Looking for Alice

[looking-for-alice]

I've been taking a huge break from social media, well actually this is a lie within itself... I have been scrolling like mad looking for validation from a society I clearly do not fit into.

I have no friends, well I have one friend who uses me an escape, an old friend who wants to date me and someone I have an old connection to and have seen once in the last seven years... so in todays terms.... 'no friends'.

I used to think is it me, is there something wrong with me? I have felt like this since I was singled out as a child because I had been through more trauma as a six year old then most of my class would in a life time... and I now know as an adult that kids act like this towards things they cannot understand and forgiving and forgetting is the way forward or else you just become bitter - that bit was not hard and the saying 'time heals' fits in well here.

Now I realise that looking back on my childhood all the friends I did have moved away, moved country or something similar and it became a joke between my mum and me when I was a lot older that I had the worst luck with friends... so I guess that on top of going to the school from hell was enough to make me realise 'friendship' was not on my top priority list.

Now that I am much older, I've been through a lot more, lost friends and family and had my heartbroken I now understand how I have come to be this way.... and since lockdown and loosing some of the closest people to my heart (at the time) I became my own best friend, learned to have fun and enjoy my own company and now I think why would I want it anyway.

I am flunking through school for the second time, falling behind on online work and not getting the grades I want, I had a huge manic episode and spent to much money and now I have to get an emergency job and fix the problem I have given myself in that episode.

So I decided tonight as I laid in bed that enough is enough, no more over eating, you worked so hard to loose the weight and you are just over eating because of what??

Tomorrow I am getting up and doing some work and I am going to try and pull myself out of this slump.

- Looking-for-Alice

[looking-for-alice]

Is it bad that when I send you a text and you reply that I actually forget who you are... you are a distant memory to me... we have no connection.... no friendship... nothing... after four years.... I can’t remember your voice, your tone or touch....but what amazes me most is I don’t miss you at all... because I don’t know you.... and maybe I never did.

[looking-for-alice]

It’s hard to know what you want from life. With each year of my life that passes, each milestone and each chapter that begins and ends this all changes.

Life essentially is one big ball of ongoing change, where every action has a reaction and it just keeps rolling and rolling until you can roll no more.

I was thinking about this whilst I was walking around the nature park near my tiny home and I kept thinking how 10,15, 21 year old me would look at my life now; how would they feel? Would they be happy with what I have achieved, how I have lived and continue to live my life? The choices I made...etc? and this is how my anxiety/ocd brain functions on the daily.

I think about how in my head I had my whole life mapped out and had put a timeline next to these life milestones and was convinced this was how my adult life would run and everything would slot into their place as I got older... sitting and writing this in my tiny 15m2 apartment makes me giggle a bit! 

Most of the goals I had set, or things I expected to have achieved or ticked off at a certain age have not all been ticked off... and I think as I wake up in my own little space and go on my own adventures that I am beginning to be okay with this and beginning to see the reactions of my choices.

It’s funny how the things you most want aren’t always the things you need or the things that will make your life better, more enriched or happy.

It is also funny how I am supposed to be writing an essay which once again I have left to the few days to start, edit and finish and have no motivation to do so .... but can write this little word vomit on the internet. 

[looking-for-alice]

Honestly how I mend myself with mania doesn’t surprise me anymore.

I have always done crazy things, spent to much money, picked up random hobbies, pets and traveled.

I would pick a different hobby, get into it , buy all the equipment and be obsessed for weeks, months, years until another one came along.... is it just me?

But recently I have been a lot more in control; and I have been trying to limit myself financially and also trying to keep myself busy more.

My new location is amazing... There are parks, nature and lots of things to see and do; all on my doorstep and in reach - I am now having to force myself to stay inside and study as I constantly feel the need to be up and about and doing something.

So today I am attempting to realign myself and my thoughts and just be.

[looking-for-alice]

It’s been a while since my last essay/post/thought throw -up.

I have moved. I have found a place where I think I could be happy for a long time which is a first for me as I am used to change and moving often.

I have really found myself in these last two weeks, what I want and who I am and how the past has had an impact on this.

The last few months feel like years ago, I am not sure if I am relieved by this childhood trauma technique or saddened how quickly I glued my broken pieces back together.

What I like about my new location is its busy, lots of people doing their best to survive and thrive under the current circumstances and I have a huge park as a garden which never fails to make me feel lucky about my situation.

Today has been the worlds messiest day of mania, I woke up disappointed in myself after doing something dangerous and totally out of character just because I could and I woke up not feeling ashamed but almost as if I could justify what had happened as a way of gluing myself back together.

I woke up early and spent two whole hours rerunning last night through my head - like who was that girl!!

I got up and went on a mad self-care/life changing fitness shopping spree and blew through all my savings and decided I cannot gain weight I have worked too hard to get here and that's not the life I want for myself.

So tomorrow I am off - back on track and motivated to not feel like I am wasting my life.

