Letting go

I was 14 when I decided I was going to be a Social Worker. In hindsight it seems like a pretty strange decision to make as a young teenager but I guess some needs are so deep that when there is no other way, we are forced to meet them ourselves. I was as longing to be saved, as I was to save others.

Ten years on and I am a qualified social worker who has just quit my first “real” job after only four months. The job that I had dreamt about and worked towards relentlessly for ten solid years. Less a job and more of a vocation. I was made to be a social worker and because of this every shitty experience I’d ever had was okay because I was training. Gaining valuable experience for my future self. Every experience I’d wished I’d had would be fulfilled through these beautiful, cathartic moments where I would become the person for these kids that I had always longed for myself.

In reality the four months were hell. Weeks and weeks filled with sleepless nights, debilitating stress and an overwhelming sense of helplessness in the daily pursuit for hope. I’ve never felt like I couldn’t do something before but leaving this job was not a choice, it was necessity. And just when I’d had my life all neatly tied up with a bow at last, it came undone. And the whole fucking mess came spilling out. When I quit my “dream job” I lost not only the ideas I’d had about my career but the ideas I had about myself too. That I was capable and strong and tenacious. A social worker. A wounded healer.

Life is funny like that, isn’t it? We can plan with precision and care how the entirety of our lives will pan out but it is as useful as a daydream. I am quickly sobering in my new found knowledge; that my life may never look like I thought it would. That our lives rarely do and that there is beauty in that. That our real character will be shown in how we faced the challenges and the U-turns, not how we predicted them. In how we were able to grow and adapt to our changing surroundings. In how we were able to hope, amongst our pain and our dying dreams.

Some of the most beautiful experiences of my life were mistakes. Completely unplanned, unpredictable moments and chances which I am thankful for everyday. Life really is more complex and more creative than we could ever comprehend and it is our responsibility to ensure we never limit ourselves to our own imaginations. I might get a new social work job and continue my career or I might not. I might be a teacher or a writer. I might not be the person I thought I was going to be but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying. We don’t always have to succeed to win. Success won’t always look like we’d imagined but it doesn’t mean it’s not worth having.

Sometimes the greatest strength is not in how hard we hold on, but in how gracefully we can let go.

Making my bed

I’m 23 years old, 24 at the start of the new year. I work as a barista in a coffee shop, in a job I neither hate nor love. I’m at a place in my life where I’m neither happy nor unhappy. Not anxious, not depressed or heartbroken, not broken at all and yet not happy either. I suppose I always believed that happiness was just the opposite of unhappiness. I work in a job that I believe uses less than 10% of my creativity or skill as a person and maybe even less of my attention. That brings me no closer to who I really am or that lets me explore that. One of my new years resolutions for 2016 was to stop working dead end jobs and I am really no further than when the year began. And the more I settle into this routine the more I think that there are two types of people in the world, people who are content with this kind of life and people who aren’t. The people who will get out and the people who never do.

So I made a list. 25 things I want to do before I’m 25. Things which range from learning to play my banjo better to learning how to drive. The smallest most insignificant things like making my bed every morning, because that what I thought successful people did, to

Number 12 on my list: Climb Black Mountain (03/10/2016)

getting my dream job within the next year. Because those people who are neither happy nor unhappy, the ones who live largely unfulfilling lives, the ones we all know and think we will never become, they were just us once. Just some 23 year old girl with a degree she wasn’t using, writing some amateur blog and thinking about how far away those dreams seem in reality.

But you don’t need to be the person you want to become tomorrow. That’s the kind of thoughts that keep people immobilized. That its too far away, it’s too hard, its too unrealistic. It probably is. You don’t need to get your dream tomorrow if that’s not actually feasible. You can only get there when you get there. You just need to take small steps in the right direction. You just need to do one small thing that brings you towards it everyday. You don’t need to write a novel, you just need to keep writing. You just need to keep your dreams in your sight.

All you have to do today, is make your bed.

The real question

When I began this trip I had one objective and in many ways one real question I wanted answered;

How do I stop being afraid?

I figured if I put myself in the most overwhelming and chaotic circumstances, eventually nothing would frighten me any more. And my plan was going surprisingly well. Then one night in the back of a nightclub in Van Vieng, Lao I met an Irish guy (typical) who was asking himself the same question. He said he was a “normal”, confident, popular guy. He was content with his life and yet almost sporadically he would awake in the night gasping for air.

