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Pegs And Holes

June 22, 2018 by cosmicgirlie Leave a Comment

I Was just in the middle of blogging some crap, and didn’t really know what I wanted to say. So I deleted it. (Ahhhhhhhh censorship, I can fucking well do without that.)

Then The Mr literally just came in 20 seconds ago and said,

You know, you get smacked down so much. And you always get back up again. And I’m proud of you, because that’s really amazing. I just wanted to tell you that.”

(Not many people tell me this; not many people say those words to me, I guess because they don’t always see the smackdowns.)

I don’t get up nearly as fast as I like – I used to literally bounce right back up. But now I take my time, because there are lessons to learn, knowledge to gain, and power to use.

So that’s what I’m doing at the moment.

Everything on the surface looks a bit shit, but underneath? Holy crap, underneath there is SO MUCH going on. And I’m hanging on to that, because it’s giving me strength.

I’m not excelling where people seemingly expect me to excel, and I’m not doing the things people seem to assume I “should be doing”. Mostly because (as my now deleted post started), I wasn’t designed to do the same old stuff as everyone else. I’ve always thought differently, seen differently, approached differently – I’ve been hyper aware of how different I am. And thankfully, finally, I’ve come to realise that it’s probably A Good Thing.

I couldn’t fit in if I bloody well tried, and, I have tried so much. But that was my mistake. And I’m done with trying to fit in, because…well, I don’t bloody fit, do I?

Filed Under: Beginnings, Thoughts

Too legit…

June 19, 2018 by cosmicgirlie Leave a Comment

Dark Sakura Shinku Hadoken

I don’t know how to quit. I’m not a quitter. I know when to walk away because something is over, and I see that as a huge difference to quitting.

People are allllllllways asking me “Jay how the hell do you do so much stuff? What can’t you do?”

I do so much stuff because, quite simply, I can. I literally don’t have time to listen to people telling me what I can and can’t do. So I go off and do the things I want to do, be the things I want to be, see the things I want to see.

It’s a wonderful thing called “determination”. And I’d like to think I’m one of the most determined motherfuckers you might ever meet. (My mother calls it “being stubborn and determined”. I like to think it’s a fine balance of those two things, plus a bunch of other stuff.)

I don’t set out in life to be some kind of over-achiever. But, I’ve known from day damn one that my entire life was going to be an uphill battle. I mean, I was born a black female in a white-man’s Britain for crying out loud. Then as it turned out, I didn’t care much for sticking purely with the reggae and soul music foist upon me by my dad, preferring to listen to everything and anything (including garage, house, rock, indie, pop, and especially classical music). And then most of my friends were white or Asian; the few black friends I had were – well, there was a black girl who played cello who disappeared off the planet, and I black guy whom I was literally in love with for years but it was never gonna happen because he was a stud, and I was a geek.

(Years, Mr B. Freaking YEARS. Damn you and your handsome, super popular, high-school-jock ways.)

Then the recurring pattern of being told “Jay you’re a brilliant cellist!” and then in the same breath “yeah we’re kicking you out of xyz because insert-fucking-ridiculous-and-sometimes-racist-reason-here”.

It’s not that I purposely made things “difficult” for myself, either. By the time I made it to age 10-ish and realised there was something wrong with my head (discovering 8 years later I’d been suffering from depression), I could see life was repeatedly going to throw shit-balls at me.

I had to grow an armour of fucking titanium, throw myself out into the world, and find my way.

It became apparent very quickly that very few people had genuine faith in me. I wasn’t sure why, at the time. Though looking back, maybe a lot of it was for the reasons listed above. And none of it, absolutely none of it made sense at the time.

I had to fight. I had to learn to fight excruciatingly difficult battles, every single step of the way. When you’re 16 years old, and even forcing yourself to wake up and get out of bed is a battle, you discover your strengths very quickly. When you’ve stared hell and all it’s brimstone directly in the face, when you’ve bathed in its lava pits and survived, when you’ve literally died repeatedly and somehow always come back, you realise just how strong you are.

