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Something’s not right

I'm in a nest

I'm in a nest

I'm making a nest because I'm not feeling very ok and I would like to have a place to retreat to while I ride it out. Everything is chaotic all around and inside me almost all of the time, and I need some time out from it. If I make a nest here I can carry it in my pocket and know it's there for me.

In this nest it's very cosy. There's lots of soft pillows and blankets. Some are made with bright colours, mostly greens, pinks and yellows, and some are made in much deeper shades of purples. The nest is egg shaped so it can be climbed into it but still be a hiding out place. There's lots of fairy lights strung around the nest. They're different shapes and some are warm yellow, some are cool white and some are multi-coloured. They can be adjusted to vary the amount and type of light inside. There's also music which can sometimes be heard throughout the whole nest and sometimes it's playing from the headphones that are always kept on the pile of cushions. There's a lava lamp as well, and squishy glitter balls to squeeze and roll in hands. There are an endless supply of soft creatures to hold or sit with. There's always flowers in the corner and this morning they are gerberas standing tall and proud, on a little wooden table. Next to the vase is a teapot, colourful and quirky, with a collection of teacups and mugs.

Right now I am sitting in a pile of cushions very still with my knees to my chest, my head on my knees and my arms wrapped around my legs. There's no music at the moment so it is very quiet. Only a couple of strings of lights are turned on and they're twinkling yellow balls, so it's very dark but there's still some light inside. I have a soft blanket around me. It's peaceful in here.

I have to sit here until I can work out what to do next. I'm surrounded by people but I don't remember feeling so alone. I feel scared of making any move right now because I don't know what the right move is, and I don't trust any direction. I'm hoping that if I can hold out like this for just a little bit longer I will know what to do.

Right now I don't want to talk but I don't want to feel so alone either, so I'm asking for someone to please come and sit quietly next to me until I can move from my ball or I am made to move from it. I don't know when that will be, but I know I can't stay like this forever.

5090 replies

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In response to: I'm in a nest

Re: I'm in a nest

Good morning in the nest
I am not feeling so great (at all) and a lot of that is because I have two very tricky things to do over the next couple of days.
The first one is my case closure meeting. It's tomorrow morning and the feelings it is bringing up have been bubbling away for a few days now. I couldn't be feeling happier or more relieved to see myself exited as a client from this organisation as it is something I have wanted from within moments of being referred there over a year ago now. But I am so scared of what it might bring up for me to do so. They're the organisation who managed the refuge we stayed in for about two and a half months, and the one I was told I had to continue to engage with until I had secured housing (a public house or a lease in my name), in order to keep a roof over our head. I know enough about the way this system works to believe that this organisation cares much more about maintaining their status within the system by demonstrating short term outcomes (numbers), than they do about what kind of life the people who enter their organisation have once they leave.
They talk a lot of talk about things like how many women and children they put through the refuge each year and how many they help escape family violence. They talk about their dedication to fighting for justice for women, the feminist framework they work within, the holisitic approach they take to health and wellbeing, and their awareness and sensitivity regarding trauma. They do talking really well - on their website, on shiny brochures, in long reports, in the media and to stakeholders. From everything that I have seen and experienced over my time as a client with them, that's where it stops though. Their actual practices with the actual people most effected by the things they say they care about, are so far from any of the things they say they do.
Being in refuge was like being in hospital with all of the head damage that came with that. It was how I imagined a prison with an unlocked (from the inside) door might be, but with the message that you came here by choice and you can leave if you want (even though we know you literally have not a single place you can go and we will call the police and CP if you do). It was all kinds of scary, and confusing, and painful all while there were three huge reasons for me to hold it all in and keep it under control. And there was no-one working there who cared enough about any of it to do anything. I see so much good that happened there, most which came from the connections made with the other women there who also experienced the same stuff.
When this house, that I knew wasn't right, was found for us and I was told to take it or leave (they loved the 'well you are free to leave' line), I felt the biggest blow when they also told me that to keep this roof I would need to continue to work with them. It felt like holding a house as ransom. Every single contact I have had with this organisation over this year, has reminded me in some way of what I went through. It has been so hard. I fought it and crashed. I sucked it up, smiled, nodded and thank-you-very-muched, and crashed. I'm so completely shattered to think that I ever planned on being part of it. My now case manager (there have been a few), initially seemed to get it and because of that I trusted her. When she first started in the role, we sat together going over it all and she seemed incredibly keen to sort it all out, including getting to the bottom of what had caused me to be deemed difficult and a problem by her coworkers. It made me really nervous and I remember saying that I didn't think she would last like that for long as she would either burn out or become part of it all. Recently she took a week off and told me it was because she was so stressed that she wanted to leave. She returned, but over the last little while has slowly become just like they all are. She now has impenetrable walls of self-protection that has led her to become dismissive, unkind, and too busy to care. And now after the last few weeks of my fight, I have a feeling I will be deemed difficult and problematic once again which I only care about because I don't believe I am difficult and problematic. I believe I am a thinking feeling human in a difficult and problematic system that has caused me huge difficulties and problems that I will carry for a long time after they step out, and it really, really sucks.
I don't know how to approach tomorrow. I can't find what feels right yet and it's making me really nervous. I am sitting somewhere between 'just get it over and done with and walk away' and 'use this chance to take a stand one last time'. There are warning bells all over tomorrow, as I feel I have potential for imploding or exploding. I would usually have made a plan and I haven't because I don't know where to start. I'd usually have spoken it through with someone, like my mental health worker, but she's been on leave. I'm going to have to wing it and that's scary.
The day after this meeting, I also say another goodbye and this one is so far from a happy one. It will be to someone who has been one of the two most supportive support people I have ever worked with, and it's hurting my heart to think about. I don't know where to even start with that one either.
So I am buckling myself in for what is likely to be a bit of a shaky couple of days here in my world. Thank you to anyone who read that ramble and who might get it.

