yearofradicalselfbelief

[yearofradicalselfbelief]

12/06/24

Did not mean to disappear, but life has been happening (as life has a way of doing) and I’m not too sure about this blog’s original goal. That’s not to say things aren’t going well! An exciting writing opportunity may or may not be on the horizon, but it’s largely out of my hands now and I’m very much just waiting and seeing, but otherwise life is just life-ing.

I did find out this year that there’s a strong chance that I’m neurodivergent – mostly after a friend who also is was like “listen, I have a hunch” and I did some research. I don’t have an official diagnosis, and seeking one out isn’t particularly realistic for me right now, but it definitely did shine a light on a lot of things that now make sense. And honestly? This discovery has been so good, but also something to sort of? Contend with? It’s been so nice to see a lot of what I previously considered my major flaws and realise there is an explanation for them, beyond “I’m a fucking idiot lolol” and all that. A quote I heard a lot at the start of my digging is that it’s a relief, because previously you live in a world of horses, built for horses, and you think “man, I’m such a shite horse” – and then you find out you’re actually a zebra, and a really good zebra, you’ve just previously been comparing yourself to something that is entirely different to you.

It's been a relief, in some ways, and it’s brought about a lot of forgiveness towards myself. But it’s also been really difficult. Especially the longer it sinks in, and the more used I get to the strong likelihood.

Previously, like a lot of neurodivergent women, I thought I just had bad social anxiety and depression, along with a hefty dose of C-PTSD (which I still do, it’s just rooted in something different to what I previously thought), which means that all of the symptoms were put into the perspective of something to be beaten and overcome. That if I just tried hard enough, I’d stop feeling so constantly painfully fucking awkward, I’d feel less lost in social situations, I’d suddenly gain some sort of charisma, a comfort in my own skin, nothing would hurt, everything would be golden. And realising this has uhhh…taken that possibility away.

In some ways, it’s a relief. Realising that it’s more of a feature than a bug – and that it’s an explanation for why I instantly click and feel comfortable with some people, while it takes more work with others (guess what I have in common with folk in the former camp) – does, to an extent, allow me to put down the sword and walk away from the battle. One that I didn’t have a hope in hell of winning. And in a way it’s good, because that acceptance does help me. It lets me sit in my discomfort and accept it, rather than making it worse by fighting it and seeing it as the symptom of some terrible mental illness that I need to conquer.

But…on the other hand I need to accept that it is just always going to be there, and that has been very difficult. Especially this week. I think it hit me properly this week. Because others sense it immediately – to the point where pretty much everybody knew this about me before I was ready to accept it, for better or worse. It’s what got me bullied throughout my school career, it’s what had the teachers asking my friends ‘is there something wrong with her?’ when that bullying was reported to them. It’s what had my mother despising me, because I wasn’t the social butterfly party animal northern lass of a daughter she’d envisaged. It’s what’s had people I previously considered close friends drunkenly making jabs about how painfully awkward I am, and how they wouldn’t want me around for important life events thanks to that.

And it’s just always going to be that way, isn’t it?

Sure, there are right crowds and right people, and there is a lot that I can probably thank this difference in me for. And I have to laugh that I’m discovering it at the same time I’m writing Here, Where Fire Grows, a fic where the OFC feels constantly othered and ostracised by people without being able to place why they immediately have her marked as different or less-than when she spends most of her time trying to blend in.

It's just a bit of a grieving process. Sure, I don’t need to fight the battle in overcoming this – because it can’t be overcome, and maybe it shouldn’t be overcome. I have a lot to thank it for. It leads me to finding people I do vibe with, I probably have it to thank for how obsessively I chase after my hobbies and skills, and my patron deity has an affinity for the outcasts, so maybe it’s even how he barrelled into my life. I would never want to change any of that. But it’s just accepting that this fabled day where I’m super socially savvy, charming and unawkward will never come. And I can’t lie, that does hurt a bit.

Sure, I’m a great zebra, but I am still living in a world made for horses. So I’m always going to be the awkward one, the one who needs to be explained before introduced, the one who’s only fun to hang out with if you’re willing to endure the awkward quietness the first few times before I get comfortable enough to not just go selectively mute. I’m always going to be the one who people see and immediately think there’s something not quite right, regardless of how much I’m probably internally panicking over trying to just seem fucking normal.

