Month: Nov 2022

Fuck it attitude

For the past six months I have been busy. Busy with travel. Busy with friends and family. And then, busy personally. In my head I have been coming to terms with living in a bigger body. This has made my mind busy. 

I have always been big. I am an emotional eater. I eat when I’m happy. I eat when I’m sad. And I have PCOS which means regardless of what I eat and how much there is I will put on weight. it is also extremely difficult to lose weight. Way to mess with one’s mind eh?

Sugar. 

Fibre. 

Carbs.

It doesn’t matter.

Growing up in a bigger body meant I continually struggled with clothing and fitting (get it) in with the latest trends. But even then, I didn’t particularly like the trends of my childhood. The Schott jackets and short black skirts at school were just not my thing. I know now that if I had worn those items of clothing it would have been to fit in with everyone else and be worthy of those clothes because I fit in them. If I could have shrunk myself down maybe I would have felt normal. But then… If I didn’t want to wear the clothes others wore, would I have been their type of normal?

As my twenties turned into my thirties, I found that I drowned myself in big jumpers and jeans, which was a big step up from my dress and legging situation of a decade ago. Of course with the obligatory safety cardigan. That is until I started listening to a certain podcast, which I have mentioned before.

The aim of the podcast is to help everybody love themselves in the here and now without feeling the need to change something about themselves. Hence the name, ‘Go Love Yourself’. One early October Sunday morning saw Mr W and I wandering into our fast-becoming favourite haunt in Greenwich for breakfast and Mr W remarked on my strut into the dining area. I laughed nervously not knowing what he meant. Was I strutting? As we sat eating breakfast and sipping our caffeine hit, we talked about why I felt so comfortable. The fact of the matter was, I walked into a place I genuinely loved being, with the person who makes me walk tall and wearing my beloved black trench coat. Under said coat was a pair of khaki dungarees. It was a huge deal to be out in public in a pair of loose fitting trousers without a care in the world. Girls like me aren’t seen in dungarees. And yet there I was. The coat itself makes me feel good because it’s stylish without the price tag. I’ve had it for donkey’s years. It was then that the penny started to drop.  

Therefore in October, with holes in many of my clothes including my trusty stretchy jeans, Mr W said enough was enough and unleashed me online to buy clothes I actually liked the look of. My aim has always been to fit into clothes and not once have I stopped and wondered whether I have liked anything that I wear. In fact I have on occasion bought the same ugly top in every single colour it comes in for the pure reason of it fitting my body. Ironically I never asked myself whether the selling point of these items was the fact I liked the way it looked. I’ve never asked myself that question. The exception being my wedding dress. 

A big box of clothing turned up 4 weeks ago with various casual dresses, trousers and a rather cool hat. Mr W eagerly anticipated my transformation as I tried on each new item with disdain on my face. What on earth had I done?

This wasn’t me. Dark green waffle knit dresses. Carrot leg grey trousers. And the hat. Why the hat? I didn’t recognise this person. 

Fast forward to the 31st October when I mustered up the attitude to wear an outfit from my new capsule wardrobe for a day in London. We had a fancy meal booked using a voucher from my birthday in March, an exhibition booked at the Tate Modern and a talk at Cadogan Hall by Levison Wood, tickets I had gotten for Mr W for his birthday. It was a far cry from our usual days out in our capital city. 

I wore a burgundy dress with black tights, my new fedora hat, the trusty coat and some suede ankle boots. Team that with one of my favourite bags and I didn’t feel too bad. The hat was quite a statement piece in my eyes and I could feel the nerves of people looking at me creep in as we jumped on the underground into Liverpool Street. 

Training my eyes to watch the pavement as I walk has been a lifelong trait of mine and it’s normally to watch out for my clumsy feet. Only occasionally is it to avoid peoples glances at me. I would always wonder what they were thinking when they looked at me. Why are their eyes gazing at my neck, is it the double chin? They’re looking at my stomach, it’s too big isn’t it? You can imagine the pains I rotate through my head. 

And then, the second penny dropped. Regardless of what I wear, my chin and stomach will still be there. Why should I wear items of clothing that make me feel hidden away? When I can wear things that give me a bounce in my step because I actually like them.

Upon arrival at the restaurant, I was complimented on said hat. Smiling nervously I said thank you. Surely, he was just being nice. And yet several times throughout the day and days since I have received similar compliments. This is beyond strange to me. 

