Beneath The Bottle

Tag: trust

  • Finding My Spark Again

    Finding My Spark Again

    I was told I’d lost my spark.

    The words sat there between us, heavy and undeniable. And the truth is, they were right. I have lost my spark.

    Not in the obvious way, perhaps. I am not outwardly miserable. I am not the person people would necessarily point to and say she is falling apart. I can still smile. I can still laugh. I can still hold a conversation and make myself appear intact. But inside me, there is turmoil running through every vein. A constant unrest. A heaviness that rarely loosens its grip.

    I keep most of it in.

    It spills out here instead, into my writing, because this is the safest place I know to be honest. I can pour my worst fears onto a page, lay my pain down in words, and for a little while it leaves me. Or at least becomes quiet enough for me to breathe.

    If you met me, you would see that I do have a personality. Even writing that feels uncomfortable because I have no real ego to cushion me. Speaking well of myself feels awkward, almost embarrassing. But it is still true. I can laugh. I can care. I can sit with someone for hours if they need comfort. I can help an elderly lady reach the top shelf in a shop, balancing on my tiptoes as if I am far taller than I really am. I can help a flustered woman at a petrol station open the petrol cap when she has borrowed her husband’s car and cannot work it out. I can carry the weight of eight children’s needs, emotions, chaos and endless mess, and still somehow keep everything moving.

    If I see someone struggling, I stop.

    If someone needs kindness, I give it.

    I can play video games to a decent standard for a 45 year old mam. I can snipe on Call of Duty. I can edit montages on Premiere Pro. I am down to earth. I can crack a joke. I can make my kids cringe at my humour, and although they would never willingly admit it, my jokes are funny. I enjoy a bit of harmless sarcasm. My empathy floods me more than it should sometimes, but I would still rather be too soft than too hard.

    But trust is gone.

    Some things happen in life that strip trust from you so completely that it never grows back the same. Since last year, I have known that something in me has changed for good. I do not trust. I do not believe I ever fully will again. So I stay alone, in my own company, where disappointment cannot walk through the door wearing a familiar face.

    There was a time, about eighteen months ago, when I would go out walking and take photographs of everything beautiful. Flowers. Bees. The river. The sun. The moon. The trees. The clouds stretching themselves across the sky as though they had all the time in the world. I noticed things then. I felt pulled towards them.

    Then I stopped.

    And maybe that is what losing your spark looks like. Not becoming someone else entirely, but slowly ceasing to reach for the things that once lit you up. Quietly drifting away from what made you feel something. Letting life harden around you until wonder no longer feels natural.

    But today I took photographs of the clouds.

    And they mesmerised me.

    That has to mean something.

    Maybe I did not lose my spark at all. Maybe it was only dulled. Worn down by years of pain, by things that should never have happened, by the sort of hurt that changes the way you move through the world. And then, just as I was already carrying enough, I was retraumatised by someone I had believed I could trust.

    That kind of pain does not just bruise you.

    It alters you.

    But sparks fade. They do not disappear.

    I need to believe that now. I need to believe that there is still something in me worth finding again. I need to start looking for beauty in small things. I need to let myself enjoy gaming not as a distraction alone, but as something that genuinely brings me joy. I need to make the TikToks again. Edit the videos. Learn new things. Build something from the skills I do have. Not for clicks. Not for likes. But for the feeling. For the small flicker of pride. For the sense of purpose. For the reminder that I am still here.

    Gaming brings me joy. It always has. My competitive side wants to improve, to sharpen, to keep going. Editing gives me something to focus on, something to shape, something I can make mine. Creation matters. It reminds you that even when life has taken so much, it has not taken everything.

    I do not naturally believe I am talented. I can say I am a good mam, but even that I downplay because it feels easier to minimise myself than to stand fully in anything good. But I have written a book and self published it. I have another one in progress, this time fiction. That must count for something. It has to.

    What I need now is belief.

    Motivation.

    Desire.

    A reason to keep reaching.

    Because the truth is, I have never really had anyone in life who believed in me in the way people should be believed in. I have had to become my own cheerleader, my own comfort, my own support system. And that is hard when your faith in yourself has been chipped away over years and years.

    But maybe this is where it starts again.

    Not with a miracle.

    Not with some grand transformation.

    Just with a photograph of the clouds.

    Just with a small return to wonder.

    Just with the quiet decision to believe that something in me is still glowing beneath it all.

    Maybe I have not lost my spark.

    Maybe I am only learning how to find it again.

  • I Learned To Sleep Facing The Door

    I Learned To Sleep Facing The Door

    Trust did not shatter.

    It eroded.

    A grain at a time

    carried away by hands

    that said stay

    while quietly teaching me why I shouldn’t.

    People imagine betrayal as violence.

    They picture shouting.

    They picture rage.

