was an awkward appointment, with a man I don’t know trying to get me to talk about my innermost feelings. I didn’t want to. I did want to know – how long could I expect to be on anti depressants and how long I have to drag myself to the doctor’s monthly. His answer confused and annoyed me. He said usually it would be 6 months, and then it may be possible that I go off them or go on longer prescriptions. He said that it would depend on whether I get “better.” And I was puzzled – I did not know what he was trying to say. What is better? He is clearly not as good as treating mental health as my doctor – my doctor would never make such false promises. I saw it as a false promise, and I was annoyed that he would dangle it in front of me. I’ve been struggling with my mental health since I was 15 – am I ever going to be better? And is it even OK to think in those terms? When I first overcame depression I thought I was better and I stopped treating myself, and I relapsed. I didn’t get depression again – but I relapsed into the negative thought patterns, the difficulties sleeping, the worries and anxieties and low self esteem. I developed disordered eating as I tried to eat away my feelings, because by the time things had gotten worse I hadn’t been prepared for them, and I had forgotten what it was like and what to do. I wasn’t ready to feel that way again. So – better? He talked like there was an end point to this. But is there? Isn’t it better to keep myself ready for it…

…or perhaps that would turn into waiting for it, and then where would I be.

And I wonder about the antidepressants. He asked me what was working about them, and what wasn’t and I struggled to answer. I feel it – I can’t describe it but I feel just a little different. I feel more able to cope. I’m struggling with insomnia, and I’m stressed and unhappy, but I’m holding on. I don’t know how they are doing it, but these pills are giving me just a little bit more strength to get through. I wish I would be able to fall asleep easier, that my concentration would improve, that I wouldn’t feel quite so tired. But when I’m at work, when I’m driving and chatting happily with my driving instructor, when I’m scared and worried but not hyperventilating or crying every day over it, I think its better. My disordered eating has completely come back – and that it worrying me. I wished the pills could do something. I wish they would have made it disappear – this hunger. Except its not appetite is it- this is a very different type of hunger.

I admit to maybe feeling a bit scared of going off the tablets – what then? I cannot imagine life without my shitty mental health. So maybe hearing “better” doesn’t annoy me, it scares me. What happens when I’m better? What would change? Would anything be different? Or would it be like the first time I went through CBT for my depression and I came out of my last appointment on top of the world, only to crash down a couple of years later when all my expectations and my hopes shattered as real life pressed its weight down on my shoulders?

Sometimes I think I am clinging onto my mental health, somehow doing this to myself, to give myself a convenient excuse for why I am so spectacularly useless at life.

I’m not writing much. I struggle to express these feelings inside me. This feeling of dread deep inside me, this fear, like I’m being followed by an invisible enemy. Something is going to happen and I’m caught in the headlights, paralysed. I’m coping, but just. I’m struggling with uni, still. I’m terrified of graduating and being thrown out into real life. I can’t sleep and I have horrible, disturbing dreams. Driving lessons are going well though, and work is too, and my family are being nice right now. I’m going home soon – two whole weeks. Hopefully my parents can help me reclaim the lost hours in my day as it is currently – hours lost to oversleeping, to finding myself spacing out, or too exhausted to work. I worry about the lack of privacy and alone time at home, but I know I need someone around me to make sure I wake up in the mornings and to watch what I eat. And I want a break from other minor responsibilities- like chores. I am not doing a good job at taking responsibility for myself right now, and so I’m trying to the proper thing and I’m going home where I can focus on trying to get through my work, and let my parents do the rest. I’m trying not to feel bad about needing that.

It doesn’t sound like I’m coping at all. But I’m not ending my days sobbing miserably or hyperventilating as I am overcome by panic and I can talk to people and go to work without panicking so I’ll take what I can get. “Are you enjoying your course right now?” the doctor asked. No, I said and laughed, because what else can I do?

“Its not that,” I told my mom when she told me to do something else if I hated my degree so much. “I want to be an electrical engineer. Its everything I want. I just don’t think I’m good enough.”