And honestly, the internet is a godsend. I’m so much better at communicating via text than speaking, because when I speak, I panic and I stutter, and unless I really concentrate, I’ll fuck up my sentences (not beating the awkward as fuck allegations, huh?) but then that adds extra panic, too, because I’ve made so many amazing friends online, and I die inside whenever one excitedly tells me they’re going to be coming through my city, because my first instant thought is “god, you’re going to be so fucking disappointed by how I am in person” – especially because in those cases, we don’t have time for the three hangouts before I manage to un-freeze enough to become who I actually am. And I can’t really bear the thought of that.

It’s just exhausting, if I’m being honest. And I do think finding acceptance will help me make strides forward, but even knowing that I don’t particularly have to fight the battle to be “normal” anymore, I feel like I’ve lost it once and for all now. I don’t want to be the one who constantly makes shit first impressions, or who has to apologise for being weird, or just apologise for existing in general, or who has to be explained before she’s introduced, or who thinks she has a really close friend only to be mocked for that awkwardness that she cannot help, and having that last bit happen enough that I’m in a constant state of waiting for it to happen with other, better friends, too.

People compliment me, and I’m just waiting for them to see the awkwardness and the differences, because surely they wouldn’t be giving those compliments if they’d noticed by now? Or if they have seen that and continue to actually hold me in some sort of high regard, I feel like I need to be fucking eternally grateful to them for being magnanimous enough to overlook my glaring flaws and other-ness in order to find one or two shreds that they kinda sorta like. Or hey, maybe they’re just lying and it’s all some cunning ruse. Very realistic and likely, right?

And people will love me anyway. Deep down, I know that. Whether it’s in spite of it, or because of it, they do and they will, but it’s so much harder for me to love myself while taking all of this in. I’m going through a bad bout of depression right now, and the overwhelming thought just utterly battering my skull is I don’t like anything about myself. Knowing that I am, to some extent, always going to be off-putting to people, always going to be laughed at or mocked for something that I can’t help and can’t even adequately cover up, and that I’m always going to feel like I’m living in a world where everybody else was given a map and a fully written guide on where to go, what to do, and how to act, when I wasn’t looking.

I’ll find my peace with it. As I said, a lot of this current feeling is just because I’m going through it with my depression right now. I’ve been the weird one all of my life, I’ll be the weird one for the rest of it. On a deeper level, I can find a lot about that to love. I wouldn’t want to blend in.  It’s just a grieving process, and I can’t skip straight to acceptance with this one.

[yearofradicalselfbelief]

Part Four [Progess & Foundation Laying] - 16/12/23

Hello! I actually have a non-depressing update to write today, what a time to be alive. Discussions of 2024 goals, and changes to my writing schedule ahead.

I’ve spent the last week or so basically already making a start on my goals for 2024, so that once January hits, all I need to actually do is maintain the momentum instead of spending the first few weeks undoing whatever bad habits I could let myself slip into just because it’s the holiday season.

My big goals for 2024 are nothing new. I go into every year wanting to read more, write more, and exercise more. The thing is, there was a time when I’d have these goals and each one truly would be starting from scratch. Before I started writing daily as a rule, weeks would go by where I didn’t write a single word, then I’d feel bad about not writing, which would make me want to write even less, and create that great little feedback loop from hell. I also went through a ridiculous reading dry spell during/following my uni years, because nothing makes you want to read less than doing an English Lit degree, and honestly I’d never been big into fitness beyond a few weeks-long health kicks up until I hit my 20s, either.

So when I’d first have these goals, none of the foundation would be there, and I was basically expecting my habits to go from 0 to 100 the second the clock struck midnight for the New Year. Recently, I’ve been doing things smarter.

Starting my daily writing streak on 1st January 2020 was a great starting point, because I haven’t missed a day since, and I’ll be hitting my 1500th consecutive day of writing sometime in the first quarter of next year. The year that followed that, 2021, I started to take my fitness way more seriously. I worked out on and off before that, but 2021 was the year where I did my first ever 75Hard challenge – successfully – in the summer, then another the following autumn, and I’ve done several since.

2022, as I’ve said, was a bit of a write-off because of everything I went through, but 2023 has been the year of upping the reading habit. Last year I read 14 books, this year I read 41 – with ~5 more being in progress, but I probably won’t finish those til New Year. My goal for next year is 50.

The thing is though, juggling these habits means that it’s been pretty common so far for one thing to fall by the wayside while I focus on the other two. When I did flufftober this year, I didn’t have the time to do a single workout the whole month. Or when I do a workout challenge, my writing output halves because it gets to the evening time and it’s just a struggle to stay conscious during the evening hours where I’d ordinarily get my best words in.