It wasn’t until he asked me the question; “How do I stop being afraid?”, that I realised I’d been asking the wrong question. It’s wasn’t how. That’s why nothing had worked. I had drank and prayed and willed the fear to be gone with no success for almost 16 years.

It was why. 

Why are two happy, content, “normal” 20 something year olds waking in the middle of the night, after a seemingly regular day, unable to breathe. And as soon as I’d asked the real question, I knew the answer. They aren’t content.

It is said that the body knows. It knows things we don’t understand yet. It feels danger before we sense it. And once I’d asked the first right question. a thousand new questions unfolded.

What about my life am I not content with? If the body truly knows then what is it trying to tell me? Am I acting in a way that is true to my truest sense of self? That person we are when we’re small; unchanged by loss and deceit. And why here? Why did I have to come half way round the world to allow myself to ask these questions?

What exactly is it that I’m running from, or perhaps the real question:

What am I running toward? 

Are you ready?

This is the most common question I faced during my last two weeks in the states.

Are you ready? I was never sure whether they meant ready to leave or ready to go but either way I always knew the answer was no. I had planned over and over again, I had talked myself in and out of the trip for six months but at no part could I honestly tell you I’d felt ready.

Change terrifies me. I had a very chaotic life. Everything changed, all the time. I stopped counting the new houses after 30. I was always the new kid in school. People dropped in and out of my life all the time, their ability to protect me changing as they changed. There was love. Always. But there was also chaos and change and confusion.

And by the time I reached 18 I desperately craved stability and routine. I desperately craved calmness. But when I got it, nothing changed. I still felt afraid and confused and chaotic. And I realized that the chaos wasn’t my environment anymore, it was in me. It had shaped me. It had raised me. And so began this journey. And four years later, after counselling and medication and yoga and routine I decided I was bored of catering to my anxiety. And I booked a year long worldwide trip around the world. 

I decided that I would put myself into the most chaos I could imagine and I would find a way to cope with it. I would have to. This is sink or swim. And sometimes I swim and I know I’m in the right place and I know this is going to shape my whole life in a new way. Some days I am so sure the answers are here. And some days I sink. I sink and sink and sink and wake in the middle of the night in an unfamiliar hostel unable to breathe.

Am I ready?

I didn’t eat for 4 days when I landed in Asia. I didn’t sleep for 5. Of course I’m wasn’t ready but are we ever really ready? Are we ever ready to face our past, to face the person it made us and didn’t make us. Are we ever ready to come face to face with our fears, to face all the things that hold us back and tell us we can’t. Are we ever really ready to face ourselves, and decide that maybe it’s not who we wanted to be.

All my love,

Maeve

Your story

Since as far back as I can remember I’ve told myself the same story;

• Girl gets sick and dies from freak illness nobody ever gets
• Girl is too anxious to spend time alone; or travel, or leave the house without something to distract her mind
• Girl is too anxious to watch scary movies or shows about hospitals and sickness and pain

And exactly what you think might happen, happened. It became my story.

Is any of it true? Maybe, I don’t know anymore. But I believed it to be true and therefore it was true. So often our perception is our truth.

And I lived it. I lived this story out my whole life. Right down to the darkest corners of my mind and back I’ve played my part accordingly. And then one day I realized I was more afraid of living this story than anything else. I was more afraid of the way my life was beginning to take shape than of the illnesses I had obsessed over for 22 years. I had spent so long obsessing over these imagined illnesses than I’d failed to see I already had an illness. And it was fatal.

It was killing me from the inside out. It was taking my personality, my social life. At one point I was so anxious I couldn’t eat for days and weeks and slowly mentally and physically I began to fade away. I had that “butterfly stomach” feeling constantly, my mind consumed with the fact that I could drop dead at any moment and yet so wholly unaware of the fact that I’d been dying for a long time.

That was almost two years ago now. It’s been over a year since I had a panic attack which were at one stage a daily occurrence. And yet I do not write to you from a pedestal of epiphanies and redemption and light. I do not write to you anxiety free with a pamphlet of 5 easy steps to make you feel “normal” again.

Instead I write to you from the 5th day of a year long, worldwide trip. I write to you from a clammy room in upper Manhattan, New york city where a girl, the same girl from the first story tells herself a new story.

One where she travels the world.

One where she falls asleep without a movie on.

One where instead of reminding herself how anxious she is, she reminds herself how resilient she is. How much she’s already overcame, and how much she still has left to conquer.