Can a pill make you feel good enough? Or are there things you lose because of depression and you can’t get them back? Just what does it mean to be “better”?

Post Title: 12012 - Swallow

“It just goes to show you can’t leave anything behind. You bring it all with you, whether you want to or not.”

So now I’m going to carry on from this post and I’m going to try and keep this positive, because I had my whine in the last post.

So rewind: two weeks back. It doesn’t seem long ago. My sister dropped me off and perched in front of the TV at home, whilst my mom and I went out shopping together. We actually had a lot of fun together- chatting and browsing idly whilst forgetting what we had actually come for. My mom spoiled me a little. It had been years since my mom and I had gone shopping – before I became depressed I think we may have gone out quite often together. As I walked along that high street I was amazed at by how much it changed, but also by how much the same it was. I felt like I was younger again, and I remembered. I remembered me and my mother going out together, and how we got along. It’s crazy how much being a teenager changes you and the relationships between yourself and others, and my depression didn’t help. Anyway we went grocery shopping next, and then we came home. I cooked supper. My sister got ready to leave. My sister left. My mother and I ate sitting side by side on the couch watching some reality program. My mother really enjoyed the meal I made here, and I felt happy. I cleaned the kitchen nicely for her as she finished her program, then we put a film on, some romantic comedy that was very enjoyable at the time but not particularly memorable. That night I slept in my mothers bed, in the void left behind by my dad. We watched another film first, another romantic comedy, then went to sleep. I had a fantastic sleep. I did not wake up once, I did not have weird dreams. In the morning I woke up feeling comfortable, relaxed and refreshed. I could have just stayed there. My mother and father’s bed really is the best. Its the same frame they’ve always had, so it feels like the same bed that I used to go to when I was little, still in South Africa, and afraid of the dark. When I was younger and I got sick, I would stay home, curled up in my parents bed, always on my fathers side. It’s a place of comfort and healing for me, no room for bad thoughts. I slept so damn well.

That Sunday I went to the food festival with my mother and sister. My mother was in a bad mood and my sister was in a bad mood and the festival wasn’t as good as the one I went to with my sister for my birthday this year, but it was still quite good. I ate a lot of bratwurst mostly. As the sign at the stall said “money can’t buy you love, but it can buy you an 8 inch sausage.” That made me laugh. There was a South African stall too- run by a guy from Joburg. We had the usual chat about why they’d moved, how bad the situation in South Africa is and how much better it is here, how much the weather sucks here, although he did not mind too much. We bought miniature milk tarts and butter milk rusks. Very random to stumble across it, but nice. It’s always nice to bump into fellow South Africans, although also sad. So many people are leaving. So many people you meet have so many bad things to say about SA, and they are hardly wrong. Its not like it comes from a place of hate- its comes from a place of disappointment. And that’s what is so sad. That these people, that my family even, love South Africa so much but cannot see a viable future there for themselves or their children. So they pack up, leave, start again somewhere else.

We got home and I hung out with my sister watching bad reality TV then went to bed. The next morning I did some chores for my mother, then went to the train station to return to my uni home. Since then its just been the same old routine of uni and work and driving lessons. Coursework deadlines are creeping up, as are exams and I’m feeling under pressure. I’m still struggling. I’m supposed to be positive in this entry though so I’ll stop there.

I developed a cold last week, was coughing and weak for a time but seem to be better now, which is great.

Finally a random collection of positive things from the past couple of weeks:

➔ This was the really great article on disordered eating mentioned in the last post.

➔ Driving went really well this week and last week, despite having a week off. A little shaky on clutch control, but my driving instructor is still letting me loose on fairly busy roads. Progress!

➔ My best friend emailed me today and we are going to meet up soon! Just when I had given up ever hearing from her again. I’m so excited, but I’m trying to refrain myself from writing back right away so I don’t show it. I don’t want to look desperate.

