.: Entry One-Hundred and Nine :.

My name is Elliot Parker.

Last night was the first night in two weeks where there hasn’t been the unavoidable, unstoppable onslaught of tears before I sleep. Whether it was because I was willing it or because I felt a little better for having begun to tackle how I have been feeling.  There is some kind of inexplicable therapy in the form of getting a new tattoo. It can transform how you are feeling about something or somewhere. It makes sense I suppose; you are undergoing a transformation. It is a choice every time. I suppose that is the beauty of it, when you sign the consent form it is like signing to say, yes I am ready to transform and grow and turn whatever brought me through those doors emotionally into something beautiful. Getting a tattoo for me, it makes me feel better, stronger, transformative, different, brighter, newer… it just feels like some kind of preparation. Some kind of allowing on a different scale. Sure it hurts, a lot. This one hurt a tonne, I was glad I chose something smaller. But it was perfect. I let go of the executive decisions on colourings and let the artist take over, I trusted him to choose what would look best, as long as the pattern followed what I had in mind, and it did.

After the tattoo, it just felt easier, walking with the pain, like there was some connection forged where I didn’t feel so alone, as crazy as that sounds.

That’s when some of that caring a little more about myself kicked in, making some of those moving forward steps began to happen. I got home and ate dinner with nana, having a nice chitter chat about nothing in particular. I went and cleaned my tattoo off and put that first wonderful soothing layer of cream on to make it feel better. I loved it. I didn’t really think it through too much before getting the tattoo, I didn’t have major expectations for it, in fact I just had some vague idea and I couldn’t picture it on my skin until it was done and it was right, it was just exactly what it needed to be. It was me, I even found the colour pleasantly surprising, most of my other tattoos are black work with a little colour pop here and there, this was full colour and it was perfect. I couldn’t help but love what it was, it was the perfect symbol.

So yes anyway. I cleaned off my tattoo, came sat back down, put a base coat on my toes and watched whatever was on the TV, I can’t say I was paying much attention. Then I put on a nice shade of lilac I must have had for a few years that I have very rarely used. I treated myself to just feeling a little pampered. I painted my big toes in a different lilac, a similar shade but this one was super iridescent. It just felt nice, to have that little pampering. The lilac isn’t too far off the lilac that’s been used in my tattoo. I don’t have a blue nail varnish that would match my new tattoo, yet but I have seen one that would look like a gorgeous complementing colour.

It was a nice way to start putting some real self-care into action. I prepared my vitamins for a week while I was at it. I tidied up a tiny bit of my bedside table. I wrote in my book of positive aspects. My three good things that happened that day. I do it every day, it has become a bit of a comfort thing, I like it. It sounds like something small and insignificant, but it has helped me in so many ways. I relaxed and watched TV last night with my nana and spent the time chatting about anything and everything.

Going to bed was easy enough, sleeping is where it got harder. It was hard, falling asleep in the darkness, but it was the first time I didn’t fall apart at the seams. I can’t promise the same tonight but it doesn’t mean I won’t be trying to not try but to just be.

I just know that today I want to keep looking after myself a bit. While this computer took forever to sort itself out I trimmed, filed and painted my nails in some sparkly stuff that is called fairy spell unicorn addiction. I just liked the twinkle and sparkle and fun. It’s basically unicorn jizz- sparkly white stuff that has no real colour it’s sort of transparent but has a lot of sparkles and shimmers in it. Such a wonderful description right?

I guess I could say I had a good day at work, excruciatingly tired but it was essentially a good day.

Right now I am listening to Bring Him Home, a song that would usually make me cry but right now I feel strong enough to listen, strong enough to let it just be with me. To let it be my prayer for JJ, even though I don’t know where he is or what happened to him, it just feels like the kind of song I would be hugging him while listening to right now, because that is what I want to be doing right now. Hugging my big lump of a crazy dog. I don’t think there is any shred of doubt in me when I say I will never, ever, ever, ever forgive my mother for rehoming him without even letting me know, for hiding it for months, for not letting me find another, for not letting me have a choice, for not letting me even say goodbye. On what planet did she ever think that it was going to be a good idea, a forgivable action? How could she think there would be no consequence, not when there wasn’t a good enough reason to do that in the first place.

