Hi Brandy

Thankyou for your kind words and for being so observant ?. I’m not sure I’d agree with all of those qualities but I’ll take them for now.
It takes a special kind of person to take the time out of their lives to offer out help and support to a stranger and I appreciate the friend comment- I feel like we have a connection too in how we feel and see life. It’s good to know there’s someone else just as crazy out there!

My daughters are great thanks. They both have a lot of positive stuff going on in their lives. I spent a day down in London this weekend with them and albeit only a short visit, I view every minute we have together as gold dust and memorable. I did find myself listening to my thoughts when I was with them this weekend and I have to come to realise that I self sabotage the time we have because I find myself constantly on the look out for signs that they are ok and that the guilt I feel is not being manifested in how they are. I don’t know if that makes sense but I know what I’m trying to say. I’m always on the look out for signs of approval or disapproval which I know is related to guilt and my pain (which is ultimately their pain I assume) and I find it compromises me at times as the parent and the responsible father in favour of receiving their forgiveness, respect and love. I know that sounds ridiculous and that a daughters love for her father is unconditional and that this is a reflection upon me and not them, but it’s just how it is. I do find that I spend and waste too much time in their company over analysing and not living in the moment and just showing them the real me enough. I guess to a point, all of the above is understandable in the circumstances but to go back to my last message to you; I have not met the expectation I had of myself in this role, this priority in my life and perhaps I’m over compensating trying to make amends. This shouldn’t be about ‘me’- our time is about them, their needs, the support they need and the weight of the burden of having a father who is pretending to be a gracious swan on the surface is like an emotional paddlesteamer underneath. They want fun dad, laughing dad, supportive dad. Their dad. I’m aware of it and I’ll do better.

Your question about what was going on before the ‘turning’ is a question I’ve spent so much time and effort contemplating now. I see the life since that time as a series of consequences of actions and decisions which were as a result of a choice I made. I see the preceding years as where the cause for the action I took lies but also there are clues in how I think, feel and behave today. What I mean is, who I am today must have been part of who I was then but because my life was happier then- or I believed it was- it never surfaced.

I can relate to specific elements of my thoughts and actions today from as far back as my early childhood. The propensity to self isolate when not feeling worthy or belonging, the need for security and safety, the need for time to myself alone and more, all present themselves today but magnified a thousand times because the difference now is I have responsibility, accountability and self-expectation.

What behaviours and traits still show up in your life today that you can recollect from childhood? Do they serve you or hinder you?

I hate to have regrets- I wish the size of the problem was such that I could call them lessons learned or experiences or tests; but the reality is the turning I took is a massive regret which cannot be undone- only mitigated through damage limitation and a phenomenal amount of effort.

I also hate to talk this way. I hate being this self-pitying version of myself . I take accountability for my mistakes, I own them but of late, I feel the lid starting to burst on the can I’ve kept them contained in for too long.

I love to hear of how you refer to your life now and how your focus is on your kids, preparing them for life, teaching and showing them the way. I picture it all happening under the security of the safe family roof and that whatever life throws at you, you have that as your haven. I make an assumption because I don’t know any better. That has gone for me; I replaced it with a continuous stream of hellos, get to know you agains, goodbyes and gaps until next times. It’s not what I wanted and it’s not what I expected of myself. But, you’re right. To create all that pain through choice had to have been by way of ‘escape’. I just can’t put my finger on what?

i do know at the time I had been under massive self-induced stress at work. I occupied a role well known for breaking people and I worked for a company which would happily stand by and watch it happen. My significance driver was so over powering and unstoppable at the time that I got so much self-worth and value for my heroics that for the first time in my life I felt like someone that people could admire and respect.
I also believe that once that job ended shortly after my ‘turn’, I sought my significance and worthiness in new relationships. I threw myself straight in to new relationships, over committed way too early and then had to undo all of that. The past 7 years have been a non-stop runaway train of bad choices after bad choices, temporary highs with lower crashes and decisions made in times of stress, uncertainty and instability.

Im getting myself fixed this time. The decision to medicate is all about giving myself the chance to establish a foundation of clearer thinking from which I can make the right choices now. I’m waiting for the effect to kick in and am already preparing for what that might feel and look like. It’s exciting too. I have so many questions: will I find clarity? Will I find my old passions again? Will I find self love? Will I find peace?
Ive read so much and seen so many people who get the most fulfilment out of life because of the most simple things. That’s all my dream is; to find happiness and to have the relationship with myself that I always wanted.

