Doing something positive

It has been a very long time since I have posted something here. Life has a way of running away from you sometimes.

Lately nothing seems to be much positive in my life as one shitty thing after the next happens whithout stopping. And my depression do not help either.

Today I thought about something. If I were to stand outside myself and look at the small things in my life there sure is a lot of small positive things happening, and I am missing it, because I just stare at all the negative things happening in and outside of my life.

As a hobby to make an extra income I have a few chickens. It is breeding season for them and chicks are popping out of their shells. It is such a wonderful thing to see. It is a new life that enters our world without seeing all the negative things. They just want food, water and their mother. It is so beautiful, making me feel warmth in my chest.

I also look after people’s homes and pets for an income and it so happens that I need to water some seeds for the current house I am looking after. Yesterday when I woke up I walked past the carton it is in I saw that three of them started to grow! It feels wonderful to see that all the watering has paid of and that I helped it come to life.

In the end I suppose we should always try to see the positive, even if it is just a half positive. I admit it is better said than done. In my case anyway. Looking for the positive things in your life might lift the darkness for a while.

I am sorry for my really crappy grammar and punctuation. it really is a very weak point!

Running

A wolf is running over endless green fields, the wind blowing through her fur, feeling how her muscles work harder to run faster, feeling endless freedom and joy.
I dream this quite often when I feel pushed in a corner, frustrated and depressed. It is such a nice dream, I want to cry when I wake up realizing that it is just a dream.
A wolf represents freedom to me. They are free and THEY are the predators and haveno fear of other predators hunting them.

Nowadays I just feel to run away from everything. It feels like a very dark cloud is moving with me above my head. Depression is an awful thing to have.
My mother has Vascular Dementia and Bipolar. It is hard to handle and process everything even though she has been diagnosed over a year ago with Vascular Dementia. There is a lot of crying, temper tantrums, confusion and hurt on both sides.
I feel ashamed to say that I feel everything is always about her. No thought goes to the rest of us, the family. Our needs, wants and worries. A lot of families feel like this. And it is normal to go through feelings such as this. It is a phase that they go throughgh. Acceptance is hard.

On the sidelines, I struggle to keep all my balls in the air and to get my overactive brain to be quiet.I am struggling with patience and I am tired of all the sh@t and drama every day. Sometimes I feel utterly lonely in all of this, but at the same time, I do not want to talk about it all. It is contradicting I know.
I just feel like running. running from everything that’s bothering me. It is sad because I am not a person to run away from my problems. It’s hard to get up out of bed in the mornings to face the day.
In the end, I know that we all will get through everything but getting there is hard.
That’s all for now till later 🙂
PS. excuse my grammar and punctuation.

Hello there paranoia!

A little while ago I lost my precious Lovebird Duke. I really don’t even really know what caused her death, but I think she could not get her egg out.

My mother’s lovebird started mourning after Duke died and stopped eating and so on, so we decided to get another lovebird. It felt too soon for me to get another bird. In the end I ended up with a baby that still needs to eat porridge. All is well and so on. Saro stopped mourning and I decided that I did not replace Duke at all. It sure felt like that!,

Now I have Frikkie. He is a naughty little bird with a personality bigger than the ocean. With Frikkie my paranoia start to stick it’s head out again. 8Hm… Is the porridge too hot or too cold? That thought started after his breath smelled a bit and I asked my vet what the cause can be. She said it’s possible that the porridge was either too hot or too cold. Now I keep worrying about it. After feeding I need to keep watching for any sign that could indicate something is wrong.

This morning he looks lethargic. Lordy that got my head into a spin. Is he sick or is something else wrong? My mother says I am over sensitive.

I wonder what I can do to make this happen less. It is astonishing the stupid things I can be paranoid about! I am sure there is a lot of people struggling with this. It helps to talk about it sometimes just so that someone can assure you that everything is fine.