That evening, we listened to Levison Wood talk to us and the other audience members about his travel ethos. I was totally entranced and equally as shocked when my right arm extended upwards to be picked during the question and answer portion of the night. Someone else was picked and my arm was withdrawn rapidly in embarrassment. What was I thinking? How could I talk out loud in front of 900 people? They would all look at me. It had taken me the hour since the announcement had been made that there would be a Q&A to formulate a question and gather the guts to lift my limb, let alone actually speak. And yet as the questioning continued. My fuck it attitude kicked in, I scolded myself for thinking my question wasn’t as worthy as anyone else’s and I raised my arm again. This time I was noticed. I asked my question, Levison spoke back to me and I grinned nerdily as we maintained eye contact. 

I couldn’t believe it. That was me. The one speaking out loud. As the lights came up in the venue, Mr W smiled as he questioned what had gotten into me. It was highly unlikely for me to speak up in a room full of people I know let alone in an auditorium full of strangers. My only reasoning was that ‘fuck it’ had entered my mind and taken hold. 

With my new clothes I felt I had taken on a persona of someone with confidence. It is only now I realised that wearing ‘the real me’ was the fashion that fit me best. It will inevitably take time to adjust to wearing new clothes on the body I do not like and choosing not to hide it away. I deserve to feel good no matter my size. That is what the podcast has taught me. I’m just slower on the uptake than others. Or maybe just too scared at times. We met new friends from America in London the other day and we got to talking about introverts and extroverts. They were shocked to find that I am an introverted extrovert. One of them couldn’t believe the fact that I am mostly a shy person because I was so talkative. And yet wearing clothes I love, including the hat and coat, made the extrovert appear for a fun day out. It made me realise that the clothes I wear may not be a true reflection of who I am on the inside, but they are helping me push through a little more each day. 

Fuck it attitude and all.  

Go Love Yourself

Life happens and then it crashes…

So here goes…

I have never pretended that I have got it all together on this blog. Mental health, PCOS and travelling are the biggest things I’ve ever talked about with you. They’re all big factors in my life and sometimes one will take precedence over the other.

With my PCOS there are huge fertility implications and a lot of my mental health problems come with the condition. It’s often when I’m planning travel or travelling that these battles will get pushed aside and sometimes they’re forgotten. It means that I feel my best because I’m not trying to conquer the demons in my head or worrying about my future with or without a child. And even as I say that I am tearing up because that is where my mental health is at the moment. The battle everyday to stay positive on the fertility side of things in our life is enormous. 

For the first time in a very long time I’m dictating this blog. So what I’ll do is speak into my phone as if I’m talking to a friend and then I will go back and edit it. This means it’s much more coherent for you to read! And covers up the mistakes on the phone’s part. This just means that everything in my head is coming out as it needs to and then all I really do is add in punctuation and that means, I hate this word, I can be as ‘real’ as possible about PCOS and mental health for those of you out there that maybe need to hear this story. If I can be to my readers ,or to those who stumble across this blog who has PCOS or lives with mental health issues, someone to relate to and therefore feel less alone with these conditions, I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all. 

So it’s been 3 weeks since I wrote and (if you want to just follow the link below it will go back to that blog in particular) it discussed how busy our life had been since our Scotland trip. So, we got back from Scotland on the 2nd of October and I didn’t write for 11 days. It’s now been 3 weeks since that day, so in fact it’s been nearly 5 weeks since the loss of momentum with the writing. What I found I was doing was posting the blog title and then catching up with writing later or spending a whole day just writing blog after blog and then scheduling them to publish. I wasn’t just doing one a day I was either doing 0 or 4 and it just didn’t work. Then I found myself in a pit I could not climb out of.

I’ve not sat here doing nothing. I have been really busy. We decorated our home office and that was back to the bare bones. The skirting came off, we took all the furniture out, the windowsill came.We had to do this has it’s not really been done properly in the six years we have lived here. We’ve got a lot, as you can imagine, of cameras,  lenses, photography bits and travel gear in that room, as well as a computer and  other you know fiddly bits. All the furniture was all dismantled and removed. It then took over a week to decorate as there was a mishap with paint where we didn’t have enough and the store no longer did that colour. I could go on but you can imagine how it eventually worked itself out.  

There was a lot going on and at the same time I’ve been having some osteopathic treatment for my back. The first session, which to be honest I thought was quite tame, didn’t really make much difference to my sciatic pain and I was worried it wasn’t going to benefit me at all. The lady did discover that the bottom of my spine had twisted and therefore on the second visit she did manipulate my sacrum quite a bit and I did feel a lot more pressure in that area. Since then I have been happy with the results and the advice on how to sit and sleep moving forward is really important because that is a massive factor in the predicament I have found myself in. Unfortunately it’s just what we are used to isn’t it, we get into the same positions to feel comfortable. That has been a change in the last week, unfortunately my step nan died last week. When the opportunity arose in September to go and see her, I didn’t go because of my back issue.There was a plan that as soon as I could sit reasonably in a car again that we would travel over to Wales. Sadly, I didn’t get the chance and because of covid I haven’t seen her since late August 2019. That’s been a really harsh blow and naturally I have been beating myself up about it since. We had been writing letters to each other for the past three years and I will miss that massively. 

