God makes beauty from ashes

 Alun has been gaslighting me all year and I've had enough. He will ask me to do something/order him something/plan something and when I do it, he loses his damn mind and will shout and have a huge fit over it "Why did you do/say/organise that? I DON'T WANT IT" and yell at me for ages, working the word "dickhead" in repeatedly. Last night, Alun SWORE BLIND he wanted a Big Mac meal. "I'm so hungry, Janet" I watch him carefully because I love him and I know he'd not eaten all day so to hear him say he wanted to FINALLY EAT something brought me so much joy. "Are you sure?" I asked as I brought up the MenuLog ap. Alun nodded and pointed to the McDonald's logo on the screen. He jumped around excitedly on the sofa "Big Mac meal, please! I want it! Big Mac, yeah yeah yeah" I laughed seeing him so happy. I pressed "order" and put in my bank details (I'll treat you, my love) and turned back to the show I was wat...

 My memories of being a little girl are definitely hazy. I don't remember a lot and what I do remember makes me really sad. Anyway. I'm sitting at work (shh!) with a can of " Pasito " on my desk. For you UK readers, it's a fizzy drink. Supposedly tastes of passion fruit.  Drinking it takes me back to being about 8 years old. Dad, Mom, Jay and I were living in a sort of trailer park thing - in a structure called a "Donga" which was like a house made out of a sort of shipping container. It felt a lot like a huge caravan, to be honest. We had a close-knit community - loads of white European guys married to Filipino women (go figure) each in our own little "dongas", so I think we were all pretty happy. A few Donga's down from ours lived an old guy. In my blurry memory, he was about 100 years old. In reality he was probably younger than I am right now typing this but bear with me, ok? He had an accent and at a guess it was maybe Polish? or Swed...

 that's how long it took for my friend...let's call him "Adrian"...to open a letter from me. Adrian's had a rough time of late with 2 of his closest friends dying within months of each other. I wanted to send him some support and encouragement in the post so I picked a card with a load of cartoon acorns on the front. The card read "If I had an acorn for every time I thought of you, other people would say I had too many acorns!" then inside, the card said "And they'd be wrong!" It was so cute, even in the store as I read it, I knew I loved it and wanted to buy it for someone. I wrote about how I'd be there for Adrian any time he needed to talk and that he was loved and not alone. I posted it off with a happy smile and hoped it would bless him. I think it took about a week for the card to reach Adrian...but I didn't hear anything back from him for almost 3 weeks all up...because he was scared to open his card. Adrian's anxiety had...

My parents have "been together" for 38 years. And I used "been together" very loosely because in all those years, about 28 of them has been incredibly rocky. My parents have screamed, shouted, threatened and hurt each other more than I thought anyone could. They've constantly split up and gotten back together. Every time they split up, we had to move house and I had to ferry my younger brother between two homes and make it seem like an adventure "Yay!Sleepover at Dad's!" so he could live a basically normal life. On one of their MANY break ups, my parents each got a new partner. Mom went out with this Dutch guy and to this day I don't know his name because I called him "Meathead". He was like a well-meaning ogre who rode a motorbike.  Anyway, when Mom starting "seeing" Meathead, she and I got into a huge fight about how she was never home (she wasn't) and Mom decided to leave us altogether. I was in my late teens so Jay w...

 There I was, sitting on a bus heading around the city. We have free buses that each do a long loop around the city - they're called "Cat" buses for some reason and I love catching them because I can cruise around Perth's prettiest places in air-conditioned comfort.  So good. Anyway. I was on the bus daydreaming away, when a guy in ragged (but clean) clothing came and sat next to me. We rode along in silence for a few moments before he leaned in  and whispered "Aliens are going to come and get me in 3 bus stops from now" Are they?  Wow! That's awesome! (I didn't question this for a second because I still look for care bears in the clouds on every single plane trip I go on). So...I excitedly waited. 2 bus stops went by. One to go. Were they going to beam him up like in an 80's style Sci Fi? Was he going to turn into sparkly particles like people did in Star Trek? Were Aliens going to suspend time and space and while we were all 'frozen' an...

