There’s a phrase that has been bouncing around my head for some time now.

What if you’re defined by the worst thing that ever happened to you?

What does that make you?

Who do you become?

How do you seize back control of your own story, as someone who DOES and not someone who is done TO?

Well the worst thing that ever happened to me wasn’t all that bad by Terrible Life Stuff standards.

I just got divorced. People break up. Families split. It’s as common as, well, you know, RAIN IN SHEFFIELD.

But 2 years on, it is still rubbish. It still hurts. And dammit, it IS still defining me…

For the last few weeks, it’s once again been the first thing I think about when I wake, usually at 3am, by the call of miscellaneous dread.
It’s the last thing I think about before I eventually go to sleep.
Some days, I am wandering again through the motions of everyday feeling like a stranger in a life I don’t recognise and never wanted.
Some days, I can’t hold a normal conversation with people about anything that’s not THIS, because it’s all there is, and they won’t understand, and saying what I think or feel or even just the facts about what’s happening is BORING, 2 years on, or inappropriate, or even just plain bitter.

That’s the trouble with 2 years on. People want you to be ‘over it’ by now.

But how do you get over something that’s not actually over? That keeps coming back around, like a vindictive groundhog day?

I was working on it. I was actually getting there. I was BETTER for a while (one very significant letter’s difference to bitter).

But then it started up again. It’s still alive and kicking and BITING. It’s still impotence and fear and anger and ridiculousness and lack of good choices and being backed into corners and there is no respite or even keel or even clarity – even REALITY – because it is lost in the he said/she said and twisted logic and semantics and anti-correlation and blame and accusations and ultimatums and reasonable vs unreasonable dressed up as reasonable in sheep’s clothes, howling at the damn moon.

And the only thing, the ONLY thing I can change about any of this – the only thing I will ever be able to change – is me.

MY reactions.
MY actions.
My choices, such as they are.

And sometimes that’s the hardest thing of all, isn’t it?

Especially when you feel powerless. When you feel done TO. When you feel the world can see but simply doesn’t care. When you feel alone.

So I do what I always do, when I feel my feet scrape the bottom of everything that is.
I Weeble.
I roll back up.
I show up.
I plan.
I invest.
I TRY.

But mostly, I DO.
(Ironically words I have come to sincerely regret…)

I throw myself into Christmas early and all the fab stuff we can do together, and crafts, and trips and tickets and friends and festive, because now I only get 2 December weekends to do it.
I try and use my alone time to do all the doing that needs to be done so I can just do Mummy when they’re back, and do it properly, so they remember me. So it matters.
I clean, because that means I’m coping, right? Look – mopped floors, everything must be fine!
I buy too many presents I can’t really afford to make up for everything that I know they see and don’t say, but comes out at odd times, and I’m sorry they have to live with all this, and I buy cheap sparkly clothes I won’t wear because I don’t go out, but sparkles make me happy – or at the very least sparkly, and maybe that will do – and I try and not look at the families in the shopping centre.
I try and build ME and be a growing, flourishing, rounded PERSON and not (only) a diminishing, scared and exhausted shell, so I plan activities and start courses and hobbies and write bad poetry and draw bad pictures and reach out to people and gatecrash friends’ activities but then don’t always respond or show up because I can’t face it.
I run until everything aches and I can’t breathe and then I drink wine so life looks funny again and have sex until it’s the only thing I can feel and blocks out everything else.

What I don’t do, very often, is stop.

I think I’m afraid that if I stop, everything that I’m fighting or running from will catch up with me.

I think I use momentum, I use DOING, randomly, so that I feel like I’m the one in charge of my life. That I’m the one doing the DOING, not having the doing done to me….

And I think that isn’t always the right call.

Sometimes stopping IS doing something positive for yourself.
Sometimes stopping is an investment.
Sometimes silence is golden.
Sometimes doing nothing is renewing.
And sometimes you need to stop before you fall over….

I suck at it. Stopping.

It feels like the enemy.
It feels like admitting defeat:
it feels terrifying.

Because, who am I when I’m not going?

How do I find a forwards, an out, an exit, if I stop moving?

What happens in the empty space that follows?

What is in my head if it’s not full of plans, and can I actually bear it?

What if all I am IS the worst thing that ever happened to me, and it has eaten away everything else and there is now nothing left underneath?

STOP.
STOP.
STOP.

I suppose that’s my new project, in my overall campaign to REdefine me – Project Stop. (which may in fact undermine the whole stopping ethos by being planned and attacked as a project, but it’s the only way I know how to tackle it, because old habits die hard).

So one of the things I’m going to DO this month is to learn to not DO, and take myself off to a pamper evening, run by a lovely friend of mine.

If any other Sheffield-based Weebles out there fancy Project Stop, I’d love to see you there.

It’s a Feel Good self care and pamper evening, at St Gabriel’s C of E Church, Sat 30 November from 19.00.

Here’s the Eventbrite link: http://bit.ly/FeelGoodEventbrite

xxx