➔ I am really enjoying work. It does make me a bit anxious, but the work is very manageable, almost relaxing at times, and my co-workers are really nice. We have interesting chats, at least it is for me. It does feel good to take a few hours away from university every week to help out in the shop, and to have a chance to interact with other people. Even if it makes me anxious, it also feels good and helpful. Stops me from becoming too self absorbed, you know?

➔ There’s a couple of cats down a road near me who always greet me when I walk past, and I likewise. I petted them on the way home one evening last week, and looked up to see a little girl watching me out her living room window in confusion. I guess I must look crazy. I don’t care. It always cheers me up to see them.

➔ I’ve managed to talk to my father a couple of times this week. This has really helped stress wise. My dad has a way of making me feel motivated about university, and making me feel like I’m capable. I really appreciate that I have the sort of father that doesn’t mind taking the time to explain things to me. I probably would never have become an engineer if not for my father always taking the chance to explain things to me since I was a little girl– regardless of that fact I am a girl. I’ve grown up listening to my father informing me on how the world works and encouraging me to be curious – how a car works as we drive to get groceries, how all kinds of technologies new and old work as we walk around a museum, how the electronics of items work as he takes them apart to fix etc. I’m not sure I’d be able to carry on with my degree without it.

➔ I went to see the doctor and he told me it was great to see me looking so well. He said I looked happy and healthy. He seemed genuinely pleased with my process. It made me feel good. Yes, I am still struggling, but if I look back at where I was… I have improved in many ways. I’m glad I went to the doctors. And I think the antidepressants are going to be a good thing in the long run. There’s a lot more I can be doing myself, after all. See: willpower and discipline.

➔ I have completed three job applications and started two more. I spoke to the careers advisor again to get more advice and motivation. Gotta keep going!

➔ I have done some studying these past two weeks, actually. Even if it doesn’t feel like I’m making much progress, I have made some effort at some points. (positivity fail? Oh well.)

➔ I have started, just occasionally, doing yoga and I think I really like it.

➔ I have been reading some fabulous books lately. The Tenderness of Wolves was excellent,so rich in historical detail and with incredible characterisation, although it was utterly heart breaking. I cried once I finished it because I was so overtaken by how it had effected me and how much loss I felt at it being over and like that. There was so much longing in the book – not just for love – and so much of it unrequited and with no realistic resolution/going nowhere. I wanted to write about it here but words failed me. Even what I’ve written now feels inadequate. I’m reading The Falling Woman currently which is incredible in the way it presents religion, ancient history and mental illness and questions our perceptions of what is real and normal without being preachy. In between, I have been flicking through the new scientist last word books which are very entertaining.

➔ I found a local organic supermarket which is expensive, but sells amazing items – like brown short grain rice, spelt flour, puy lentils and every kind of alternate product you could wish for.

➔ I started using cloth sanitary pads and have been quite impressed. Am pondering writing a post on them – I’ve already written posts on not using shampoo and on mental illness so maybe I’ve already crossed all tmi boundaries, or is this one a further one? Hard to know what is too much (information). I’ve been blogging too long.

There, a nice (?) solid list of 13 things*. That wasn’t too hard, actually.

*Bloggers always go for multiples of five. Well, I’m using a prime number OK? I like awkward numbers. Whatever.

Post Title: Stef Penney - The Tenderness of Wolves

“Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow kind, perhaps in the nook of a cousin universe I’ve never defiled or betrayed anyone.”

Its been a while since I posted about my eating difficulties. Its not something that is easy to post about – it feels absurd and ridiculous still that I have something like this, and it doesn’t feel serious enough to really be worthy of attention. But I read an article today about eating difficulties and it made me thoughtful. Well, it made me sad.

