The world today

Oh dear campers, I think I might make you all feel very down today. I've been thinking about the state of the world and recent events have put my mind into overdrive, so here it is:

I can't fathom the world today, is that just me? It's causing my ocd to bounce off the walls and lead me to believe that having a baby was the most selfish thing I've ever done, and maybe it was. Maybe it's what every parent thinks, but I'm starting to have panic attacks when I think about the world my child will grow into. It seems to be a very depressing future, a world where fighting and greed and selfishness win out over goodness, honesty and kindness. Where outer beauty and thinness is valued over inner beauty and intelligence. Where objects are valued over humans, where antisocial ways of life are the norm. You no longer need to leave your house for anything. I worry that my child will never know the pleasure of playing out with friends, will never understand the value of respect, will never be able to experience life to its fullest, and that's only if you think positively that the planet will last that long! We are slowly killing the planet with deforestation and landfill, with hatred and war, with greed for oil, gold, land, power. We are happy to sacrifice other human brings for the greater cause of wealth and power. Nuclear war is imminent, global warming and flooding are imminent, the end of the world is nigh!!!!! My goodness you could really get depressed thinking about this stuff!!!!

But what if instead my child is one of many who will change the world, to make it a better place, a nicer place. A place where they value human life over wealth or power. A place where people work together for the greater good. That could happen, so maybe  I have nothing to worry about. 

I can't accept that the world is that bad, but I can't help the thoughts flying around in my head, telling me what an awful future my poor baby has, and I fret that there is nothing I can do. It makes me so angry that the world can be so hateful and dangerous when we are all the same species, we are all human. why can't we all get along? 

Eventually something has to give, I just hope and pray that it all works out for the best and we don't end up destroying ourselves over religion or power or wealth.

Maybe everyone needs to take a step back, yes you can have your own beliefs, but how about believing in humanity? 

There is so much more I could say about this, so many more worries, but instead I'll just leave you with a poem,

I don't agree

I don't agree with fighting

When we're capable of talking,

I don't agree with hating

When we're capable of loving.

I don't agree with hunger

When we're capable of feeding

I don't agree with greed

When we're capable of sharing

I don't agree with war

When we're capable of peace

I don't agree with misery

When we're capable of happiness

I don't agree with lies

When we're capable of honesty

I don't agree with nastiness

When we're capable of nicety

I don't agree with pain

When we're capable of healing

I don't agree with hostility

When we're capable of hospitality

I don't agree with selfishness

When we're capable of selflessness

I don't agree with enemy

When we're capable of friendship.

Anyway, cheer up, there's alway tomorrow (I hope)

Happy camping x

The girl in the room

Tonight is story time around the campfire, so get yourself comfy.

Once upon a time, a young woman found herself in the depths of despair, surrounded by strangers, locked on a ward without hope or deliverance. It was the darkest time of her life. Everyday she would wonder the hall, the garden and the kitchen aimlessly searching for peace, for solitude, everyday she found none. Everyday was the same, wake in despair, drown it out with meds, eat what little she could to spare disapproving looks, and sleep only to wake back to despair. Everyday seeing the same walls, the same people, the same darkness. Until one day, whilst wondering, pondering how to get through another day, she heard a small sob from behind a closed door, gentle she knocked and opened the door. There, sitting on the bed, was a wane blonde beautiful young woman, her head buried deep with in her hands, her slender body heaving with every sob, her skin so pale she seemed almost a ghost. "Are you ok?" she asked the girl in the room, she waited but there came no answer. Quietly she closed the door and walked away, back to her own dark thoughts. The next morning she passed the door, again she heard the sobbing, again she knocked and asked "are you ok?", again there came no answer. Later on that day, the young woman saw the girl in the room, sitting quietly by herself in the garden, her ghostlike presents hardly noted by anyone. After a few minutes she disappeared, unnoticed to all except the young woman. The next morning there was no sobbing, this time she knocked and looked in, there she sat, the girl in the room. "come out and sit in the garden" the young woman requested, she held out her hand and was surprised when the ghostlike figure stood and followed her out, her head bowed down. Together they sat in the garden barely saying a word, but both knowing they were no longer alone in the darkness. After that the two women spent everyday chatting, or just sitting together in the garden drawing or watching the world go by, both knowing that even in the darkness they had each other to guide the way.

