Brain Dump

Homesick, Unsure and Questioning Myself

I need to take a dump. Out of my brain.

I’m struggling today. Writing about how I feel is the most effective way for me to process my thoughts and figure out how I feel about them. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m not going to edit this. Or go back through and put silly little fucking buttons where I think they should go. I can’t be fucked.

I am feeling tired, overwhelmed, lethargic, and frankly as though I’ve just had enough. It just feels like it’s one thing after another at the moment, no matter how hard I try. Life is slinging shit at me. I’m dodging it as best I can, but I’m running out of energy and I feel like the next bit of shit I dodge, I’m going to turn my head back around and cop a nugget right in the mouth…

For a long time, I have been using that age-old trick of dismissing negative thoughts. You know the one, “it’s just a thought, you can’t control it. blah blah blah”. But lately, I can’t help but wonder, when does it change from “just a negative thought” to genuinely the way you feel, and how do you distinguish between the two?

Let Me Have a Whinge For a Sec…

As I sit here, I know this is not a good time of day for me to be productive. My medication stops being effective sometime around mid-afternoon. I have spent the last three days doing a ridiculously boring course for work. I’ve been trying to do the course and do my job at the same time. Yesterday, after a couple of dramas, my boss told me that he would sort everything out. After the course finished today, I checked in on where we were at. It seems he and I had different understandings of what he was going to sort out while I was in the course. So after three days of shit that really doesn’t work well with my brain, I had a messy pile of shit to sort through, most of which should have been done before lunchtime today. In all honesty, work down here hasn’t really been what it was sold to me as. It’s not bad. In a lot of ways, I am lucky to have the job I have. I’m not naive to that. But it’s just not quite what I was expecting when initially having conversations about potentially taking on the role.

I was on my way home from work and I got a call to say my fucking asshole dog had escaped again after I put yet another measure in place to prevent the Houdini asshole from doing so only this morning. We’ve made the decision to try to re-home him but only to house/people of our choosing. While logically this is the best step to take for all involved, it’s difficult to accept emotionally that I’m just not able to provide him with whatever the fuck it is that he needs for him to be content.

I haven’t really been able to enjoy living here the way I had anticipated either. The weather has been terrible, but I guess that goes for most of Australia at the moment. I spent a lot of the spare time I had when I first got here working on the self-contained unit downstairs so we could get it up on Air BNB. Something we didn’t anticipate we would need to do so soon. But the RBA had other ideas, which has been a whole other course of stress. I knew interest rates were going to rise, but I don’t think anyone anticipated them to rise as sharply as they have. Naively I probably expected the family and friends that I do have here to have more free time than they do, or for their free time to magically align with the very limited free time that I have. When it does, I’m usually too fuckin’ tired to want to do anything anyway.

I fuckin’ love growing veggies. I had a great setup in Canberra. I loved it. Greenhouse, raised garden beds fuckin’ everywhere, all irrigated. In Canberra, I would germinate my seeds in August in the greenhouse. I would plant them as soon as I was confident we’d seen the last frost. I was really excited to get down here and grow veggies. Better climate, longer season, and more rain (rainwater is better for plants than tap water). I bought my seed trays and seed-raising mix probably a month before I actually had the time and energy to plant them. I only just got them planted the other day, two months later than I would have liked. There’s just something so special about faffing about in the garden on a summer arvo. Just doing whatever, stuff that doesn’t even need to be done. Doesn’t matter. I just like being out there, pretending that nothing else matters. The most important thing in the world at the time is deciding whether or not that zucchini over there should be pulled out today or tomorrow.

Our son is a fucking angel. I think. From what I have heard from other people he has been a dream. He has slept well of a night time for the nine and a half weeks he has been alive. I don’t think there’s been a single occasion where he has cried for a reason we couldn’t work out. 98% of the time it’s a very simple fix. I’m so grateful for him, his health, and his relaxed nature. He’s made everything so easy. But, I still have no fucking idea what I’m doing with him. I change the fuck out of his nappies. Call him a good boy while wiping what looks like coconut cream mixed with curry powder from his asshole and ball sack. But the fear of the unknown with him is stressful in itself. I know there is no point in stressing over things we can’t control, but we don’t really control what stresses us out, do we? Like what the fuck am I going to do when he starts teething? Might go on a sabbatical.

I’ve also been battling with my sobriety, which on the surface feels like it’s been pretty easy since I have been here and I am grateful that nothing that has happened here has resulted in me drinking again, but there have been some slight battles along the way and I’ve removed my main coping mechanism from the last 18 years. It’s just… not even an option anymore. So while it’s good that I’m not drinking anymore, is it good that I have less or more foreign co[ping mechanisms during a stressful time?

Look, I know a lot is going on for me. I live in a beautiful place. I have a perfectly healthy little family. I have a reasonable job. I have a home full of food and good family and friends. But right now, I feel like things were better and easier back home. I know for fact I felt better about everything in a month or so before we moved. So would if I’m not feeling great down here, would it not make sense to just, go home?

Is it Real?

What I’m struggling to distinguish is, is this truly how I feel? Or am I just having a moment? The reason I am questioning it is that I felt the same way yesterday, only today the feeling is stronger. What if it’s stronger again tomorrow? How long does it have to take before I can no longer brush it off as a fleeting thought and genuinely how I feel?

My fear is throwing a tantrum and going home only to find that the same problems still exist. I have said in the past that the location has never been my problem. My problems have always been exactly that, my problems. I just can’t help but feel like maybe on this occasion I have bitten off more than I can chew and I’ve run out of energy to chew anymore.

I don’t want to be a quitter. I don’t want to show my son that when things got hard I just gave up and went running home to safety. But at the same time, I don’t want to be stressed. I want to be content and present for him. I don’t know what’s the better lesson for him. I don’t know what’s best for me either. Will I go home and think even less of myself for not sticking it out a little longer? What if a break is just around the corner, what if I’m so fucking close to a little bit of relief and I throw in the towel just before my opponent’s corner throws in their towel?

I know there are a lot of what if’s in here. I’m not looking for solutions from the six or seven of you who will read this (haha). I think I just needed a dump.

I think ultimately, I will get to a point where there will be no decision left to make. It’ll become obvious what needs to happen. I’m just scared to make a drastic decision based solely on a short period of heightened emotions. I think I will regret that. I’m just fuckin tired. Not as in, I need a good sleep tonight. I’m life tired. The problem I think I have is, a lot of the stuff that is making me tired is outside of my control. So I don’t know how to manage that. I guess all I can do is work on how I react to these thoughts and feeling or how I allow them to affect me. Easier said than done.

Anyway, I think that’ll do for now.

Cheers Wankers.

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