So my overarching goal for 2024 is to have a year where I just absolutely ace all three of those habits. I want to read lots, write lots, and get a great level of consistency with my workouts. I do have more minor goals that fall within all of that too, like finding a way of using social media that isn’t all or nothing. This year, my screen time has either been insanely high, or I’ve been on Instagram breaks for months at a time. Then I hang around until I can see it’s wearing on my mentally, and disappear again for a long stretch. I really want to find a middle ground with that – one that doesn’t have me being so terminally online that I feel like shit, but also one that doesn’t have me constantly missing out on cheering on overseas friends, with whom IG is my only source of real communication.

And, as I said on my main blog, another big thing I’m changing is really controlling where my energy goes with my writing, and when. Because I do have a bad habit of focusing on fanfic more than I focus on the novel. There are a few reasons for that, and honestly I don’t even regret it – yet. But if I don’t make any changes, there will be a day on the horizon where I do.

Fanfic has been, and still is, great for me. It gave me a community of amazing, kind, supportive, and generous people when I was in the lowest point of my life (and I cannot overstate how much that made that time bearable for me), and it has improved my writing by miles. I’ve had people in my life who do openly view it as me wasting my time because it hasn’t gotten me further in my writing career when you only look at the basic facts, and there have even been times when I’ve been tempted to give into their way of thinking. However, earlier this year I read some very early drafts of the novel – from way back before I even started Little By Little – and they were just not good at all. Then, I look at the chapters I’m producing now, and seeing how much better they are, and that change is thanks to the sheer amount of fic I’ve produced in the last few years.

In part it’s because of the fact that writing so often is bound to improve said writing, but it’s also because of the feedback I’ve gotten on those fics. Feedback doesn’t always only limit itself to reflecting on the specific story that feedback pertains to. Sure, sometimes it’s a case of “I wasn’t a fan of this plot point” or “I don’t like this character”, but other times it’s “I feel like there has been too much introspection in these last few chapters” (which was a big problem with my writing at the start of this decade, and really showed in early novel drafts), or “I really enjoy the humour you put in your stories” – because allowing myself to have fun and be silly with the narration in Catch the Wind, and seeing not only how much fun I had with that, but how much people liked that, really freed me up to add the same thing into the novel itself.

It all contributes, and while I do have a tendency to get upset at myself for reaching the ripe old age of 27 without having yet even queried a single novel, I look back on the stuff I was writing at the ages when I really wanted it to happen that specific year, and I can see that my writing just wasn’t ready for it. Now, thanks to fic, it is.

But that still leaves me with the fact that I now really do need to start prioritising my time. The discrepancy with fic and original work comes in the form of instant validation. With fic, I can finish a chapter, and if it’s a popular story I might have a comment on it within an hour. And it’s not that I feel like I can’t write without that, but because it’s such a help with my own anxiety when it comes to writing. I have a tendency to finish every chapter thinking it’s shit, and I don’t believe otherwise until I have that first comment telling me someone enjoyed it. With novel work, it doesn’t work that way. And because the novel means so much to me, that adds to the anxiety, until there are times when I’m so anxious about working on it that I can’t even enjoy working on it, because I’m just telling myself “what if this is shit? What if you’ve wasted ten years of your life building this world and creating this thing, and it ends up being for nothing?��

And I mean, it won’t be for nothing. If no agent wants to take it on, I’m not averse to the idea of doing a patreon type thing with it once I’ve exhausted every other avenue, but it is just that initial anxiety. I know it’s irrational, and my beta readers are really enjoying it, but the fact remains that I am a Frightened Bitch. It’s genetic.

But I need to overcome that, and I won’t overcome that if I’m running to the safety blanket and instant validation of fanfic whenever my anxiety spikes.

This is something I’d resolved to fix for quite a few years now, but I’ve never gone in with a specific game-plan, which means I then fall back into usual habits very quickly, because “idk I’ll figure it out” isn’t cutting it here.

So, I’m imposing a rule where I can only post one fic chapter, total, a week. Not one chapter of each fic, just one chapter of one fic. Fridays will be fanfic days, and I’ll post my chapter, and then I’ll go back to novel work. If a few months go by and I’m especially happy with novel progress, I might up that. I still want to take part in flufftober, but I’m really hoping that by then novel work will be so far along that doing so won’t be a problem, because it’ll be a nice break from edits rather than all-out rewrites. The plan is to also decide at the start of each week what will be updated next, let you guys know what it will be so you’re not waiting only to find out it’s a fic you don’t even read, and then rotate between that and the novel during that week. My current way of doing things is to have like 12 word docs open at any given time and just add to each one here and there until something is finished, but that isn’t the most efficient way to go about this.