One day the young woman, feeling her soul would burst, that the darkness would never pass, began to cry. She cried and cried, now that she had started she couldn't stop. Sat alone on a bench, struggling to catch a breath between every heart wrenching cry, face drowned in tears, the darkness overwhelming. Suddenly a hand touched hers, she looked up to see the girl in the room sitting beside her on the bench and she realised in that moment, that she truely wasn't alone, that somebody cared. In that moment the girl in the room saved her.

5 years later the young woman stood with tears in her eyes, clapping and smiling, feeling honoured to be amongst the wedding guests of the girl in the room. No longer ghostlike, there she stood, proud and smiling on the happiest of days. Seeing her smile, seeing her happy, seeing her surrounded by love and people who cared reminded the young woman of the love and care she had found in their friendship. Finally they were both happy, both knew hope, and although they knew their journeys through the darkness still had someway to go, it was easier now that they had their friendship to hold on to, to guide them through, no matter distance or time. And most of all, they both believed in the future.

To the girl in the room, thank you for saving my life. I wish you all the happiness and joy in the world x x x

Fact or Fiction?

Good afternoon campers, the fire is lit, the marshmallows are toasting, it's time to begin.....

Do you remember when.........? Of course you do, the question should be 'do you remember correctly?'. Do you remember it how I do? Do you remember it positively or negatively? Do you remember it vaguely or in all it's glorious detail? Do you remember it how you wanted it to be?

Memory is a very tricky thing, it can bring joy or pain, it can drive you nuts, it can be 'it's just on on the tip of my tongue' frustratingly annoying. It can be missing. Sometimes I wish mine was missing! Other times I feel that's an awful thing to wish.

Part of my condition is being able to recall almost all conversations I've ever had, it's a blessing and a curse. Comes in handy when you need to remember something important, not so handy when your ocd uses it to replay negative things or unkind words I've spoken, or to recall conversations from the past that cause you to pick fights with people in the present!!! I replay these things again and again in my head, buzzing quietly in the back of my mind like constant background noise. Not every conversation, just a select few at a time. They buzz and buzz and buzz, whirring round and round slowly getting louder and louder and louder until finally there they are, front and centre. This might take minutes, hours, days, even months, but eventually I'll crack and BOOM, there they are. Some times I can tuck them safely away in my brains basement, still aware they are there, but not having to deal with them. Sometimes I sit and worry about it, allow it to make me frown for a while and then finally shake it off. Other times I let it get the better of me, let it make the decisions, rake over old ground. I allow it to guide me into trouble and chaos, allow it to pick fights with people (who have no idea why!) try to get answers about past conversations that others can't even remember. Allows me to torture myself, to inflict pain deep within my soul, to suffocate my sanity. But are my memories right? Did I even have these conversations? Or is it all a figment of my sick and twisted ocd mind?

What if I ask someone why they said/did something and they deny it? Is it my memory at fault or theirs? Are they protecting themselves, have they genuinely forgotten, are they denying it to be mean or is my brain playing a deranged game with me? 

What if I imagined it all? Am I now so crazy I'm making up the past???

So I try and say nothing, let it whirl around till I can bury it back deep inside, lurking, waiting, ready for its next great escape. And the times it does escape, well I add those conversations to the basement too, I just hope this basement is big enough!

It's not just conversations though, my brain finds new ways to play with my sanity. 

My mum asked me the other day if I remembered an event in my past involving my dad, and I thought about it and no, I honestly couldn't remember, so then she asked what I do remember about him, and I have to confess not a lot, I seem to have wiped him from the memory banks! My brain did such a good job that it even convinced me that he wasn't there on trips we took as a family, that my mother assures me he was on!! Ok I don't get on with the man (I find it odd calling him dad in fact) but I was 16 when he left, surely he left some kind of impression in that time? If it wasn't for the fact the rest of my family had seen him, I'd go as far to say he doesn't even exist!! Maybe he doesn't and my family are having one of those mass hallucinations!!! But then that doesn't explain the man in the photos! Hmm maybe he does exist after all. The real question is, is my brain just being perverse or is it protecting me? If its protecting me, what from?