A happy heart

As a hobby, I breed with large breed chickens that are very scarce here in South Africa. My friend shares the breeding and they are also housed there.
In January we bought five-day-old buff Orpington chicks from a breeder. As the days went on the chicks grew and we noticed that one of the chicks have a scissor beak. A few weeks later, the chicks died one after the other for no apparent reason. Only one survived- the scissor beaked chick.
We thought he would not make it long. His development is slow and we expected that he would have a lot of health issues as a result of the scissor beak. Boy was we wrong!
He grew up slowly but figured out how to get enough food into his body. We saw that he needed a large enough bucket that is half full of food. We normally do not leave this much food in cages, because it causes rats, mouse and stray bird problems that can give our chickens all sorts of diseases.
Anyway, time went on and I build a chicken tractor that larger than most chicken tractors at home and decided to bring the scissor beak rooster “Bekkie” home to live with me. I got two Pekin bantam hens that could stay with him.
I like to give fresh fruit and vegetables to my zoo here at home and Bekkie missed out as he could not pick it up. It always upsets me to see how hard he tries with no success at all. He ends up just watching the two hens eating the fruit and vegetables.
Yesterday, I bought a tub of yogurt and gave some to the hens and got a brainwave. I held the yogurt tub just as is for him and Bekkie started slurping as he ate his whole face was full of yogurt even his comb! He was so happy!
Seeing this filled my heart with so much joy I was nearly in tears! This also caused to put some shame in my heart for our human race. We are only thankful for water when we do not have anymore. We are only thankful for food when we do not have anymore. We do not take advantage of what we have.

The moral of the story is we should be more thankful for what we have. Even when we do not have much food, water or daily necessities.
Ps. Please excuse my grammar and writing mistakes. 🙂

Video I took this morning

We are the storm

Lately, I feel as if I am drowning. There is too much to do in too little time, too many new responsibilities and new problems to handle. It makes me feel anxious and worried most of the day. My thoughts in certain situations are on the nasty side. And I am struggling to sleep because of thoughts I can’t seem to put away. Everything and everyone irritates the crap out of me. I need a change.

I feel as if I am changing for good, but also bad. I love music. It calms me down gives me focus and so much more. One song by Lara Fabian “spoke” to me it is called We are the storm.

The lyrics are as follows:

Looks like the sky is breaking open

Looks like the sky is falling down

Feels like fear is taking over

Is this the slipping of the crown?

If we run for cover

Stick our heads in the ground

What is that to say for honor

How will that save us now?

Seems like everywhere we hear the warning

They all say a storm is coming

We are the storm, we are the storm

We can be the change that brings the lighting down

Be the thunder

We are the storm, we are the storm

If we gather all our raindrops

If we form into a wave

And take control of angry oceans

There is so much we could save

Be our own salvation

Be our own higher ground

If we recognize the power

That is what will save us now

Seems like everywhere we hear the warning

They all say a storm is coming

We are the storm, we are the storm

We can be the change that brings the lighting down

Be the thunder

We are the storm, we are the storm

Whenever the devil whispers

Laugh in his face, laugh in his face

We can be the change that brings the lighting down

Be the thunder

We are the storm, we are the storm

Source: LyricFind

It tells me that I am the storm that can bring change into my own life. I can choose not to live in fear of things to come, I can choose not to react badly to things in a given situation. I can choose to change the way I think about people and things in a different way, instead of sitting and smoldering inside. I have the power to change things in my life and so do you!

It is hard to make changes in oneself. I will struggle quite a bit I imagine, but it is a decision we have to make and that we have to stick with. It is ok to fail, as long as we start again until we get it right.

We are the storm and thunder of our own lives.

What does it mean to be a good friend?

I do not have a lot of friends. I am more of a “lone wolf”. I like being alone, but not all of us are that way. My sister and mother likes to be surrounded by people and their friends.

A true friend is a friend when it is convenient AND when it’s not convenient. It is sad that there aren’t so many of those around.

My mother who has early onset dementia also do not have that many friends anymore. One of her friends whom she talks with on zoom, whom also has dementia, lost all her friends. They just disappeared one by one.

It seems that when life happens to you and it is bad your friends’ true colours will come out.

I am a friend who do not look at age. I do not look at how much money you have, whether you are rich or poor, or what color you are.

Be the type of friend you wish to have.

Hurting

I’m sitting with my back against a water tank with mountains as my view. Today it feels like a mountain is on my shoulders. Actually it’s been a few days.