You also realise that, at the end of the day, you can pretty much achieve anything you like. Some things might seem impossible, some things will be taken away, and some things will serve no purpose to you at all.

I’ve found that out.

I’ve tried to do a number of things which have served me no purpose whatsoever. I’ve put my name down for stuff I needn’t have done, I’ve tried to join things which were of no use to me, and tried to partake in stuff which, quite frankly, would have taken me in completely the wrong direction. (Including taking me back a few steps, rather than progressing forward.)

I know why I’ve done these things. I like to…well…I like to test myself, to see where my boundaries lie, to see if the goal posts of my life have expanded a little. It’s important, for me, because complacency and comfort are really fucking dull. I don’t have time for those things, At All.

I’m not religious. I don’t believe in “one god”, or any god. But I do believe that we have the power to control our own lives entirely. I don’t believe in coincidence, or in happy accidents. I believe in fate, I believe everything happens for a reason, and I especially believe that we can take those moments, turn them around, and own them “like a bawse“.

Even the shit that gets thrown at me. And I need to remember that, as someone who is like one of those end level bosses that just will not fucking die already, I’ll mostly likely sit with that shit for a little while, realise it’s not even my shit to deal with, get the fuck back up, throw that shit down, and be all:

Dark Sakura Shinku Hadoken

(That’s a Shinku Hadoken, to you and me.)

I’ll keep fighting. I’ll always keep fighting, because I have to. No one – and I do mean no one – can tell me what I can and can’t do. Unless it’s something like, I dunno, become the king of Scotland.

(I don’t think that’s something I’d want to do anyway, but I’d bet if I reeeeeeeally put my mind to it, I could make it happen somehow. Even as I’m typing this, my brain is already figuring out a way…)

For me, nothing is impossible. (Almost nothing? Absolutely nothing? I don’t know. I’ve not tried everything, soooooo.)

The wake up call was my recent rejection for a course at the Conservatoire; they stated “you’re not quite ready (can we suggest a year of study with us first, then reapply?), also, you being a mom of 2 suggests you probably won’t have enough time to dedicate to your profession.”

Shit like this quite literally gives me more strength, more ammunition, to fight harder, and go at things a different way.

I’ve been stalking cellist Zoë Keating for a while, and her twitter bio is something which screams at me, every single goddamn day.

When all the doors are closed sometimes you’re better off making your own building.

Doors close in my face every goddamn day. All the time. However, I spend a loooooot of time looking into the other doors which are still very much wide open. The fact is, if I set my sights on something, as I have done many times in my life, I won’t be quitting any time soon. I will not step back, or stand down, or move over, or whatever. I set my goals because I want to live my fullest life, because I respect the importance of being me. If there’s something I want, and people want to stand in my way, then that’s absolutely fine. I know why people want to stand in my way, and I never ever take it personally; because someone else’s behaviour is never my problem (unless I taught them to behave that way. I’m hoping like crazy that I’m better than that, though). Even more so, being pushed down only serves to make me stronger, because it’s an exercise in getting the fuck back up again. Fuck knows I’ve done that enough times. Sometimes I’ll leap up, sometimes I’ll crawl up, sometimes I’ll sit there in a fucking daze, trying to process wtf just happened.

But I’ll always get back up.

I’m not a quitter. And no one can tell me when to quit.

Filed Under: Thoughts

Beliefs, Forgiveness, and Closure

June 13, 2018 by cosmicgirlie

Dear ****

I forgive you for taking out your frustrations on me. I forgive you for mistaking my concern over our friendship as harassment. I forgive you for misunderstanding me so, so much, and blowing everything out of proportion to the point where everything is confusing for you. I forgive you for making me feel absolutely horrendous, and I forgive you for the things you said about me.

