"It was a very good year..."

So, I decided that rather than spamming everyone's Facebook feed with recaps of my year, resolutions I won't stick to and the ever so frequently seen "I'm glad to see the back of 2013," type status, I should, instead, sum it all up in a blog so that people can happily ignore it if they feel so inclined.

Firstly, 2013 has had ups and downs, but I'm very happy to report that this year has had many, many more ups than downs. I'll go over the downs first so that I can lighten to mood with the ups afterwards!

THE DOWNS:

The start of this year was a tumultuous time that lacked any kind of direction whatsoever. I was scared and anxious about the future that I was struggling to create for M and I. I was lost. This time last year I received a text message from M's father, with whom I had been separated from for three months, asking me out on a date. I thought it over, and being scared and lonely I decided to say yes, and in truth, we had enjoyed Christmas in each other's company. We laughed a lot and were friends again after a rather unpleasant few months. I visited with Matilda and we had quite a nice weekend together. He secretly planned a trip to Paris for him and I, with the help of my parents, for Valentine's Day. The thought was there, but most of the trip was spent arguing and myself receiving a myriad of odd comments about my jacket, my ears, my face in general, the fact that I am "literally always fucking complaining." We had one more weekend "date" after that before I realised that our efforts were almost entirely pointless. Our friendship declined into nothing after that, and hasn't improved since. I try my best to laugh and joke with him to lighten the atmosphere when we have to see each other at a "handover," but he is unable to reciprocate. He has said himself that it will take him some time to act "normal" around me, but I don't think it will ever happen. The damage is done.

My anxiety has had some of its darker days this year and I was put onto anti depressants... twice, both of which made me infinitely worse.

Fin. Done and dusted. Onto the ups.

THE UPS:

In April of this year, I decided what I wanted to do with myself. I was going to apply to go back into education. Slowly gazing down the list of available courses at the city college, one stood out. A shining beacon in the dark. Hairdressing. I had spent the last 12 years of my life messing about with my own hair, my friends hair, my mothers hair... That was it. That was what I wanted to do. I applied. A few months later I was invited for an interview, and was told on the spot that I would be offered a place. I excitedly called my mother on the bus home and did some squealing and some tearing up. The course has been exactly what I had hoped it would be and more, and it's going incredibly well. I've finally found my calling.

In the Spring I decided to join a dating website. I know, I know... but let's face it, being a single mother with no hobbies that involve other people doesn't make for a particularly thrilling social life. I spoke to a few interesting people who were fun to chat to, but nobody stood out. There were also a couple of total mutters, one of which used "I like the skin on your face" as an opener. I can only assume that he had planned to peel it away from my skull and wear it like a mask to his next birthday party. He didn't get a response. Enter THE BOY. His opening message had nothing to do with my face skin, his desire to "do me up da bum," (no, I'm not joking, I got that one as well. Smooth, I know.) or that I was "smokin' hot lol." Being the first one to actually read my entire bio (and it was long,) he asked me questions, cracked some jokes and (as only the shallow side of me will admit) was very, very cute as a bonus. I read through his profile and realised that he was essentially a male version of myself. Had I not been relatively sound of mind, I would have assumed that I had invented him. I sent a message back as quickly as my fingers would go and spent the next few days checking my inbox every three seconds to see if he had replied. We exchanged numbers after a time and spent almost every night texting back and forth about anything and everything. We discussed meeting, but being that we were four hours apart, we decided not to. I was handed a golden ticket in the form of a toddler-free weekend and invited him to the city for a day out. A huge part of me was scared that we wouldn't live up to each other's expectations because we had managed to grow so close so quickly. The other part of me was worried that we would exceed them. The idea of falling for someone who lives down the road is far more appealing than somebody you would hardly ever get to see. The visit turned into two visits, one after the other. They were two of the most incredibly lovely days I've ever had. While we have managed to exceed said loveliness in days since, I won't ever forget them. We get to see each other fortnightly, and I can safely say that I have never, in my 26 years on this earth, been even half as happy as I am now.

Matilda has continued to surprise me with her awesomeness. She grows and develops every day, and I couldn't be more proud of the person she is becoming.

I am finally getting more of a hold on my anxiety. I won't go into detail as we'll be here all night, but it feels nice.

And now for 2014...

THE RESOLUTIONS:

This year I will not be making 101 vague, sweeping gestures about TRYING to "get healthy" or "exercise" or "cut back on x, y and z." This year I want to make small changes with big impact.

