That was the (six) week(s) that was...

So it's been a grand total of six weeks since I moved into my new place.  And a lot has happened since then.  For one thing, I grew up.  I spent a lot of last year worrying about how childlike I still felt, considering that 2012 is the year in which I turn thirty-five; wondering what was ever going to happen in my life that would make me feel like a real adult.  It turns out I needn't have worried!

I grew up because I've had to take charge of things and act on the fact that I am now properly looking after myself.  And so I managed to get myself two jobs after two interviews, and this week I also managed to successfully negotiate a better deal for myself in my main job.  That I can hardly believe.  Me, who up until now has coasted through life and just let things happen, coming to the stark realisation that I'd better start watching out for myself now, because nobody else is going to and I'm supposed to be a sentient adult and so if I think I deserve something then I should ask for it, so I do, and then I actually get it!  Sorry - I know that could sound a bit arrogant, and it isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but for me that really is something quite amazing.

That's one thing.  Hopefully another amazing thing to occur soon is that I will start trusting my emotions again.  Because it's really quite unnerving, not to be able to trust in how you're feeling at a given moment.  I can wake up and feel incredibly positive, then just ten minutes later I'm in the grips of despair, convinced that nothing good is ever going to happen in my life ever again.  These spells of emotional despair feel like the mental equivalent of those retching physical purges of sickness you get when you have food poisoning; they hollow you right out from the inside as though someone's ripped your head off and gone for your heart and guts with a great big leaden spoon, and when it's finally finished and there's nothing left you can only sit in a calm, mechanical sort of haze for a bit, wondering whether you can eat something or if that will just trigger the whole thing off again, which you really don't want because you don't feel like you have the energy for it, not just now.  You're just spent, and then you have to start building yourself back up again, not at all certain that the bad stuff is over with.  In fact, knowing it most definitely isn't over with, not quite yet anyway.  But you know it will be, at some point.  Just not today.

This is a silly analogy, but I have a fitness DVD presented by Bob Harper from 'The Biggest Loser' which I love, as I love most American fitness DVDs, due to its hilarious over-the-top-ness.  An example of this is illustrated in Bob screaming at me throughout this DVD as I'm ordered to do my round-the-world pushups for the fiftieth time, something along the lines of "this has gotta HURT...this is what ya gotta DO if you wanna CHANGE your BODY!"  Maybe that mantra applies to life changes too...you've got to work at it and it's gotta HURT for a while, but the changes it brings might end up being worth it.

(Deep breath!) So anyway, yeah - that's been the last six weeks of my life.  Here's to the next six - and beyond.