Magnet

Some plants are magnet for insects.

Delta

I can watch this forever thinking time does not pass, it continues…

Weekly Photo Challenge

Sunny

I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.

-Paulo Coelho

Wheel

Wheel of time Wheel of fortune Wheel of life Wheel alignment… How many words contain wheel… Wheelbarrow Cartwheel Pinwheel Wheelchair… Thousands I guess. Most of them I never heard before or have seen use in a sentence. Life is a circle. A never ending circle. A wedding ring supposed to be symbolizing forever though the symbol of eternity and infinity as we all know isn’t always a ring. The shape of a sideways figure eight, the Ouroboros (or Uroboros) and the Endless Knot, are also symbols of infinity and eternity to name a few. The Armenian symbol of everlasting celestial life looks like a pinwheel and the Egyptians sign for it is the Ankh, or the “Crux Ansata” or ‘cross with a handle. Whatever we think is appropriate symbol of  eternal life and rebirth, it is still containing a circle in the middle. It got to be. Life never sit still. It turns and turns with time. And time is infinite. Our life is limited but time on its own is infinite… 

ALL OF ME

Who is she, this rebellious, creative creature that refuses to play by the rules? 

She is the chameleon that catches your eye. She is each hue of the rainbow. She is every summer sun. Every dark depth. She has a too hot heat that scorches the heart and a deep rooted longing to take flight like so many birds.

With her soul stripped bare, stark, she will dare you to see her. To truly see her. She will challenge you to hold steady your gaze. To not look away. Even when ugly truths show themselves, dancing darkly, confident of their ability to stun you. To be shunned by you.

She will let you glimpse some of the darkness that she holds, the shadows that she knows.

And then, as you try to shine light on them, on her, she will turn away from you, wanting to keep her stronghold on the demons. Because they are a part of her too. And what unknown gaping void might be left without them?

She will push you away. And then bring you back, her conflicting behaviour causing her as much confusion as it does you. She will hover at the brink. At the place where freedom falls into a different kind of escape that promises no return. She won’t succumb to the chasm that calls softly, insistently to her, but she will be mesmerised by its allure of nothingness. Of its promise to stop the clashing thoughts and tangled feelings.

There are the times when she will want to give in to the vulnerability that encompasses her. She will want to be nurtured. Spoon fed. Looked after. She will want to climb on your lap, to curl up like a cat. She will want you to tell her that it will all be alright. That she doesn’t need to do anything more. That she won’t have to draw on her depleted reserves of energy that seem to elude her today.

She assumes the personas of all the warriors she has known and learnt of. She will not always know where she begins and where the fictional personalities end, for the lines are blurred and she has no true desire to clarify them. Rather she enjoys their comfort blanket cover, that she may be able to draw on them as she needs to.

She has the haughty pride of a peacock that struts knowing full well of the rich layered beauty that draws the eye. She wants to be admired. Adored. Adorned. And then, she wants to take off the trinkets that weigh her down for they feel gaudy and heavy after a time. 

Her turmoil is studied yet unexamined, only showing itself truthfully in the offerings that she is compelled to create. She won’t be able to tell you how her creativity is born or from where it came. She does not know herself. Only that it does come, and it must come, so that she may then know some modicum of peace. Of respite. Of purpose. Her art of choice is an extension of who she is. Of who she is yet to become.

There are the days when she will wake in the light but feel full of darkness. She won’t understand what happened in the hours of sleep that she should open her eyes feeling this way. The fog will cloud her brain and dull her brilliance. Everything will move slightly slower. More muted. A lethargy descending on her. She knows to wait it out.

There are the days she will find herself in scattered pieces. Like china, smashed on the kitchen floor. Bewildered and broken. Bloodied and cold. She will look into your eyes, searching for an answer that she knows she will not find. She will feel a disoriented sense of despair. A hopelessness of sorts.

