#write – Page 3 – Entirely Unlike Tea

Perpetual Motion

I am always in motion. To be honest, I am happiest when I am using my body; gliding through a series of precise movements to get from A (somewhere) to B (nowhere). I revel in change, I thrive off new beginnings in far flung places. Rebuilding my life, my home, my circle of friends once again. I wake before dawn with a longing to fire the synapses and engage my muscles and run. Out the door and down the road, in to the enveloping security blanket of the morning black. Yes, people may think it strange, but if I stop a vice closes over my body and I am trapped, strangled by my own inactivity. My muscles grow tight, shortening fast, as if trying to crush and splinter the bones beneath. I am in the box of my childhood, where a moment in time obliterated my being. Squeezed every drop of life out of me and took away every choice I ever had, and I just had to wait. Wait in the void until I could breathe again, and I could run…..

Why does a child stop eating? A child who is desperately trying to regain some sense of order in her life. A child trying to hang on to any tangled thread of control in her 10 year old hands. That is what makes a child stop eating. A child who wants to become so physically small, that no one can see her. A child who wants to destroy her body, so she can climb back out of her withered chrysalid and be reborn as the butterfly. A butterfly who can rapidly move her wings, and fly away to regain her life, embrace the change and rebuild.

Instead the withered child was placed in a hospital. Thankfully, she was too young to be locked up in the local mental asylum next door, and thrown in a padded room. Instead she was placed in a hospital to be force fed and told not to engage one single muscle. And so I was placed on a months bed rest and that was when I truly died.

I could not run or escape the suffocating darkness that lay on me as I slept. I could not break free in to the sunlight and feel the breeze on my skin. I could not sprint from my fears or my emaciated body. Instead, I was left to wallow on a bed under a exposing strip light; watching my shrunken skin grow yellow and begin to decay. Because there was nothing else, I was left there, incarcerated, straining at the chains to fly away. My choice of movement was once again not my own.

So you wonder why I run, why I want to keep running, why I never want to stop running, because it is my choice, not yours. Why one day I will run 100 miles maybe I’ll run 200, maybe not, but I will run and I will run every day if I want to. Because, It is mine, it moves me away from the forced stillness, the pressure of my nightmares that hold me captive at night. Lost in a dark room, an invisible presence crushing me until all I can see are the veins in my eyelids as I squeeze them so tightly my head hurts. I will let my body move, I will fly out into the light and let the rain lash my face, the wind whip my skin, let the snow settle on my eyelashes and the sun scorch my shoulders. As I run, as I run far, as I run towards life, coping, sometimes winning but vowing to never let movement be taken from me again.

Crash landed and it’s not pretty?!?

Fuck fuck fuck! Today, out of nowhere, after 2 years, I had a full blown panic attack. In my car of all places…

I was alone thankfully, No small children were scarred, by my inability to keep my shit together. My heart was skipping beats and had been for 2 days. It feels like it is getting worse and that dear readers, was the catalyst to send me over the edge. Plummetting like a rag doll, back into that viscous, black abyss of brain crushing, hysterical, blinding panic.

I was sobbing, my face was numb, my heart raced the world was blurry and the white noise was screaming, I was hyperventilating and could not stop it, I just could not stop it, so I instead let it crash over me and hoped I would resurface soon.

Side note – Post meltdown recovery to be conducted as soon as functional, sane brain restarts …

I’m alive. I share, to show this is what myself and 1000s of others deal with and this is my way of making this rational, to remove the fear and look at it in black and white and walk away.

Mental fright makes me write!

I have not written for a very long time. The weird but not so weird thing is, that my articulation peaks when my writing comes from a deep dark place of fear and angst. Maybe, that is why I am attracted and yearn for that place at times, where I am caught up in a whirlwind of mental anguish, when I am desperately crawling my way out, fingernails dirty and ripped from that pitch black hole of anxious panic. As in those times when I am raw, are the moments when I feel most alive, I can grab my humanity and inspect it, all up close and personal. At those times, my insides are worn on my outside and I am truly alive in its purest form. My soul is receptive to every stimulus it encounters, absorbing, processing, feeling. I am me at my most vulnerable and raw.

This last year, I have been happy, so so happy, but in a way I feel has dulled my creativity and expression. Yes, I have been saved by running, yes you can call me dramatic, but the highs of my running and the adrenaline coursing through my veins at the end of a long run or race or ultra marathon, has replaced the high of my anxiety. I have made new friends and I am finally beginning to find a greater number of people who think and feel and strive for what my heart desires. Yet, my ability to create and express has disappeared, It is like my happiness is a shield to my internal, to the darkest depths and to the core of what makes me Kelly, yes, sometimes I miss her. I crave her view on life.