I don’t think I’m getting better. By which, I don’t think I’m developing a healthier relationship with food or my body. I’ve bought new clothes, force myself to eat good, healthy meals as often as I can, and not to make up for binge eating by starving….but. I still find myself twisting in front of the mirror, trying to find bones, despairing over the face that they are not there, at the roundness of my belly, of the width of my thighs, of my new stretch marks, of the blemishes on my face and the roundness of it too – I feel grossly overweight and unattractive and unable to convince myself otherwise. I find myself trying to stand a little taller sometimes, trying to sit a little straighter, to hide the way my belly rolls. I find myself not bothering with makeup and ignoring half my wardrobe- not feeling worthy of it. Makeup especially – there doesn’t seem to be much point when the canvas is all wrong. I find myself binge eating, still. Far too much. Not as great amounts, and not as often, but still too much, too often. I am always thinking about food, more now than ever actually. I’ll be totally overwhelmed by the need to binge, and unable to focus on anything else, or I’ll find myself considering my meals, trying to weigh up what will be healthiest and how much to have. If I’ve had a packet of crisps or a small chocolate bar as a snack I’ll either feel the need to compensate by making an especially healthy, small meal or think well, I’ve already failed and give in to binging, depending on my mood. I don’t want to eat, but I keep eating, and even eating my three good meals feels so wrong. I feel I need to do something about the way I look, and if only I had the willpower. I find myself looking at other girls, comparing myself and coming up at a loss.

I’m always watching other people – noting their figures, noting the way they dress, their smiles, the things they talk about. Straight legged girls, or girls with beautiful toned curves. Girls with clear skin and glossy hair. How two girl friends walking home in the rain lightly hold onto each others wrists as they squeeze together under one umbrella, how a woman on the phone tells someone she misses them, two students discussing a secret room in a club they can never find again once they leave, a girl wearing heels for no apparent reason than she wanted to.

I feel helpless against it.

I realize that I am probably willing myself not to get better. In fact, I may be feeling bitter about being better, may be longing for the days when food meant nothing to me and I did not have to eat, could easily get by with just a tiny amount of the stuff, and binging on a bar of chocolate was enough to get the high I craved. I want to be thin and clear skinned again – that was how I was. It probably wasn’t quite so magical, but I’ve formed this ideal in my head and the fact that I once had it in order to really make me feel bad about not still being it. I may be clinging onto my illness, too scared to let it go, puzzled by what would be left without it. If I am feeling stressed and lonely, what can I do except eat, to give me some joy. If I don’t eat I find myself on online shops, making useless purchases, anything to fill the emptiness and to make me feel happy.

I find it hard to feel happy these days. I find myself too scared and anxious over happiness. If I allow myself to feel positive and hopeful, what if it doesn’t make a difference? My mother keeps telling me to think positively, and then things will work out. But what if they don’t?

The “What if’s” gnaw at me, all the time. I feel a sense of dread, a firm belief deep in my gut that something bad is going to happen. Not it may, it will. Something bad is about to happen. I don’t know what.

I’ve faced failure a lot over these past few years- mainly academic. But that is just in paper – I feel like as a person I’ve perhaps grown up in the wrong way. I feel a little broken, and more than a little detached from everything going on around me, looking in and not understanding, being unable to cross over into that world. Perhaps I am in a parallel universe, looking into this strange and foreign place and longing for it, but unable to be part of it.

I’m hurting over the loss of my best friend – who I have not heard from in months, and who has been drifting away from me for years. I really need her right now, but she doesn’t need me. I don’t have anyone else. I have coworkers who I can chat to, I have my family, I have my driving instuctor so its not like I go without human contact, but I never connect with people. There is no one who I can really talk to. I don’t know though. I feel disconnected from the people around me, I do not know what to say, and antagonize and regret anything I do say. I don’t know how to make friends, or be friendly, and it feels like I’m now at the age where I’ve lost the chance to have the friends who you read about in novels or see in films – those long time friends who know you inside out, who are always there for you, and who do their best to be there for you. I lost my last friend this year, she drifted away and outgrew me, who is so childish and difficult and withdrawn. Now I am losing my sister to the same thing – to adulthood, to her growing up and changing. I am missing my sister too, in fact. Why am I always the one being left behind? Because there is something wrong with you. It has to be me. The fact that I never say the right thing or have the ability to make people stay. I eat away these feelings, this loneliness, this confusion over how other people work, how the bonds between people form, and how you can get someone to like you.

