…but you can’t lose if you retain ownership of the situation. Whether you choose the time it happens or not, the consequences remain fully in your control. How you deal with it is still your choice. Don’t hand all of your power over to the other person. Give them credit for being brave enough to do what is best for them, and then do the very same thing for yourself. 

xBlanaid

You make mistakes and learn and change but wish you never had. You just feel shame because you think of the mistake only, instead of feeling proud of the changes you have made in your life. Whether you changed a bad habit or removed an unworthy person, whether you improved your outlook on life, or decided not to encourage negativity in the people around you - whatever. Whatever it was that you did in a positive way, has more than made up for your mistake, you don’t need to spend the rest of your life letting the shame of the original sin wash over you. 

A bad decision does not make you a bad person. Your mistakes do not define you, unless you allow them to…

xBlanaid

…in those moments, when you never believe you can be so pleasantly surprised by life again, when you are planning an escape because your current moment is crawling over your mind and all is dark - when someone tells you in that moment that you will feel better, believe them. Even though you think you are so at the bottom of the well that any chink of light must be an hallucination - just believe them. You will feel life again, and you will fall in love again and you will know again that it is possible to feel all the shades, of every emotion, and survive. 

xBlanaid

xBlanaid

I can be friends with you because I can forget all the bad things. I can forget all the bad things because remembering the good things is so much nicer, and there is more to remember than forget. For every one thing you said that you felt was hurtful, there were fifteen things so lovely that I couldn’t respond. So now, I remember the fifteen and forget the one. I hope you do too.

Some people call this kind of  memory loss; ‘fooling yourself.’ That you can’t be friends with someone who once made you doubt all of everything. Well, I may be a fool, but if the opposite is the kind of intelligence that wins people shiny awards - then I’m happier with an empty shelf and a life full of you.

xBlanaid

Images via ffffound and Mendel

I read all of the comments and emails and texts that you lovely people sent me while I was off doing that thing that needed to be done. Please believe me, for all of the random rambling tangents I toddle off on during Fancy Friday, this one is so genuinely directed at you, reading this, that I can barely figure out what to write.  So here it is - there have been days where I have given in to the frustration and the futility, forgot all the luck and the gratefulness, all the reasons and results. Days where I’m so disconnected that it seems impossible that I will ever be anything but that slightly bewildered kid in school who never understands the rules of the game. “So, I’m supposed to run over here…and then what do I do?!”  

Then there is you, taking the time to think about some other person and hope that she is doing okay and telling her that you hope that for her….

What a wonderful, lovely person you are… 

Thank you. 

xBlanaid

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No one has a perfect life. That isn’t an excuse though. You can achieve whatever it is you want, so long as you can lose the fear, or the excuses. 

That is just my opinion anyway, and it is one I’ve only come to hold in the last year and a half. At that start of that period of time, I discovered that I had a somewhat dodgy heart. I go in for my first procedure this Sunday, hence the time out.

Yes, it has been a long road - but  I suppose the reason that I even mention it is that it has made me lose all fear. Before, I was nervous about everything I was half-decent at - and now I say, well, sure, I’ll give it a go. Because what is the alternative? That my heart and I sit at home feeling sorry for ourselves - while the life we wish we had continues on outside our window?

There is nothing that can go so terribly wrong with trying. There is no failure so devastating - or mistake so huge, that can change the fact that you have ability. There is no job, no opportunity, no moment, that is as terrifying as the thought that you may not get the chance to experience every job, every opportunity and every moment in the future.

So now, each morning, I say that today I will prepare to do something that I am afraid of - and, more importantly, today I will try and overcome that same fear. Because today is all we have, and aren’t we so very, very grateful for it.

xBlanaid

P.S On a very, probably far too very much, personal note, I would just like to say thank you to my friends and family for their lovely support  - I’m sure you can imagine that it has been difficult at times, but they have all been calm, collected and too cool for skool. I would also like to say that the people I work with, Laura Cunningham and Eoin Hennessy, have taught me more about patience and consideration in the last 16 months than most could hope to learn in a lifetime. I am, without question, a very, very lucky girl. 

There is a moment when you realise that you’re laughing with 100% conviction again. Usually when you’re lying on the floor, crying a bit from laughter at the most ridiculous things your lovely, demented friends are saying.

I had that moment last night…and it feels good to be back.

xBlanaid

If you’re not sick, why do people pretend that they are? I don’t get it. Why can’t you just be grateful that you’re not really sick? Why can’t the drama be about how healthy you are?  Believe me, the world is a lot less scarier when you’ve got your health. Don’t wish it away. Get up. Get out there. Make life your bitch. 

xBlanaid

I can’t really be any more than I am right now. That’s not to say that I can’t continue to learn, and try, and tone it down or turn it up  - but right now, today, this is all I can be. I can’t be your kind of perfect because I’m not sure what your definition of perfect is…

So here I am, with all of my faults, not trying anymore to be anything but all I am with all of my faults.  

xBlanaid

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This is a feeble attempt at making you smile. I know you feel that you’ll never  laugh again with a 100% conviction, but you will. Would a clown suit help? ; )

I wish I could help you more, or figure out the answers to your questions, but all I can offer is all that I know - as simple as it is - love is a nice thing, and if it’s not nice, it’s not love. 

xBlanaid

Nothing to say except, Summer - I love you. 

xBlanaid

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How’s that working out for you? You know, the thing where you take some time out to pull the covers of the ‘lonely, miserable life you think you deserve’ over your head? Fulfilling your own prophecy of solitude and doom…regardless of the fact that we both know you wouldn’t actually mind being ‘happy.’  Anyway, congratulations on all of that… oh, but…one thing… you do realise that what you’re doing is a choice, don’t you?

Just checking. 

xBlanaid

 ”One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud!”  Tolstoy.

I have all the attributes of a drug addict, without the chemical materials to substantiate that character. I’m constantly seeking the challenge and intensity of the highs, and when I get them, I start to regret leaving behind the mellowness of the non-days. Then, once the demented period is over, I am itching for the manic levels once more. I can’t sit still. I can’t decide if I can make a decision to make up my mind to know what it is that I want…so for now, I’l just take it as it comes. Easy day today, maybe a hard day tomorrow, but concentrate on only changing the manic!/relaxed! record to fit the day today and stop worrying about when a particular period will end, when it will come back, and how I’ll manage it all when it does return. I think, after the last year, I should have confidence in the fact that I’ll manage just fine. 

xBlanaid

The way you listen, and know when to listen, even though you know that I believe that I have nothing left to say - it’s the way that you do that, which makes me find the way to find the things to say.

I’m so grateful to have you in my life, in all of the ways you’ve been a part of it…

Love, Blanaid 

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