Today I have struggled to hold myself together, partly because I am niggled with pain but mostly because I am feeling such anger at the injustice of the things we are dealt in our lives. Its SOOOO very important not to compare our lives to others, and to remember that our experiences are our own, there is no-one that has that exact same experience, no-one feels the way you do about it and no-one can put themselves into your shoes.
I hate that from time to time, an event or something will come along and remind me of 'what could have been'.....a completely useless thought, but none the less, these thoughts have crept into my mind and there is no ignoring them until I have processed the way I feel and managed to filter out the damaging thoughts that completely distort my mental health.
So, I wonder what I would be doing if my sight wasn't so poor. I cant help but feel cheated in life, I feel like my brain is fully (ish) functioning but I'm broken so I will never be able to work at my full capacity. And that's not bloody fair!
Don't get me wrong, I totally understand that everyone finds themselves thinking in this kind of way, I have two friends, one whose Mum passed away recently and has been left juggling home life, work and her broken father. the other friend, lost her Daughter many years ago, each of these ladies must wonder what could have been, and I feel incredible empathy for my friends. BUT at this moment my grief feels enormous, time is supposed to be a healer, frankly, that's crap. We fold all our thoughts and feelings away into little boxes in our brains, we learn to live with these boxes. We accept they are there and always treat them with respect for fear of the boxes falling over and all the contents come spilling out all over our nice straight forward lives.
My boxes feel like they have been knocked over and stamped on! The trouble is, I am one to focus on what is happening in the present, so the past is, well, its the past, so when an event for example pops up and causes me to remember the past, things I might add which are happy memories, I some how manage to distort those happy memories into dark ones by remembering what my sight was like before, and then end up comparing then to now....are you all still with me?
All this thinking business drastically upsets my mood, and I just feel sad. Sad and angry. So, I sink into a not really wanting to talk to anyone mode while I let the memories flood back and I try to pop them back into their boxes once I have straightened them out a little.
This process, I've noticed. gets harder each time, and I think it is because I don't really know how much I am capable of. There is no line or barrier which says 'Lynda, You cannot pass beyond this barrier, so turn back and just stay in the safe zone'...so how do I know what to aim for?
I do know how lucky I am but, today, it doesn't stop me wanting to know what I would be doing today if I could see better Somethings, I suppose were always going to happen, but what about the other things like driving and the job I have.
And just like that, one box is picked up and packed away....as I wrote about my job in the last sentence, faces popped into my head, faces of the people I work alongside and faces of some of the customers, and I smiled! A big fat stupid smile as I think about a stupid conversation that was had this afternoon while putting out a soft drinks cage. Suddenly I feel like I've brought myself back to the present just by talking to you!
Earlier, I stood looking at the rain hammering on my front garden and thought about all the times I had mown the lawn until it had to be taken up because I kept mowing over the electrical cord....What I wasn't seeing was this...
I did that!! Well, the plants did the growing themselves, but I dug up all the grass, replaced it with shingle and planted all these plants from the bargain bench at my local garden centre!
I am not daft enough to think correcting any form of mental health is as easy as that, but we all function differently, I loose my way from time to time, and become fixated on the negatives, but I'm aware that I am doing this, I suppose in a way its a kind of self harm, I want to feel that pain and grief because I should, because I must remember that I was once a sighted person and that I have been CHEATED out of having a normal life!!
I wonder what sort of a normal sighted person I would have been! Maybe I would have been a brain surgeon (lets be realistic) maybe I could have had a driving job OR maybe I could have progressed to being a higher level teaching assistant in the job I loved, maybe I could have been a pilot!
But would I be the person I am today? I certainly wouldn't be sitting here writing to you and I certainly wouldn't have met some inspiring and wonderful people through a charity that I probably wouldn't have taken a second glance at.
Maybe being me isn't so bad after all! Maybe I should take all of those special little memories and take them for exactly what they are...MY memories, no-one else's.
..MINE...and no-one, no matter what they say or think can remove those memories.
Well, now I've had a good cry and my contact lenses are all foggy I suppose I should go and get ready for ladies night at the swimming pool, after all, no matter how shitty we feel, life has this habit of carrying on without you, so I feel I have two choices, be sucked back or keep a step ahead....betchya cant guess which way I'm heading?....Tomorrow is a new day. Speak soon x
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