I guess for quite a few of us on this forum Christmas is a strange time. For me it is.
Since I don't have any family (parents dead, brother in jail, no other familiy I know of) i'm sort of 'condemned' to be by myself with the christmas holidays.

Notice the 'by myself' part. It is exactly that, by myself. Not by my lonely self, or lonesome.
Sure, I'd like to be among loving family this time of year, who doesn't. But I don't have loving family and I never did. So i'm better off without the family part of these holidays.

So what can we do. People around me react kinda 'omfg i don't know what to say she's alone with x-mas omfg what am i supposed to say omfg what am i supposed to do i don't know how to respond' and so on and so forth.

While these are all troubling thoughts they shouldn't have. Simply because I don't mind being alone. It is tenthousend times better that the household filled with fights, drunken people, beatings and stuff. It is nice and quiet. Nice and peacefull.

And I have created my own christmas celebrations. I put up a little christmas tree, I have put it on the dining table, shining bright. I bought myself a few nice gifts, let them get giftwrapped in the store, and I've put the gifts under the little tree. I've bought nice food for both de 25th as the 26th, and really spoiled myself with that.

It's christmas eve now, and I've prepared the whole lot. So tomorrow, when I wake up, my own little superdooper christmas can start. When I wake up, i spoil my cats with extra nice and luxurious catfood. Meanwhile the oven heats up. When the cats are fed, the oven is hot. I put in the bake off buns, and lay out a nice christmas breakfast table with all kinds of yummie goodies.

When the buns are done, I take them out of the oven, get my cup of coffee and move to the diningtable. And then the fun starts. While eating my freshly baked bunes, I start of with a christmascard I wrote to myself. Telling myself that I wish that next year my life will be filled with much more joy than it is know. I complement myself for the fact that I have made some difficult decisions this year, decisiocns that eventually will change my life for the better. It has been a rough year, but I've made some good steps in the right direction. And then I wish myself a very good 2014 and hope with all that I have in me, that 2014 will be my year!

After reading my card tomorrow, I allow myself to open up my gifts. Amd although I know what's in them, it is still so much fun to do! I already know that I'll open them and smile, both for the fact that the presents are nice and good, and for the fact that I'm taking care of myself!

After a long and good breakfast, I will go walk in the dunes and on the beach (if the weather is nice enough). When I come home I have a nice late lunch and watch a few movies and have a nice dinner.
The 26th will be about the same exept for the gift-unwrapping part. But everything else will be about the same. Two nice, easy going and lovely days.

The 27th I'll be at work again, finishing off some stuff, and then the weekend is already there! So in short: I will have a good week, taking good care of myself and enjoying my holidays.

I hope you all have nice holidays as well. I do hope you are able to spend them amongst people whom you love and who love you. Because that is always the best. But if that is not an option for you, I wish your christmas will be at least as nice and peacefull as mine will be.

I wish you all the best and happy holidays xxx

So here we are.

Drinking whiskey (mind the 'e', so Irish, yes) and feeling tipsy by now.
Apparently I need that at this moment. Need it to numb a bit of all that I'm feeling right now. Simply because I cannot handle it. Not now. Need some more time to adjust.

(oh, blog moderator: you can approve this post, I won't regret it tomorrow I'm not drunk or loosing it or something ).

So what it comes down to is this:

after visiting my shrink the other day, I did something I would never think I would do.
I drove up to my (as I know now) best friends' house. Drove up there with my heart pounding out of my chest out of anxiety. I parked the car and rang the door. First there was no answer so I rang it again. Her husband (a really good and cool guy) opened the door and let me in.

I went up and when I saw my friend I gave her a big hug. A hug. Me. The person who never did anything remotly like that. Never showed any affection to anyone. My shrink will be proud when I tell him next week.

But after that everything sort of went down hill. Every bit of stabiltiy I new or ever felt.... well it feels like it has disappeared. Every sence of sureness, everything i new that kept me secure and safe and feel protected seems lost.

All kinds of feelings are going trough me and I don't now what is happening. I cannot address all that I am feeling. I cannot place them. I cannot seem to channel them into manageable pieces. They flow through me relentlessly.

So now what, you might wonder.

Well now I'm lying to people who care about me. What did I do you might wonder? Well nothing dramatic. But I feel bad enough about it anyways.

It started yesterday. I felt really... well lonely I guess is the best periphrasis. I just didn't wanna see anyone. Not talk to anyone. Wanted to have time for myself. And not just one day, but the whole weekend. I felt like: if I mingle with people I'll go nuts!

So I decided to call of the lessons I was supposed to give (togehter with 4 others, so they can easely do it without me) and call of my own training. The excuse I gave is that I was feeling sick and was coming down with a fever. Those were lies. No I don't feel ok, but i'm not sick and I'm not anywhere near having a fever.

I just wanted to stay home. Not meeting anyone. Not feeling obliged to behave. Not feeling obliged to be gentle, funny, uplifting and nice as I'm usually am. I just couldn't be that person today. The idea of needing to do so made me nauseous.

I feel bad about it, but I'm also very happy I did this. Taking this time for myself. THinking about myself for a change. But I do feel bad about lying. About not being able to find a legit way to get the same result: a weekend for myself.

But it is done. I have the day of today. And tomorrow. And somehow it does feel good, in spite of the lying part. So i'm sipping my whiskey, eating snacks. Enjoying my private time.