I yearn for the pain on occasion, it is like I need to check my brain still feels and can create moments of a higher awareness, in tune with the energy waves around me, from others in pain, I want them to know I understand, I accept and I want to give them the energy that bubbles under my skin. Often clarity came to me in the moment of a panic attack, it was like the brain crushing fear, brought a moment of purest focus, where the world became 4D / HD and every detail and noise was so clear and bright it hurt. I can still create that when I run, those last 6 miles or a marathon or endurance run and my brain stills, the world gets silent but so sharp and it is just the energy of my muscles pushing faster and faster, my steady rhythmic breath – in and out and nothing hurts, everything is working together in harmony and I feel like this will never end and I don’t want it to and then exertion and pain slam down, muscles screaming, tiredness crashes on to me like a wave and I push through, chanting “I have fucking got this, one foot in front of the other, I have fucking got this, breathe and settle, breathe and settle” and once again the world is clear and my body moves on, it is almost like my feet are floating and I feel nothing but everything, simultaneously. I can not describe how that is the most wonderful feeling in the world.

I write to feel, I write to create my world, I write to share and I write for others. I write so you know it is OK to share, it is OK to be, as life likes to call it “mentally ill” and it is this what makes you the most wonderfully alive human being, open to life, working in harmony with nature and surviving.

It is for you I write and expose my deepest emotions, my crazy thoughts (PS I love crazy) and it is to you I share my humanity.

KJ.

Dreaming of a Sunday ?!?

AHHH my day today.. Sundays, a day of rest and relaxation. Supping coffee in a comfy chair with the sun dappling across the morning papers. Birds chirping in the trees as you do your Sunday meditation and yoga in complete silence. Maybe some lazy Sunday copulating with your significant other and a delicious,home cooked meal with a delightful glass of wine…

UM NO FUCKING WAY …. My day… I was woken up at 6am by a naked toddler, playing with his penis, demanding breakfast and shouting “I am HUNGRRRYYYYY”. coffee, was heated from the day before whilst I shovel my breakfast down to the 7 am whine, ” What do you mean no TV, man that sucks, and I’m so bored, this house is soooo boring”. My reply ” well best you go and find something to do”. While I put on 3 million loads of washing and clean the kitchen, make lunches for tomorrow and clear up the 6.30 am painting session you all decided to indulge in.

Then I have to put on my Sergeant Major hat, to conduct peace talks at least 20 times between a 9 and 6 year old as they repeatedly re enact “The Lord of The Flies”, ” other wise I may be watching “Armageddon” or “Fight Club”

Later I cringe under the back handed “you suck’ comments at our Sunday basketball, because I did not bring the right water bottle and I use all my strength and yoga will power to swallow down the wrath of mama building up inside. Instead I weep the whole way home in the car and march them to bed. As they apologise profusely and are heart broken that they have broken my heart by their inappropriate behaviour and rudeness to myself and our hostess….

Now I sit here with the much needed “that glass of wine” Ahhh at least something rang true to the ideology of the perfect Sunday.

The science of being slightly nuts…

My marathon training has now entered week 6 of 16 weeks – so we have 10 to go before I actually try to run my first 26.2 miles (I did the math just in case you could not 😉)

I think I may have become a little deranged. My long run today is 14 miles. I need to complete this before the sun is high enough to strip the skin off my body or reduce me to a pool of water. My running prep is now thus…..

– wake up 5 am (Jesus it’s dark)

– eat a carefully planned oatmeal, with seeds, honey and banana. Complex carbs, simple sugars and protein (check) – as I may just starve on the way round – eating at 5 means. I have 90 mins to get that sucker down and not vomit at mile 6.

– drink a large, fully loaded coffee, a) to wake me up and b) to evacuate the colon and large intestine – so there will be no Paula Radcliffe’s happening mid run. (Google Paula Radcliffe London Marathon shit)

– as I’ll be running at temperatures between 80F and 95F with humidity – I need to drink 7 oz of water 90 mins before I leave. Hydration is key.

– charge headphones – as banging house tunes may be the only way to get through the last couple of miles. Or “We are the champions”, a la Queen. Please do not judge my over 40 year old tastes?!?

– sunglasses – check

– hat – check

– sunscreen – check

– no blister socks – check

– 4 water bottles filled with electrolyte water – check

– running belt – check

– fancy Brooks sneakers – check

– phone charged – check

– Garmin Fenix 5 charged – bugger I need to do that, hold on, – check

– now time to do stretch’s – I am now 41 I need to do this or I may just seize up and fall over. Not cool.

– energy gels for over mile 10, again I need everything I can to do this shit. – check

– oh and the important part, actually pull on shorts and a running top, I’m not sure the world is really ready for me running naked. 😂

Phew I think that’s it ….. Start running at exactly 6.30 am .

Who said this was simple ?

The cracks of aging….

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what if the beholder is YOU? And you really hate the way you look?