Rage is not unfamiliar to her. Cries of anger let loose when fear threatens to take over. She will shout out, hearing a voice she knows to be hers, yet not recognising the stranger that she finds in the echoes that flood back to her.

She can’t always verbally articulate what she wants to convey, what she’d like to share. Rather she finds her voice in her craft. Adding an adjective here, a splash of paint there in place of the words that might otherwise stay silent. Solitude sits well with her, yet although she knows she yearns for this sacred time alone, too much of it leads to a distorted place where the world is twisted and misshapen. Once there, she races to return, taking gulps of air that will speed her back safely.

She will find segments of herself in the creations she makes. In her words, her drawings, her sculptures. She will smile then, as she has a feeling of unity. Of coming home. She will feel confident, connected, whole.

Turning to face you with eyes so bright. And then, in no time at all, she will yearn for the next creation, panicking that it might not come, that she won’t have any outlet for the chattering riot inside her mind. She will want reassurance. Understanding. Love. So much love.

She may be some or all of these things and much, much more. She will frustrate you. She will inspire and amaze you. She will infuriate you beyond a measure that you barely knew existed. She will be all kinds of temperamental. She cannot be any more or any less than she knows in that moment. She is complex and chaotic. She is poetic and proud. She is every kind of fire and ice and all the elements of earth and sky. She is the restless, rebellious female creative and this is what it means to love her.

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I wish I wrote this piece because it describes me word for word but it was penned by Skylar Liberty Rose- freelance writer and fellow blogger who believes in creativity as a form of healing and is passionate about manifesting her dreams. Skylar is an advocate of stripping away layers of conditioning and instead discovering the unique truth within. She is inspired by souls with spirit and courageous hearts. She grew up in London and now lives in New York City with her husband. Skylar is a woman after my own heart.

Truth slap

I can’t wait for the day when life finally makes sense when we find the silver lining in every tragedy, when we learn the lesson from each mistake and when we understand why our hearts needed to get broken a few times to let love in.

I can’t wait for the day that we understand why we met the right people at the wrong time or the wrong people at the right time and why our lives didn’t align to bring us together.

I wonder if it’s because they’re the wrong ones for us or because we still have a lot of growing up to do and we’re meant to be with someone who understands who we’re becoming not who we were.

I can’t wait for the day that we understand the lesson behind every struggle. Why we struggled to be successful, why we struggled to find love, why we struggled to reach our dreams and why we lost people who meant the world to us. I wonder if we needed these lessons to learn how to appreciate life and feel the pain of others or we just needed to learn that there is no living without suffering.

I can’t wait for the day that we understand why we had to hate ourselves to love ourselves, why we had to destroy ourselves to build ourselves up again and why we had to start over just before we got to the finish line. I wonder who saved us or who inspired us to save ourselves.

I wonder if we are meant to be reborn a few times so we can learn how to truly live. I want to know what triggered us to change and how we can no longer recognize who we used to be.

I can’t wait for the day that we understand why we keep falling for the wrong ones over and over again, why we can’t forget those who hurt us and why we sometimes can still forgive them and take them back. I want to understand how our hearts operate, how they function, how they move us to do things we would never do and lead us to places that we know we shouldn’t go to.

I’m curious to know why we listen to it, why we follow it blindly like it never got us lost before, why we trust it even though it left us broken and why do we always go back to it for questions when it keeps giving us the wrong answers. I wonder if there will come a day when we stop listening to it and if we’ll ever be truly alive without it.

They say everything happens for a reason and I truly believe that, but I also want to know what this reason is and why it chose us. Why some reasons keep recurring and why some reasons leave us even more perplexed. I want to understand why we go through certain things, what’s the message behind it and what if we never respond to this message, what if we just ignore it and keep living, what will happen then? Will our lives get lost in translation?

I can’t wait for the day that life makes sense – some days I understand why certain things happened and others I’m not so sure, but all I know is that somehow we’ll connect the dots and someday we’ll complete the puzzle, until then, we have to learn how to live our lives without trying to understand it and we have to learn how to be comfortable with the irony and uncertainty of life; otherwise we’ll lose our common sense trying to make sense of the life we’re living.