 Hey, I've decided to give being a proper writer a go. So I'm going to use this blog as a "hey, here's an example of how I write/the things I write about" link to potential publishers...which means I need to do a huge clean-out in here.  I need to delete the rambling blogs, keep the best ones and most importantly, protect the identity of everyone I've talked about. Hmm. Wish me luck xx

 I can't stop blogging, I bloody love it. So...I'm back :) hooray! It's the very end of October, everyone in Perth is free to meet/go out as much as we please (woo) and a lot of homes are getting excited about Halloween. I think even if I wasn't a Christian, I wouldn't be thrilled about it. I don't like scary things. Why do people want to celebrate ghosts and monsters? I've never understood. So life in the world of Janet is actually going really well just now. (I feel I should whisper that so LIFE doesn't overhear me and say "oh really?" and quietly arrange for a bus to run me over and shut me up). I got offered a permanent, full time position for a huge-ass Engineering and Construction company that has offices all over the world. The job pays better than any other reception job I've ever had. They offered me a 5 grand raise to 'entice' me to accept the job.  OH HELL YEAH. So I'm earning a lot, and I also really like this job. I...

Wow. A lot of blogging from me today. I guess a part of me knows this will end soon. I won't be here much longer so I'm trying to get out as much as I can before it all stops. The other side of my blogging is that I need you. When you text me, message me or maybe even call me to tell me "Hang ON, Janet" "Don't give up" "You mean something to me, please don't leave us yet" It means the absolute WORLD to me. When a friend reaches out and messages me: "No need to reply at all, just want you to know I'm thinking of you" or "Hey, just want to remind you I love you" or "You can do this, I believe in you" They save my life. And I go through 24 hours a day of wanting to die...so those texts, they are like little sparks of hope in my life that keep me going for another hour. My friend Christabel doesn't understand it "Why do you need other people to tell you you're awesome"? I don...

Alun and I spent the last 2 days at home together...moving like zombies and not really speaking...but holding hands the entire time as if we are both trying desperately to stay linked even though we seem suspended in limbo. I'm a talker, you know that. I want to talk about it with Alun because I know there are some HUGE inaccuracies in the way we both see things. My fear is that Alun's put me in a 'too hard' box. I worry he's labelled me "mental" and doesn't trust me with anything and hasn't for the past year. I worry he doesn't think my opinion is worth anything and I worry he sees me as some "poor nutcase" who can't be talked to and just needs to be fed, mostly ignored and placated. I'm not that person. I'm severely depressed, I admit that. I am mental, I own that. But I'm not entirely useless. I'm not some crazy, worthless girl that Alun can't trust or talk to. If that's the way he sees me, t...

Yesterday was the worst day of my life. I have never wanted to die more in my entire 43 years. I rang "Lifeline" for help and someone kind there talked me off the ledge and into bed for a much needed sleep. I feel like my head is caving in and my heart is completely shattered. Everything I believed in or thought I knew...has crumbled to dust in my very hands and I don't know how to cope. I spent a lot of the day yesterday on auto pilot. The gravity of another divorce  (for fucks' sake, Janet!!!) weighed on me like a tonne of bricks on my head. Alun and I called each other probably about 20 times yesterday, each phone call filled with hatred, accusation, threats and awful, hurtful words we can probably never take back. All I wanted was Alun home so we could talk. In my mind on the train home this morning (I spent the night before last night at Jacker's house), I pictured walking into the front door. Alun would be there - MY Alun - not the drunk, sad, ...

I'm hanging onto life with my very fingertips. I feel like my life is the edge of a cliff and the sea is 100 meters below me...and I'm hanging on with my very fingertips, trying not to let go. I'm looking down at the waves crashing below and it's tempting to just let go. My arms are so tired, guys. It's easier to just give up. I tried to fight it for a long, long time...since last August so almost a year ago...and I can't anymore. I can't. This depression is going to end me, you guys. Here's what I'm doing to try to fight it: I get up out of bed every day. This is extremely hard. I set myself ONE task every day. Today it was to do the weeding. I only did 20-35 minutes of it but at least I did something. Today I showered. For someone with depression, that's a pretty big deal. It took everything I had . I take my anti-depressants every day. I was going on a walk every day - 30 minutes - but I'm struggling now to leave t...