We’ve taken our time putting the office back together so we can take advantage of space and this week I’ve capitalised on this new found sense of get up and go and decluttered the house. We aren’t necessarily messy people but the small changes have made big changes to my frame of mind. I’ve been putting picture frames on walls rather than having them on furniture, just to give the element clear space and to be honest it has really helped to have a lot more order to our home I’ve also had a clear out of my wardrobe and I’ve earn some extra money on vinted which is always great this time of year. I’ve not really experienced money troubles or worries with all the new problems with the economy but it’s always in the back of my mind. I do worry about Mr W and how he takes it all on board. So just by making those few extra pounds I hope it takes the burden off a little bit or you know shows that I’m trying. And there you go, that’s where we’re at up until today really. 

The biggest change has come about in my mental health. Where a few years ago, especially during the first few months of covid in 2020, to ease my anxiety over what was happening in the world I would keep myself busy. To cover the cracks in my own problems and my own dealings with it, I would just constantly keep busy but as soon as the busy times stopped the anxieties were still there. In the last 6+ months I’ve actually tried to settle into my anxieties and just feel the feelings because they’re not going to go away. Just because you’ve cleaned your house top to bottom with a toothbrush or you’ve decided to go for a 4 hour walk, in my experience, doesn’t mean your anxieties are banished. It just pushes it aside, it doesn’t really deal with it. I’ve been focusing on what I’ve been feeling to try and process it a lot better but the problem is the deeper you go the harder it is to find your way out. Especially when you can’t pinpoint why you feel so sad.  There is a lot of negativity going on in the world and my own struggles with maybe never having a child have thrown me through a loop. The past 3 to 4 weeks have possibly been the worst mental health time for me in a very very long time. What’s worse is on the outside, so as soon as I step outside our front door, I’ve almost gone back to how I used to behave. Putting on a rather poor show that everything’s fine, happy happy, happy, go lucky but as soon as I’m back home I just retreat and Mr W and I just settled into this whole routine of home life. Get up, do the dishwasher, cook dinner,  watch TV, go to bed and my and Mr W’s relationship has become quite static. We’ve had a lot of time to talk over the past week about how to make some changes and see what we can do. We’ve got a few things in the pipeline over the next couple of weeks, and like I said it is really there a little things that make the biggest differences. 

I will be writing again, I’m not going to sugar coat what’s been going on but I hope by looking back at the Scotland trip, because I still haven’t finished the itinerary blogs and their highlights for you, I’m hoping that it will give me some structure. Looking back as well, which I haven’t done in weeks, will remind me of that fantastic trip and will ignite in me the need (obviously) to pursue the next trip. 

We have a little trip coming up in 10 days, a tiny trip, but we’re going somewhere we’ve never been before and I’m hoping I’ll be able to share it with you live so that’s something really exciting. It’ll give us a lovely little boost before Christmas. We have so many lovely things coming up over the next couple of weeks and then we are currently talking about what’s going to happen next year in terms of travel of which I’m already so excited about. Potentially we’re going to two new countries and travelling in a way we’ve not traveled before so that is really exciting. It’s obviously also something to think about logically because of the economy. I don’t want travel to be the reason we fall apart when we have responsibilities at home as well. There’s gonna be a lot of talk but I often find that that’s how we shine as a couple. We brainstorm and explore and we grow individually and together. In some way’s that’s why I write this blog because travel for me eases so many worries in my life. 

I used to think it was because it was an escape, that when something bad happens I just run away but now I find it just brings out the best in me. That my anxieties just float away. Maybe it’s down to the fact that when we travel I have my itinerary and I know what to expect. There are no questions and I feel safe. I’m safe from the unknown. For instance today, our igniter broke on our oven and it seems that every year something big goes wrong in our home. You can’t predict it nor can you run away. You have to find the easiest way through anxieties or none. I also think travel just brings out the best in me and that’s because the anxieties of PCOS, mental health and homelife (to a certain degree) don’t exist in my travel brain. They’re all gone for a short portion of time. I get to exist as who I am. I don’t have PCOS nor does my brain hate me. 

The plan is to continue travelling on a budget because we, quite frankly, don’t know how to go backwards. It’s not that we would not worry about money when it comes to travel, you just make it work but now we realise it’s not about the money you spend, it’s about the experience you have and they don’t have to cost the world. We have done that for so long. Since the covid pandemic really. We have changed so much as travellers that it would seem almost foreign to go backwards.

Really looking forward to the next couple of weeks and seeing what actually happens next year so stay tuned and thanks for sticking around.

Life happens