30 Day meme - Day 1 - Introduce Yourself

Funny. I started this about the same time of year in 2010. I've had an urge to just tidy up my brain and get it onto paper, so a redux is probably a good start. I think it's probably a Samhain thing, the taking stock.

It has been a very difficult four years. I think I will just rewrite the old one for the "now me".



Hello. My name is Hannah and I'm an still an insomniac. Except when I'm exhausted, which I frequently am.

I still like my name. It's still the same as in 2010. It was a big deal then because I had just got married and didn't want to change my surname. And now I'm in the throes of divorce, so good job I didn't bother. Parents are still dead. Humour is still dark.

Regarding the refusal to change my surname. I wonder now if that was some subconscious omen. I wonder that about a lot of things now - the past 4 years have made me doubt myself a bit less, but other people a whole lot more. I've made some crap choices but I have for the most part got my head round them. I reached the absolute pit in the summer. I'm slowly on the upswing but it is so very hard work.

I still have a brother and a child. The latter has been an immensely challenging experience in 3 years as a single mum, but still very worth it. I still have good friends. Very good friends. And more of them. And some have become closer. I don't think anyone has fallen by the wayside since 2010 except Ben's Dad, which was hardlly surprising. And I'm not entirely sure we were ever friends anyway to be honest. I have mostly found that you do really find out who your friends are when the going gets tough. It's easy to be a friend when it's all rainbows and sunshine. The people who stick with you through the shit are the treasures.

I still like my solitude. It's a bit of a double-edged sword when you're a single mum - you never get the right level of solitude when you need it :P But I have learned to be much more flexible and tolerant about sharing my space and time. My opinion of myself isn't that high right now, but it's not terrible either. I've discovered gaslighting is a thing. That is so fucked up. A lot of people have stunned me with how fucked up they are. While saying how fucked up I am. Which I am, but still...

Self-acceptance is more tricky at the moment. There's a lot of new bits of myself that I've discovered the past few years, not all good. Basically I'm recompiling at the moment. All the old me is still there, but it needs a few revisions. Parenting does that to you too. You constantly question your own sense of self as you have to enforce it on someone small and important without cramping their sense of self. Very strange.

I may have moderate manic depression. It's been suggested that I have BPD. I don't know about that one. I've just noticed that I need a lot more validation at the moment than I used to. It's natural after major change, I guess.

I wonder if Adult Children types cling to models and labels to give them the validation that their parents never did. It's an interesting thought.

Anyway, I'm still me. It's good to see me in there, four years ago. I've felt inspired to go back through the 11 years I've begun November in this journal and see who I see there:

http://cybermule.livejournal.com/2003/11/03/
http://cybermule.livejournal.com/2004/11/03/
http://cybermule.livejournal.com/2005/11/03/
http://cybermule.livejournal.com/2006/11/03/
http://cybermule.livejournal.com/2007/11/04/
http://cybermule.livejournal.com/2008/11/01/
http://cybermule.livejournal.com/2009/11/05/
http://cybermule.livejournal.com/2011/11/02/
http://cybermule.livejournal.com/2012/11/01/
http://cybermule.livejournal.com/2013/10/26/

Yeah - I'm still me. That's reassuring. In fact, I'm getting back to who I seemed to be in the earlier years.