I also eat away over my stress over my life. I have my thesis to work on, which I still don’t understand, alongside two other projects, and have exams to study for, and job application after application to labour over alongside. I’m facing so many deadlines, and I feel utterly overwhelmed. I am not working right now. I’m trying to put it off. I don’t want to face it because it makes me anxious and stressed out. Of course procrastination makes me stressed out and anxious too, but not if I eat enough sugar to get that nice high. I can pretend its OK then. It feels like I’m doing life all wrong, I cannot succeed in my personal life, and I’m always struggling to keep up with my academic life. I’m feeling trapped when it comes to my financial situation, and I keep applying for scholarships, for interneships, and now for jobs, and getting rejected.

It feels more than a little disheartening to spend hours researching a company, putting together an application just to get a generic email back saying “sorry, you don’t meet our requirements.” That wording too, that implication: you are just not good enough. Here I am, sitting thinking I’m ticking all the right boxes – the high academic achievement, studying abroad, learning a different language, volunteering – but its not right. I get paranoid that perhaps they see past it all – see how shy and insecure I am underneath the facade I want to project. I want to be someone clever, someone independent who also works well in a group. I am passionate about travelling and working abroad, passionate about my degree and using it to do something useful and I want them to know this. Perhaps they focus on my failed A levels. Perhaps they see that I am shy and introverted, because I’m not involved in societies, maybe? Or do I not have the right hobbies? Is it the languages – because I have not grown up bilingual and have managed only to get to beginner level in my chosen second language? Is it that I have not got enough work experience? Perhaps. But as my coworker noted, as we were having a good bitch about the stress of graduate job hunting, it feels ridiculous and unfair that to get an entry level job you would have had to already had that job before. It feels wrong to use the word unfair. I have always believed that if I worked hard enough then I will be rewarded though. I always thought it would pay off. I’m frustrated by it. It makes me crave something that makes me feel good. Like, some chocolate.

I probably over think things. I don’t know how to switch my thoughts off. “What would you do if you had more free time”? My doctor asked me, not getting it at all. Its not that I don’t have time, its that I feel overwhelmed by the management of it, that I cannot concentrate on anything anyway, because of my thoughts. I’m so caught up worrying if I’m doing the right thing, that I feel frozen, and I don’t want to face it. What if. What is about to go wrong. Am I about to mess up. Am I messing up right now. What is wrong, what is this bad feeling settled inside me.

I don’t want to face anything. I’m tired. I’m scared. I really want some bloody chocolate to make me feel better. I know I’m not supposed to though.

Post Title: Bob Hicok - Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem

“If I only had one wing…”

I had a train to catch today. 10.42 in the city next door to mine. I overslept and rushed around trying to get myself ready, get the house organized, finish packing. I walked as fast as I could to the bus stop but only got there at 9.45. I waited for the bus which was supposed to come in 5 minutes. It came in 15. The journey was long. I seemed to have landed on one of those bus journeys where it stops at every stop, gets stuck in all the traffic, and always has the lights turn red on it. Time crept passed and eventually I had to accept I was not getting my train. I only got into the city at 10.42. So I had to get the later train after all.

This has been the theme of this week- late starts, rushing around, never quite managing to get myself organized. I missed the first hour and a half of my lecture on Thursday – a lecture I missed last week. I feel and am acting like I did in Malaysia- tired and unmotivated, never on time for anything, struggling to get things done. And my 2nd year of university in Malaysia… I didn’t do well. I’m a little worried. Why am I like this? Is it my medicine? I feel like I’ve been having massive mood swings lately- going from periods where I feel really great to periods where I can barely drag myself out of bed, because what’s the point? Everything feels so hopeless. Of course it could be hormones. It could be that I need to stop blaming my illness and recognize my own laziness and lact of discipline. I really need to get my act together.

