whiny crappy people barfing

I’m about to get all 100 days of gratitude on your asses. Shrink Two, who is CBT-ing my ass on the way to her becoming a fully fledged shrink, and this, of course, is CBT homework. Despite my absolute loathing of shiny mindfulness, I’ve been keeping a mental gratitude list for a little over two years now. I haul it out when needed and it never, ever makes me spew rainbows, but it really does help. The goal of the daily gratitude list, obviously, is to stop the whole mindless (snigger) kneejerk thing and get me into the ever so thankful nowwww. Om. I hate to say it, but it makes a lot of sense to me.

If she turns me into a shiny mindful person, I am going to have to kick her through a tear in the space time continuum somewhere. Mind you, the other assignment is to try to identify the individual thoughts that accompany my suicidal ideation default setting, so at least I can muddy my shiny aura with some morbid thoughts. Phew.

Okay, let me get my rainbow on.

My rainbow appears to have dashed.

1. I spent two hours on the beach this morning and it was a really great walk. I had genuinely happy memories of my mother and beaches, it was amazing not to feel stabbed by them right away (someone hid that knife till after midday).

2. I’ve been looking after a friend’s dog for the past six weeks, dog will be flying to friend overseas in two weeks. Now, said dog has been my friend for seven years or so; I rescued her from an asshole who tied her up for a month and I kept her while she learned to accept love and kindness. It’s going to break my fucking heart to see her go, but I am really and truly glad she’s with me now. And she was especially sweet and photogenic in her own demented way today. I used to call her PTSDog.

3. After the beach, once the dogs were fed, I decided to get the books out and identify stuff I’d seen on the beach. I used to know it well, but yeah… stuff. I ended up paging through the book, stopping when I found something I’d photographed for my beachpickings blog, to add titles to the photos, with common and Latin names. I was absorbed for hours, which is a bloody good sign, given the way my brain loves loadshedding nowadays. It also took me back to my real self a bit – the part that would probably exist regardless of trauma and bipolar – the decidedly nerdly side. I’m pretty sure of it too, because there’s a clear strain of nerdiness in my family. In terms of shared obsessions (which is really what nerdy is all about), lotr, books, music and naming things are certainly things unconnected to terrible things.

4. I got amazing gifts from an amazing friend yesterday, which meant that I tried Reese’s Pieces for the first time in my life today. Om nom nom.

5. Depression didn’t hit me till the afternoon.

Brb going to run slow motion through a soft focus flowery meadow.

How do I do this without the inner dialogue going…

1. She’s dead.
2. In a fortnight I am going to cry hard and hurt harder.
3. The afternoon was truly shite.
4. I can’t afford imported Reese’s Pieces.
5. Well that’s cold comfort innit.

I know the fucking answer. It’s keep fucking repeating the fucking task and trust the fucking process. (Please don’t take away my darkness, it’s all I know.) (Turmoil. I haz it.)

Didnt manage to identify thoughts round suicide today. I didn’t notice any around it.

In the process of stealing sourcing images for this post, I saw smurf porn #cannotunsee #scarred4life

Note to self for Shrink Two: yes I know that friends can be family, but it tends not to be same in terms of practical support – and why on earth would/should it be?

I really do hate Mickey.