One where instead of focusing on how breathless she is when she steps off the plane, she focuses on the fact that she did it anyways.

And she reminds herself that this story, this running monologue in her mind is shaping her future. That it’s shaping her.

And she gets to decide how that reads.

She gets to write it.

All my love,

Maeve x

Flawed

“she refused to accept her wounds came from the same place as her powers”  Power-Adrienne Rich 

We all have those days, or weeks or sometimes even years when you look into the mirror and the person looking back at you just doesn’t seem good enough. It might be your looks, you’re too fat, you’re too thin, you’re too ugly to be loved or wanted. Somebody’s broken up with you or cheated on you and somehow you’ve made that be about you and your flaws. Somebody’s smarter than you or more athletic or more musical and no matter how hard you try and practice and graft you just can’t get there. You fall short time and time again.

For years I’ve been attempting to be this ideal person. This image i conjured up, hand selecting traits I seen in the people I admired. Patient and kind but feisty. Humble but confident. Good at sports and music and lively without ever being over bearing. I have now concluded this was impossible. All I could ever be in the end was me. And I have wounds. I’ve seen pain and betrayal. I’ve had my heart broken. I’ve felt abandoned and forgotten and scared and with this has come wounds that aren’t ready to heal. With this has come a lifelong struggle with hypochondria and anxiety. A defensive and argumentative nature. A need to be right. To be the one in control. 

But it took me a long time to realize these things I hate about myself were also a part of the things I loved. They were also my powers. Yes I am defensive but how else would I be a social worker, how else would I defend those who can’t protect themselves. And yes I’m anxious and overly analytic but this very story, this journey back to myself had to first begin with loss and confusion. Only when I had no idea who I was anymore, when I’d lost my whole self in my mental illness could I begin this journey.

I’m not preaching for you to remember the things you love about yourself but rather for you to love the things you hate about yourself. To realise that your bossiness, your sensitivity, your shyness are just as valuable as strengths and occasionally are just two sides of the same coin. Their is power in your flaws and weaknesses and quite often your wounds are just the beginning of a new power.

It’s okay that you’re not as pretty or confident or creative as her or him in or everyone else. Its okay that you can’t master a skill other people seem to find easy. That you can’t run fast enough, speak in public or get the hang of that sport you’ve been playing for 2 years *cough rugby cough*. These are exactly the things that push you onwards to run a little faster, train a little harder, speak a little more. These are the moments that breed strength and ambition and bravery.

“The road is long and in the end it’s only ever with yourself..” The sunscreen song-Baz Luhrmann

And sometimes the things we don’t achieve are the most valuable moments of all.

All you can do is try and try and try to be a little more empathetic. To try to listen that little bit more, to try and catch the ball one more time than you did yesterday. And to remember that change comes slowly and compassion sometimes even slower. That patience and humility are traits that some people have to cultivate and practice. That sometimes it takes a whole life time to stop defending yourself. And that the journey to self awareness and improvement often begins in our ability to first show ourselves this compassion.

Hold on or let go?

I read this interesting article the other day and it stated that the people you spent your time with in your 20’s will define who you are going to become. Here’s a quote from it;

“The time you spend in your 20s is arguably the most influential in regards to your future self. Who you spend time with and what you spend time doing plays a massive role in you reaching your full potential.”

Do I believe this? Yes, in some ways, but there is always time to change the life you’re living. What I do know though is that time is precious. It’s valuable. And it’s yours to decide to divide up in whatever way you see fit. There’s so much I still want to do in life and sometimes I feel like there isn’t enough time to do it all. This isn’t true though. We have all the time we need, sometimes we just don’t know how best to allocate it.

This doesn’t just apply for how we spend our time but also who we chose to spend it with. There will always be times when we have to spend time with people we don’t necessarily chose like work and collective hobbies but even in these circumstances you have choice. The choice to refuse to accept who they want you to be or who they already think you are. The choice to stand strong in your own character, your own beliefs, your own agenda and to realise that if you have to change who you are to gain their acceptance or approval, then it isn’t somewhere you need to be or something you want to be apart of.

Sometimes though it’s not easy to see when a relationship or friendship has run its course. In times like that I simplify it to one simple question

Does this person make me feel like a bigger version of myself or a smaller one? 