.: Entry One-Hundred and Eight :.

My name is Elliot Parker.

So what are those wonderful things I am looking forward to? How can I rebuild myself?

Because that is what I have to do, I suppose it is the only choice I have.

So what do you do when you finally get your freedom after being trapped in some kind of bizarre horror show of an existence?

First, I get to stop beating myself up. It is ok to not be ok. It is fine to let yourself feel hurt and grieve as long as I can stop letting it consume me.

So I started by dying my hair. Not some crazy colour, not some false version of me I can project on the world and pretend that I am ok with like wearing a mask. No, I am stopping doing that. I am stopping this stupid need to hide how I feel. So I dyed my hair sort of close to my natural colour-ish, again, only this is the closest match I managed to find. So there it is, the first layer of my mask is gone.

I won’t be beating myself up or getting mad at myself for crying anymore. I am releasing resistance when I do, I am finding some semblance of healing when I free myself from pretending to have things together.

So what else?

I am going to paint my toes. It sounds small, but it is a little bit of pampering, it is a little self-care and self-love beyond doing the bare minimum to pretend to be ok. Painting my toes is for me, people at work don’t see my toes, I don’t wear peep-toe shoes, I don’t wear flip flops really, my toes are my private little pampering and sparkle that get to be my little nod to say it is ok.

What next?

I am going to listen to some music that feels more like summer, feels brighter and more fun and more sassy. I haven’t listened to music in a while so this will be a nice change.

I am going to be proud and draw a little bit. A little doodle once in a while.

I am going to check in more on here, write more on here, not keep bottling things up.

This can be my safe space for a while too.

I am going to meet up with Hal and spend some time with my brother from another mother. A good quality hang out just the two of us and catch up on everything. I am going to have fun and eat junk with him and talk about everything. I’m going to open up to him.

I am going to honour JJ in some way, however that is I will find a way that feels right. The best dog ever that would be the clown to make me laugh when I was broken hearted, my best friend and baby boy.

What else?

I am going to shave my legs and wear a pretty dress and go out with Dyl for dinner and have a lovely date and spend some time together. I want to make sure he knows just how much I appreciate him. And yes I know I started that sentence with I am going to shave my legs, it’s a special occasion so I won’t be doing the rushed ones I have done the last two weeks, I am going to take my time because I can’t keep scratching skin off with the razor when I rush. The razor is meant to cut my hair not my damn legs into ribbons.

…

This post was interrupted. I received a message from a friend. You see not long after thinking about trying to find some way to honour JJ, trying to think of a way that I could have some consistent reminder of him with me always an event fell into perfect place. The message said that my tattoo artist had had a cancellation, on a day that would have been impossible to get time on and my friend thought of me. I had asked about getting a time slot either yesterday or today but my artist was fully booked. So when the message came through I thought this is brilliant. So within twenty minutes I had gotten dressed and left to go to the studio.

So I got a tattoo on my right leg, the side that JJ had been trained to walk to. I got something that both JJ and I loved playing together, bubbles. It seemed like the most perfect way to honour him. I needed to do something, to give myself some way, some place to grieve.

Last night was the first night I wasn’t bursting in tears before I dozed off. That’s not to say I slept well, not at all, I woke up regularly. It drives me a little crazy that I haven’t slept through the night yet. But this was the step in the right direction. It didn’t even hurt that much today, it was fine at work and now here I am. Finally, with some way to feel like JJ is with me still, in some kind of way. I don’t feel so alone, JJ was wonderful like that, he was always there always excited to just be with me and spend time doing whatever. Being separated was always something very hard on the both of us, we were so in sync together. He was as much a part of me as I might have been to him. That’s the most precious thing about having a dog. They become part of you, they are impossible to forget but the most horrendous pain in their absence. He is so irreplaceable and he will always be a part of me, in my heart and now on my skin. It is the perfect way to have him with me always. Now hopefully as the ink heals I will heal at least a little with it.