I do have other set outlines as to how I’m going to achieve my other goals, rather than just “read more” and “exercise more”, because breaking them down into concise weekly targets to hit makes so much more sense. As for the screen time/social media dilemma, I’m going to be taking every Monday off of social media – with the exception of answering IG messages, because I use that in place of texting and I don’t want to completely self-isolate, just lessen the scrolling and the posting. I’ll also be limiting how often I can post, because the folk who follow me over there will know that my IG stories get a bit unhinged re: length at times. If I need more than that, which I think I will, I’ll extend the break to Tuesdays, too.

And the 50 book goal is pretty neat, because I can then just set myself with the goal of one book per week, or aim for 100 pages a day, which is fairly doable most days.

It’s going well, so far! I worked out five times this week, I’ve done quite a bit of reading, and I’m currently in the progress of updating every fic that I want to update before this once a week rule comes in (HTWA, Free, and Fallen Through Time are the top priorities – then, I think HWFG should roll around to be the first thing I update come New Year).

And to finish things off, I mentioned in my last post that I’m forcing myself to go out and do fun things for the sake of doing fun things at least once per month, beyond just errands and stuff that needs to be done, even if it just means a solo cinema trip or whatever. I did that this month, so have my proof of that in parting. Went to the city centre for lunch with a friend, and to take in the Christmas lights and snoop at the pretty clothbound classics.

So happy to be able to post something actually positive on here for once! I intend to keep that up, and I’m very grateful to the people who are following along on here!

[yearofradicalselfbelief]

Part Three [Moving the Goalposts] - 21/11/23

CW: mentions of anxiety and depression.

Long time no see! Flufftober kept me, uh, occupied (aka manic and frenzied) and then November followed and has, so far, completely knocked me off my feet in a lovely haze of depression. But it’s slowly giving way now, and I’m able to contemplate the future with thoughts that aren’t limited to “oh, no” so it seemed a good time to write this.

I’m moving the goalposts of this Year of Radical Self-Belief, with that in mind. All in all, 2023 has been pretty good to me – although I haven’t done as much as I would like with it, in part because I completely underestimated how much healing I would have to do in the aftermath of the years that preceded it. As of June this year, I’d only been in my new city for one year, and once the dust had settled and I actually came to view my new city as home, it turned out to be the first quiet year I’ve had in…well, ever. And my brain had no idea how to cope with that.

That’s the thing about being herded from one disaster to another year, after year, after year, after year. When things do settle down, it’s very easy (and reasonable) to mistake it for just another calm before the storm. I spent the months following my moving here – which included a very close family member becoming very sick, and thankfully making a good recovery – pretty much scared to exhale, because I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s only now that I’m slowly beginning to trust that things might actually be okay for a while. It’s only now that I actually feel like I’m waking up, and not just sleepwalking my way through things as I wait for the next disaster to hit.

Going into this year, I had a lot of high hopes for myself – namely that I’d be querying the novel by now. I am not. Usually I’m very hard on myself for stuff like this, but right now I refuse to be that way. Because it’s understandable. I needed more time to breathe than I initially recognised, and if I didn’t allow myself that, I’d be in terrible shape. Once the dust did first settle here, in the period when I was determined not to trust it, I was having bad panic attacks on the weekly, out of nowhere. It infuriated me, too, because everything was fine, right? I wasn’t homeless anymore, I actually had a bedroom, my living situation was far less toxic than it had once been, and I loved my new city miles more than I ever particularly liked my old one.

But that was the problem. I could afford to feel it. So then I did, and I couldn’t stop feeling it for a good long while…not least because I was so fucking angry at myself for feeling it at all. Now? Now I’m doing better. Calmer. Well, as calm as I personally ever get. So I’m not angry at myself for spending a year actually healing and breathing and enjoying the peace where I could get it, rather than hurtling myself towards the next thing – especially at a time where I don’t think I could have taken the inevitable rite of passage that query rejections are.

On Saturday the 25th November, I’ll turn 27. My own personal new year. Usually birthdays really get to me, too, because I always meet them in this absolute panic over the fact that I’m not yet where I want to be in life, but this time around I feel fine about it. Hopeful, even. So I’m taking that as a good sign, and I’m calling this the beginning of the Year of Radical Self-Belief. I’m not saying I don’t think depression will bowl me over again between then and 28, but that gut feeling just tells me it’s better this way.