Its common knowledge I had body issues. As a child I was deemed an ugly duckling, but that was probably because I had an emaciated body and a skull for a head as my mind and body was ravaged, then abused by Mrs Anorexia. Well I got over that, but I have always been very critical about the way I look. Yes I am shallow, as shallow as a puddle. you would never drown in my puddle.

When I was younger I always knew I was not ugly, but I was never comfortable in my own skin to truly love myself. So in classic style I used to seek approval about the way I looked. I did not care it could be male or female I just needed the reassurance that you thought I was pretty. I always needed new clothes, a different hairstyle, a new cool lipstick to chase the you are fucking ugly demons away, to shut that part of me down, that personality trait is a very ugly part of me.

I wish that I did not care. I wish so hard for that. But in a land where most of my friends are having Botox, lip fillers, boob jobs, its so very tempting to join in. To join the my forehead does not move crowd. Part of me would like to grow old disgracefully and not go down that route.

I have entered the 2nd year of my forties and shit its all going south, the crows feet are deeper (I would almost say a crow would be very jealous of these feet), yes I can affectionately call them laughter lines, but believe me, superficial Kelly really wishes she had not laughed quite so much. The deep crevices beginning to channel their way down the sides of my mouth, could almost be called a continental divide, fuck why did I have to smoke for 10 years of my life (because I loved smoking that’s why).

I drink coffee, I drank alcohol to excess in my twenties, occasionally in my thirties and the yearly reminder of why not to do this in my forties. I dabbled in narcotics and naughty white powders, danced in dark club’s until dawn and have still not had a full night sleep since having Rugrats All of which have eroded and broken my three layers of epidermis. Regretfully awesome, to have had so much damn fun that something had to give. Hey but I consume blueberries, spinach and avocados, they should fix the damage, right? Right?

Technology does not help my withering confidence and increasing hatred of looking in a mirror. As HD photography highlights every tiny crack in my face, I find myself refusing to smile, turning my head to show my better side, to always wear sunglasses to hide those eyes, oh those deep set eyes of mine, how I despise you. But I keep taking selfies (oh dreaded selfie) over and over again, take, delete, take, delete, hoping that it is not true that somehow a pretty picture will come out and I am 20 again. Now every picture is just revealing what I do not want to see or know. Aging is a process I cannot stop and have to embrace so hard that it becomes something I love and not battle against (or at least suffocate) How? Answers on a postcard please. Or a Whats app. Whatever works.

My bathroom cupboard is bursting forth like a vomiting “Rosemary’s baby” of anti wrinkle creams, hoping that each will reverse the inevitable or at least putty fill the current cracks. Sadly, mending my face is not mending the way I think and feel, or the huge break in my mind to get a grip of. I really need to get a grip. I am bloody old for Christ sake, I need to not actually give a shit. Old people never give a shit about anything.

My husband gets better with age, I just get worse. How does that even work?

Trawling through Instagram, I cannot believe these 40 plus year old celebs look so amazing, young and so so so beautiful. I want to be a stronger, better person, to figure out how to erase the ugly glasses at which I judge the physicality of my being. I may just have to stop wearing my glasses, I look better blurry. 🙂

My kids call me old, yes I am old, being old makes me sad, what makes me angry is that I cannot rise above the aging process and not give a flying fuck. The key has to be to live like a puritan, never use a mirror and to never go out in the sun. But is the aspiration of a sagging youth worth not having fun or experiencing anything ever again. No it is not. I am at a stalemate and I need to win.

Clearly I just need to drink more water, as this seems to be the answer for everything 🙂

Or grow a very long fringe.

Or ALWAYS have my hair tied back for a DIY face lift.

Or just bathe in Kale.

Or if you know a good plastic surgeon or have discounts on Botox, please give me a call.

8 miles

Today I ran 8 miles, this was the first long run of my current training plan. Boy did it suck. On paper it should have been a pretty easy run, due to the amount I currently run each week and my body is used to that distance.

Pull on my sneakers, fill up my bottles with water and Nuun electrolytes, earphones in and podcast on. Ready …

6.25 am, the sun is beginning to turn the sky pink , as it peeks above the horizon I step outside and SLAM the humidity hits me it’s like wading through a wet shower curtain that’s wrapped itself around my body and dragging me back. I start to run.

Legs are heavy and I’m sweating like a pig, water is running down my face and oh look that’s only mile 1 completed. Shit, I’m not sure I can do this, Ana Faris is jabbering in my ear, like a chipmunk on speed and I instantly hate her wanton cheerfulness scratching my ear drums. I turn her off. That’s mile 2 completed. 6 to go…..

BOLLOCKS I’m bloody dying here.

I grind it out as it grinds me down. Legs are like “twizzlers” my face a tomato and my body is soooo wet I look like I have been swimming in the ocean as salt collects under my arms..