~ via facebook

Commit

My father used to say: Once you commit yourself to something, you have to give it all, heart and soul or otherwise don’t do it at all. I abide to that rule since day one and still live by it. A source of ongoing conflict between me and D. He has an irritating ways of doing everything halfheartedly, especially those that don’t interest him and I can tell you nothing interests him much. Aside of course for the things that directly and personally concern him like technology and chocolates. No, I am not complaining. Just trying to make an example I can vouch for. Like yesterday, I asked him to kindly deadhead a rose bush- just one rose bush- by the fence in the front garden (gardening doesn’t interest him) because it has climbed higher than I can reach. This morning looking out I saw that the dead flowers are still hanging on the canes. When I asked him about it he said he removed the spent blooms that was hanging outside the fence and will do the rest in the near future. There was only one flower outside the fence, the rest are inside, and since he was busy with it anyway why not cut all the dead effing flowers?  

But that is D. He is fond of procrastinating, waltzing around, and only doing things you assigned him to do if he likes to do it. He is lost without manual and in most tasks you even have to hold his hand and guide him through it and if you are impatient like me, you will end up doing everything by yourself. I can’t take his words at face value because what he says and what he does are completely different things. I’m talking about simple things like locking the doors, windows, setting the alarm, putting the car inside switch off the cooker and so on. Little things that can have irreversible damage if something goes wrong and believe me it did already in the past. There were other big negligence caused disasters that costed us money which can be avoided if he only commit himself of not doing the same mistakes over and over again. “Next Time” is his favorite excuse. Always next time. But although if I’m lucky he will indeed not do the same exact mistake again, he will do it other way- same MO different concept. Mind blowing. 

He drives me crazy (and probably I do the same to him with my goal-oriented perfectionist ways of doing things) but we are married to each other. We made a commitment a long time ago to stay together for better or for worse. He is a sweet guy. You can’t argue with him because he doesn’t say a thing and just stands there. Fights cannot escalate when it’s only you doing the talking. His most endearing qualities are the ones that can also make me want to sign a divorce paper blindfolded, like being passive and childish, accommodating, nonchalant and diffident. Sometimes I really want to give up but I am stubborn. Once I commit myself into anything I see to it that I did already everything possible for the cause to work out before throwing in the towel. So when I close the door there will be no regrets and no self-reproach later on. That’s why probably it took me twenty years to walk out from my first marriage even though it was a living hell. My tenacity for holding on while others would have already jump off ship could also be my downfall.

I’ll take a shower now before I get carried away again. This evening I will be attending the premier of my favorite movie of all times: Transformers. See yah later…

Paper

What would we do without it? Even in this time of ultra- modern technology paper is still indispensable, especially in the western society where people prefer to use it in the little room to clean what needs to be clean instead of just using the more hygienic alternative- water. Don’t get on your high horse so fast because I am not on mine either. I am just telling the simple fact and the simple truth. Don’t look for meaning behind it. I have my own stock of kitchen rolls in the garage too, something which is unthinkable where I came from. We air dry dishes and only have one dish cloth and one rag to clean every surface. Now, I have boxes and boxes of paper hankies for my chronic sinusitis and ongoing allergies. And I still prefer good old fashioned books than E-books and still holding on to little notebooks and post it notes to record my old school thoughts.

I used to have a collection of expensive multi-colored stationery which I hardly use. I bought them because I like the way they look, feel and smell. Reminds me of the beginning of the school year when I was young and my oldest sister shopped school supplies for me and my siblings. Those were the happiest times in my life. Going to school was so important to us the worst punishment my parents could inflict on us was to make us stay at home on school days to clean the house. Corporal punishment was preferable than missing a day of school. 