The first couple of months were good – I did a lot of writing, a hell of a lot of reading, focused on my physical health, and just finally began to feel like a human being again. It was a good prologue. But this new beginning is a neater starting point, and I just have a good feeling about 27. 9 has always been my lucky number. I’m 27 this year, which comes to nine, my brother will turn 36 the following week, and there are nine years between us. Superstitious, sure, but still.

I also have actual concrete plans this time around, too, beyond “do better” – which are as follows:

A conscious step back from Instagram.

I’d say “social media”, but honestly I use Facebook twice a year at most anyway, and Tumblr doesn’t have the same negative impact on my mental wellbeing that IG does, so that’s the one that has to be focused on. At the minute, I tend to disappear for a couple of months, return until it well and truly wrecks my head, and then repeat the process. I want to find something that’s a happy medium between the two, so I don’t feel like I’m constantly playing catch-up with the pals of which that’s my main source of communication, but also that I’m not repeatedly having to resort to completely ignoring it for the sake of my brain.

Which ties in neatly with the next part.

No longer posting about novel progress on IG.

This one is a weird gut instinct thing. It’s not that anybody has ever made me wish I hadn’t posted about it – in fact, the people cheering me on over there have been absolute stars, and the beta readers have eased a lot of my fears about it. It’s closer to being done than it ever has been (although it's not exactly within arm’s reach just yet), and I feel like I just need a big ol’ chunk of time where I don’t post about it, don’t talk about it, and where I just keep it to myself and get it finished. It just feels right, and who am I to argue with that?

Plus, I’ve been talking about it for so damn long now that folk are probably sick to the back teeth of hearing about it. If people ask, I’m more than happy to chat about it, but it just won’t be the focus of my posts over there until it’s done.

Making myself do something I enjoy once a month.

I don’t mean this from a standpoint of “read a nice book” or “eat some ice cream”, but like properly making a day of “taking myself on a date” once per month. I hate that phrasing, but it’s the easiest way to explain it. I’m anxious (both socially and in general), and I also go through low bouts, and when they all hit together I find myself only venturing out of the house to do the things I absolutely have to, in terms of errands etc, and it’s just not good. It fosters the sort of agoraphobia I developed as a student because of some stalking incidents (never live in Wembley, folks), although these days when it does crop up here and there it’s less rooted in anxiety and more in depression, and it’s just something I need to keep an eye on. I enjoy writing, and I enjoy hiding away and reading shitloads of books, but I need to remind myself that it’s not the only thing out there.

This will be the most difficult one, but it’ll also be the most rewarding one, I think.

So yes! I’m sorry for the radio silence, and I’m sorry for the false starts, but I haven’t abandoned this thing! Thank you guys for your interest, and for your loveliness. I feel like 27 is going to be a good’un – so I’m going to see to it that it is. Whether it likes it or not.

[yearofradicalselfbelief]

Part Two - 10/09/23

CW: discussions of anxiety and depression.

Days after posting my last post, I was struck down with what I’m 90% sure is the new severe variant of everybody’s favourite virus. I’ve had it twice before – the first time I was a bit tired and a bit warm, and that was it. The second time I was a little bit worse, and it turns out the third time is not the charm because this time I genuinely thought I was going to fucking die. I couldn’t sip water without puking it up, which made it worse because not only could I then not take any painkillers to help with the insane fever, I couldn’t take my mental health meds either. Even once there was nothing in my stomach I was still puking, I ended up being able to stomach one meal in three days, and I lost well over five pounds in five days, through sheer inability to keep food down/how much my body was burning through its stores to try and get rid of this thing.

I’ve never been so sick in my fucking life, my brother was the same, and by day four we were like weary soldiers in the trenches, trading war stories and swapping electrolyte tablets and paracetamol for morale. But it wasn’t all bad – she says now that she’s not spending the bulk of her day hunched over a bin – because in the midst of the fever, when I was feeling too dire to sleep but also too dire to do literally anything but curl up on my bed in silence, I was pretty much at the mercy of wherever my mind took me, without any of the layers of stuff we tend to have when we’re awake and alert that self-edits those streams of consciousness based on shit like ego and what we think we should be thinking.

Full disclosure, though, I’m well aware of how *fake deep* this is about to sound, but it’s what my brain gave me as I floated through it.