Mile 8 – COLLAPSE, drag body through front door and am eye to toe with my naked 3 year olds feet.. “mummy why are you on the floor,” ” because mummy is fucking dying!?”

I’m not sure I enjoyed that 95F (real feel) run. No shit Sherlock .

Anxie – tea and biscuits.

I wanted to share this – this picture is of me going through serious anxiety and repeated panic attacks. I look calm and together. Inside I am unraveling and panicking continuously. I think I am going to die… literally! and my mind is broken and fuzzy. The only thing that makes me keep some form of sanity are the kids. Today I have googled continuously the symptoms of a heart attack and any form of light that suggests I am ok? I know rationally it’s my anxiety and I need to breathe and focus and meditate and slow down. But when you are in a pit of overwhelming fear and confusion, it’s very hard to climb out. I can feel it lifting as I take those steps. But it will be a good week before I’m back to “normal”. I wanted to share this picture to show you, anxiety like any mental illness cannot be seen from the exterior. This is essentially a picture of me crumbled and destroyed and barely keeping my shit together… and you would never know. I don’t need sympathy but just an understanding that I am one of many and kindness is key to anyone struggling. #anxiety #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness

Flu, have an opinion?

With the current flu pandemic effecting most states, the topic of vaccinations and children, once again raises its head.

Whether you do or do not, get a trained medical professional to stick a needle into your kids arm or thigh and administer a clear (potentially life saving) liquid into your child’s tiny little body, that is your right to do so. I have many friends who do not vaccinate and I have many friends who do.

It’s such a personal choice and we may not agree on each others choices, but its ours, we have to remember that. I vaccinate, my personal belief that, way over the idea of metals being placed in my kids bodies and the potential side effects, I would rather that, than them, getting flu or polio or some other eradicated, previously life threatening disease. You can tell me I am dumb or pour out some spiel from some study, by some person. But I will never not vaccinate, like I could never convince someone to vaccinate who has chosen not to. The fallacy or reality (as remember it has not ever been really proven) that they can cause autism is a chance I will (repeatedly) take if it saves my kids life and the life of a sick child or a child too young to be vaccinated. My eldest, which is common knowledge, has high functioning Autism. Was it his shots at birth that caused this, who the hell knows? Is it genetic, or the way he was born, we will never know? But, I feel he has a far better chance to best the odds if he ever gets sick, which currently he has not. He is brilliant and healthy.

The thing is I will vaccinate and take the supposed risks, as I believe there are far worse threats to my kids life, food dyes in food (banned in Europe) as its proven they cause hyperactivity and cancer. I will never ever let my kids drink a Gatorade, Froot loops, MnM’s – again my choice, my belief, my opinion, good or bad. My kids will always wear a bike helmet when they cycle, I avoid hard candy (coloring’s and choking threats) and the list continues.

We all do what is best for our children and we may never agree, but we must respect, I will always love a person for their hearts and kindness. You may believe in God, I believe in science. You may like Trump, I do not. You believe in the right to own a gun, I never will. I love you and and I may never agree with you, but I value your ideas and thoughts. As long as you are not a racist, chauvinist, a bigot or narcissist, I will always sit and wait for your side, your thought out idea and the argument for or against. I hope people can always do this and not be blinkered to shut down and push out friends for having opposing beliefs. It makes us unique. Listening, not accusing or shouting creates community and understanding, respect and kindness. I will always like/love a friend if they just have the ability to listen and not bombard, accuse or demean a thought or another person.

We all do our best by our children and our fear and love for them is what drives us to keep them happy, loved, well and safe. For me that is one thing and that includes a shot to the arm every year from Flu, to you that is not, to me that is science at its best, to you that is a money making machine. We will always beg to differ.

Beauty

Truly is in the eye of the beholder. We surely do not behold the beauty in ourselves, externally or internally. Women suck at liking themselves.

This evening I sat with 3 girlfriends, all unique, all beautiful in completely different ways and none of them could see it. Gorgeous smiles , kind hearts, rocking bodies, complete sexy packages and not one of them could see it and accept their awesomeness. What creates this self doubt and internal blindness. Society? Men? Religion? Other women? Who said beauty had to look a certain way? What makes that way beautiful ? I want to know? I want to see this perfection! Where is it? Who has it? All of us do? But none of us believe it see .,

It breaks my heart. That so much delight, is not beheld or loved by the person who owns it.

Why? and when will we find it? Secretly in our rooms when no one is watching? After taking 300 selfies to get the perfect shot, we’ve all done it?

Or never?

Or maybe?

But we need to see ourselves for what we are, The great, gross, beauty, banality of our being, accept, appreciate, not always love, but realize it is what makes us unique, one of a kind and no one else has this. It’s special and crazily wonderful.

For Cat ❤️