Approximate reading time: 7 minutes

It has been a pretty great week😊

Lots to report.

Where to begin, where to begin.

Mmmm….

It needs to be said that I have been ever so proud of myself this last week, for a couple of varied reasons.

You are not going to believe this, but I, Gayle Hill, who is completely IT illiterate wrote computer code

and it actually WORKED!

I was chatting to Teresa, my super lovely new flatmate, who has started reading my blog and I was asking her for some feedback on it.

(I love feedback!)

She mentioned that it was quite difficult to follow the storyline consistently because there was no way to see the dates of my posts unless you were on a specific post.

She made a valid point.

This is something I have thought about in the past but never had the forethought to actually try and fix it.

I felt inspired to give it a go.

 I contemplated reaching out to my “Blog fairy” to ask her for help. But seeing as she always helps me for free, out of the goodness of her lovely heart, I decided to save my next reach out to her for an out-and-out emergency.

So I did a little research on youtube and found a video showing me how to do it.

I will be the first to admit I held out little hope that I would be successful.

And yet, walaaaaaaa it worked!

I feel it important that I show you the code that I wrote …..

(Mmm well technically that would be the code that I just copied!

But let’s not nitpick over the finer details)

Are you ready?

That’s it!

I now have a page that lists all my posts from beginning to end, in chronological order.

It’s a fucking miracle I tell you.

Aren’t computers amazing!

PS I just remembered that I had a dream where another ‘me’ was telling me that I swear too much and I really should try and stop it.

(Fuck it, even in my sleep my inner critic can’t stop bossing me around)

I told her I’d think about it.

When Richard left two weeks ago he abandoned a shit load of delicacies

in the fridge and freezer.

As you have, no doubt, already deduced my relationship with food has never been the greatest.

(Myself and a large proportion of the general public I would imagine)

The only way I make sure

I don’t eat things I shouldn’t

is

I don’t buy things I shouldn’t.

Of course, I still have binge days where I crawl out of the house to buy as much sugar as I can…..but then it’s finished and I start again. The idea of having anything sweet in the fridge and then rationing it over the whole week is absolutely ludicrous to me.

(Nancy, I have no idea what the hell you are talking about)

eg Richard had a chocolate tiramisu on his fridge shelf for almost TWO weeks!

It was torture!

How do people do that?

I had a boyfriend years ago who used to get highly annoyed at my inability to ration.

He would buy a slab of chocolate and attempt to ‘train’ me into having 4 measly pieces a night.

I mean seriously?

Why?

WHY?

(Needless to say, we didn’t last very long!)

I am untrainable

I would like it notarized that when Richard moved in, I had been on the carnivore diet for just under two years and I was ALMOST at my ideal weight.

Richard came into this house bringing with him a bread maker, pasta, ice cream and ALCOHOL!

As wonderful as all this communal eating has been for my soul,

my waistline has not approved.

(Although he did inspire me to start eating vegetables again!)

Needless to say, as much as I miss him I am grateful, that I will have a slight respite from all the evils that have slowly infiltrated into this house.

But before the respite could start, I needed to eradicate them all first.

(Much to Keida’s horror of course)

My goal is

(and has been for the last 20 years or so )

to get my 20-something figure back.

Deep in the back of my mind, I do realise that this is unrealistic and highly unattainable, especially when you are someone who deeply despises physical exercise as much as I do.

(In my defence I do an online Yoga and an online Pilates class once a week…..and I walk a shit load with all the dogsitting jobs…..but that’s about it.)

A logical

(mature)

part of me has accepted that

• I am not a fan of hard-core exercise
• that my life is definitely too short for treadmills
• and that my goal weight is most probably never going to materialise.

And I am generally okay with that, except for this small stuck part in my brain that still dreams of perfection.

Neurotic Angel does a good job of reminding me, regularly, that even in my 20’s I wasnt content with my figure!

(She speaks the truth)

It seems to me that for the last 25 years or so I have found myself consistently pondering the same question

When I was younger, I used to beat myself up quite a bit because I didn’t have the stamina or mental strength to be one of those super healthy, super motivated people who don’t have an inch of fat on them and will quite easily say ‘no thank you’ to Richards amazing roast potatoes or that huge slice of banoffee pie.

