Pancakes

 Some times figuring out why you aren't able to function is like a confusing tangle of knots. There's so many things in the way and trying to find the end seems impossible. Instead of trying to constantly undo the big knot in the middle it's better to just keep undoing each smaller knot as we get to them. 

Our minds are incredible but not always easy to understand, it gives us clues to what the current problem we need to solve is, but it isn't always crystal clear what it means. For years I would make pancakes as a way to show my love to people in my life. I didn't realise what it was I was trying to really do at the time, I just thought it was normal to make your partner pancakes in bed, I thought that it would help them to feel better. I never really understood why they would reject my pancakes.

As I approached the weekend I kept hearing a voice call out 'pancakes' in my mind and once again I didn't really understand why. I didn't actually feel like eating pancakes at all. When I took a bath using bubble soak that had the same scent as my grandma it all suddenly clicked into place. Every fortnight I would stay the weekend at my grandmas house, she would often make us pancakes for breakfast. We would get up on the Saturday morning in our pyjamas, slippers and dressing gowns come downstairs and have pancakes whilst watching a VHS of a Disney film my favourite was always peter pan or the jungle book. 

For a while I have managed to get my weekday mornings sorted and push away the depression fog but I would always fall apart at the weekends. It didn't seem like there was any point to getting up, to do anything, then I would feel like a terrible person. 

Pancakes were the clue. It wasn't ever really about the pancakes, it was about how my grandma looked after us. How she made us feel loved and safe. When I stopped staying my life started to deteriorate. Making my ex pancakes was because I had learned that that is how you look after people, it is how you show love. I never showed my disappointment when my pancakes where rejected, but I did feel it. 

When I struggle to get up at the weekends it is because I miss being cared for, being looked after. 

Finally understanding what pancakes really meant, I started to feel less afraid of the weekends. It doesn't matter If I don't do anything much at the weekends, I'm still learning how to look after my being on all levels. 

And now I also know how to extend that in a relationship. Something I have secretly feared I won't be able to do or feel properly. It's not about the pancakes, it's how I felt being loved and safe and cared for. Deep down I've been too afraid to admit that all I really want is for someone to look after me as much as I would look after them, I've been afraid that If I let someone start to look after me that I would become a burden and not give back to them. I've believed that relationships are always one sided, If I look after them then I won't be cared for back but also scared of myself doing the same if they look after me. This fear has led me to repress the need and desire to be cared for. It has spread out to the belief I must become self sufficient to be loved but in doing that also believe that anyone who loves me would become cruel and cold and take everything from me until there is nothing left. I had unconsciously placed myself between two hard rocks with no option for a way out. 

I don't need to make pancakes and I don't need to always be busy on a weekend. 

When I envision my future I have always envisioned the weekdays being smooth, I've never thought about my weekends, this is why it has always fallen apart before the end of a week any time I have tried to hold a goal in my mind. 

So when I think about my new house I want to think about it at the weekends. How will my new house feel Saturday mornings? What type of weekend life do I want to create for myself? What do I want to be my normal weekends? 

My biggest goal has been to love and be loved, to be in a healthy relationship, to create that for myself I have had to go on this journey of self discovery winding through all the little knots that have been getting in the way one by one. Right now I am at the knot of weekends, how does a weekend look to me in my normal life before a relationship that can then easily extend into a relationship? I can't create the trust and feelings of being with someone before even knowing how to be with myself all the time. 

There is nothing wrong with wanting someone to look after you, to support you, to care despite whatever mental health struggles you have, but it is going to always be very difficult to make it healthy if you aren't learning about yourself and how to love and care for yourself first. 

It's too easy to look at other people in the world and think "they managed to get a loving partner with the same mental health problems as me, why doesn't it happen for me?" but that is a fruitless self trap. You can not compare yourself with others and truthfully when I look deeper at those types of relationships they aren't what I want at all. I don't want to be those people, I want to be me. And a part of me has always known that i want to be more than the me with depression or anxiety or C-PTSD. I want to be the me that learned how to get past all of those struggles. 

What do weekends feel like in my new life? I can see and feel my weekday routines to easily, but I have no idea about weekends.

Maybe If I start with walking down the stairs that are carpeted, Feeling the fuzzyness beneath my feet. No one is yet awake, I go to the kitchen and I have a glass of fizzy water as I look out of the kitchen window at my garden. The sun low in the sky. I sigh peacefully because there is no rush to wake anyone up just yet as it is Saturday. Maybe I potter around doing a few chores, putting the washing on to dry on the line later in the day, putting the clean dishes from the night before away. Of course I feed all of the cats as the come in from the night adventures. I might sit at the round dining table and have a quick look at the budget and make sure everything is in order. Soon little feet shuffle into the kitchen and a small voice asks for breakfast and the day has now began. The children get to watch TV as they eat breakfast since there is no school now, they get to stay in their pyjamas late too. I will continue to potter around doing chores here and there but I will also be doing things with the children once I've finally made them get dressed for the day, they can play in the garden whilst I hang the washing to dry, we can make things out of crafts, they might ask to go out to the park. 

Weekends are a time to catch up on house work lightly but spend time with the children.  

If I add my favourite person into the mix it wouldn't be much different except perhaps I make him a coffee in the mornings and we sit and look at the budget together, one of us can continue a particular job that needs doing as the other plays with the children. As the day comes to an end we all have a family board game night that goes past the children's usual bedtime because that is what weekends are for, and it makes it exciting and fun for them. Then they go to bed and my person and I cuddle up with a cosy film or show we have been watching or we may have a babysitter come round and we go out for  a date night. 

Sometimes you just need to figure out what pancakes really mean and suddenly you've undone another knot out of your way to the life you really want to live. 

-Tiny Diny

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