LEAVING THE FLOCK (CHURCH)

Well, I’ve finally done it! ‘It’ being that I’ve finally made the decision I’ve been dithering about for months. I am leaving my church to go to a much smaller community church. Having had many happy times there in the past eight years, I now find, that my church has now got too big. It is a very rich church; in fact it is the richest church in my town. The congregation now number 400 and with that many people, you can’t possibly keep up with everybody else’s lives or to think, care and pray for each individual. It is sad to say but it has become impersonal now. They have conference rooms, an absolutely beautiful building with a stunning worship hall, run a smart cafe and numerous other functions, clubs and groups. It is a very successful church attracting people from miles around and I have to say, is wonderful in its diversity. Having said all that, I haven’t attended the Sunday or the Thursday services at my church for nearly eight weeks now due to going through a rough patch in both my mental and physical health. No-one has contacted me to see how I am or whether indeed, I’m still on the planet; not one soul and I am hurt. Should I be? Am I expecting too much? Am I being unrealistic? I don’t think so. Where is their pastoral care? Where is their Christianity? Am I indeed, developing an unchristian attitude myself?

I am passionate about my faith. I know I can be passionate about my faith anywhere but I want to share this with others who feel the same. I want to express my feelings about God openly, demonstrably and sharing this with others and if I do so in my first church, It is frowned upon whereas everyone is free to worship in which ever way feels right for them in my new church. However, God is everywhere. I know I can worship and praise Him whether I be in one church or a different church, or indeed at home or in fact wherever and whenever I wish.

But I am happy now that I’ve made a decision. I have found a much smaller community church which is really friendly and personal. Everybody there comes up to me to say hello and they don’t seem at all perturbed by my trusty, blue, electric wheelchair otherwise known as ‘Charlie’! I’m getting to know people quickly, and them, me. They have a small cafe (coffee and biscuits) which is open to the public every morning and various small groups in the afternoons. But most important of all is that they are passionate about their faith and demonstrably so which I love and feel so comfortable with.

LEARNING TO DANCE IN THE RAIN

Having Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder or BPD really does make me emotionally unstable which I guess goes without saying! One minute I’m in the depths of despair and the next I’m touching the moon; I go from shovelling coals in the basement to then flying a kite.

On Tuesday night, I found myself distraught and counting out sleeping pills and paracetamol which I then overdosed on hoping for permanent oblivion. Not good. Not clever. I know that. I woke sometime Wednesday evening and was promptly sick which did no good at all as my body had already absorbed the drugs into my bloodstream. I had a pounding headache, racing heart, nausea and chronic stomach ache, all of which I realize were self-inflicted. And then was angry with myself for not ‘doing the job properly’, and angry that I was still on this planet that has brought me so much pain and heartache. It was raining…….’good’, I thought……at least there is no sunshine to mock my persistent emotional  pain. It was nearly dark now, the sun having gone down behind the silhouette of the trees.

I slept right through that night and woke Thursday morning, actually feeling clear headed and feeling more positive about my life despite the fact that all the problems are still there…..college closes it doors for the final time on Friday afternoon; I’m still torn between the two churches I’ve attended; I haven’t seen my children or grandchildren for months now; I’m in debt; Mum is getting on a bit and not in the best of health which I constantly worry about because my fear of losing her or being ‘abandoned’ is so horrifically, truly and absolutely terrifying.  I find myself thinking over my past life, full of pain and sadness, regret and sorrow, and my future which is a completely unknown entity. I wonder if there is another way out of all the chaos of my life, the past horrors, my fears and phobias. I’m daydreaming. I come to my senses. Will I be forever waiting for the storm to pass and watching the days melt into weeks, into months and into years of misery or do I begin to weather the storms and learn to dance in the rain, as the saying goes….

Perhaps a more positive mindset, if I can maintain it, will lead to more positive experiences and a more positive outcome. At this present time, I am ready to try to dance in the rain – I have my wellies and raincoat on and am out there jumping in the puddles. I know this week, in particular, will have more than its fair share of emotional challenges but I have to keep reminding myself of this:

‘Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass,

It’s about learning to dance in the rain’.

THE MADNESS OF MY MIND

I am really not good today at all. I needed to write this morning. I wrote this in a Word document so please excuse its length and layout as I have copied and pasted my writing here because I am desperate to get out of the spaghetti in my head, the madness of my mind.

MY REALITY – FEELINGS

My feelings are totally out of control this morning – so much so that I needed to write them down.

I have a knot in my stomach the size of a football. I feel completely overcome by my BPD in that my impulsivity and mood changes have got totally out of control and are wreaking havoc all over the place.