[looking-for-alice]

I have the chance to restart somewhere new, be someone new and just breathe and find myself.

The last few days I have felt weird, I’m not scared or nervous ... I just feel off ... like not knowing what to do with myself as I count down the days until I take this leap.

I am looking at this as a Eat, Pray, Love experience; weird I know... but when I first saw this film I was maybe eighteen or so and I remember thinking ‘I think one day I am going to have this experience’ and I connected so much with Liz and felt the same emotions through various ups and downs of my life. The film has stuck with me and played on my mind through various stages and traumas through my life and now I think it is time for me to also go soul searching.

So after the end of 2020, my relationship breaking down and loosing a place and a person  I called home for so many years I have decided in the middle of a pandemic to pack up and move to my dream location and just breathe and experience things I haven't before.

Starting small in a tiny studio I am going to create my own happiness and experiences and live everyday with the mindset that Liz (EPL) had.

So it could be a interesting experience, it could go horribly wrong but it could be the push or breath that I needed the most.

Looking-for-Alice

[looking-for-alice]

My mood can change faster than the seasons, faster than the weather, faster than it take a cup of coffee to go completely cold.

It has always been this way... I have always felt that my emotions and feelings are either a ten hyper, ‘happy’, active, positive etc or a ten sad, depressed, unmotivated and unstable. There has never been an in-between or halfway point for me...

This I discovered as time went by ... is not normal... not everyone feels this way and I wonder often how the others live their lives and sometimes I get lost in this thought process for minutes, hours and days...

Looking-for-Alice

[looking-for-alice]

Do you ever just crash no matter what time of day it is, if you have important things to do or due in and just have no motivation for anything? And you end up just in this weird between place of not knowing what to do with yourself... and not having the energy to do anything.

[looking-for-alice]

Its funny when I posted last night I felt this huge weight had been lifted as I typed away my most inner thought for a total stranger to potentially read.

I have never really been one for sharing, I am a very open person but I have a lot of inner thoughts/secrets that I will never share... not even with the people I am closest too.

As I wrote my first post after watching a documentary about a girl who posted on tumblr in 2013 and kept an almost journal of her inner thoughts on the internet and interacted with people/strangers who didn’t know her but knew her through her thoughts - this really appealed to me in 2021.

Leaving little cookie crumbs of myself on the internet appealed to me as this is something I could never post on Facebook/Instagram or any other app where people knew it was actually me.... and one day looking back or someone looking through my post might connect and. not feel so alone- somehow sparked me to sign up for Tumblr again. 

I’m not convinced anyone will see or read my inner thoughts but it did feel like a weight had been lifted just by typing them out... and hitting post. A weird and almost euphoric feeling - which was odd to me.

Today is a Wednesday, all the days seem to blur into one as I adapt myself and my routine to another place where I don’t really have much control over my life. It won’t always be like this as I am planning a fresh start - but I just have to wait out the time between now and moving which sometimes feels like forever as we are trapped inside a lockdown.

I was thinking as I sat up in bed laptop on my duvet that for me the lockdown has had its ups and downs, a lot has changed, I have changed ... but I have also learned to really enjoy my own company ... which may not seem like a big thing but I used to spend hour and hours keeping busy or doing activities with others because I didn’t want to be alone with my own thoughts ... but now I like being alone... funny how things change right?

[looking-for-alice]

A lot has changed

A lot has changed for me in the last few months.

I went from thinking I knew who I was, what I wanted and needed and what my future looked like ... and then in less than a week ... I did not know who I was when I looked in the mirror, who had I become?, what I was going to do with my life? and what did the future had in store for someone who didn’t know the answers to the above.

I spent weeks recording myself thinking maybe I would look back and think you were broken here in this 20 second video and look how far you have come - but really all I saw was my scared six year old traumatised self all alone in the world with no sense of direction and no one to call for help.

This scared me. Kept me up at night whilst I tried to distract myself with childhood favourite films that I could barely get through without crying, films I would later come to decide that I probably would not watch again.

As I sat alone in my packed up house with nothing but memories and sadness running through my mind... I realised that maybe everything happens for a reason and maybe this was a time to build myself up piece by piece and finally know what I was supposed to do with my life and who I am without you.

We can become dependant on people in different ways and I certainly put my happiness and love into your hands with the promise of forever and convinced myself that no matter what I had been through or was going through that I would always have you and this is something that my whole world rocked on.

A few months have passed since and I rediscovered a few things about myself in that time;

1. I am emotionally distant with trauma and manage to forget things very quickly if they cause me pain.

2. I can adapt to any situation.

3. I am happy on my own.

4. I have changed so much in these last few weeks that I don’t know I survived before.

This is my journey, that maybe someone will stumble upon and think I am not alone with my thoughts or maybe I can make it through this situation...no matter how bleak it seems and eventually a time will come where you will look back and see that you made it.

This hopefully will be one of those journeys.

Looking-for-Alice