Since 2012 I had been trying to learn how to define myself – why? Because I had such a suppressed, isolated and abused life before that time that I had never developed my true personality, likes and dislikes etc; because I was never allowed to be nurtured as an individual. I was literally born to become a facsimile of my mother’s dreams and wishes and because her dreams and wishes went against a lot of my own instinctive nature, both of us were very unhappy with the result and neither of us got exactly what we wanted from my existence.
Where it was my nature to sit quietly, drawing, cutting & pasting, playing Barbie dolls and watching cartoons, it was my mother’s nature to force me to listen to pop music, watch top of the pops, worry about fashion, gossip and EastEnders and to try and teach me to give certain people Hell on Earth.
When I was bullied by other children, it was my nature to ignore them, but confide in my mother and hope that she would try and help to advise me or complain to the parents or head teacher on the rare occasions I went to school; but instead she responded with the concept that I had to play dirty and hit them back or I was considered weak and therefore would only get bullied continuously. There was a situation with my mother’s close friend, where her two children bullied me and pushed me off my own swing in my own back garden, I ran indoors crying and both my mother and their mother dragged me outside with a broom and told me to hit those kids as hard as I could or else I would get it instead.
Looking back I still can’t believe how both my mother, her friend and her children would sit back and laugh in recollection of that day, especially as I chose not to hit the kids with the broom and instead scarper upstairs as fast as I could and bolted my bedroom door up with my bed to stop any punishment of my supposed cowardice. I stayed in my bedroom for the rest of the day, because I knew once my dad came home my mum couldn’t continue her plans, as dad had a sweet nature and wouldn’t allow it. A trick I had learned to use for most of my life – hide till dad gets home.
I had to learn to be partly how she wanted me to be, as long as it didn’t go against my personal morals within reason. I am glad to say, I have a higher standard of morals than she does.
The amount of times she had tried to train me to be violent, it had worked in some cases, but in others it only taught me how to literally close my emotions off at dangerous situations. I easily phase out when there is a dangerous violent person around me ranting and raving and throwing things around, I go blank, close down, and become almost robotic. It is something I have been told I need to alert the doctor about, but I won’t because I feel that they might try to think it would be helpful to keep me switched on. A lot of people state that switching myself off emotionally during these times can be very dangerous, a sign that I could become a dangerous person, but I am by my very nature, quite passive unless provoked too much!
I just want a quiet life where I am loved, that’s all. I want happy people who dislike drama and just want to get on in life, not bored, arrogant people who thrive on bullying and drama. That’s not for me. I don’t want that kind of attention. I just want love, peace, getting on with my art, games, gardening and pets. That’s all. Boring I guess to a lot of people, but I would be very happy.
I am learning that a lot of things I thought I loved when I lived with my mother are actually things I was taught to love because she liked them. Since moving away, on every context of my life, I am unrecognisable. I don’t hold myself the same way anymore and I certainly don’t have the same voice anymore, strange I know, but even my voice has changed a lot!
There are a few things I wanted to be, do and have, when I lived with my mother, that I still want to be, do or have now; but not much of it.
I still want to be a writer that gets her books published, but I understand that for now, it is best not to get published before Autumn of 2022, for certain personal reasons.
I still regard myself as bisexual, something that I have never been open about to any member of my blood family, due to stigma, my mother has a problem with gay people – she wouldn’t hurt them, but she is ridiculously avoidant of them and I have heard the kinds of things she says behind their backs! The rest of the family are kind of open to homosexuality, but they are very Catholic too, so it is a stiff subject to rise with them. Some of those family members will now most definitely know, because I know they read this blog.
Despite being sick, I have always wanted a homestead or a smallholding. But I have to be realistic with what I can physically do, but I am trying hard to find a way in keeping to this dream, but working around the disabilities too. I don’t have a big enough property yet, to do it, but I am researching a lot about chickens and food forest permaculture style gardening and that sort of thing.