Alas, I am NOT that girl.

I take solace in the fact that as I have got older I have begun to realise that we all have our vices and I have met quite a few very healthy and super-disciplined people

whose vice is simply to be

very healthy and super-disciplined.

(Why did I never realise this before now?)

I met one such person a couple of weeks ago.

Diane was a lovely, friendly, chatty woman who spends a huge proportion of her life running long-distance, endurance marathons. 

Her longest one was 5 days of running.

5 DAYS!!

I was duly impressed and found myself slipping into that Oh too familiar self-dialogue that went something along the lines of

“Dam- why-can’t-you-be-more-like-that?”

As we sat chatting I got curious and started to dig a little bit into her personal life….

(I am nosey

I love finding out what makes people tick)

Diane admitted to me that running is the only time she ever feels truly alive and connected to the world even though it means taking her away from her family for long periods of time, which she always feels incredibly guilty about. She also admitted that she struggles quite a bit with anxiety and that running was what helped her to maintain it.

I wasn’t surprised to discover that Diane had experienced a severe amount of trauma in her childhood which she nonchalantly dismissed.

(Clearly, it wasn’t something that she allowed herself to dwell on)

I shared a little about what I had learnt about childhood trauma and the long-term havoc it can play with our lives and Diane’s eyes glazed over in that way I am all too familiar with.

What was interesting for me was that rather than feeling irritated

as I have routinely felt in the past

(“Oh my GOD why don’t people WANT to heal?”)

I actually felt a huge amount of compassion for Diane.

Learning about attachment has helped me understand people’s defence mechanisms a lot more. How we all find different strategies for coping with what life has thrown at us.

Work, cigarettes, alcohol, food, porn, Netflix, religion, social media, family, exercise….needless to say, the list is endless!

(There is a whole world of distraction and numbing agents out there)

I was reminded that for so many people who have experienced childhood trauma, the only way they have managed to survive is by hooking into their vices and attempting to outrun all their negative feelings and pain.

I realised that Diane was literally running for her life.

And who could blame her…

Inevitably many of us reach a point in our lives where something happens, that is so painful that our vices or coping strategies no longer work and we are forced to deal with the difficult, buried feelings we have been trying to distract ourselves from our entire life.

It could be a death, losing a job, the end of a relationship or heaven forbid an illness.

Granted there are certain types of people who were so deeply wounded as children that the chances of them ever coming face to face with their own pain and vulnerability is pretty minimal. Instead, these people who have high traits of narcissism spend their entire lives deflecting their own pain onto others and taking very little accountability for their own healing.

You only have to go onto to YouTube to see how many people have created an entire career out of ripping other people’s life choices to shreds.

And we call it entertainment!

(I should know I still watch them)

It’s weird how as I sat chatting to Diane, that day, something cemented in my brain. It dawned on me

how I have spent so many years idolizing those ‘healthy types‘ who seem to have that part of life’s equation all sorted out.

How I had hyper-valued their drive, their perseverance and stamina and put them on a pedastal…

I mean surely that’s what we should all be like?

It seems like the most logical thing in the world to understand now

but it wasnt until that moment in time that I actually got it:

As I sat there I found myself strangely infused with an emotion that hasn’t always come naturally to me….but seems to be showing up consistently more and more these days.

Instead of continuing to berate myself for

all that I am not,

I found myself thinking about

all that I am.

I might not have spent the last 20-odd years cultivating a body to die for

but I have spent a huge proportion of that time trying to find ways to

understand, heal and love myself more.

I might not have the athletic prowess that will win me medals and accolades

….but

I know how to access and feel joy…..

every single day in so many different little ways.

I decided then and there, that that was enough for me.

I also made a promise to myself that I would hold onto those thoughts

the next time Neurotic Angel starts her shit with me:-)

‘Cause she is fucking relentless sometimes.

(Shit sorry, I forgot, NO swearing!)