After a long day at work, I've rushed home to write this blog because I need to let you know that Alun is the best person I know. Truly. He is suffering from his own depression because he's going through some very heavy things these last 6-12 months: - Alun has patients that die over and over when he's at work. Alun loves deeply, so he takes their passing away to heart and he grieves over ever patient as if they were a friend. I can't imagine how incredibly dark and painful that must be for him. But he still goes to work. He still tries so hard and he still loves with all his heart, no matter how much it gets broken at work. - Alun's wife (me) is a complete psycho. Dealing with that on the daily can't be good for anyone. - Alun's dear friend and fellow Rugby player died a month ago. When she was diagnosed with untreatable, incurable cancer that was going to kill her completely in a matter of weeks, Alun's heart shattered into a million pieces. So...

I'm falling completely apart. What makes this worse is that it's happening to Alun at the same time. He was drunk a few nights ago and that's when he opens up. Alun said he was going to steal anti depressants (just random ones) from the hospital and start taking them. This is all kinds of wrong. (Yes, the stealing is wrong but that's the least of my worries when Alun said that). MY concerns are that: 1) Alun feels depressed. This is a big deal! I need to help my husband. 2) Alun is depressed enough to consider taking medication. All kinds of alarms going off in my mind and heart. 3) He can't just decide on his own to take random anti depressants - they could do a world of harm to him and if he develops a dependance on his own and doesn't have support...what happens then? I asked Alun to seek out proper Medical advice and support. He shut me down totally. End of discussion. So I'm at home wondering if my husband is walking around with random d...

It's struck me how similar a psychologist-to-patient relationship is to a romantic relationship because right now, I'm trying to "get over" George, (not his real name) and finding it really, really hard. George and I "worked" together for 3 years and became really good friends over all those psychology sessions. I shared my deepest secrets, biggest fears and most treasured hopes and dreams with George. We'd "unpacked" so many things...every time I'd gotten fired from work, all my relationships, my worries, my triumphs...I guess when you spend that much time getting to know someone - there's bound to be a relationship there. I shared my hopes and fears, and he ended up sharing his life, too. He loved yoga. He had a partner and she had a 12 year old son who didn't approve of George and was a little too sarcastic for his liking. George also had an office bully and related to my struggles because he knew what it was like. We became ...

I don't know how to get past it, guys. The trauma. Nothing has happened apart from the daily bollocking by Barry (thanks, mate. NOT) but I feel like I'm suffering. I tried to kill myself on Christmas Eve. I tried again about 6 weeks later. I went through 3 jobs in as many weeks AND Alun's parents came to stay. That's all really, really affected me. Alun and I were in a really bad way for a while there. It was scary. We were both depressed, both anxious, both lashing out. I was seriously considering a divorce. Not just having a hissy fit...I seriously wanted to leave Alun. He accused me of KILLING his parents "You're sentencing them to death, I hope you're happy" he had branded me with a heavy burden. How was I suddenly responsible for the livelihood of his parents? I just wanted my home back. Then they left. Covid19 took over the world. And we've all moved on. But I haven't. I'm still on Christmas eve. In my head, I'...

I've been struggling at work in the last few weeks as the 'charming' Team Leader I thought I had is actually an overly ambitious shark. He's figured out who he can mess with, who he needs to butter up and who he can downright bully...and guess which group he's put me into? Yep. So I get "pulled aside" for a DAILY "meeting" with this guy. We'll call him "Barry". Barry is a small, weird looking Indian guy who speaks as if he's quietly singing somehow. There is a lilt to his tone and use of words which seems to go up and down hills as he's speaking. I find it unnerving. I always have. I excused it in the beginning because he was always complimenting me. Now that he's honed in on my weakness (I'm a people pleaser, damn it), his voice just grates on me. When my work Skype pops up with a  message from him "Janet please come see me", I know I'm in for a bollocking. He messages me EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Wh...