Unconditional love v. stress

Ive met an extraordinary man! So why am i telling you?

Meeting ‘the man’ does, in part, explain why its been so long between posts but honestly…… I just haven’t known what to say. Day after day ive been asking myself how i feel and i couldn’t have told you. Now i want to try.

Happy certainly. Relaxed for the first time in months. Excited. Hopeful. This man took away all the stress, wouldn’t allow me to think about it, took visible, physical steps to banish it. Distracted me and wouldn’t let me dwell on it. Day by day has released me from it so that its echo can barely be heard. Does that all sound a bit poetical? Tough coz that’s how i feel 🙂

Love is whats done all this ……. and i don’t mean ‘falling in love’ (although that certainly might come into it in the future) but unconditional, freely given, love for another human being.

This is only one example of the small miracles i’ve been getting every day. Last night he told me he’d just let me talk all day because he thought i needed to (and I’m paraphrasing next not quoting coz i still find it hard to trawl through my brain sometimes) – he felt i hadn’t been allowed to talk for a very long time. ‘He felt’, he didn’t know, but i cant tell you the difference it made to me because no one said ‘Shush Sal!’ or asked me to ‘John Craven’ it (this may have been funny 7 years ago coz sometimes I’m not very good at telling stories and didn’t realise it was my undiagnosed ME that made me have to relate what happened sequentially and exactly because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to remember what i was saying but actually is just bl***dy rude) which eventually turned into plain ‘Shut up Sal!’ with eye rolling and made me have to ask ‘Can i just say something?’ (which i can see was equally annoying but what can you do?) if whatever i had to say was not related directly to them or what i was going to do for their benefit. OK, I’m exaggerating because if this person was in a good mood, which could be for a couple of weeks in a row sometimes (was that sarcasm?) i would lull myself into a false sense of security and talk if i needed too but (this is actually true) eventually it would become too much for him and then whatever i said would be wrong even if it was right (and fear not … i tested it on occasion because over 7 years of it you do have lucid gaps where you ask yourself if it can REALLY all be you).

I know now that I didn’t talk too much. I know now that i just said what needed to be said, what was funny, what would make me feel better to say, asked questions if i needed to know something, made statements if they needed to be made, said what needed to be said to make the other person feel better, showed i was happy, sad, excited, worried in words just like everyone else does.

Everyday now i hear words that sound the same but have the opposite intent and i realise just how wrong the last relationship was.

The point of this is that in hindsight i believe (i believe?!? I KNOW!!!) that the stress in that relationship caused my relapse and that the blessed loss of that relationship is the reason I’m feeling so much better and that i can actually feel myself again. If you regularly read my blog you might remember me saying that it wouldn’t be long but i didn’t think id have this much help and get to this point so fast. This is good for everyone around me – my children are different children, they are amazing anyway and have helped me so much but they are so happy that their mum is happy and well. My friends all think my new man is amazing and say they can now stop worrying about me because I’m back to myself – my voice sounds different, I’m relaxed, smiley, have energy and i love them so much for not giving up on me because i put them all through so much – i just couldn’t see what they ALL saw!

Its awful that we might have to live around loved ones who don’t believe in us (or our ME) but worse to know that the stress may exacerbate our ME and even be the cause. If you feel like this i hope your miracle is just around the corner. It took me 6 out of the 7 years we were together but eventually i got it!

I’m not saying my ME has gone all I’m saying is that I’m out of the relapse, working at 85% at the moment (which feels like 100% after so long) and that all it took was to get rid of the cause of the stress. If you care about yourself the only thing you can do is get rid of anything that causes you stress!!

I usually like to end up light but i cant seem to find the words today. If you need to/ want to talk you can find me on facebook www.facebook.com/SallyMarsden or comment here.

PS Unconditional love v. stress …………. and the winner is …….. love every time!!!!! Love … the undefeated heavy weight champion of the world 😉