Countdown is on to the 1 September and already I am trying to implement some of the new rules for the NBY. Weekly grocery shopping - just one shop - in full swing, no popping to the shops to pick up some bits, if I haven’t got it, I haven’t got it, end of story. Obvious exception being toilet roll or cat food! However, I do want to start each month buying those things in bulk so I don’t have times where I am without.
Anyway that is all a bit boring. I have been thinking about my life recently and what an evolved human I am these days - sometimes I wonder if it is better to live like an ignorant shithead? But then I think about how I may have ended up dead or seriously maimed if I hadn’t have stopped drinking when I did. Not that the drink would have harmed me directly (although my liver may have disagreed) but that my behaviour when drinking was really detrimental to my overall safety. Mental health wise also, that awful feeling of regret and sadness clinging to my sweaty puffy skin the next day, couldn’t scrub that shit off for days no matter how many showers or baths I took.
That the last few years I have slowly come to terms with some of my flaws or weaknesses is probably more correct - none of them really a fault of my own - more to do with my genetics and childhood, plus a big fat dollop of CPTSD. But again, blah blah blah, talked about all that a million times, been to therapy got the fucking T-shirt, kind of want to move on. But the STUFF, the stuff around me is the thing I can see I use as a security blanket. I still have so much stuff in my house and I have decluttered so many times! The problem is I keep replacing things…
Recently I decided I wanted to change my image - yes this happens to me quite a lot, because simply, I sometimes find it hard to know who I want to be, maybe that sounds mental, and it probably is! Some years I want to be colourful and bold, other years bookish and preppy, now I am doing full circle teenage goth/victorianna lol. The constant chameleon of my personality is made up of so many of my whims and likes, and an enthusiasm for change. Probably because my world stays the same all the time; I like safety I realise. I have had my own roof over my head since I was 29, I have paid my mortgage on time every single month since then, I have always had a job, a steady good job, always paid my bills, but obvs got into debt too because there is this other side of me that craves less of the steady and more of the fuck it. In my heart sometimes I want to pack up and sail off (very slowly) down a canal in a barge, but I know I would be moaning within five minutes and be craving “safety” of my boring little life. And so I constantly change the things I can. Someone once asked if I had ADHD or OCD, no I just change shit up all the time. I think that can wind some people up about me honestly. I change my mind on a whim, I can love then hate in one breath. It can make life a bit difficult being like this, because I ride the waves of my emotions all the time, hence being susceptible to compulsive drinking, eating, texting, spending and so on. I also find intimacy hard because of this, come closer, now back off immediately type thing. Argh draining.
So this NBY is going to be super challenging, because if you remember a month or two ago I was in my “gym era” bought the kit, went to the gym loads but then it got closed down due to financial mismanagement (solidarity my friends), and now I am in my “emo/depeche mode era” and spent about £100 on Vinted in the last two weeks, all black or leopard skin items. I do make myself laugh sometimes though - which personality will I be next month? However, I do have to say I have felt so so so good dressing in the things I used to wear pretty consistently in my late twenties and early thirties - I have always had bit of an edge (LOL). I am repulsed at some of the middle age abominations in my wardrobe that I thought were great only a year ago. But a lot of that is about being plus size and dressing in clothes that you are just fucking grateful that they fit, and you look good (or so you thought). I have thankfully sold most of those. Recently losing weight again has opened up a whole new size choice and I am stepping into the clothes I really want to wear and not because I have to wear them.
Talking about losing weight, I noticed in the last few weeks since looking slimmer, and dying my hair a warm copper brown, I am getting looks off men again, and having random men offering to help me with things, and even making eye contact. That stopped the minute I shaved my head, was about two stone bigger than I am now, had a pink mullet and then pink bobbed hair - nothing puts the average Joe off you like pink hair I reckon - good! (there is a tip for you if you fancy repelling them for a bit). Not interested, but it is in-ter-es-ting. After being so invisible for a few years, it is disconcerting and actually laughable to feel visible again. As it happens I actually find most people repulsive (cheers low T and Perimenopause!) so I am just observing rather than giving a flying fuck. Look a certain way women, or you don’t exist…yawn.
The NBY for me is the final boss level of compulsive behaviour I would like to kill. And boy, since I am back on the no snacks, eat three sensible meals a day wagon, the spending has gone all over the place - but from 1 September I am cutting off the serpents head with my giant gothic sword! Pray for me.
I did just go for a browse round the shops where I work and I started to feel like I was having an out of body experience, so much stuff, just all fucking meaningless in reality, trinkets and pretty things, and a dress for £300, and bags, and trainers - isn’t it all just so boring in the end? Obviously in my weaker moments I don’t think so. It is all so much noise, too much choice - god I crave simpler times, I think that is what I am missing more than anything. The days when our brains weren’t loaded with so much information.
Anyway I have set up a Tiktok to document the NYB and it is to keep me more accountable than anything. Roll on 1 September but also, fuckkkkk I am seriously thinking about why I actually do these challenges and am muttering FML to myself. But also, fuck consuming and making corps richer and the planet and our environments poorer.
Bye.