Its not all bad though. Work was OK this week. And after the disastrous breakdown of last week I was shocked to find that this week I could drive (fairly sure my instructor was too) I managed to drive through the estates I’d struggled with a few weeks back, without any major errors, and then I drove through a busy town centre, and a busy road which required me to push my speed up to 40mph. Not that I didn’t struggle, but I didn’t feel as anxious as usual, I just went with the flow, didn’t over think, went easy on the controls. And it was OK. It was even fun. I had to deal with traffic which wasn’t fun, but I chatted to my driving instructor, who really is so nice. Maybe its because I feel more comfortable with and more trusting if her that I could relax? Idk. Either way, I almost had fun with my lessons this week. It didn’t feel terrifying or overwhelming for once- I felt capable and confident in my own abilities. I don’t have a lesson next week due to the half term and I’m terrified that when I get back to lessons whatever magic that happened this week will be lost, and I’ll be as hopeless as ever. I don’t want that.

I’m now on my train, squeezed into a table seat for some reason. I should have known it would be busy and to get a single seat, but I was caught in the idea of posting from my laptop. I was foolish. And should have expected that I’d end up writing on my phone instead.

My sister is picking me up and taking me home, then I’m going to be cleaning the house and eventually making food. My dad is away right now, and I feel for my mother all alone, working long hours with no one to help. So I offered to help her this weekend. I’m also going to a food festival with my mom and sister tomorrow which should be good. Hopefully it will cheer my mother up to have a weekend spending time with her daughters and being looked after. That is my hope. I don’t really want to spend my weekend listening to my mother and sister fight. I’m tense and anxious myself and desperate to relax. (Looking forward to being able to give my cat a big cuddle too! Is it bad that I’ve been on the edge of my seat excited this whole week at the though of seeing my cat,? It feels a little pathetic. )

“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”

On Wednesday, I cried in front of my driving instructor. I had been feeling somewhat fragile and a little unstable throughout the lesson – I kept making stupid mistakes, like pushing the gear into neutral when I should have put it into first, and more dangerous mistakes, like drifting dangerously to the side of the road and then, just once, suddenly, swerving sharply towards the curb as I completely lost concentration. My driving instructor was noticeably frustrated and a little on edge. I wanted to do better, but I was tired and emotional and I couldn’t think. Towards the end of the lesson I was keeping my face turned away, blinking back tears, desperate to just get through it without crying.

I did not get through it.

I ended up in the passenger seat on the drive home, crying helplessly. I’m sorry, I had a terrible meeting with my project supervisor this morning, I explained, my voice hoarse. In reality, the driving was also a factor, as was the careers meeting I had the day before, as was university and my mental health and everything I was carrying, but I did not want to embarrass myself further by going to deep into an explanation, so I chose the main factor for my break down. My driving instructor was lovely, talking to me kindly, giving me tissues, sympathising with me. It was nonetheless mortifying. When we got back, I got out the car still sniffling and then got into my house, curled up on my bed and sobbed, loudly and uncontrollably, burying my face in my pillow both to muffle the sound and out of shame. If I hadn’t of taken my medication I probably would have started hyperventilating and having a panic attack. At least my driving instructor did not have to see that, I tried to cheer myself up with that, but nothing could shake my embarrassment. I do not know how I will face my driving instructor next week. No one has ever see me cry apart from my family.

Its not been great being back at uni. I’m already feeling overwhelmed and stressed out, mostly by my project and how confused I still am about it, how I just don’t know what to do, and by the fact that my supervisor is very cold towards me and I’m certain he dislikes me. Its like something deep inside me telling me that I need to get away, I tell my mother on the phone, my intuition is screaming at me that there is something off, but I have to meet him every week even though it makes me feel so uncomfortable. Maybe he sees something in you and is trying to push you, my driving instructor had told me when I expressed similar concerns to her. But I remain unconvinced. He doesn’t look down at me, but he is consistently unimpressed and not very forthcoming. This week, that wednesday, just before my driving lesson he told me “well maybe if you started doing something you’d know” I went over the words again and again, and I swear he actually said that. So I was not in the mood for driving. So I ended up crying because this project is already making me miserable and frustrated, just three weeks in and I don’t need that right now.

