The truth is, if I'd known how the first half of 2024 was about to transpire, I might have chosen to opt out. But there are certain things that give you NO choice - particularly if you want to get serious about sorting your shit out.
My outlook on life has completely changed in the last few months. This is even more of a 'question everything' time than Covid was for me, in some ways. One of Neale Donald Walsch's books is called 'When Everything Changes, Change Everything'. So much has changed in my life ..
In the space of five months, I've gone from:
Having a job to having no job.
Living in Manchester to moving back to Poole.
Having an online relationship that I'd invested some hope and even money in (which was crumbling by early February) to being completely single again and really wondering if my last hope of a romantic relationship was completely gone now.
Thinking I was going to go into some sort of spiritual business to having to completely rebuild career wise.
Being mentally reasonably stable to going completely off the rails for a little while.
Thinking things were going to work out to having all my issues intensified.
Being part of a large community in Manchester to losing that community and building new and existing connections down south.
Identifying as 'spiritual' to identifying as 'I'm not sure what my beliefs are'.
Having a completely different perspective of what 'inner work' is.
As you may know by now, I don't do fake positivity or pretend I am super grateful when I'm not. 2024 has been a brutal, traumatic and pretty catastrophic year for me, and I know that many people have been struggling. Something has surely been in the air. For a little while, I had completely lost hope; all my issues were magnified and it was totally overwhelming. God had abandoned me, so it seemed. Some of the thoughts that came into my head were straight from the depths of horror.
RESTORATION OF SOME HOPE
What has been made very, very clear to me is that unresolved trauma, particularly from childhood, has been essentially running the show for most if not all of my almost 50 years on earth, along with some of my neurodivergent brain functions. And also, just how serious this stuff was for me. There was not going to be any quick fix; no regression or hypnotherapy or Reiki or deliverance from demons was going to provide a magic cure. There was some big, big work to be done.
Fortunately, I have maintained a strong interest in personal growth, mental health topics, some aspects of psychology, and how life's challenges can affect us. If there's something that can help me, I want to learn as much as I can about it that is useful.
Two YouTube channels, Crappy Childhood Fairy and Tim Fletcher have been particularly helpful for me and given me some insight as to why I am the way I am and how complex trauma has played out in my life. At the moment I am listening to Tim's videos which are very insightful and contain years worth of knowledge and research and experience. I highly recommend both channels for people who are struggling with trauma and PTSD.
LOOKING AT THE REST OF 2024 - WHAT NEXT?
The obvious answer is that I don't know what will happen during the next few months; there are times when life is completely out of our control and things happen whether we like it or not. However, I don't feel it's going to be quite so intense as the first half for me. I don't expect to be completely better by the end of the year, but I am taking small steps to helping myself.
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| Charmouth in West Dorset, courtesy of Flickr |
I always expected to move back near a coastline someday, but I wasn't really planning on moving back down south (although I had been thinking a bit that it could be time to be a bit closer to my family). It is good to be back near a coastline; I don't intend to stay in Poole forever but I do intend to stay near the coast and not too far from my family as things stand - and whilst I have to put a disclaimer in because I am fairly prone to changing my mind on things, as things stand I don't feel like I'll be moving back up north anytime soon.
This year is partly about finding myself; looking back I can see that I wasn't being my true self in some ways. My connection to God and Spirit has changed - to be fair it's been bordering on non existent or completely non existent over the last few months, but I still expect to have some sort of connection going forward, whatever that may look like.
Everything has changed for me; I am making a lot of inner and outer changes too. Life has taken me in a direction I wasn't expecting or even wanting, but I needed a big kick up the backside.
Onwards and upwards.
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