I really struggled with the idea of writing this blog post. When I first started writing this blog I claimed that it was going to be ‘real’, which to some extent it is. However, it’s still only the side of myself and my life that I choose to project. I like to focus on the funny, entertaining side of life as essentially that is who I am and also I feel like this is the side of me that people want to see. No one wants to hear someone moan about how things aren’t going right in their life and how they are feeling low. There’s always that one person who is so negative and draining that they suck the life and soul right out of you by sometimes just being in the room, ain’t no one got time for that! But yet at points, everyone feels like a steaming pile of shit so why not feel like we can talk about it? In a recent post on the Facebook page, I mentioned a cocktail evening I attended in Ponsonby (mostly full of pretentious wank-stains). At one point in the evening I met a professional blogger and got chatting about her blog. One thing she said struck a chord with me, she wrote a post about a really low period she’d had in her life recently and was pretty brutally honest about it. She said she felt stupid and a bit guilty about it because there was nothing wrong with her life and people had far bigger problems but yet she couldn’t shake herself out of this crushing low. She also said she’d never had a bigger response to any of her posts (and unlike my lazy ass, she had posted once a day for the last year). All of a sudden all of these people were coming out of the woodwork admitting they could empathise with this and had been through similar experiences.

(Fuck, now you probably think I’m writing this as a tactic to get my readership up, totes not true by the way, haha)!

Anyway, interestingly I bumped into a girl I went to school with a few months ago who I was friends with on Facebook, one of the first things she said to me was ‘OMG you have the most perfect life’. I’m all like: ‘HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA………..AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…oh wait you’re serious?!’ A fair chunk of the last two years of my life has felt like a giant cluster fuck (actually I’d imagine not quite as good as a giant cluster fuck, lol). I made the difficult decision to pack up and leave the life I’d built for myself over 10 years in London and move back to little old New Zealand with my fiancé to start all over again. A decision I questioned every single day for a year until we actually left, I was terrified and completely consumed with the fear of what if I hate it, what if it’s suffocating, what if I can’t find a job, what if my relationship doesn’t survive etc etc. Turns out I got back, found an awesome job within 3 weeks and loved being home in my beautiful country with family and friends. Unfortunately my relationship didn’t survive because of many reasons which was devastating at the time but funnily enough, going through it wasn’t quite as awful as my perception of how it would be. So, mostly I’d spent a year worrying for no reason at all. Ace.

The hardest thing for me after the breakup was redefining who I thought I was. I’d gone from being on the verge of marriage, buying a house and potentially children to being 33 and COMPLETELY SINGLE AND CHILDLESS! This was frankly horrifying for me and all I could see in front of me was a life of spinsterdom (is that a word?) and many many cats. Turns out I didn’t know horrifying until I launched myself back into the world of dating. Tinder. A veritable minefield of creeps, borderline personality disorders and baggage that could fill the entire world’s fleet of Boeing aircraft. Epic, epic proportions of fucktards. (Btw, stay tuned for our next post which will delve more into the blood-chilling nightmare that is dating). Don’t get me wrong, I had quite a good hit rate however none were quite right for me. Every time I met someone I’d think ‘ok, this is good, maybe this could be the one’ and every time it wasn’t and I had to pick myself up from the crushing disappointment of it not meeting my expectations. Therein lies the exact problem. My expectations. Instead of just going with the flow and actually living in the present, I was projecting everything into the future – this future of matrimony, happy, smiling, doting children, a house with a fucking picket fence and a dog called Rufus (or whatever the hell people call dogs these days). Eventually I took a step back and realised I was in danger of coming across as a Stage 5 clinger and that yes, I want these things but the reality is probably not as rosy as I imagine and also if I really stripped everything back, the only reason I am putting so much pressure on myself to do these things right now is because of what other people think. Like people are going to point at me on the street and laugh like Nelson from the Simpsons ‘HA HA, loser’. What the actual fuck?! How ridiculous is that. I’m trying to shape my life, MY LIFE based on what I think other people think is socially acceptable (you may have to read that last sentence a couple of times for it to make sense, soz). When in reality the people who care about me don’t think that because they care about me and the people who don’t know me don’t think that because…well they don’t know me and couldn’t give less of a shit in all likelihood.

So anyway, I ditched the pressure I was putting on myself and started doing stuff I enjoyed, writing this blog, getting really stuck in to my work which I love, making new friends and making loads of time for old ones, actually exercising (I know, I can’t believe it either) and if I felt like it, locking myself away in front of Netflix with a pizza and a family-sized tub of ice-cream. I’ll tell you what, I have never felt so awesome in my entire life. Because I was totally myself and everything I was doing was authentic (sorry to use that word, I feel like it’s a wellness buzzword and a bit twatty but it gets the point across, lol). Lately I feel like there has been a lot of change that I can’t control which has triggered me going back into that world of fear and pressure so have been feeling pretty heinous again. But I know I’ll bounce back quicker because I know how to find that good place again. In fact I think all the change has come as a test to challenge my ability to let go and trust that whatever is to come is exactly what I need in my life. Tapping into that ability to surrender and not try to control everything around you is the most freeing, empowering (ugh another buzzword sorry) feeling that I’ve experienced. It just happens to be a really c*nty thing to do because it’s hard and the natural nervous system response to instability and fear is defence, which narrows your focus so much that you can’t see opportunities, excitement and amazingness which may lay ahead.

Aaaaaanyway. I have a lot more to say on this but that’s enough for now. In summary right at this moment, I feel like a bag of dried up old assholes and want to take an ice pick to my brain but tomorrow I’m sure I’ll feel marginally better and the next day marginally better than that. And if not there is always alcohol.

Nic xx

Comments

comments