Man oh man oh man. Do I disgust someone right now.

so there you have it. Someone gives you a task. A big task. The task to organize a very important happening for the compagny. A task with the assignment to make it so that if things go wrong, they would surface and make a report about it. So you do exactly what you have to do and as a result he says: you're this close from being fired!!!!

Like what the.....? So here is what happend:

So I work on the task. 3 months of hard work. Arranging a lot of people, putting them in place as orderd.
Those people have to perform within the task in their consecutive roles.

The task was set up as follows: manage your job at least reasonable and there is no problem, doe a poor job and things go wrong.

And things went wrong. Really wrong. And yes, all because people never took their responsibility to prepare properly.

So I reported what went well (because things also went wel of course) but also in the second chapter: what went wrong!

And now the commissioner, after reading the report, is furious. But wait! Not at the people screwing up their part! No! He is furious at......... me! Things are not true, things were not interpreted correctly, everythings is JUST NOT TRUE I SAY! (he said). Me, astonished, react and say: but this is the task and assignment you gave me? What did I do wrong. He: EVERYTHING!!!!
He was ******* mad.

Why? Because really a lot of things went wrong. While he expected things to go really well.
And now he is pissed. And in his anger he said: well, continue like this, and you won't work here much longer, I'll fire you personally!!!!!

what the.... ?!? I'm still full of surprise, and now also full of anger. I didn't do anything wrong, I did exactly as I was told, I have the tapes of the task to prove that everything I reported is the truth (the taping was part of the task, the people performing the assignment knew beforehand that they would be taped). They performed very poorly and now I'm the one that should be fired????

My manager did his very best to stand by me during the 'assault' and said that it was b*llsh*t and he wouldn't accept such a weird and preposterous measure. But with me the damage is done. For now anyways. I'm sad, I'm angry, I feel verbaly extreemly assaulted (the commisioner has the same character trades when he is angry as my father had). All i can feel now is like I could cry and scream and tear everything to peaces, I feel so unrightfully treated. It has been a real, real, real long time I have felt like that.

One plus though: my manager complimented me on staying as calm as I did. I didn't let myself get drawn into the commissioners' emotions as I normally would have.

well.

It is still a really ffff*k up situation to take with me into the weekend. Knowing that monday I need to sit with the commissioner again to talk about the things that I say went wrong.

Yuk. Where can I puke?

So for the last 5 years i've had a big problem with my weight. In just 2,5y. I gained 45kg. I've been working hard this past six months and now i've lost 20kg. So on my way back.

But what I'm so very happy about is that today, for the first time in 5 years, I was able to buy a shirt from a 'normal' clothesstore instead of one in perticular for heavy people

A big reward for hard work!!!

But there is more to be happy about at this moment.
My employer will contribute to paying my psych when he goes back to his country and my insurance won't cover it anymore. Thank you employer! *bows*. I know I'm very blessed to have such a considerate employer!

And another thing: I did a project at work which was very hard to realise, but everything went exactly as planned and all results were better than expected. I don't deserve all the credit, my projectteam did also an outstanding job. I couldn't have done it without them. It was really great the way things turned out and how pleased people were with the results.

And last but not least: the next 6 weeks i'm going on different courses which are all cool and very interesting.

I feel blessed today!

Ok, so the session with the psych didn't exactly go as planned

first:
It started with my - sort of - failure to keep my ipod on. It felt soooo horribly stupid and weird, I took it off. I kept it in my pocket within reach, but that was it.

second:
Normally my psych asks me how I'm doing or how I feel after last week.
Instead he started talking about the last two sessions, what we talked about, how it went and so on.

Third:
I just listned, surprised and all. Then he asked me how I feel talking about the past. Somehow the only thing i could do is try to answer but got stuck completely.

But then it happend. I said: this is not really the answer to your question but I have to say this.
And then I just told him stuff I wanted to say. That he was to kind for me last week, that I thought he should have pushed on more. Told him I did the day walk and that is did so much good.

Then there was a little silence and then he started telling me that he made his descision to leave the practice and go back to his country. While he said that I started to laugh. The reason was, that despite his imperturbable posture I saw his eyes. What they said. I saw he was heavy a really hard time telling me this.

He asked me why I laughed and I immediatly appologized. And i meant it, I really didn't mean to laugh, it just happend !

I explaned what I saw in his eyes, that it was consistent with what I saw last week when he told me that there was a change he might leave. What followed was a real good talk about the possibility for me going to his country to continue his help. I told him I have the means and time (it is only a 30min drive more than it is now). He told me his concerns if he would accept (the substitute he wanted to arrange, the extra traveltime, the fact that the insurance probably won't cover abroad medical attention etc).

We discussed this and more things. Bottom line: We are both giving it an extra thought and decide in a couple of weeks.

Anyways, we went on with the session and it went very good. After the going away talk I was more relaxed than I have ever been in session. It was now so much easier to talk to him and say what I really feel, how I experience things, and so on. It felt really good to tell him what I thought of his methods in helping me, how I experienced last week, what the daywalk really did for me and be more close to my own emotions than I have ever been. And the funny thing was that I still was very far away from my emo-side

I'm getting there. I just keep on working hard!
My next session is 2 weeks from now. Which will be hard. But hey I have this blog to vent so I'll be just fine