Hi Brandy

No, definitely not an English PhD 🙂

Once again, thankyou kindly for your time and persistence! Your replies are extremely helpful and insightful and very accurate. They make me think and challenge me. Remember our conversation about needing people around us who will challenge us rather than simply agree with us? My interpretation of how you write and talk is that you are being that to me but not in an agressive or provocative way- more feeling your way and doing so when approrpriate. I see that and very much appreciate it too.

Yes is the answer to all those early questions- we are all physically safe and yes, we did agree (although maybe not in written words) that to make decisions from anything less than clarity will carry risk of further problems.

Ok, I feel I need to be more specific as to exactly what is going on so as to help explain the urgency and why I feel so pressured and trapped. Before I do that, I want to explore with you what I’ve done so far becuase I feel now I have to journey back through that to understand a) what Ive done and b) what have I learned. Ive done all the things I told you and those things you listed. Ive seen a counsellor twice- mainly that route because I never had anyone else to talk to at the time as I was quite alone and so I guess I was paying for someone to listen so I could hear out loud what I was thinking. Counselling didnt really do much for me as I found there was a limit to their understanding and once we’d run past all the theory, there wasnt anything else left. Maybe I expected answers rather than being satisfied with receiving help and then understanding how to apply it. Probably the most powerful thing I ever did was once write a letter to myself. In this letter I took the role of myself inside my head but as a critical observer of my life and I spoke to myself. I talked as though I’d been alongside myself, observing my life and in that letter, I played back to myself what I’d seen and then also why I thought that was. Why did I do this? Because I truly believe in finding the root cause to a problem- truly understanding the answers right at the core- even if it means challenging myself, making myself feel uncomfortable and being truly honest- with myself in a way that only I know if i am being. So, to your earlier question of have I done what Peter suggested (note to self ‘need to thank him’), the answer is yes- and some! My only fear is that now being aware of that, did I leave myself down there in the roots and never resurface?

In my letter, I looked for answers, clues, a trail of crumbs to the problem and hopefully, solution. I pulled apart every key stage of my life, I searched my feelings, my values, my actions and looked for reasons why and what commonality might there be between those early actions to the actions I take as the grown up version of myself. So, what did I find? I definitely found a need for recognition- to be loved and accepted. Not in a needy way or having to always be first, but just by way of recognition that- I am enough or good enough. The way I behaved at school, with my early friends and my family was all about feeling safe, loved, fitting in and just about being enough. Without delving right into the details, I strongly believe the decisions I took to turn right instead of left- many times, had that core need of having to feel like I was good enough or that I alone, and not my actions and gestures, were enough. Perhaps I already had that from my children and therefore didnt need to seek it in them and in seeking from others, in making decisions to acquire that, incurred the loss I feel today and pure hell of guilt, shame and regret. The ‘me’ I spoke to in that letter needed and craved the things I feel I deprived my children of (for part of their life) and when I talk of guilt and the pain- it comes from a place of understanding where it originates but not of one of understanding how I could have done those things. I took away, particularly my youngest daughter’s, right to have a father around. I put her through the most unimaginable hell inside her head. I turned her whole world upside down and will have inflicted on her views of the world, relationships, parenting, love and god knows what that her innocent mind did not have to be corrupted by. I didnt think, didnt know and only saw my own problems and situation and whatever has triggered this train of thought, has shown me that if I take the necessary action NOW, I can at least stop the loss for not one more day than it needs to be. She has three years before she goes to uni and each day I take inaction, equals a day of loss of opportunity, repair and growth. That is where my urgency and my problem comes from, but as I get more emotional as I write, I too realise that I would be better off just making a choice and dealing with the consequences later- rather than continmue to exist here in paralysis. N