Friends and good relationships are ones in which you see yourself through their eyes as a bigger, braver stronger version of yourself. More funny, more intelligent. Friends build you up, make you feel invincible and worthy. They make you feel big. They help you grow. They support you. They change and you change but somehow you adapt to get those two pieces to still fit together. 

They put the hard work in and when something isn’t working they put it in again and again and again. They try something new. They value you and they tell you that they do. And they show you that they do. Their the people on the side lines rooting for you even when you stumble, even when you come last. They love you even when you can’t love yourself. They feel your pain. They feel your doubts, your insecurities. And when you’re sure you can’t go on, when you’re absolutely sure you can’t take a single step more, when you have nothing left to give, they show you how to give a little more. The take the step with you, sometimes they take it for you.

The hardest part is acknowledging when is the right time to hold on and when is the right time to let go. Again I ask myself one simple question;

Have they given up on me? 

If the answer to that question is yes then you already have the answer to yours.

Life is too short to spend with people who don’t appreciate you. Change is necessary. And that choice you make between holding on and letting go, between giving everything and giving up becomes the story of your life. Write it carefully.

I am invincible

I am invincible

I’ve always been ill and more than often terminally ill. I’ve had brain tumours, meningitis, appendicitis and more heart attacks than I could keep track off. Right now I actually have DVT. Unfortunately only one illness I’ve ever had was real though. Health anxiety, better known as hypochondria.

I’ve talked quite openly about my experiences with anxiety though I actually rarely mention that most of this anxiety is focused on my health. I read a great article last week that hit the nail on the head “anxiety is like water, it needs a container. A thought to give it shape, a channel to flow through”. This is the most accurate way I could describe hypochondria. It’s just the container, the real problem is the anxiety. Understanding this has helped me better understand anxiety in all its forms such as OCD, social anxiety, even jealously in relationships. It all comes from the same place and then we pick and choose where we focus it.

I’m sure I probably lost half of you at hypochondria. It’s become so well known that it’s comical. The people who are obsessed with going to the doctors and think a paper cut is cancer. Even I laugh about it. But there is a serious side. At 3am when you’re still awake googling symptoms, sweating trying not to pick up the phone it stops becoming a joke. At 18 and on courses of anti depressants and diazepam it stops being funny.

Now surely if you have the insight to know you’re a hypochondriac then you can no longer be one? I wish it worked like that. My anxiety is clever. Every time I’m on top it finds a way to out smart me. We’ve been best pals since I was 6 years old though I can remember moments of anxiety even earlier than that. It grew up with me, it changed with me. I’ve stopped watching Tv shows about hospitals, stopped reading articles on fb about freak illnesses but it’s so tuned in. It will pick up stories from half way down the train carriage, remember illnesses from game show questions and then use them at the a later point.

The ironic thing is it has nothing to do with actually being sick. It’s just about control. Like OCD, like eating disorders, they are attempts to gain some kind of control in life. Which is exactly why when I’m stressed my hypochondria will rear its ugly head. But you can’t have control. The only real way we control our lives is by how we chose to react to life.

I realised a long time rationalising with my anxiety was pointless. I’m 22,  this disease is really rare etc does not work. The fear is irrational so how could the answer be rational. The best way for me to deal with it right now is by acknowledging one simple truth. Up until now, I am invincible.

Nothing has ever killed me, no turmoil was too much, no anxiety was ever too frightening, no heartbreak too heartbreaking. No challenge life has given me yet was too hard. I am invincible. So therefore I must assume, based on probability that whatever life throws my way I will overcome it. Because the reality is that’s much more likely that the alternative.

And by that acknowledgement, by accepting that I can’t control if I get sick but that I can control my reaction to it, suddenly you take the driving seat. By letting go of control, you gain it. And not only am I going to endure it, not only am I going to survive it but I’m going to live it. I’m going to own it.

I am invincible.

As G would say..

All my love,

Maeve

Writers block

It’s been exactly 3 months since the last time I wrote something. 3 long slow months. It’s so much easier to write when you’re travelling or living in another country, so many new people and new experiences. But living in my home town, working in a burrito bar.. It’s easy to feel like you’re going backwards sometimes. And even easier to feel like their are no lessons to learn in doing so. But there are things to be learnt and discover in every single part of life if you are willing to see them. So for the sake of my own sanity these are 3 things I have learnt in the last 3 months.