I forgive you. Not for you, but for me. I forgive you because hate is just another way of holding on, and you don’t belong here any more.*

J

~~~~~~~

Dear ****

I forgive you for lashing out at me. I forgive you completely misunderstanding who I am, even though you don’t know me in the slightest. I forgive you for the things you’ve said about me, both to my face, and behind my back. I forgive you for not believing in me. I forgive you for trying to silence me, for trying to make me smaller, for trying to tell me my dreams weren’t valid.

I forgive you. Not for you, but for me. I forgive you because hate is just another way of holding on, and you don’t belong here any more.*

J

*Beau Taplin

Filed Under: Thoughts

My Greatest Achievement

May 16, 2018 by cosmicgirlie Leave a Comment

Managing to stay alive and not do Something Stupid.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Story time: Battle Of the Black Dog (part eleventeenty bajillion)

October 16, 2016 by cosmicgirlie Leave a Comment

 Completed a concert/series with Birmingham Philharmonic – first time in roughly 15 years. Rough start (holy shit I really thought I was done with panic attacks), and certainly a wake-up call in terms of my playing abilities (I feel dangerously close to being past my sell-by date!), but damn…
I did it. I never thought I’d ever be able to make it through some FUH-REAKING HUGE mental obstacles, and sweet baby Jesus, is that Black Dog barking really goddamn loudly in my ear right now.
But I did it, y’know? I made it through.
People say “oh you’ll be fine”, but the thing is, you DON’T know I’ll be fine. I nearly didn’t make it. There were too many times on a Sunday morning, before leaving the house for rehearsals, that I would sit on my bed doing everything within my power to calm the rising panic, to push away the immense fear, to tell the mental bullshit to just fuck off and do one. To literally, just (just! Hah!) keep breathing. Get off the bed. Walk downstairs. Pick up your cello. Get in the car. Go.
These last two months have been some of the toughest months I’ve had since my last significantly major breakdown (1999-2001 – thanks to a fuck-load of meds and stints in mental hospitals, I have no recollection of my life in those 2-3 years, and I’m not sure I want to remember in full detail).
But I survived. Not because you “knew” I would be ok, not because there was “nothing to be worried about”, not because it’s no big deal.
You “didn’t” know I’d be ok (neither did I), there was plenty to be worried about (and more, as it turns out), and it was a fucking almighty big deal (and whilst I try to tame it, there’s still room for it to be bigger).
I’m proud of myself. I’m thankful for the help and support I’ve had from my friends (actual friends. Like, REAL actual friends. REAL ONES.) whom I won’t tag because I’m certain they don’t want this on their wall, but Sally, Richard, Jo, Naomi, Angie and MANY more, to name but a few.
I’m tired now, and I’m pretty certain that a major “episode” is looking at its watch, waiting for me to crumble and succumb to the darkness for a bit.
The Black Dog is barking, loudly.
I’ve ignored him as best as I could for quite some time – in theory, I “should” have broken at the end of August under the circumstances. But I held on, and I’m pleased with that.
But I’m tired, now. That Black Dog…he’s barking, loudly, and he won’t shut up. I don’t want to sit with him, but I don’t know what else to do.
So maybe I’ll just sit in the darkness for a bit, near the Black Dog, pretending to ignore him, fighting the urge to sink into the horrible but inviting blackness, and hope that my teeny tiny successes of the last few months provide a small glimmer of light in the corner of the room, for me to see when I feel I can open my eyes again.
You guys…
I completed a massive achievement today. I hope I get to celebrate it soon.

Because it’s a Good Thing.

I fought the Back Dog, and for a long time, and I won.

Filed Under: Depression, Music

Backwards To Go Forwards

September 11, 2016 by cosmicgirlie Leave a Comment

Rehearsing with Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra later this morning. Last time I played with them was about 15 years ago.

I seem to be delving horribly closer and closer to (but still not even yet reached the core of) a past life I still can’t seem to deal with. I had forgotten what panic attacks felt like; it feels weird exercising everything within my puny power to battle through this, and not just retreat instead.

Sometimes I wish I knew how to quit stuff easily.

(I am DESPERATELY hoping people will not tell me “oh you’ll be fine”; that’s akin to telling me to “keep my chin up” when the Black Dog is sitting on my head.)

(Also, it would be a terrible thing to throw up over my cello, right? I’m thinking I should avoid doing that.)

Filed Under: Depression, Music, Thoughts

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