"When you get bit by a snake, you are supposed to suck out the poison. Well, that's what I had to do. I had to suck all of the poison out of my life."- Mean Girls

As we all know, lockdown is tough. I had great intentions, to begin with, that this is the perfect time to start fresh. The perfect time to focus on myself, my values, hobbies, and interests.  I was viewing it as a time of hibernation, or a cacoon. I would be a caterpillar before and after, I would emerge this beautiful butterfly. All my bad habits? Gone.  Confidence level? 1000%. That guilt and shame? It's been replaced with love and compassion.

Well, as I mentioned, lockdown is tough. I'm not going to explain why. We all know why and it's different for everyone. So everything that I mentioned above? Working on myself? Re-discovering what life is about? I let it slip.  I let it slip, and gave in to natural behaviours and attitudes to cover how I was truly feeling.

Once or twice in counselling, I describe myself as an addict. Luckily, I'm not an addict to anything illegal or that could hospitalise me. But I'm an addict to certain behaviours, certain people, certain situations. Once I get my 'hit', I'm OK for a while. I'm relaxed. I'm aware that I "can't" do it again. I promise myself that this time I'm going to get "clean". I'll be on the straight and narrow. I'm going to learn from my mistakes. But, then the "addiction" kicks and after two or three weeks, I want to give in. I crave it. So I go looking for it again; whether that's an argument or a person. And the cycle repeats itself.

The reason why I'm writing is this to be honest with myself.  My behaviour hasn't been OK. I've been allowing my emotions to get the better of me and deflect it onto other individuals. That's not OK. I allow myself to be treated like crap by some people (even though history has shown me what happens), so I'll deflect and treat other people like crap because I'm not being honest or seeing the situation for what it is. But I don't want to admit that. Rejection is a cruel, hard pill to swallow. I could write more but I don't want to turn this into a "dear diary" soap opera. That's for my journal- lucky thing.

I would love to be able to erase memories of people knowing me, situations. I would do it in a heartbeat. I would be like Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the deathly hallows or the lead character out of 'external sunshine of the spotless mind'. To start fresh, to be the version of a person I've always wanted to be from here and out, to not let things slip and to not give in to the addiction.

But alas, I can't. I can't erase memories. I can only hope and pray that time will be on my side, and time forgives all; from other people, but within myself. But with hope and pray, I'm also going to put the work in again and not give in to the addiction and let it all slip. But to do that, I'm going to let go of it all and start fresh.

I've already started doing small steps to let things go, to start fresh and to become that beautiful butterfly after lockdown is F I N A L L Y over. I'm feeling confident about it all.  So, this blog is going to be one of my concentrations from now on so expect a lot more posts.

Keep safe, be happy and make good choices.

xoxo