I saw myself as being made up of three sort of parts – one of those parts being real, and two being things foisted upon me, that I carried around, but weren’t real. The first part, the outermost part, was this sort of anxious, shrinking meek little dormouse that wanted nothing less than to be noticed in any way, shape, or form. That’s who I default to being in most cases – it’s like a security blanket. The next part is one layer below, but it’s no less disingenuous – and that’s a whole lot of bitterness and defensiveness and cynicism. The depression to the first part’s anxiety.

Then, after that, is actually me. The person who just wants to learn everything she can, and do her best, and live. The person who has to fight through those two layers to manage any of that in the first place. It sounds daft writing it down, but it just was a moment of such clarity, and there was a lot of relief in sort of realising that these first two aspects were things that I’d learned, or had been foisted upon me – either directly, by people who are or once were in my life, or indirectly - adopted in response to shit I’ve been through. It doesn’t make them any easier to put down, but there was a relief in that realisation on its own.

The thing is, I’ve always been anxious, and I’ve always been depressed. When I was a kid, I regularly had fainting spells because of it, including one in the middle of a class, long before I’d even first heard the word “anxiety”, much less being aware that it was a formal diagnosis. It took countless doctor visits and blood tests being done before anybody even thought to turn to the possibility that the cause could be mental, and not physical. Even as far as the depression was concerned, by the time I was ten, it wasn’t uncommon for one of my parents to find me lying on my bed, in silence, in the dark, and when they asked me what I was doing I’d simply say that I felt fed up, because I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe something that I should have been much too young to feel.

It's not like they’re new things that I suddenly find myself having to get over. It’s not as if they’re new hurdles. I just don’t remember a time when they didn’t actively stop me from doing things as much as they seem to do now. I don’t remember always being this sort of shy, shrinking, nervous little thing that I suddenly feel like I am now, and I’m not okay with being that person any longer. It’s not me, and I know it’s not me, but it’s a mask I can never quite manage to drop when it automatically slots itself into place, and it’s fucking unbearable.

I’ve always been scared, and I always joke about how many years anxiety has probably taken off of my life at this point, but I used to be so, so much better at acting in spite of that. Even before I finally found a doctor who listened to me and medicated me. Now it feels like I never do act in spite of it, at least not to the extent I’d like to, and it gets the better of me more than I’d like. And then I’m harsher on myself than I once was over that fact.

To an extent, it is understandable. A hell of a lot of shit has happened to me between now and then, and if anything, the way it’s gotten worse is natural. I think few people could’ve gone through what I’ve gone through and handled it as well as I have, even if I’m critical of how well I have handled it based on some pretty unrealistic expectations of myself. But I feel like the more I let it get the better of me, the more I allow it to control me, the more I concede victory to every asshole who contributed to its worsening over the last eight years.

The funny part is, too, I can honestly say that I’m happy all of it happened. Not in a “woo, let’s throw a party about it” way – but in that I’m in a place where I can say I learned from all of it, I can see why it had to happened, and I wouldn’t want to part from a single lesson I learned from it all. It also ended up with me in a much healthier situation than I was once in, in a city that is far better for me than my old one. It could not have worked out better, now that I’m on the other side of it, as far as external factors are concerned.

It's just the internal ones that need addressing. When I moved here, I started exhibiting signs of C-PTSD – which, again, is unsurprising. My last therapist dead ass said to me “you’ve spent your whole life being shoved from trauma to trauma”, and she told me that before she broke the news to me that the one parent I had left in my life was abusive as fuck, and the only reason I hadn’t seen it yet was because the other had been so much more obvious about it that they made the one still around look like a saint in comparison – whereas they were actually more insidious. The homelessness then followed about a year later. So I think I more than fucking earned those symptoms. And I let myself have a year to just breathe and recover and exist without harassing myself to do better and be better and find better. But now I feel like I’ve finally woken up, and it’s time to start moving forward, and finding a way of doing that isn’t as simple as clicking my fingers and letting all of the mental shit vanish.

A goal without a plan is just a dream. I think that’s how the saying goes. I’ve seen it plastered around Instagram enough times, I should probably know for sure by now. Or at least not be too lazy to google it and find out – but I don’t want to mess up my algorithm with that. Next thing you know, the search engine will be recommending Live, Laugh, Love pillows to me. There’s no coming back from that sort of thing.

Anyway, my original point stands. It’s all well and good for me to make a fancy new side blog and decide things are going to magically be different, but sheer force of willpower without actually changing anything won’t do much good, and this little resolution will fizzle out into one of those typical ‘it’s 2am and I’m going to revamp my entire life’ moments.

