Music and Recovering

When I spent alot of time in inpatient units just after I'd had Reuben I started singing quite a lot again to help me. 1 as a distraction and 2 because when you can't exercise or are on bed rest it's something that you can actually do. I'm crap at arts and crafts and have to be in the mood for them. But music and singing is something I've always done. So the other day I had a session with my care-co and we started doing and OT piece of work and I was talking to her about the fact I nearly went to stage school and always did performing arts etc at school. Something I loved to do and succeeded in it but I hit a crossroads where it was stage school (mum was ready to send me off to London) or skating. I chose skating as it was what my heart was fully into.
Facing a time at the moment where I'm trying to find myself again I started singing again the other day and plucked up the courage to do a video yesterday. The song is so meaningful to me because of the lyrics and I sang it to all 3 children while they were in my tummy and when they arrived.

It really helped me and I'm going to start moving on with it and carrying on. Here's the first of many (i hope).

Snowballs

I'm writing this post in the hope that it makes me feel a bit better. Things have been ok hence I've not had time to write for a while. I've been busy with friends and distracting myself and actually using my distress tolerance skills. I've found it's helped me......

But since three days ago I've been teetering on the other side of the recovery mountain in the not so helpful realms. I had a really positive meeting on the Friday and felt like I was ready to tackle this new adventure of recovery. I did an online thing with www.recoverywarriors.com last week and found it so helpful to engage my brain into what recovery was all about to me. Friday happened and I turned up (along with 3 other appts I didn't think I'd show up too last week) and it was actually ok. So I thought this is actually ok and it's going to be hard but I can see where I'm going, I have an amazing care-co/care team and I'm lucky on that front that it's helped stabilise me. And then after going out for a drink with some of the girls I hit rock bottom. Sundays are scary biscuits anyway because I don't see the kids at the moment but I was in bed feeling sorry for myself by 6pm. Rookie error!

I think why when you feel one minute that you've got a grip on things and maybe they're going to be ok does it turn round, slap you in the face and then snowball. It's like the gift that keeps on giving, you feel no matter what you do like you have that lump in your throat and no other desire but to sleep forever.

I want to hide away from the world, I want to not face up to anything like I used too. But I know then that the snowball gets bigger and bigger. I have woken up this morning and thought, I need to get a grip here. Lastnight wasn't good and I acted out for the first time in ages (apart from purging etc)  and I feel like I've let myself down this morning. But instead of snowballing and not making the recovery wise choices I could actually choose to fight still. I'm not saying it's easy, far from it but fighting is surely less painful than living a life of shit and misery!

So today I'm going to fight, I'll write tommorow and let you know how I got on. I'm going to be practical here and use my recovery tools and choose to feel better, not let it snowball into a situation where I'm less of a happy bunny.

And then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk to bloom. -Anais Nin