I will smile more and frown less. Ignore more and worry less. Laugh more and shout less.

I will learn to pick my battles and respond to them wisely.

I will breathe more slowly and calmly and sleep more deeply because of it.

I will DRINK MORE WATER.

I will drink LESS things that rot my insides. I'm looking at you, Coca Cola.

I will eat smaller portions. Not for weight loss, but to feel better internally and to avoid hating myself after every meal.

I will go to bed at a reasonable time.

I will enjoy cuddles and playtime and worry less about things being tidy.

I will keep a journal (I'm already on my way with this one, thanks to my delicious new Christmas gadget.) full of the happier parts of my day.

I will finally get a tattoo. Don't worry dad, it will be tiny. Probably.

I will learn to care less about the opinions of people I'll a) never see again and b) don't care to see again.

I will tell Matilda firmly and more frequently that she is wonderful. That she is my best friend. That I love her.

I will learn to make the most of every minute that I get to spend with the boy. There aren't enough of them, just yet.

I will work above and beyond as far as my future career is concerned. THIS, I am going to do right.

I will pretend that the future doesn't exist; stop worrying about the what ifs and appreciate and handle the things that are happening TODAY.

I am going to stand my ground.

Above all, I am going to smile a lot more, because if 2014 is anything like 2013... I'll have many reasons to do so.

Happy New Year to you and your families. *clink*

"And I damn near sh*t myself."

2014 is going to be the year I finally become "zen," you guys. 

For realsies, this time. I hope.

In September I entered my fifth year of Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) which, for those of you "normal" folk out there, is a mental illness that affects the brains ability to distinguish imagined threat from real threat. For example, a normal person will watch an advert for Macmillan Cancer Research and think "Oh, isn't it sad that people go through that?" swiftly followed by "What time is Corrie on again?" I say normal. Anyone in their right mind wouldn't watch that steaming heap of dung if they were paid to do so... but I digress. An anxious person will watch the very same advert and think "OH LORD HELP ME, JESUS/BUDDHA/BATMAN, IT'S A SIGN FROM GOD THAT I'M DYING FROM THAT BACKACHE I HAVE EVEN THOUGH I LIFTED HEAVY BOXES YESTERDAY."

Another example is simply going for a walk of an evening. A normal person will see other people in the street and think nothing of it. An anxious person will mentally play out, in great detail, how that person will mug and/or murder them and that nobody will be around to help them and they will just lay there forever until they become a bloated corpse and vultures will travel from afar to peck their eyes out and nobody will turn up to their funeral because everyone secretly hates them.

It's after these thoughts that their brain decides to put their body into unnecessary fight or flight mode, leaving them feeling shaky, sick, dizzy, exhausted, short of breath and with a heart beat that feels like it's doing the dance moves from Whigfield's 'Saturday Night.' A normal person only goes into fight or flight mode when it's entirely necessary, e.g. when their car has a near miss with an 18-wheeler or when a lion has escaped from the zoo and broken into their house for a bite to eat. An anxious person feels like this 150% OF THE TIME. After a while the body starts to shut itself down and leaves us feeling like an empty, diseased husk, which only serves to make our fears worse, leaving us convinced that we're dying of a myriad of weird and wonderful illnesses, some of which haven't even been discovered yet.

I don't plan to finish my fifth year of this in the same state I'm in now. I have an attack plan of sorts that I'm hoping will kick GAD right in the gonads with impressive force.

Firstly, I will be having a man from the internet hypnotise me on a nightly basis. Now, when I say "hypnotise," I don't mean I'm going to sit up all night watching videos on YouTube of swirling vortexes or a man swinging a pocket watch back and forth. I have acquired an app by a guy named Max Kirsten (his last name is a girls name. I know. Grow up.) and plan on him being my new bed buddy. Basically I listen to him talk at me with whooshing background noises for 40 minutes a night in the hope that he'll rewire my scrambled egg of a brain box, and so far, I'm enjoying it. I wake up from my odd little trance feeling remarkably awesome, although last night he scared the ever loving life out of me. I relayed my experience to my dad this afternoon, and it went something like this:

"So I had a man from the internet hypnotise me last night."

"...I see!"

"Yeah basically I just listen to him talk for 40 minutes while I have a bit of a nap."

"And how was it?"

"Well, the best part about it was that part way through he started talking at me with two voices at once, and it came out of nowhere and I damn near shit myself, which made me jolt, cracked something in my lower back and now my leg doesn't hurt anymore... so that's something. Maybe I should write him a review saying 'I still feel anxious, but thanks for healing my sciatica."

