HappyComeLucky

Sometimes being too tight isn’t best. I’m not talking about for physical penetration. I’m talking about emotional penetration. I am too tight. It is so frustrating because I am open and welcoming and always giving. My whole soul is nurtured by my relationships with others and how I nurture them. I think that is me. I think that although it is exhausting, I am not ok without those links to others and the opportunity to nurture.

So, why am I saying that I am too tight? The last few weeks have shown me that I am. I have a very demanding job. I thrive in it because of the difference it makes. I am very lucky that I can organise my life around being available for my children for the summer. I live for those weeks. The time together. The opportunities for being together. The chances to share who we are. The long weeks of exhaustion from work and trying to balance survival and nurturing each other. I expect a lot of the summer and I need it to recharge.

The last couple of summers have been very difficult. Two years since my eldest had a breakdown and was suicidal. The recovery is slow and long and there are what they call, low risk suicidal thoughts still as a constant. Two years of vigilance, nurture and trying to allow eldest to thrive. Two years since I started my Master’s degree which added too much to my 50+ hour weeks at work and meant that I lost every chance to relax to catching up and deadlines and trying to scrape by without damaging the family. Nearly two years since my father’s collapse and the four weeks from that until he died holding my hand. One year since the stress of the course, and everything else got so bad that, even though I was off work for the summer, I had panic attacks that got so bad that I feared for my life.

As I am writing this, I am realising that these are only the headlines. There is so much more. The deaths of friends and my younger cousin. Weird family stuff with extended family, Health problems. Pain. Redundancy threats, new job, new job politics. So much going on. When I collate it all together, it’s not really surprising that I have forgotten how to relax. I have such a need to make a safe place, especially for my eldest that I can’t wind down the vigilance dial. That makes it hard when my eldest is out, hundreds of miles away, pushing themself to and beyond their limits and I am still their safety net.

The thing is, I can do this but only by becoming a bit of an armadillo. I keep it all under control by tightening everything up – a bit like tightening all your guy lines if you are camping. I am the most easy going control freak you’ll meet. I hide it well, but I get by through tightening and tightening all of those internal psychological guy lines. I’m very tightly strung right now.

Theoretically this would all be fine because it gives me the resilience to get through. The trouble is, it makes me too tight to be flexible. The opportunities that I could be taking to relax into the wonder of having my man around aren’t as great as they should be. I’m too tight, too busy because it keeps me ok. I’m too much in control to sit back, relax and let my mind wander. I am not a control freak in putting everything away in exactly the right space. I am a control freak in keeping my mind on the safe track and walking the well worn routes of my home helps that.

All of this means that I am not relaxing – hopefully that may happen next week.In the meantime, I feel that I need to apologise to my man. He deserves someone who can prioritise him and someone who can switch off enough from the other things to lavish the attention that he needs. Right now, I do not know why he stays around but he does and I love him. I am very glad that he is but \I am very aware that he does not get the best deal out of me – the trouble is, I am me. If I try to be otherwise and don’t do the things that I need to to stabilise me, there will not be a me, too tight or not.