I don’t know if our modern technology has a positive effect on deforestation or it’s the other way around. I hope those stories about sustainable forests is not just a myth. I love paper and its various forms but not in the cost of the environment. As of now, we are experiencing a heat wave for two consecutive weeks now it is forbidden by our government to even water our own gardens and fill pools so our kids could swim. And it looks like it will continue towards the next week for the time being. Record shows that the number of days with highest temperature in history have increased double in the last couple of years. I wonder how long those unbelievers could deny the reality of global warming.

Here I am getting side tracked again. Do you think living without paper is possible in the near future? Or is it like asking if we could exist without the existence of plastic and God knows what other engineered products we think indispensable to our lifestyle and survival.

I’m off now to have a few seconds under the shower to cool off. I guess the government will not fine me for trying to still alive. They don’t keep track of what I’m doing anyway. Or they will arrest me for sitting here typing this article butt-naked (or it is buck-naked?) Anyway, I’m out of here and maybe see you later. (P.S. It’s too hot to edit. You know what I mean)

Transient

Ephemeral beauties that last only for a short period of time but leaving everlasting memories in our minds…

Beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It’s the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death…

Loop

Let’s put our cards on the table: some women are stuck with men who don’t deserve them, yet we often fail to take the necessary steps to leave them.

Talking from personal experience, what used to comfort me was realizing there are many out there whose situations were just like mine, friends and strangers alike.

Let’s take Frida Kahlo for instance. She willingly stuck with Diego Rivera, yet everybody knew that he didn’t deserve her. Their story used to be my inspiration, back when I was stuck with a man I wanted to leave, but never felt I could. I tried to speculate: why did she stay with him, and how did it feel to stay while feeling miserable?

The reasons for staying are many, and each woman can only acknowledge her own. Still, I think we usually stay with men who don’t deserve us for four main reasons—and we won’t admit these to anyone but ourselves:

1. Fear—It can be fear of leaving and not finding another man we can profoundly love, or fear of leaving when there’s a chance he will change.

2. Attachment—Not only attachment to him, but attachment to the history together.

3. Hope—Believing that the man we love doesn’t deserve us can be devastating, so we keep hoping that things will get better.

4. Giving Up—Being with the wrong man depletes a woman of her energy.

Rather than taking the below crucial steps to fix my situation, I simply accepted my reality.

We know that leaving isn’t as effortless as some may think it is. Talk is easy, but when it comes to taking action, it can be the most complicated process, ever. We will have guilty thoughts accompanied with emotional loss. And the worst is being stuck with a man who manipulates us into staying every time we try to leave.

One thing I won’t say is this: “Leave, he doesn’t deserve you.”

I’ve personally heard that quite a lot, and frankly it never helped me with anything. As a result, I unconsciously stayed with my partner when I saw the whole world was against him.

Today, I will tackle the steps that helped me leave. Attachment to my partner and to my suffering blinded me then, but with great introspection and courage, I was finally ready to take the blindfold off my eyes.

1. Use the statement “talk to the hand, because the ears aren’t listening.”

Keep this in mind when people tell us why we should leave. Gently ask them to keep their opinions to themselves, or simply turn a deaf ear to them—maybe fantasize about an exquisite Martini on the beach while they’re talking. This can be difficult to do, especially since the people talking will mostly be our family and close friends, but it is crucial to develop our own opinions on the matter.

As long as we listen to what other people are saying, it will be impossible to prioritize our thoughts. Our actions will be based on other’s perceptions and not ours.

2. Be a recluse.

Once we’ve succeeded in doing step one, now it’s time to form our own line of thinking. In order to do this, we should stay away from everyone, including our man. Take a vacation for a week, if you must. We will get nowhere attempting to find our own thoughts with our man next to us. In other words, we shouldn’t be influenced by him.

Space is critical to know what we should do. Perhaps after spending some time alone, we’ll figure out a new way of dealing with him, other than leaving. Whatever the decision, it cannot be shaped unless we take space.