For fucks sake, I cannot design a power system in three weeks, Can I?! I ranted at my sister

I was so messed up and emotional that I actually got the courage to turn to my sister. Well, actually my driving instructor had told me to contact someone, and that she would text me later to check, and I did not want to lie in my text, and what if she asked in the lesson if I had contacted them and what was said? Yes, it took these kind of thoughts for me to reach out to someone, to not just sit at home crying and panicking to myself. I don’t want to be a burden to anyone. And I feel terribly ashamed of how weak I am. I want to appear strong and put together.

I took the day off on Thursday. I just couldn’t bear to go into university. I needed some time for myself. I had a lie in, I relaxed at home. I had a good, hard think about things and then I talked to my mother on the phone. I had turned to my sister the day before, and it had not really helped to be honest, so I tried my mother next and thankfully my mother said everything I wanted. In the end, she is the only one who really gets my mental…things.

That day I thought a lot and came to terms with everything.

I reasoned with myself there are things you can control and there are things you cannot. I cannot control how my supervisor is towards me, but I can control my own actions and my own attitude. I thought about the work I had been doing- was there cause for concern? No. I was putting in enough and meeting all my deadlines. How was I acting in the meetings? I didn’t think I was letting my feelings show, but I resolved to be even friendlier, to discuss my work properly even if it never seems like he has much interest. I would think of it as practice for the real world – where your co-workers or even your boss may not treat you how you wish, but you have to act properly anyway. As for the driving, that was something I could control. I am already making progress with managing my anxiety around driving. As for remembering the procedures…I was working under a have lesson, review it mentally kind of system, but I decided to include a new step in my learning process – make a written driving log. I am hoping that will help me really remember things. I will work harder. I recognised that I could do more, so I will.

The careers? The careers advisor told me my CV was good! I just need to learn to stop obsessing over the fact I failed my A levels, to shake off my worries that my introversion will scream out from my CV and my application and for that, they will reject me. I am not a bad person because I am a shy introvert. I do have things I can offer to the world. I just worry because I make such a bad impression, as I told my mother. My mother did not have much to say to that, because she knows me, and she knows how cold and aloof I am when you first meet me, how rude it makes me, how off putting it is for other people. You will never truly be yourself when you do not trust people she said, hitting the nail on the head, and identifying the main problem even if she wasn’t aware of it – I do not trust anyone. But you are lovely inside she added, of course, in much more detail as she tried to reassure me. Yes, well, I said. What use is it that after a while I relax some and show a sweeter side to my personality, first impressions count. I am terribly worried about this. But, again I reasoned with myself – I did edit my CV, and I did get the courage to go speak to the careers advisor so I am not totally behind. Now I need to take the next step – get those applications in. I plan to send my first application by the end of next week.

I will apply the principle of mountain climbing to my life – instead of looking up and fretting over how much is left to climb, wondering how the hell I will ever make it, I will focus on just taking the next step, and then the next, and the next…

It’s OK. Everything is OK. After crying like that I actually did feel a bit better, and after taking the day off, and working through things in my head, and having a good discussion with my mother, I was ready to pick myself and carry on.

Is this entry very negative? I find my thoughts are always tinged with negativity. My mom pointed it out to me on the phone – that everything I was saying was so negative. I can’t seem to control it at all. I guess that is why I blog less – I feel a little self conscious about this kind of negativity, it must come across as a bit whiny? I do worry about that, and I am sorry. I’ve just not figured out how to fix it yet.

Post Title: Sylvia Plath

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