.: Entry One-Hundred and Seven :.

My name is Elliot Parker. My heart is still broken.

The sense of loss is still overwhelming. Two weeks, my dog is gone, my childhood home, my childhood, my memories, my belongings, what little of the relationship I had with my mother. It’s all gone. I won’t get any of that back. The memories are all tainted with the poison of all the deception and lies. My mother might have been happy living with all those damn lies, every single one, she might have been fine with living, but I see it for what it was, what it is and it makes me feel sick.

All I want more than anything is my dog. I want him to know I love him that I never got that chance to say goodbye. There’s no body for my grief to get closure. There will never be closure where my mother is involved. Finding out all those lies, that is the closest I will ever come to any kind of closure. I am so far beyond things.

In those two weeks? The first two days Madam basically manipulated everything, told my nana I was yelling at her, that I threw stuff at her, that it was all my fault that I ruined her relationship. Everything ridiculous under the sun, even though I had told nana everything the moment it was over. She managed to get nana to blame me too. That hurt. Though I wouldn’t admit that to her. Instead I said she wouldn’t have had a problem in any of her relationships if she hadn’t lied so freaking much about every single damn thing.

How is it she can make everything my fault when all I did was discover the truth, all of it. Finding out the truth wasn’t free for me, I had to give him the answers to his questions. I had to stand in a room with her *vomit creeps up the back of the throat* husband. I wasn’t the one who lied to everyone for three years after getting married in secret. I wasn’t the one who rehomed JJ without my consent, let alone even telling me.

How the hell am I meant to be ok with this, why is it that my nana won’t accept the fact that her daughter destroyed everything her own damn self, told horrific lies, tried to scam out a new TV and yet I am the monster?

I will never forgive my mother’s actions. I will never accept them. I feel like I will never make peace with them. She takes any joy I have ever had and has single headedly destroyed it and then found some angle some way to blame me for it every way, every time since I can remember. How the hell is that fair?

How am I always the monster? How am I always the villain and her some poor defenceless victim?

When I had my CBT after the event I found one word that could accurately describe my mother, narcissist. The other word is delusional, but I think she knows what she is doing. She knows she is manipulating things to suit her.

CBT has helped but that hasn’t cured barely sleeping at all, my record sleep was maybe about 5 hours in one night, not solid, but it was still more sleep in one night than any of the other nights. Every day I wake up with that horrid pounding head you get after crying yourself to sleep and every day I am pulling the threads of myself together so people don’t know that I am only pretending to be ok. I am very much not ok.

But one thing I am proud of myself for over all of this, I haven’t resulted to my old coping mechanisms. I am still eating, I haven’t been harming myself, I haven’t had a drink. I am sober in all my vices. I am clinging onto my life, on to any stability by the finest of threads.

I don’t think I would be this sort of stable if it wasn’t for that wonderfully abundant influence in my life, the biggest source of joy, Dyl. So far I think I have only broken down properly in front of him over the two weeks twice at most. It’s not that I am hiding how I feel from him, but that I want some to keep things joyful to a degree, I know he knows I am really struggling. But he is still very much being there for me. I know I couldn’t be luckier than to have him by my side.

I broke down a few nights ago, I was afraid I would lose him to like I lost everything else. He reassured me the opposite. But I suppose I hadn’t realised just how this pain was seeping into my thoughts. I know my relationship with Dyl is secure. I know it is safe, and yet with losing all those ropes I was afraid I’d lose him too. It makes sense in some logic. I know I won’t.

I just wish I could get free of this feeling of holding myself together using something like dental floss. Because I can do it. I can survive. I can get back to knowing happiness again. I don’t have to be in this trapped prison of still feeling caged because I am free and I know I am free and I am trying so hard to look forward to life. Look forward to the future that I am building with Dyl. I know it’s stupid, and I know I said it and I mean it that my mother will never be there for anything else in my life and I know that is my choice. But every girl wants their mother at their one-day wedding. I can’t even trust my mother enough to tell me if the sky is blue without checking there is no way I would risk anything remotely important near her no matter what.