3. Introspection followed by making a decision.

Now it’s time to make a decision. But for us to take this step, we should pay a visit to the past. Sit quietly and go back to the beginning of your relationship. Note the good times, as well as the bad ones. With this introspection, we can come out with a decisive conclusion: If the bad times outweighed the good ones, it is a clear sign that deep inside us lies a whole lot of pain and it’s probably time to leave.

However, when going back to the past, our mind might draw the good times and hardly recall any bad ones. If this is the case, maybe it’s better to reconsider our decision.

4. Find stability within you.

Once we’ve decided to leave, we should find that place inside ourselves where we can lock our emotional stability, which is pivotal to sticking with your decision. Our man might try everything possible make us stay. If we aren’t emotionally stable, we will fall for the trap—just as I did, many times.

Remember: your emotional stability is your weapon, without it you can’t go to war with your man. He will fight you with all the beautiful words in the world and all the unforgettable history you both had. Fight back with your stability and you shall win.

5. Don’t push yourself.

Now that we know we want to leave, it is better not to draw a time frame—we can take all the time we need to do it. Maybe we will be ready in a week, and maybe in a year. Some of us might stay longer, to get over the relationship while staying with him. This way, once we’re not together anymore, we won’t suffer as much.

Take for instance people suffering from alcoholism or drug addiction. To refrain from their habits, some might slowly cut back before they are ready to completely stop.

6. Plan your future.

One thing we don’t want to happen after leaving, is to regret what happened. In order to prevent this, we should plan our future ahead of time. Maybe plan a trip, register for activities, programs, even meditation classes. Never leave yourself without any plans, at least at the beginning of your journey alone.

When a relationship ends, we should use our time wisely. To prevent feeling lonely or bored—and particularly regretful—we should keep ourselves busy so we don’t drown in negative thoughts.~

When using this guide women should keep in mind that they’re the only ones responsible for their own happiness. There is no such thing as “accepting reality”—we are the creators of our reality.

Love shouldn’t make us miserable or doubtful. If it does, then it’s not love. It’s only a false image of love that is controlled by ego, attachment and neediness. Never be weakened by fear. Fear is a liar. Follow your intuition, be strong, and remember: everything looks hard from a distance.

~Relephant Read: Via Elyane Youssef

Meddle

Why this word prompt reminds me of two things: One is the Echoes, a signature track from Pink Floyd’s Meddle album which probably a reminiscent of my former life with my ex. The song goes like this:

Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air
And deep beneath the rolling waves in labyrinths of coral caves
The echo of a distant tide
Comes willowing across the sand
And everything is green and submarine

And no one showed us to the land
And no one knows the wheres or whys
But something stirs and something tries
And starts to climb towards the light

Strangers passing in the street
By chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me
And do I take you by the hand
And lead you through the land
And help me understand the best I can
And no one calls us to move on
And no one forces down our eyes
No one speaks
And no one tries
No one flies around the sun

Cloudless every day you fall upon my waking eyes
Inviting and inciting me to rise
And through the window in the wall
Come streaming in on sunlight wings
A million bright ambassadors of morning

And no one sings me lullabies
And no one makes me close my eyes
So I throw the windows wide
And call to you across the sky.

It was written by Dave Gilmour, Nick Mason, Rick Wright. A group effort with lyrical contributions from each member.

Here is another song that reminds me of today’s prompt. It is appropriately titled Meddle.

I remember all the things she did before
I remember all the times she cried
I remember all the things you promised her
I know it hurt, I remember all the times you lied

Don’t meddle with her heart, meddle with her mind
Meddle with the things that are inside
You don’t know what you’ll find
You don’t know what she hides

So don’t go messing with her heart or messing with her mind
Or messing with the things that are inside
You don’t know what you’ll find
You don’t know what she hides

She still remembers like it’s yesterday
She still remembers you so well
She still remembers all the things you saw forever more
She still remembers but won’t tell

‘Cause she’s a mixed up girl in a mixed up world
And you know she don’t mean any harm
So please understand if you take her hand
You’ll get much more than you bargained for…

The last stanza kind of reminds me of myself 😀

Once Upon A Time

For many years I was in an extremely destructive relationship with someone who has NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) and during that time I was regularly subjected to a variety of emotional, mental and physical abuse.