Considering my  superpower of conversation recall, I can only recollect one conversation I had with my father and that's the last one we ever had, it didn't end well!!!  But in 16 years we must have spoken? Must have had one moment where one of us made the other laugh or even smile?

That gets me thinking, how many other people have I wiped from my memory??? Why do some stay and others not make the cut? I'd like to say it depends on how they've treated me but then I think a lot more would be missing!! Maybe it has to do with how I treated them, or maybe my brain is trying to protect me after all. It's not doing a great job!!!!

So I guess I'll never know what's fact and what's fiction, whether it's protection or torture. So what to do? Maybe I keep burying it, hoping I'll keep it all contained and that will be good enough, but then I have to accept that occasionally there will be a breakout and I'll have to deal with the consequences as they occur.

 It might be all in my head, but sometimes my head leaks!

So on that note, I'm off to don my rose tinted glasses and bathe in the warmth of a slightly oblique past.

Happy camping x x x

Say it how it is!

Well, hello campers, thought that today I would take you on a little ponder about honesty and the ultimate question. So join me, and if you can, answer truthfully :)

Wouldn't it be better if everyone was honest about how they felt? I don't mean openly wondering around making random statements "oh I love that colour flower" "yuk I hate that car" etc, I mean if someone asked you a direct question, like 'how are you' or 'how do you feel about...?' that you gave them an honest answer.

Don't get me wrong, I'm as bad as the next person. 'How am I feeling' "erm fine", is that true? If I was find would my soul be screaming out in pain?would my brain be hurtling around quicker then the earth spins around the sun,? would I be writing this blog? But it's etiquette, we are conditioned to be polite and not burden each other with the mundane, with our own perceived problems, and maybe that's a good thing. Sometimes we ask the question out of politeness, to make small talk, and therefore it's only right to give the formal quick response 'I'm fine thank you, and you?'. Sometimes we ask out of reassurance 'are you ok' I make sure everything is ok, again to get a quick fix answer 'yes I'm fine thanks'.

 But what if you want a real response, what if you desperately seek an answer, the truth? What if your question 'how are you?' is a genuine question? Maybe the question isn't honest, maybe we use 'how are you' to convey other messages, private, secret messages that you hope the other person will translate. 'how are you' can become genuine concern or 'I miss you' or 'why?' or 'talk to me' or any other message you dare not ask. But herein lays the problem. You might be sending secret messages and the person receiving it doesn't know, to them 'how are you' is simply that, and you will receive a simple answer 'fine thanks, you?' or worse still what if the question really is 'how are you' and it gets mistranslated and opens a whole can of worms?

Language is a tricky thing, it leads us into many difficult situations, trying to untangle hidden meaning when there isn't any, missing hidden meaning when it's there. The wrong people misinterpreting the wrong hidden message, the right people missing the message all together. So surely it's better to be truthful, when someone asks 'how are you?' and your not 'fine' then tell them, if they don't want to hear it then they shouldn't have asked, they should have just said 'hi' and left it at that.
Why should we hide what we feel? I'm not saying put it all out there, you can be selective, not telling everyone everything, but why shouldn't we be honest to the people that we desperately want to be honest to? Why shouldn't we be able to ask questions that leave awkward silences, hurtful replies, happy smiles? We have become so conditioned to protect ourselves from pain, that maybe linguistically we are becoming numb. No longer able to ask the questions that we want, no longer able to hear the answers we need. But you know what they say, no pain no gain. If no one ever hurts your feelings how can you expect anyone to make you feel anything? (does that make sense?) if we never ask for an honest answer and never ask an honest question then we can never be surprised by the outcome, but also if we never answer a question honestly then we can never surprise anyone either, it works both ways. If we deny the truth or use humour as a defence then aren't we robbing each other of something, of part of an honest relationship. No matter whether you're friends, acquaintances or lovers, each relationship should demand an aspect of honesty and respect (linguistically speaking). It might be that the person you're asking is on the defencive or feels they don't want to face the truth or hurt you with the truth, but does that mean they shouldn't answer truthfully? . Some times honesty is the best policy, but use your judgement, and remember sometimes the answer to 'how are you?' really is 'fine thanks'

The real problem is, none of us are mind readers, we will never know what goes on in someone else's brain or heart unless they say it out loud in a clear, simple, no hidden context, way or write it in a blog!