So I need to decide how I’m going to do that, and next time I post it'll be with the game-plan that I'm working on. I need to decide how I’m going to actually start fucking rooting for myself and believing in myself again. And it’s not going to be easy.

But I deserve it, and it’s going to be worth it.

[yearofradicalselfbelief]

Part One - 19/08/23 - the purpose of this blog.

CW: mentions of suicidal ideation (from the past). No gory details, though. Be safe, don't read if it's going to trigger you 💜

Six years ago, I was suicidal. Sometimes depression means actively wanting to die, and sometimes it means just not particularly wanting to be alive, and back then mine got so bad that I toppled strongly, face-first, into the former category. It had been a chronic sort of “thing” for years before that – since my pre-teen years, really – but a combination of lots of concurrent outside events, and an inability to find a doctor who’d listen to me (and therefore medicate me) really sent me spiralling while I was at university, and it culminated in that, by the time I hit my third year. By then, I was leaving my bed only to go to class – on the days I wasn’t too anxious to attend class – I was only writing if not writing would eventually mean answering to an angry course leader, and when I wasn’t forcing myself to sleep until I physically could not sleep any longer (my personal best was a stretch that surpassed twenty-four hours, and I ended up entirely nocturnal at one point, which uh…probably didn’t help), I was wishing I was asleep.

Looking back on it now, none of it actually seems real. It doesn’t seem like a memory, but rather a very, very bad dream. I couldn’t bear being awake, I couldn’t bear being alive, and so I had a plan, and I had a deadline (for lack of less apt phrasing) by which I needed to carry out said plan, and I had the tools I needed for it. All I lacked was the courage. Now that I’m no longer in that headspace, I can absolutely see that courage was not the right word for what I lacked at the time, but it was what I called it back then, as I spent countless days curled up on my bed, staring at the wall in silence, both willing myself to move and forcing myself to stay absolutely still because I was afraid of what I might do if I did eventually find that will to move. It was that grappling, as well as sheer religious faith that my gods were indeed with me, that stopped me from doing something very, very stupid.

As far as the details of that deadline are concerned, I’m not going to get into them because it doesn’t really matter…and I don’t want to offer up any inspiration for people who might currently be struggling with what I grappled with back then. But the deadline approached, the “courage” did not, and I quickly began to realise that I was at a sort of crossroads. Either I’d do it, and…well, no “and”. That was sort of the point, wasn’t it?

Or I wouldn’t do it. That was the only alternative, and as my window of opportunity was beginning to shut, I was having to seriously grapple with the fact that it was really beginning to look like I wouldn’t do it. However deeply and endlessly thankful I am for that fact now, back then it filled me with dread and foreboding. Because not doing it would mean more of the dreaded “this”, and “this” was unbearable. “This” being the way my life was back then. So the only real alternative (other than the one I was failing to work up the “nerve” to turn to when it really came down to it) was to change “this”.

That was when I made a deal with myself – and the making of this deal is the only part of these memories that feels real to me now. The deal was pretty simple. With one of my two “options” there was no half-assing it, and there was no going back afterwards. On a very literal, physically possible level. When you check out, there’s no checking back in. So why did the other option have to be any different? Why did that have to be a half-assed sort of weary existence until some outside force put my out of my misery for me?

No. When I scraped together every little shred of hope that I could muster, I told myself this. That if I chose life (insert Trainspotting montage here), I’d have to really choose life. I’d have to go for what I wanted, all or nothing, and really fucking go for it, because if I was going to throw my hands up and do this thing – and live – I’d have to give it my fucking all, because that was all I was going to accept from myself if I was going to insist on sticking around.

The deadline came and went, and I was still around, so I had to make peace with the deal I’d taken.

And this isn’t a Disney movie, right? The depression didn’t disappear. It was never quite as bad as it got in the run-up to the “deadline”, but it was still bad. As a stroke of luck, a couple of months later I finally got a doctor who would actually listen to me, got me medicated the first day I stepped into her office, and set up weekly follow-up appointments so she could keep an eye on me and be a lifeline while I was on a waiting list for proper mental health services. I also ended up living with my brother full-time (as opposed to between uni semesters, as before) which was a godsend because he's my best friend, and he's been through almost everything I have, as far as family is concerned anyway, so there's an inherent understanding there that I can rarely find with others.