Every day I walked on eggshells, living in fear of saying or doing something that might trigger an aggressive response.

Many people might wonder why I, or anyone else, would remain in this kind of environment, but by the time I fully recognized that I was in extreme danger, I was already badly emotionally and mentally weakened and debilitated.

I was living in terror waiting to be attacked at any moment and yet I did not feel as though I had the strength or courage to remove myself from it.

Abuse doesn’t always happen overtly and it isn’t always easy to recognize. Often it is a covert, insidious, invisible drip that slowly poisons the victim’s mind so they don’t trust their own judgment, is unable to make life-changing decisions and feels as though they don’t have the coping skills necessary to get help or leave.

It took me a long time, and everything I had, to pull myself from the bottom of the deep dark hell I existed in and to get myself to a place of safety.

By the time I walked away, I thought that the nightmare was over. But in so many other ways, it had only just began.

The terrors of the taunts, torture and torment that had become my normality didn’t subside. They remained alive and relived themselves in the form of intrusive, regular flashbacks.

Many months after I had left the relationship I discovered that I was suffering from C-PTSD, (Complex Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.) C-PTSD is a result of persistent psychological trauma in an environment where the victim believes they are powerless and that there is no escape.

C-PTSD is slightly different than PTSD, which is brought on from experiencing one solitary, traumatic incident, or it can develop due to an accumulation of incidents. Although both C-PTSD and PTSD both developed from my experiences, I identify more with C-PTSD, as it was the effects of the prolonged exposure to repetitive and chronic trauma that I felt I couldn’t escape from that affected me the most.

For many months after leaving the relationship I struggled to sleep at night, and when I did I often woke trembling after experiencing terrifying reoccurring dreams. On many occasions when I did eventually sleep I would sleep solid for at least 24 hours, in such deep slumber that I would struggle to wake from it and when I did I would feel fatigued, spaced out and as though I was numbly sleep-walking through the day.

I was easily startled and panicked at the slightest sudden movement or loud noise.

I was ultra-sensitive, on edge and highly alert most of the time, which I believe was my mind’s way of forming some sort of self-protection to keep me aware so that I avoided similar potentially dangerous situations.

At the mention of certain words, names or places I felt nauseous and dizzy and would become extremely distressed. A painful tight knot developed in my stomach every time something occurred to remind me of the trauma.

I still have difficulty remembering large phases of my life, and for a long time I struggled to stay focused, and my concentration abilities were very poor.

I would get upset easily, especially if I was in a tense environment. I had constant anxiety and was regularly in fight-or-flight mode.

I didn’t eat properly. I had no motivation and suicidal thoughts regularly flooded my mind.

I had lost my spark.

One aspect of the aftermath of the relationship that affected me most was the daily gaslighting that I endured. This left me finding it difficult to believe anything people would tell me, and I analyzed, questioned and dissected everything.

Forming new relationships, whether friendships, or romantic, was almost impossible as I struggled to trust people’s intentions and felt scared of possible underlying, hidden motives and agendas for their words or actions.

I dissociated from most of what I had been through and pretended, even to myself, that the abuse wasn’t as serious as it was. Partly because I felt ashamed that I had not left sooner and also because I wanted to defend and protect the person I was involved with, as I still cared for him. Therefore, I rarely mentioned the relationship to anyone and froze and shut down through stress (sometimes resulting in a meltdown) if anyone tried to talk to me about it.

It got to the stage where I withdrew completely as leaving the house became overwhelming and a major ordeal because I wouldn’t/couldn’t open up and connect and I felt terrified of everything and everyone.