So, how are you?

Sink or Swim

Right then, here we go.....................

Ok honestly I'm not sure what I'm going to write about, I have a million different topics buzzing around in my head but none of them seem to be making it on to (virtual) paper! how annoying. I seem to have stumbled onto a bit of a problem, you see, the OCD wants to write a blog that's all doom and gloom, where as, I want to write one that's cheery and bright, so what to do?

Lets start cheery and bright and see where we get to....

As some of you may have noticed, my mood has been a little bleak recently, or at least my blogs may have been. That's because I've been working through some things and OCD has been giving a helping hand gggrrrrrrr. So this weekend I did something totally out of character, I let my hubby talk me into a spontaneous trip to the seaside :) sounds wonderful, but have you ever tried being spontaneous when you have OCD???? Well without dwelling on the details (as I'm sure you don't want to hear about what I packed or the fiasco of deciding where to go) it lead to a 90 minute drive with a level 10 anxiety attack chasing closely behind! Everything from 'had I locked the door' to 'it wont be a perfect trip' was whirring around in my skull, ugh why did I agree to this????????? My incessant pursuit of perfection does not go hand in hand with spontaneous, in fact it fights against it kicking and screaming, scratching and hair pulling. My brain was in torture, on one hand I was going away over night (yes folks, this is all over one night away!) with my wonderful hubby to let our son experience the seaside for the first time, on the other hand, at that precise moment, it was possible my hair straighteners (which hadn't seen the light of day for nearly 2 weeks) could be burning down the house ('did I unplug the hair straighteners???'). What chance did I really have against this roaring tide of emotion and anxiety, the trip was already over, the adventure ruined!!! or was it?

Well I managed to get us to the hotel determined to forget about my blazing house and get a good night's sleep ready for seaside fun, that didn't happen! Can you claim back the good night guarantee if it's your son and your OCD that keep you up? I woke up tired but excited, we were going to the seaside yippee, the little child inside of me was itching to break out the bucket and spade that I had yet to buy. What could possible go wrong?

The Weather!!!! it rained and rained and rained. We had a lay in, it rained. We went for breakfast, it rained. We watched 'The Cat in the Hat', it rained. Then at 11am I saw it, a slither of blue in the sky. This was it, everything thrown in to the bag and tossed into the car, everyone strapped in and off we went. Look out seaside here we come, this was it, the weather was breaking, we were at the coast, my hopes were high...............

And so was the tide! Really, was this really happening. Did the universe decide that today was the day to pull out all the stops and play a cosmic joke on me? Well OCD you win, congratulations, you have my perfect day at the beach, are you satisfied? I hope so. So there I sat, in the car, sulking, not knowing what to do, totally down that my perfect day was ruined and there was nothing to do but turn around and go home :( sad and dejected we drove around for a little while whilst I let my brain calm down. Poor hubby was trying his best, making every suggestion known to man. In the end we decided to pull up at some free parking and at least show Bobo the sea. What happened next surprised me, I heard myself saying 'why don't we walk back to the pier along the seafront and have some lunch and see what happens next?' Hello brain, been a while! so that's what we did. I decided to ignore the OCD and decided that as we were there we might as well make the best of it.

What happened next? We had our perfect day at the beach. We had lunch and when we came out of the chippy (as it is written in law that at the beach you must eat fish and chips), the sun was shining and there was a lovely strip of sand behind the bucket and spade shop :) And so a lovely afternoon was had by all. I got one over on the OCD, hubby got to be spontaneous and take us on an adventure, and Bobo finally got his first experience of the seaside, paddling included. And to top it all off, not only did we make wonderful sand castles with our newly acquired bucket and spade, but we made wonderful memories too!

So there you go, a happy blog. I think I'll leave it at that for this week, while the mood is light. Next blog might not be so lucky, in fact, I'm almost sure that it will be a trip into the darkest recesses of my brain. I'm already deep in thought and getting dragged off through moments of guilt and OCD and other such quicksand of the soul, already feeling the overwhelming desire to enter the darkness and dwell in its exquisite torture.

So til next time, Happy Camping x x x