Sometimes you have to relearn lessons
I argue too much and listen too little. The amount of times I have heard this in my life is frankly bordering on ridiculous now. It’s not that I don’t believe the people who say it or that I don’t see it for myself because I do but unfortunately just because you understand it, it doesn’t mean you understand how to change it. One thing I have always struggled with is untangling my flaws from my good traits. For example I don’t know how to still be confident and independent and efficient without being pedantic and over bearing. It’s something I work on almost every single moment of my life and most of the time I don’t succeed. It’s a lesson I’ve been learning for 21 years and yet some days feel nowhere closer to achieving it. But the important thing is that I recognise it is a lesson I am still learning. The important thing is that I do want to change and improve.

Burning bridges is always detrimental
I don’t know how many times I’ve said, Heard people say or thought “it’s okay cause I’m leaving anyways or I’ll never see this person again”. While this may seem true at the time, often you will have to cross the same bridges again and I have been humbled by the amount of times this has happened in the last year. It is much easier to maintain a steady relationship than to build a broken bridge. Thankfully the people in my life I have encountered seem to have an endless amount of grace but as a close friend reminded me it is also important to give yourself this grace. Moving on and mending relationships requires first the grace for you to forgive yourself and the mistakes you’ve made. To allow yourself to be forgiven inadvertently gives you the permission you need to grow and change.

Perspective is everything
Over the past few months I have noticed my health anxiety creeping back into my life. This is not overly surprising to me really. As soon as I stop moving in life either physically or emotionally I have always felt my anxiety more acutely. What I have learnt though is that perspective is everything. Health anxiety is not a nice feeling and I do not enjoy it but I have come to understand my anxiety is not my problem but rather a symptom. The times when it increases is when I’m stressed or not dealing with a problem that’s been rattling around inside my head. It forces me to stop because it paralyses me which in turn gives me the time to process my thoughts and whats not going well in my life at that time. Also constantly feeling like your dying or about to die, while terrifying, is actually a great way to live. Steve jobs once said “you’re already naked, theirs no reason not to follow your heart” (I think) and he was right! Yes I might not die today but I am dying. So are you. Being forced to deal with this reality forces me to live. My anxiety has never changed but my perspective on it is consistently changing. Sometimes that makes all the difference.

So yeah, Belfast is great as it always has been. And maybe I am in some ways going backwards but maybe that isn’t a bad thing. Maybe it’s the universe giving me a second chance to make amends with my relationships, my past and myself.

ps. I’m having some GREAT ADVENTURES aswell.

My brothers surprise party

London training with Camp America

Here comes the summer

I can still remember that day as clear as ever. Taking the ferry from the North Fork to Shelter Island for the first time. I wore a white top and denim shorts, had a cowboy hat on and sunglasses which always hurt the sides of my head. Like they were begging me not to miss that moment. I’ve played it again and again in my head. I had my feet perched up against the glove compartment, resting neatly in place of the steering wheel.

We were strangers then, all of us but somehow the silence never felt awkward. Would it have scared me then to know how attached I would one day become. Would I have regretted the constant inscription of you etched around my right ankle, almost as real as the sound of your voice across a crowded dining hall. This is the problem with travelling you see, it doesn’t just broaden your mind, it stretches your soul. It leaves pieces of it scattered under the coconut trees in puerto rico, or buried below the sand at K-rock with our old cigarette butts.

If I knew then how much I stood to gain and lose on that tiny island, would I have turned back. Would I have rewinded it back to my first night, drinking cocktails in your back garden, arguing with your dad that true love exists. That I’d felt it, I’d lived it. Or back to the night we skinny dipped at k-rock, back to them nights on the roof watching the sun come up. So free. So free it was almost frightening.

Or maybe back to the first night at camp. Would I be willing to give up this me for an easier ride. Would I be able to say no, say I’d meet you another time, down by the waterfront or at the drinks machine queue. Would I place my hand over yours, close that gap on the sofa, fast forward the inevitable. Would I take the bus out with you to chase that thunderstorm, you always were braver than me friend. Or maybe I would just get drunk with some friends, watch a girl in cowboy boots get sloppy. Enjoy the details my mind may someday not remember.

This is our first summer since that day apart. Sure we’ll see eachother but it won’t be the same. It won’t ever be that first day. It won’t ever be that first ferry ride, silently gazing across the still water. So unsure about what this adventure would hold. So unaware of the effects of that small patch of land on our lives and so ignorant of the potential a group of “20 something year old kids” might hold.

ps Bryan, this ones for you..