One thing that became apparent and harrowing was that although I had gained enough strength to walk away and I felt empowered by the decision knowing that it was the right choice for my emotional, mental and physical health, I was suppressing all my emotions and feelings and I was far from okay on the inside.

There were many rollercoaster emotions trapped inside me and trying to ignore and contain them was doing more harm than good. In many ways the ending of the relationship had signaled closure to one phase of my life and had opened up a new chapter that was going to take a little time to get used to.

It appeared that while I was in the relationship I had become so used to enduring a wide variety of narcissistic behaviors that they had almost become normal and acceptable. Stepping away from all that I had known felt like I had walked from one planet and onto another and I hadn’t got a clue how to navigate it on my own or how to relate to anyone on it.

I soon realized that unless I started to focus on healing myself, I would remain a victim of my previous circumstances as the build up of emotional injuries, wounds and scars needed urgent attention. Otherwise, they would seep out and silently destroy sections of my life without me being aware that the past was still controlling me.

It was up to me to rebuild my strength and confidence, otherwise I would end up alienating myself and causing further damage.

I had a lot of inner healing work and restructuring to do and trying to convince myself that just because I had left the relationship everything would be okay, was not going to be enough.

The first and most significant step I took was admitting and fully accepting that the carnage I had experienced was real and had a huge impact on my emotional and mental wellbeing.

I had been surviving by a fragile thread in a domestic war zone and for far too long I had been intimidated, manipulated, lied to and threatened, amongst many other toxic and dysfunctional behaviors. The whole relationship had been an illusion and resulted in me having serious trust issues as well as losing the will to live. I not only struggled to trust other people, but I also realized I had no faith at all in my own intuition, perception or judgment.

Finally, I gave myself permission to take as long as I needed to heal, even if it meant I would spend the rest of my life slowly putting the pieces of my life back together. I came to terms with the fact that there is no timescale to healing and there was no hurry.

I allowed myself to grieve the relationship and the loss of the person I had separated from. This was extremely difficult to do as I had so many mixed emotions due to the scale of the abuse. For a long time I denied my grief, as it was complex to come to terms with how I could miss someone who had been responsible for vicious behavior towards me.

One of the hardest parts to dealing with this grief was feeling as though I could not talk openly to anyone, as I believed no one would understand how I could remain in such an abusive relationship and still miss many aspects of that person and the life I had with them.

The reason getting over this type of relationship can be so difficult is that many narcissists display both “Jeckyll and Hyde” type characteristics, one minute appearing extremely loving and affectionate and the next crippling, cruel and cunning.

It is not easy to explain that I deeply loved and badly missed one side of the person I was involved with, and disliked, feared and never wanted to hear his name mentioned at the same time. Even thinking about this can make one feel a little crazy as it does not feel natural to love and hate the same person.

One essential step toward healing from narcissistic abuse, I believe, is finding someone to really confide in and who doesn’t judge or question anything that is said. Being free to talk openly and comfortably without having to over explain is vital to start putting the accumulation of experiences into some sort of context. If there isn’t a friend on hand, it is worth taking time to seek out a good counselor with an understanding of C-PTSD deriving from abusive relationships.

The most important thing that helped me to heal was focusing more on healing and rebuilding myself. Although I took time out to research and gain knowledge and understanding of the type of abuse I had been subjected to, I spent far more of my time indulging myself in whatever felt good for my soul.

Slowly and surely I rebuilt myself, formed new friendships, learned to trust people and forgave all of the past. There are still days that it haunts me, but there is a bright light at the end of the tunnel and although it can be difficult to believe that when you start walking through it, as soon as you take the first steps of acceptance the path ahead begins to become clear.

Healing comes by taking one small step at a time, with gentle, loving care and without hurry…

Author: Alex Myles

To The Beautiful Woman Who Is Striving To Be Skinny

I see you everywhere.

