Always Wanting More

This evening, I’m wide awake guilty of something I’m forever moaning at my wife for, that’s wanting more. Its exhausting, and my wife is forever driving me mad with this, for example, we have 3 cats and one of them has just had a litter of kittens, and she wants to keep yet another one. Or we had a perfectly good Bugaboo Cam which we got only a few months ago and she’s gone and got a brand new Bugaboo B3 pushchair, what was wrong with the old one? Or new things around the house either way her desires always come down to spending money.

What I desire doesn’t cost money, in a way, it’s just a state or point of which I thought I would be by now, and I’m not happy I’ve not achieved it. When I was a child people would ask me what I wanted to be or what I wanted to do, and my answer was always working for myself. I want to be ‘independent’ and have a company or business that I’ve built up and earning my own money. By now I thought I’d have an empire, a decent house that was mine, a nice car and not having to worry about where money was going to come from.

Don’t get me wrong, with my wife and I now both working and bringing in decent(ish) money we aren’t worried, but we can’t afford to stop renting for example. I get frustrated with myself when I get into this frame of mind, I’ve got a lot to be thankful for and I’ve achieved a lot in my 28years on this planet. Despite my health and missing a lot of school I worked hard and got good grades and a good degree, I’ve got a good job, I’ve got a family and I’m able to provide for them, and I’ve been privileged enough to see a fair amount of the world with some nice trips and holidays in the past. So why am I not able to accept to myself what I say to my wife that ‘enough’ is good enough, why am I wide awake fretting about this?

Why, despite the fact that my rational mind knows this, and I am genuinely happy at the moment, that I feel so down about this. I had all these plans growing up of where I thought I would be right now, and I feel I’ve achieved barely any of them and I don’t feel I am now, or ever will be in a position to try and achieve them in the future. I hate it when I get like this, this feeling of being down, spiralling as I stay up, frustrated at myself for getting like this, reminding myself of all I’ve achieved but somehow making it worse in doing so, as I get more frustrated that A) I can’t accept those arguments, and B) it reminds me of what I haven’t achieved in my life goals, and the cycle continues, until eventually I finally fall asleep and wake up grumpy, down and even lower, which limits my ability to pull myself out of it.

I genuinely don’t know what to do, I say I’m fine to my wife, and that I’m happy (and I am happy for what I have don’t get me wrong) but I am putting on an act to some degree, much life I’ve always done for other people or other reasons, as a defence from admitting to her, or myself that actually, I’m not, I don’t feel I’ve hit my targets or aspiratoins, I feel there are things I haven’t given enough effort to, or even attempted, but I can’t tell her that, yet I don’t know why. We have one of the most supportive of relationships, especially recently, we can openly talk about our feelings to each other, in a supporting environment with no judgement or moaning back or taking offence but I just feel she would take this as me saying I’m not happy with ‘our’  life.

I guess this is just another area I need to note down to work on, I know people say if you want something go and make it happen, and believe me if I thought I could, I would. I have the drive and passion but it isn’t always that easy as much as the cliché would have you think, how could I just uproot everything to take a selfish jump into the unknown putting myself and my families comfort at risk, on the hope I ‘may’ achieve what I want and bring myself happiness, risking everyone else’s, and mine if it didn’t work, in the process? I don’t see how I can.

Well I should probably try and wind down and get some sleep, rather than beating myself up and going on like a broken record, I will admit writing it down has helped a bit, even if it’s just putting the ‘angst’ down on paper to get it out, it’s helped a little. I’ll continue my internal battle of wits, and maybe try to talk with my wife tomorrow about how I’m feeling, it comes in cycles it’ll go away in a bit but then will come back. Maybe if I talk to her openly it might got once and for all? Who knows, anyway, night all.

Confused By My Feelings, I’m In A State Of Flux

Well this looks like it is certainly becoming a habit. Late at night (well early morning now) and popping up another post, but I can’t sleep because, yet again the little one won’t let me. I think moving forward, it’s going to be safer to assume I’m not getting any sleep, and I’ll say in a post when I do finally get some, so I’m not always repeating myself. Anyway, it’s been quite a long day, and now it’s winding down and I’m listening to the baby monitor I find myself feeling quite confused.

As I’ve mentioned a few times I been receiving counselling of late which has helped me get in touch with my feelings and understand me a lot more, and there is still a lot of work to be done, but I’m not understanding the conflict in my head right now. I feel happy, much like I did last night, which is great, I’ve longed for this upbeat, bubbly feeling where nothing currently is stressing me out and I’m able to breeze through the day despite my trials, but something seems a miss. I feel quite down at the same time. This is where my confusion starts, is it normal, or possible to be happy and sad at the exact same very moment, because I’ve never experienced that, and my rational sense of mind is “you feel an emotion, if you’re happy, why do you feel sad?” and I don’t know if this is just because I’m still learning about my feelings or because I have so much unresolved.

Like I said yesterday there is a long list of things I’m happy for, and with the recent new medication lowering my high blood pressure as a side effect of my illnesses, and simply life the last week has been calmer and slower, things have just seemed easier, which has brightened my mood and made me a bit more like the old me. I always used to be happy, a smile on my face, nothing would phase me, except, and I never told my family this (or myself for that matter), that was mainly a face I would put on for them. I grew up not understanding half of the things I was going through as I was too young, and given my age, I assumed they were the norm. Comments from family that then followed as I grew up of “oh it’s fantasic despite what you go through you are always smiling” I didn’t want to disappoint.

There were often times I was unhappy, but the thing is, I didn’t realise that then, it’s only now when I think back over memories, and pay attention to them, I am seeing the times and understanding what I was going through. I’m scared I’ve repressed so much. I’m not sure what is making me feel down though, as I say, this week seems to have been good, but like my counsellor would say, “listen to your feelings and give yourself time to tend to them”, this is what I’m trying to do now, and why I am doing this blog in a way but I don’t know why. It’s frustrating me, and I want to know what is happening in my head that I can’t access to be bringing me to this mind frame. I mean, yes there is a lot going on that is understandably wearing me down, and that will contribute to it, but I’m worried. I’m worried I could be regressing and acting in my old ways of thinking I’m happy when in fact I’m not, am I trying to fool myself? and is this new found ‘happiness’ a cover for something I can’t accept, or not ready to?

This clearly shows I’ve got a lot more on my journey of understanding myself. I hope this is a normal thing, this state of flux and that one can be happy and sad at the same time with no sinister meaning behind it. I hope I’m over thinking this because it’s a scary thought that I could be trying to hide from myself like I used to ‘act’ or ‘hide’ from others, I know where that path lead me. If I’m really honest, I guess I still haven’t adjusted to dialysis yet and the change it has brought to our lives (although I tell family and friends I have and I’m doing fine), it’s just such a huge thing and having to go out late 3 nights a week is a struggle. I’m also worried about my joints, I’m getting terrible pain in my knees and wrists, which is making it difficult to deal with the girls at times and help my wife, but I’m scared to let on and have her worry even more with enough going on at the moment, she’s been ill the last week so I’ve been working harder to let her rest back to full strength.

Reading that last paragraph back, I guess I can understand some of the things wearing me down, which could impact on this feeling low, so I’m glad I’ve had this ‘brain dump’, but I still can’t shake this fear there’s something more. I hope there isn’t.