Things I wish …

How many times do you walk away from something and think damn I should have said x or done y. I tend to do this a lot! I replay conversations, situations over and over and over in my head. Especially when things haven’t necessarily turned out well. I will try to work out ways in which I could have done or said things differently.

Over my life there have been so many times when I wish for one more moment or the ability to say one more thing, one more time. Some of these would be:

Saying I love you – I have said goodbye to people I love in a very flippant way only for it to be the very last time I said goodbye. I wish I had moments in time again to be able to say goodbye properly to wrap my arms around them to tell them I love them with all my soul and that I always will. I am not sure though, if I had those moments again I would feel any different today, we always want one more moment, one more kiss, one more hug, one more I love you. I try now to always make sure that I always say thank you, hug that little bit longer and say I love you because we just never know what comes next.

Asking for help – too many times I will push on through a project, my emotions, you name it I am just generally very bad at asking for help. I think that in part this is because I am just stubborn and somehow I have managed to convince myself that asking for help is a sign of weakness. I could be stuck on one side of a cliff and all my loved ones on the other side with a rope to get me across but instead of asking for help I will suffer in silence and get to them eventually and I will have done a really good job of hiding the fact that I was stuck on the other side to them that they won’t even know to offer the rope.

A snappy comeback – you know like when someone is annoying you or maybe even worse, that ability to know the right thing to say to essentially put them in their place and let them know to back off. Some people have a great knack for this but rarely is that me.

Owning my story – I am working on this but quite possibly if I had owned my story a lot sooner then I wouldn’t have ended up under so much rubble and then had such a long way to dig myself out. Part of my story is that when things are too much for me I will turn to shopping and it is always when we can least afford it or that I have in the past created a hole of personal debt to feed this need to feel something. Spending money for me is the same as drinking might be for someone else, I have often gone to great lengths to hide it and I have also betrayed the trust of those around me in doing it. By owning and understanding that it is a part of my story and make up then I and others around me can help me put strategies in place so that things don’t get out of control. For now, I think we have this under control.

 

Being honest – with myself, loved ones and my treating doctors. Understanding those moments in time when things are not really normal. They may appear on the outside to be super productive or part of the cycle in how I get things done. In reality they actually might really be part of something much bigger and far more complicated. Of course no-one can help me with this unless I speak up about it especially when I just accept the highs and lows as part of life. I am starting to recognise that perhaps some of the feels I feel are quite possibly not normal at all, and probably more important than the highs or lows, is that there is never any middle ground for me. There are only the over-productive and crazy highs or the depths of the blackest darkness nothing in the middle. All the while I am trying to smile through these highs and lows so that no-one thinks that I am weak or different or sad.

 

Saying nothing at all – I can be so guilty of this. I don’t want anyone to feel the feels I have or am. I want everyone to be happy, content. Sometimes it is more important to say nothing at all than to say anything and I am not always great at recognising those moments. I know why I am like this it is a deep seated fear that if I can’t make their hurt go away then I am not a good friend. The truth is that like me, they need to feel their feels, they are part of the cycle of life and not feeling them doesn’t make them go away. It just means that when we do feel them they can be so much harder. Equally their feels are not mine to carry all that I can do is be there, hold their hand and help them through. Recognising the moments when to do and say nothing or something is an important lesson to learn.

I am sure there are lots more examples of times when I wish that I could have said or done something differently, but what’s that saying “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

Kit xoxo

Linking up with the beautiful Kirsty at My Home Truths for her #iconfess series and Essentially Jess for #ibot.