I no longer know my own mind and I wake with fear in my heart because I can barely remember yesterday because I was so high. Today, I’m not – I’ve sunk like a battleship shot down out at sea. My mood is desperately low – almost at rock bottom with no cause and to the extent that I feel like taking a lot of medication and just going to sleep and not waking up because I can’t cope with everything being so out of control and the consequences of my actions.

I wear a mask, big time. I am a fraud, I am a liar, I am a trickster, I am not to be trusted, and I am evil. People think I’m this sweet natured, kind woman and I do try, genuinely to be kind to people and treat others as I would like to be treated myself. But underneath all that is this scheming, selfish, self-indulgent, irresponsible, not to be trusted person. Preferably, I am not to be touched by a bargepole. I should be locked up in a cage until the wildness in me stills a bit.

I am like a stormy day after a rainbow. Yesterday, I had the most wonderful day with church in the morning which set me up for the day. Then I had lunch with Becky, awkward at first but then we soon fell in love again as soul sisters and my thoughts and imagination soared to the unrealistic, ridiculous, impulsive, high-as-a-kite, chancing the ‘impossible’ and taking on challenges far outside my reach and yesterday, I was so convinced I was ‘me’. ‘Me’ transformed myself into Becky’s shadow and took on her characteristics and mannerisms – I blended in with her, with her enthusiasm for where we were going, what we were doing, how we ate, how we drank a cup of tea. I just wasn’t in control. I had blended into Becky’s personality. Where was I? And who is ‘me’. I don’t exist or at least I wish I didn’t. I just want to be a figment of my imagination that will float away in the breeze to nothingness.

My heart is so low this morning – it is in my belly, in my toes, leaking out of the bottom of my feet and desperately trying to evaporate into nothingness.

My carer is due any minute. I must get my ‘front’ ready to put on, my mask once again. To hear myself saying what a wonderful day I had yesterday when truly, that was not me. My spirit of reality had been flying like a kite then but that was not the real me. Who is the real me? I am a nothingness, a fake, a-should-be non-existent, failing, entity.

Now, I find myself writing this rubbish! Now, Debbie is due to come any second – can I get my mask on today? Will I see her walk through the door, smile, say good morning, and give her a long-time-no-see sort of hug although it’s only been since yesterday morning when I was someone else who I can barely recall. I am lost in my head.

I have the ‘door people’ and the shopping coming between 10 – 11am and I have to be real and ok and normal (what is normal? It doesn’t exist on my planet) when I really want to curl up and disappear inside of myself like a snail retreating into his shell after being startled and rocking in the world when really I am not there at all. I want to die. Right now, I wish I was dead so I didn’t have these wild, impulsive, desperately emotional, uncontrollable thoughts.

OMG. Debbie is here. Get the front ready. Get the armour on. Get the smile out, polished and gleaming.

SCRAMBLED EGGS

Well, firstly, I owe big apologies to so many of you because I have been absent from WordPress world and also my linked email account for weeks and I realize how many of your posts I have missed especially my friends, Mercy James and Meghan. Along with other friends, I think I’ve missed out on reading approximately 70 posts from you all and I know I’ll never catch up with the backlog so all I can offer at this time are my humble apologies 😦 .

As well as not being too well and therefore my mind being incapable of forming sentences long enough to write a blog, there has been so much ‘mucky’ stuff going on in my life and things have been so frenetic that I’ve hardly had time to blink, let alone string words together. Strangely enough, most of the major issues currently in my life begin with the letter ‘C‘, purely coincidentally. If this sounds like nonsense that’s because I have a brain which somewhat resembled scrambled eggs at the moment! The list goes something like this….college, Colin, church, crime, Care, children and Carole, etc, etc. and no, that’s not in alphabetical order as my brain cells aren’t quite up to that at this present moment in time. I won’t go into the details of each one for fear of boring the pants off of you but merely offer these snippets which illustrate examples of the individual issues. So here goes…

College = closing down (2 weeks), politics, mixed media, warring factions, celebration, saxophones, the press….

Colin = brother-in-law, redundancy passport, post, diabetes, aeroplane, cats, August….

Church = pastoral care (lack of), ordination, art, new pastures, brass band, friction, apartment block, cucumber….

Crime = family, trains, Marks and Spencers, blackmail, baked beans, city, money….

Care = all change, independence, scrambled eggs (again!), pyjamas, invoice, D & D….

Children = absent, car tyres, little ‘uns, grapefruit, failure, vitamin B12, heart, spots, frogspawn ……….and finally,

Carole = box of grapes, tutor, Prince Harry, music, old photographs, emails, two foot high patchwork elephant….!

So…..Interesting?…No; Relevant?…Yes; Necessary?…No; Nonsense?…Yes, certainly, but all true and all totally applicable to my life right at this moment so is it any wonder I have a ‘scrambled egg’ brain?…No, definitely and absolutely not!