Curious Incidents of a Flailing Mermaid

The Daunting World of Mixed Emotions

As is obvious to my blog readers, I have been in lurking mode for sometime now. I am currently trying to awaken myself from a period of slightly selfish invisibility. When I say selfish, I don’t necessarily mean this in a negative way – we all have to focus on our self at one time or another! Anyway, I felt it was time for me to, at least, try and return to my online life.

Emotions are funny things. Mostly, we tend to think we feel only one thing or another at any one time: Sadness or happiness, anger or excitement. I, however, have been experiencing a wide range of emotions all at the same time. And, believe me when I say, this can be extremely overwhelming, tiring and stressful: Even more so when it is coupled with insomnia and physical pain. Thus, I’ve been trying to keep myself to myself.

I think, in reality, I am doing reasonably well. I’ve not taken to my bed to lie around moping 24/7. Nor am I sat sobbing every time I feel overwhelmed. It would probably be easy to do so. However, there is very little point to this and it takes much more than this crap to break me down completely!

The thing is I am not miserable. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. Although if I don’t start sleeping properly soon, I might change my mind. Nope! No misery for me! You see, I like to equate happiness with gratefulness and the truth is, I have a hell of a lot to be grateful for!
I have a great, flexible, well-paid job. I have a lovely house. I have an awesome best friend with whom I have become even closer to as together we both battle our own demons. And Chris, my husband, is being so incredibly wonderful that with him my side nothing is a problem.

Yes, I’m not going to lie, I’m angry too: Angry that I’m even having to explain this, angry that I am still in pain after eight months. I’m angry that this pain has made me lose my grip on my mental health – especially after I worked so hard at getting that back on track a few years ago. I’m also angry that my oldest friend, who I supported for 18 years, gave up on me and moved away without saying goodbye. That was harsh!
Nevertheless, there is little to no point in allowing anger to be the emotion to fuel your life – unless you use it in a positive way, which is actually pretty tough to do. So, I’m trying to pry out this particular emotion and chuck it to the side.

In my time away, I’ve gone through quite a few obsessions to try and focus my mind. It is in this area of my life that makes me consider if I have Bipolar. I definitely have the traits. However, this is taken from my own personal knowledge, rather than anything professional. So, I won’t go into this too much.
Indeed, I have always had plans and get obsessed with particular things then give up after a while. Unfortunately, this has not been writing lately. Shame! Instead, it has been painting, buying notebooks and magazines. I’m hoping that, one-day, I may be able to level things out and enjoy doing things in a more stable and less obsessive/full on way.

I have just bought a new camera, which I’ve wanted for a long time. I have also finally gotten round to teaching myself how to use Photoshop (can you tell?). I am really enjoying using both these things - the possibilities excite me. But, this time, I do not want to use them for two weeks and then give up!

I have quite a few awesome ideas, which I definitely want to work to develop. Ideas are great; I have multitudes of them. However, they never go anywhere because I constantly give up. If I want more excitement, I need to keep going with things I enjoy.
I love challenges. Therefore, to build up to my project ideas, I am considering setting myself a mini challenge… to be confirmed!