I used to regard almost shamefully how much of a gamer I am, but these days I am starting to feel a part of a proud community of gamer nerds. It is becoming cool to be a gamer nerd these days and it is a huge boost to my confidence about admitting to people my love for PC games in particular.
I also used to feel slightly ashamed at being a reader, because in my mother’s side of the family in particular, to be a reader, was regarded as weird as you admitting that you are a lifestyle Klingon who actively understands the whole of the Klingon dictionary! Actually I know some Klingon words, an ex-online long-distance boyfriend of mine was a lifestyle Klingon who moved to USA and became pretty famous for it… so there you go!
I have always wanted to be a larper too, which is something that Paul has always wanted to be too, so we might do that together someday.
But there is a whole host of other stuff I never knew I liked before recently. Really strange things that are even starting to raise Paul’s eyebrows in confusion as to…. Why is this interesting? But I honestly can say, I don’t know why I am finding life of bacteria, soil health and microbiology so fascinating lately; as well as the entire lifecycle and habits of bees. I also read a lot of books on cosmology and physics and this is puzzling to Paul because I can’t do math, don’t understand any of the maths involved in all of this and therefore only understand the non-mathematical parts of the stuff I am learning. I have dyscalculia, it is dyslexia for math, and it has been confirmed professionally by the OU.
I have been thinking about joining SkillShare to see if there are videos that would help someone like me learn math to as high as I possibly can despite this problem. But I won’t be able to afford that for a while, until the debts have been bought down a bit.
I don’t know why I want to learn math, especially as I don’t really plan to do anything with it, other than learn stuff I don’t really need to learn because I won’t have a career in microbiology any time soon. But it is fun stuff the bits I do understand.
I am very geeky, I admit it. But there you go.
Another thing my family will not recognise is my eating habits. I don’t eat like how I used to because of medical reasons. I can’t eat lactose (dairy) at all unless it is vegan, because my stomach can process it anymore. I shouldn’t eat gluten (wheat) because it irritates my skin and asthma, but I do slip that in more than I should and I should avoid eating more than 2 eggs a week. Because all of this can aggravate my problems; my main diet looks like this – 70% vegetables and the rest meat or fruit. I have less than half a plate of my usual dinner size meal per day, for the whole day. This is regarding what my mother would expect. When I lived with my mother it was normal to consume 4500 calories per day – since cutting out a lot of the allergen foods and because of my illness, I can barely manage 1500 calories most days. I am on high doses of most vitamins and minerals because I can’t process a lot of them.
My mother would think I am starving to death if she saw me eating 1 chicken fillet with a Mediterranean style salad and 2 roast potato halves, which is my usual meal and often only meal of the day. Because I just can’t physically cope with more than that anymore. Weirdly, I am just not losing weight, but I am losing inches.
Funnily enough doctors aren’t too worried about this because according to blood tests, my iron is the best levels they’ve ever been my whole life, lately! I used to have constant anaemia when I lived with my mother and even was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease called pernicious anaemia too. I have problems with B vitamins or something, which is now worse because of the lack of gluten in my diet, bread is rich in vitamin B, but I can’t have normal bread.
The new me is becoming very different to how I imagined I would be. A lot of the things I thought were my deepest desires are now considered things I no longer want. I wanted a large family, but because the cosmos has contrived to make my family as tiny as possible I have gave up fighting for it and no longer want any more children. I never wanted to live in a rural area, I always wanted to be a suburban homesteader, but now I want to be as rural as I can get, whilst maintaining at least an hours journey from a major British city, London or Manchester.
I never wanted to become vegan, but I have to say, that my body is doing better with a plant based diet than not – though I am not giving up meat anytime soon, just yet. But I am surprised that my diet is literally 75% plants, whereas before, it was around 20%
I am having a problem with sugar lately and I am finding candies less enjoyable than berries and vegan vanilla ice-cream.
All these are in my opinion are major changes.
I had very little respect for certain types of art and music and now I love them and will even fight for them.
I am becoming so very, very different; it is both exciting and scary!
I am shocked at who I am becoming.
Thank you for reading.
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