In response to: I'm in a nest

Re: I'm in a nest

@CheerBear I am not really here right now but I want you to know that I so so SO get it. We will get through the muddles and the puddles and the cofuddles together but not, and we will change the world in a way that we could never do if we had never been muddled, puddled and cofuddled. We've got this.

In response to: I'm in a nest

Re: I'm in a nest

@Phoenix_Rising - thank you so much for reading my ramble and for getting it. I knew you would, and that makes me feel a bazillionty times less alone in all of this. You will be with me in my pocket tomorrow while I do something scary, and on Tuesday while my heart breaks, and I will be here with you even when I am not. Shaky will change and storms will pass, and you are right - we can change the world in ways that will be meaningful because we live in it.

In response to: Re: I'm in a nest

Re: I'm in a nest

Yesterday must have been so hard with such good things happening for big and all of this bubbling under the surface for you. 🙁 No wonder it was a bit wonky, @CheerBear.

I’m not going to say too much, except I can feel it all rolling out of your words and off the screen (your pain, anxiety, anger, weariness, unease, all of it) and I wish I could take it away for you. I’m sorry you have to deal with it at all, let alone within the space of two days. 🙁

I’ve never had a K, so I can only imagine how hard that part is in particular. (I currently have the best helping person I’ve had, who means well but does me so much harm, and I would really struggle to not have her.)

My heart broke a little (well okay, a lot) reading your post, @CheerBear. Thank you for sharing. I know you’ve got an amazing little turtle who super gets it, but I’ll be here as well, to sit with you in the big feelings. I wish there was more I could do. 🌷

In response to: I'm in a nest

Re: I'm in a nest

Thank you heaps @Former-Member, for being here too. I really do appreciate it. I think you get it too bookish, even without needing to get, get it (I feel like you do). It's amazing how much can be gotten here, without the need for specifics or for others to have experienced the exact same, which is not possible anyway.

Yesterday had the added jumble of being very public. Public in the busy, lots of people, lots of tiring socialising small talk (which anxiety breeds in) way, plus the very scary potential for being out of a bubble which I made a conscious informed decision with lots of behind the scenes prepping, to do. I caught something on its way to socal media and stopped it (as an example). That stuff runs around my head quietly hidden from littles being normal all the time. It is head screwery.

There's a bit more of a vent but in saying that, it was heart explodingly awesome. I so SO bady wish I could share more of yesterday here. It had lots to do with something you've mentioned was a big thing for you as a little and that's where I will leaving this, while wishing this was less public too.

I'm going to spend some time reading a skills manual today and hoping there's a hint for tomorrow in it, and probably dig some garden up for a project I am working on. I hope your day is good for you. I'm interested in hearing what you're up to if you'd like to share, but know social interaction even here can be tricky so I won't push 😉

Thanks for reading, listening and sitting too bookish 🌸

In response to: Re: I'm in a nest

Re: I'm in a nest


@CheerBear wrote:

It is head screwery.


Perhaps the understatement of the century? I feel overwhelmed and hypervigilant just reading that paragraph and I've never even met your LF. 🙁

I so wish I could make things better for you (and the LF by extension). You deserve to feel happy and content and safe. 🌷

In response to: Re: I'm in a nest

Re: I'm in a nest

I am hiding here in the nest. I’m drafting a letter to go with my NDIS application and it’s making me really sad. Everyone else has had their chance to write reports about how pathetic and hopeless and broken I am, and now it’s my turn. A bit like the applying for the DSP, the premise of the NDIS is that your impairment has to be permanent. To borrow a phrase, it is head screwery. 😕 I’ve spent my whole life trying to prove myself, to prove I have some worth, and now this. I know it’s just paperwork, just ridiculous bureaucratic red-tape and hoop-jumping, but it feels so very awful. 🙁 Helping things shouldn't cause this much harm.

I hope your day is going okay, @CheerBear and that your reading is proving helpful … or that the garden project is helpfully distracting. I also hope the LF are having a chill day. 🌷

In response to: I'm in a nest

Re: I'm in a nest

Oh @Former-Member I'm so sad thinking that's how you're spending your afternoon 🙁 It sounds so much like head screwery and it's not at all ok for helping things to cause harm. I don't get it one bit, but I do get how sucky and awful and not ok it is to have to go through it. The idea that we fight to find or demonstrate our worth and value and potential, then fight to show we don't really have it so maybe we can access helpful things to find it - yep, nope 🙁

I hope there's something that can buffer that yuckness for you 💚

In response to: Re: I'm in a nest

Re: I'm in a nest

Thank you for hearing me and for getting it, @CheerBear. 🌷

No buffer, unfortunately. This week is all about this icky application, but hopefully by the end of the week it will be submitted. This is only the very beginning of the process, but given I’ve been working on the initial application since the end of July, I’ll be relieved to at least have it done (even though I’m dreading what comes next).

I hope you’re as okay as you can be, @CheerBear. 🦄 🌷💚

In response to: Re: I'm in a nest

Re: I'm in a nest

Ugh sounds like a shaky week for you too @Former-Member 😞 And that is a long time to be going through that process too.

I wish it was different 😞

I am going well thanks. My LF have a way of being able to make me shift out of a funk, or put it on hold (sometimes tricky in itself) and today is one of those feels good to do ones. It quite possibly helped to have vented some stuff this morning around helpful listening eyes too 😉
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