The meds got me sleeping properly again (because after graduation I shifted from sleeping constantly, to sleeping two nights a week maximum – in six hours per night – the rest all coming from fitful naps), and they got me to a place where I could begin doing the work that would help the rest fall into place. Therapy, writing again (writing daily, no less, by the time I’d been on the meds for a year or two), seeing friends, taking joy in things. They also helped me build up the strength that I’d need to face what was still on the way – because between then and now, I had to face untangling myself from an abusive living situation, cutting off family members who I’d once been very close to once I saw (at the behest of a therapist) how their treatment of me had played a very big role in the state I’d ended up in, and then the homelessness that all of that spawned.

Getting better basically coincided with spending a good few consecutive years entirely in survival mode. I kept myself together as best I could, ended up obsessed with constant writing and working out as a way to distract myself from everything else happening on the outside, and I was pretty deservedly proud of myself for my much healthier coping mechanisms than the ones I’d used to get through uni.

When I look at where I was then, and who I was then, compared to now, I’m very proud of what I’ve achieved. My mental health is still very wobbly, but it’s not what it was back then – which was un-fucking-survivable – and now I’m writing again (back then it was a major win if I wrote once a week), in fact I’m writing more than ever. I have a novel in the beta reader stage. I’m exercising weekly now, which I never did back then. I’m happy to be alive now, which is something I never thought I’d be able to say back then.

But I’m still not where I want to be. I mentioned that I’ve just spent a few years living in survival mode – right up until I ended my bout of homelessness and sofa surfing by moving cities (and countries) to come and live with family instead. The thing about survival mode is, though, when you’ve lived like that for so long – longer than I even originally realised – it doesn’t just “turn off”. For months and months after I moved and life settled down, I had to grapple with symptoms of C-PTSD that still crop up every now and then, because my brain doesn’t know how to adjust to quiet and relative peace now.

It took some work to get through that – and honestly I don’t yet know if I am fully through it, it comes and goes – but now, for now, things are quieter, and I’m left at sore risk of growing stagnant now that I’ve let myself have a well-deserved bit of peace and quiet. I’m at risk of forgetting the deal I made with myself.

I’m so used to just surviving, and to being on edge, and to doing all of that against a back-drop of near permanent, crippling self-doubt, that I’ve forgotten how to actually live my life. At present, my life revolves around getting my novel finished and sent to agents, but I’m not even managing that because of that crippling self-doubt that was just a sort of background problem while I dealt with a lot of far more pressing things.

I wouldn’t change anything I’ve been through. Any of it. At all. I learned a lot of lessons from it, but I also now need to accept that I’m not going through any of it anymore. And I need to start building what comes next, because this period of peace that I’ve carved out for myself now is hardly going to last forever. And I keep remembering that damn deal, as I sit back and I let anxiety slow down my novel writing progress to a glacial pace. I know I’m a good writer, but with the novel in particular, every sentence I write is hounded by a constant stream of “this is never going to get published, no publisher will want this”, and given that having books on shelves in shops is my one and only life dream, it’s just no fun to sit and tell myself.

So, this week, I’ve been asking myself what if I just gave myself a year – just one single year – of radical self-belief? What if, for the next year, I approached all of my goals like I couldn’t possibly fail them? What if I just gave myself a fucking chance? A chance I owe to myself from six years ago, who resolved to give my present self a fighting chance at doing this thing?

That’s what I want to do. From now, until September 2024, I want to behave as though I can’t lose. Because that’s the only way I’m going to win. I want to stop fear from tainting every single damn thing I do. And the fear, and the anxiety, and the depression, they’ll still be there. But they don’t have to dictate. They don’t have to paralyse. I’m not saying I think I’ll have achieved all of my life’s dreams 12 months from now, but I am saying I’ll have done far more to get there than I will if I keep allowing the fear to dictate what I do and don’t do. I need a reset. I need to shake off the last few years.

Most of all, I need to keep myself accountable. Because it’s all well and good to vow this sort of thing to yourself, but eventually you forget about it, you get tired, and you default to old ways. I no longer have my WordPress blog up (and honestly I don’t need all of the snoopers from IRL from my WordPress blog to be reading this anyway, because this is far more personal than I’d be willing to get on there), so that’s what I’m doing here. Holding myself accountable, and resolving to do this fucking thing. All of it. Because I deserve it.

I’m not sure if anybody is going to end up reading this – I’m very aware that this first post is a fucking drag in terms of content matter, but I’m still going to be here posting anyway, mostly for myself, and if it ends up helping or entertaining anybody along the way, that’s just a nice rosy bonus. I’ve missed creative non-fiction writing, but my WordPress blog was consistently stalked and hounded by some people from my past that I quite frankly do not want as an audience, or to even be reminded of, so this is my way of reclaiming that for myself, too. 💜