You’re on my Facebook, posting selfies of your latest workout as sweat drips from your brow, words like dying, puking, exhausting are hash-tagged underneath.

Punishment.

My Instagram is filled with pictures of you, sporting your Lorna Jane as you burn away the calories of the cake you shouldn’t have eaten, but were too weak to resist.

Penance.

You sit opposite me, order your salad, no dressing, and berate yourself for being a kilogram heavier this week.

Self-loathing.

You are fraught with comparison, with how short you fall next to the mothers at the playground you’ll never be as fit as, the group of women at the gym you’ll never be as strong as, the bodies in the magazines you’ll never be as sexy as. You beat yourself up. Promise that tomorrow you’ll eat less and work out more. No excuses, no matter what. Push yourself, purge yourself, pressure yourself.

I was once like you. I obsessed over the number on the scale, lived by punishment or reward, survived on protein shakes, and applauded myself for staying under 1,000 calories a day. I worked out, no matter what. No matter how tired my body was, no matter how run down, exhausted, or unwell. I worked out until I almost threw up, head over my knees, rebuking myself with slogans. Go hard or go home. Unless you puke, faint or die, keep going. Excuses are for people who don’t want it bad enough. I pushed past the pain and worked out when my muscles were fatigued, when my body screamed for me to stop, when I injured my knee, my shoulder, until I eventually tore a disc in my back.

And that changed everything.

In an instant, I could no longer work out. My world ended. There was no worse fate that could have happened to me. I laid on my stomach for a month, unable to do anything. I cried with frustration, beat myself up with failure, drowned in self-hatred. I feared. I feared getting left behind, losing all the work I had put into my body. I feared people thinking I was lazy or weak. But mostly, I feared getting fat. Because in my eyes, that was the ultimate failure.

And so before my body was healed, I started to work out again. Each time would see me back where I’d started, in pain, on the floor, unable to walk. I did this for months until I just no longer could. Until I had to listen to my body, to surrender to what it needed. Rest. Recovery time. Gentle walks. Stretching. Yoga.

No more sweat-pouring, fat-burning, muscle-aching workouts.

At first it killed me, this surrendering. It yelled defeat, poked and prodded into my deepest places of insecurity and challenged my self-worth to the core; I was more bound in my body image than I realised. It’s subtle, the infiltration of what we are programmed to believe is beauty—we don’t realise the way it creeps into us, the way we yield to society’s standards even when we think we are immune to them.

Eventually, it became easier to surrender, easier to let go of the demands I had placed on myself to look a certain way. I stopped seeking my value in the number on the scale and found it instead in my mind, my heart, my character, and my contribution to the world. I shed lies, so many lies, of what I had come to believe beauty should be. I realised I had nothing to prove to anyone. Every day, I practiced kindness and spoke to myself the way I would speak to any other woman.

Beautiful woman, who you are, right now in this moment, is perfect.

I know you don’t believe me. I know you fill your head with your prerequisites of beauty. A flatter tummy. Toned arms. Size 10. Lose another five kilograms.

But I understand now.

Beauty isn’t measured in centimetres, my dear.

And the moment you understand will be the moment you find freedom.

You’ll begin to exercise because you love your body, not because you hate it. You’ll eat food that brings you life and health because your body craves nourishment, not deprivation. You’ll run in the sunshine because it brings you joy, not because you’ve earned punishment. You’ll let go of striving, of negativity, of guilt and frustration and failure.

But mostly, you’ll come to realise how beautiful you really are. How strong, how brave, how kind, how intelligent, how clever, how funny, how generous, how thoughtful. How much you love. Not how much you weigh.

Beautiful woman, stop.

Stop striving to be skinny, as if that’s the only measure of your worth.

Instead, strive to change the perception of beauty, the lies we have been told.

Strive to empower women, our daughters, through the truth of their worth.

Strive to see how beautiful you really are, right now, exactly in this moment.

And then watch the world become more beautiful, because of you.

Author: Kathy Parker