I would love to hear more about you: how you are, how you are managing to keep moving forward, what you think and what you wish for the future?

N

Hi Brandy
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. It’s been a combination of being a little busy and also giving your suggestion a lot of thought and attention.

5 is a great age to go back to isn’t it? I have such clear and vivid memories of where and how I was at that age and now, having given it much deeper thought, I realise I have so many connections to that version of me.
Its quite uplifting and sad at the same time to take yourself back to yourself at a time where you were untainted by later life and ignorant to the weight of responsibility and learned behaviours, to revisit a spirit that only knew the purest of thoughts and pleasure derived from the simplest gifts this life has to offer and to re-familiarise yourself with the source of the core of who you truly are. It is only in doing so that I can see the layer upon layer of protection and armour that I (and I guess all of us) have built to deal with and cope with this ever changing world and how we fit in and survive.

I picture myself sitting at a pre-school table across from my 5 year old self. My legs don’t fit under the table and the stool is going to give way at any time. Across the table is ‘little me’. The blondest hair and the bluest eyes, fair sunkissed skin and baby teeth all perfectly lined up. I’ve done this a dozen times for parents evening with my own girls but never with me.
I ask my younger self what I like to do; what makes me happy. I answer- ‘looking out my bedroom window when its snowing, watching TV in the dark on a rainy Friday evening, playing with my friends, running in the park and playing football, when Dad is home on Sunday and we all have dinner together, finishing my schoolwork first before anyone else in the class, getting up and making Dad’s breakfast before he goes to work’
I remember all these things I used to do and be at that age and more. I also recall how what I ‘felt’ at that age has shape my life ever since. I felt secure, loved and safe but at the same time always the need to be accepted and the feeling of rejection in the playground; that I had to try all the time to be seen and that just me alone was not ever enough. I don’t know where that came from- maybe an unconscious response to something before I have re-collective memory- I don’t know. But what I do know is that those traits and emotions have stuck with me for all of my life and in some way, I’ve always been dealing with every situation with that as the environment I set for myself to live within.

When I think of what you said about sending love to that version of me, it stopped me in my tracks. It made me think about what that little boy would think of me and if he would be proud and love me and my instant, gut feel reaction is that he wouldn’t. I think he’d be disappointed in me. And then I needed to know why I instinctively thought that. Maybe it comes down to self-love- or lack thereof? Maybe its because the closest version of him I’ve ever known is my own girls and how I feel about that situation is reflected in that reaction? Either way, it speaks volumes to me about how I view myself that I believe the younger and pure version of myself would think that way.
Maybe that is my benchmark? Maybe my aim in life is to re-connect with him and make him proud? Maybe seek his forgiveness rather than forgive him?
I guess the big question is……..how do I do that?

And what about you? What does little Brandy think about big Brandy? Is she proud to call her herself?

You know what, whilst I was writing this I had a thought. It might sound like mush to you but I get what I mean so I’ll take a risk and explain.
In thinking about who I used to be when I was young, I thought I would give anything to go back to that time in my life and be that way again. A clean, clear, simple blank canvas of opportunity and life just ready for a masterpiece to be created. That I want to be that version of me again, to think in that way and feel those things in that way again. We wish our lives away too quickly- always looking for the next stage; the ‘I’ll be happy when’ stage and we never realise we were just happy in the moment until the moment is gone. In childhood we want to grow up, do the things we see the elders doing and then, when we get older, all we want is go back and rid ourselves of the responsibility, the wrong choices, the turnings and mistakes we made which lead us to who we are today- normally light years from those little versions of us we once were.
I believe home isn’t a place but is something deep within us that we feel. We can be anywhere in the world but as long as we feel deep down that we are safe, warm, happy and secure- we are home. Home for me is a place very close to that little 5 year old. He created all the feelings and emotions I experience today and he showed me who I really am and any time I act in a way that he wouldn’t approve of or that would upset him, I am further from home than I should be and shame on me if I’m not working on myself to be better for him.
I believe that in life we are all trying to get back home. Maybe for me, its re-connecting myself to myself at a time when life was more simple than I’ve made it to be.

Rainy, dark Friday nights and watching the snow dance in the glow of the streetlights are still my two favourite feelings in the world. That’s my home 🙂

N