I’ve heard it’s Valentines day today? And I’m single. Not that I was ever bothered too much when I was in a relationship. Me and John spoke twice last week: the first time we were talking about possibly getting back together but we couldn’t agree on how that would look like. Only then I had this idea that possibly he thought that I was unhappy with him only because I wanted a change? That would make some sense. But from my perspective it wasn’t like that at all: I was mostly unhappy with myself and our relationship was reflection of that.

I wanted general change, I wanted to be able to blog about everything that I find important and I somehow thought that I needed to change myself first before I expect my relationship to be different.

The second time we spoke I asked if he would like to meet if I go to Bristol. My agency is holding coffee morning this Friday so I thought I could go and make it into a day out. And John said yes. It’s nice of him, although he reminded me we’re not in a relationship. What did he mean by that? It sounded like if he wanted me to know that I should not expect something. But what? I’m confused. I’d be happy to go though, if not this week, then possibly a bit later.

But I find it so difficult to work out how I feel about him and, possibly, if it’s the right time to try to decide anything. I feel confused about everything recently and I wonder if it’s maybe because my situation changed so much? I practically become an orphan. I know it sounds silly, I’m 44 and my mum had severe dementia the last couple of months of her life so she wouldn’t help me with anything. But yet, she was still there, and now she’s not. I have nobody else.

I think that possibly I need time to adjust to this situation. And only then I can possibly think about what to do about John.

Last night I had approx 3h of sleep. Not much, but at least I had some. When I’m really stressed I’m unable to use the techniques from Sleep School, however, what helps is that now, instead of listening to meditation music when I’m severely stressed, I listen to rap, I especially like Jake LaFuria, because I don’t understand words. Dr Meadows didn’t comment about choice of music when we want to calm down, but he said that doing things with the purpose of calmimg down is what keeps us stressed and I realised that the meditation music was that thing for me: I really don’t feel like listening to it when I’m stressed but it always seemed like I was supposed to do that.

What happened since I started listening to rap when stressed was that this kind of music somehow wears my stress response down. I don’t calm down initially, I get tired first and only after that I slowly relax. It takes several hours. I wonder whether this could be speed up somehow? I wonder whether, if I was brought up in a happy family and was always supported to express myself in authentic way, whether I would experience stress differently?

Possibly I react in ways like someone who experienced severe abuse (that was what my counsellor used to imply) and I suppose I did, but it was mostly me abusing myself. That’s how masking can feel like.