    But the worst harm I have known

    arrived softly.

    It knew my history.

    Spoke gently around it.

    Waited patiently

    until I stopped guarding the fragile parts.

    That is how doors open.

    Not by force.

    By relief.

    I remember the first time I exhaled around someone.

    How heavy my bones felt

    realising I did not have to stay awake inside my own life.

    I thought safety sounded like laughter.

    I did not know it could also sound like goodbye.

    Now my body keeps score.

    I notice pauses between words.

    The shift in temperature when affection cools.

    The moment interest turns into tolerance.

    I collect these things instinctively.

    Evidence.

    Proof that I am not imagining the ground moving again.

    They say I am distant.

    Careful.

    Hard to reach.

    They do not understand

    that once you have been loved as a doorway

    people expect to walk through you forever.

    So I became a wall instead.

    Loneliness has sharp edges

    but at least it does not pretend to be soft.

    Sometimes I watch strangers trust each other.

    Heads leaning together.

    Phones left unlocked on tables.

    Sleep shared without fear.

    It feels like watching another language spoken fluently

    after forgetting every word yourself.

    I do not hate people.

    I still want warmth.

    That might be the cruelest part.

    Because wanting it

    does not mean I can survive it.

    So I sleep lightly now.

    Back to the wall.

    Breath measured.

    Dreams unfinished.

    And if someone ever truly meant no harm….

    I wonder

    if I would recognise it.

    Or mistake safety for danger…

    and close the door

    just before it finally stayed.

  • The Last Fifty Minutes

    The Last Fifty Minutes

    Today, there’s a momentary pause while I try to find the words to do justice to something important, but also difficult to talk about. It feels as though the walls around me have closed in, suffocating the space, the air stifled by a heaviness. On Tuesday, my current therapy will come to an end. Eighteen months have passed, far from uneventful, but deeply significant. Mixed emotions consume most of my thoughts. The rational part of me always knew an end would come, yet there’s something about therapy that creates an illusion of timelessness. A space that feels almost TARDIS like, where time bends quietly in the background.

    Compiling these last eighteen months would be impossible; so much has transpired. But now, I need to write my gratitude, because my avoidant nature makes expressing it directly feel far scarier than setting it down in words. Sitting in that therapy room for my final session will be harder than any before. Harder, even, than the work itself.

    Most of all, I want to express my gratitude. Over the last twenty years, I’ve engaged in numerous stints of therapy with different therapists. Each has been wonderful in their own way, but this time has been the most enlightening and thorough of all. My therapist is, without question, gifted in her work. She has worked me harder than any before, with an attention to detail that reached into places I never thought could be seen. She gave me something rare, a safe space. And to feel safe, for me, is no small thing. It’s a testament to how comfortable she made me feel.

    Trust. Something I’ve struggled with all my life;  began to take shape in that room. For the first time, I could be completely honest about who I am, what I am, and all the pain I carry, knowing it would be met with respect and care. My biggest downfall in previous therapies was my inability to trust fully the well intentioned person sitting opposite me. I’d always withhold the most painful parts, desperate not to appear as destroyed as I felt inside.

    My inner thoughts have always scared me; saying them out loud has never come easily. If she had let me sit in silence for fifty minutes, I would have.  Content to let the session slip away without speaking. But she never allowed me to “just sit.” She invited me, gently and persistently, to voice the thoughts that hid in the corners of my silence. Together we unraveled so much unspoken pain and torment that had ruled my mind for so long.

    The end of therapy is making me sad. Is this normal? I’ve never felt such a pull of emotion at an ending before. They say people come into your life for a time, to help unravel and touch your world in ways that stay forever. And now, it must end. She has been a safety net, and from next week that will be gone. I’ll have to rely on the tools she’s helped me build, to hold myself steady through the storms. But I know that the absence of that reassuring, hypothetical hand on my shoulder, the silent reminder that I’m not alone, will be the hardest part.

    This week, the tears have come without warning. Mid walk, mid song, mid thought. It’s the knowing that therapy ends next week; that quiet fear of goodbye creeping in. For so long, those sessions have been my still point; a place where I could fall apart safely, and slowly learn how to put myself back together.

    Now, as the ending draws near, I find myself grieving the space, the rhythm, and the person who sat with me through it all. She’s offered such steady guidance and warmth, and I have a real fondness for her, not only for how she’s helped me heal, but for who she is. A genuinely lovely person who met me exactly where I was, time after time.

    I need to survive the final fifty minute session.

    I need to sit through it without falling apart; to hide the ache that comes with the conclusion of something that has opened so many doors to parts of myself I never knew how to see before.

    I tell myself I need to be dignified in my demise. To hold the emotion quietly, even as my chest tightens and my eyes betray me. Because how do you say goodbye to someone who helped you find your voice, when all you want to do is stay silent and stay a little longer.