Having only been listening to it for three days, I'm not overly concerned by the lack of progress, but that 40 minutes of peace where I don't consider all the things that could kill me is blissful.

The second part of my attack is to get my gutty works under control. I suffer with IBS which, while it's super fun (it isn't) it's also somewhat of a hindrance to pretty much every aspect of my life as it stands. Eating has become a chore, which I never thought I'd say, and a chore that makes me anxious no less. So, come January 1st I will be eliminating wheat, gluten and lactose. Shortly after this I'll probably kill myself due to abject misery from all of the bland, tasteless food I'll be eating. The only bright side to this is that all of the carrots I'll be ingesting will give me super awesome seeing-in-the-dark capabilities and I can start calling myself Nighteyes. I've already started designing my cape. Thankfully this plan is not a permanent thing. The point is to eliminate certain things for a while, and then reintroduce them one by one and see how quickly it takes for me to poop myself. So, that'll be fun.

The third and final part is to DRINK. WATER. I have a terrible habit of limiting my fluid intake to decaf tea and Coca Cola, and while that was fine at the spritely age of 15 and gave me no real problems, nowadays a morning without water leaves me feeling like the dried up, mummified uterus of a 600 year old nun. 

So that is my plan. I'm sure I'll write a blog in a few weeks about how it's going, by which point I'll be doing it posthumously because of the whole tasteless misery-suicide thing.

We'll see. 

Nighteyes, out.

"Can you see any more poop, or is that the last of it?"

Back at University, my housemates were my entire social world. Every single one of us was a totally different animal from the next.

I was a sort of odd, slightly (and increasingly) overweight hermit with an obsession for World of Warcraft, The Simpsons and drinking coffee out of pint mugs.

Then there was Gio, our "mexican." He was a mohawk-clad, Ecuadorian city hopper who would disappear for days on end and then return in some sort of daze with pupils the size of walnuts. When he came home and we asked him where he'd been, he'd say "...Oslo." He wasn't kidding. This happened often.

Abby was perpetually stoned and once cooked her own finger making potato smileys. She also had extensions "professionally fitted" that left her with a rather interesting bald strip on the back of her head. I cut her hair once and it never grew back. Whenever my hair decides to stop growing for a bit, it's "doing an Abby."

Lisa and I would fight about... everything... but mostly tidying. I was incredibly scruffy back then (not that you'd know it to see my room now - it's gloriously tidy 95% of the time.) and she hated me for it... and I hated her for hating me for it. We fought with vigour and vim and OFTEN. I think it's pretty safe to say that we actively hated each other at times.

She is now my daughter's Godmother and I love her with every fibre of my body.

One day I sought friends, dare I say it, OUTSIDE of my HOUSE. I had been chatting to a few people from the area on Twitter on and off and one day decided to ask one of them out for a drink. His name was Chris and he was skinny and ginger and made me laugh a LOT. We met up in town and after an awkward hug and the usual "Hey how are you? Yeah I'm great. Me too. Cool. Alcohol?" we went to a nearby pub. We sat and chatted about general nonsense, and I quickly realised that his face, like mine, was made of rubber. Not a minute passed without some sort of stupid, contorted expression travelling across one of our faces. It was glorious.

I was a smoker back then (ew, I know, right?) and so being as it was an open fronted pub, I stood outside while he sat inside with the clean people and we continued the nonsense talk. A few minutes in I felt something land on the top of my head. My first instinct was to look up. My second instinct was to, stupidly, touch the top of my head. When I brought my hand back down I noticed a sort of white and green smear that looked remarkably like half digested, stolen chips.

"I'VE BEEN SHIT ON, CHRIS."

"You've been what? OH MY GO-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

"STOP LAUGHING AND PASS ME A TISSUE, YOU BASTARD."

He passed over a tissue and I wiped the bird... uh... "leavings" from my pristinely quaffed (it wasn't) hair, cringing beyond belief and deciding that I probably wouldn't ever call him again. Ever.

"There's still some th-no, the other si-no not there, it's right th-shall I just get it?"

We bonded over him wiping bird shit out of my hair that day, and he has been one of my favourite people in the world ever since.

"Can you see any more poop, or is that the last of it?"

"Well, it's sort of still there. You might want to wash it."

I don't get to speak to him nearly as much as I'd like to, but he is the male me and he does a wonderful Steve Bruce impression, so if you do ever get the chance to go for a beer with him... do.

Just remember to stay inside.