I wonder what it feels like to know how you are going to die. It must be devastatingly horrible. A family member of mine found out that her cancer spread a lot and that she needs to go for radiation. I think that’s what it’s called. She told my mother that she is sitting in bed every day crying where no one can see and hear her. She has a very painful road ahead of her.

My mother that has early onset vascular dementia is having bad days every day lately. I do not understand how she feels bad every day. We had a fight today because of the way I asked her whether she needed to go to the doctor or hospital among other things. Apparently I speak much nicer to my chickens. It ended with her threatening the unthinkable – suicide.

It is a sad thought to think that she will die of this illness and it’s really terrible knowledge to have for her an us- her family. I still haven’t Googled vascular dementia. It scares the shit out of me. My imagination is bad enough.

People do not realise that it is not only the person with the illness that suffers. The people and family around them suffers just as much. We also have feelings and sad thoughts about what’s happening. We are just as afraid. It sounds selfish but it is the truth. It is hard to get a thousand responsibilities suddenly on top of those that you already have. I don’t mind having them as I am sure other do not as well, but it still is something to get adjusted to. Anyway, that is the other side of the coin for today.

That being said we should always stand by whoever has a mental illness. Even if it gets extremely frustrating. Any illness for that matter. I heard of someone whose friends deserted her because she was diagnosed with dementia. It’s only cowards that do this in my opinion.

I rarely cry. But sitting here, I can’t seem to stop the tears from coming out. No one should make threats of committing suicide to others. It is downright mean. No matter what the situation is.

PS. I do not have wifi so could not put my post through grammarly so please excuse as usual my grammar and punctuation.

A happy place

In our everyday lives, things can get too much.

Yesterday our aftercare venue was moved by the principal of the school. I had to find out through a friend of mine while I was at work.

“your aftercare moved. Your mother is in tears” that was the message I received. Having early-onset dementia, change isn’t always a good thing for my mother. I also hate change. It makes me anxious. And it gets my mother’s mind scrambled upside down and anxious. Which makes her cry.

I hate it when someone cries. I am always at a loss about what I should do. Will just a pat on the back help? What do I say that won’t make the person cry more? (I can be a bit harsh at times). It’s terrible. Anyhow back to the subject.

A lot of last-minute arrangements had to be made. Contacting the teachers and parents etc. Luckily my mother could do that in between the tears.

To make matters worse, when I arrived at the aftercare and fetched the kids from class I lost my car keys. In a panic, we searched everywhere. After hours of searching, we found it in my bag. Believe it or not, but we searched through that bag 6 times. Sigh.

And to top it all off, we had to wait more than an hour for a taxi to pick up 2 kids. The taxi never arrived. It made me very angry. I felt like punching the guy because he is late every damn day.

On days such as these, I like to go to my “happy place” in my mind as well as my physical happy place. I love chickens. Besides a dog, a chicken is always loyal. Even if it’s just for food. Ha ha. Picturing courageous (see my story “be courageous”) always makes me feel better as a feeling of happiness comes to me. At my physical happy place, there’s Geese, ducks, loads of chickens and all sorts of other animals.

This helps me to calm down when I get worried, anxious or when I have a bad day and so on. I believe that all of us should have a “happy place” where we can escape to.

Ps. My grammar and punctuation suck, but that’s nothing new! 🙂

Be grateful

Today I am grateful that I am alive. I am grateful that I have an income. I am grateful to have a roof over my head.

In our daily lives we can forget to be grateful for what we have. When issues and struggles shows up we just stare straight into it without realizing that all aren’t bad. That there is still things that is working out, that is running smoothly.

Whatever you situation is, think some positives out for the situation. Or something to be grateful for.

Frustrated

Today I feel so irritated, frustrated and angry. I don’t know why exactly, but I woke up on the wrong side of bed in a manner of speaking.

I woke up to a radio that was turned on too loud. That started my irritation like a volcano that’s erupting violently.

I haven’t been sleeping for the last few weeks because of a consistent cough that doesn’t stop, keeping me up all night. So, the whole day I have been walking around like a lion with a sore tooth.

This afternoon I wanted cake and decided to go and bake one. That was a horrible disaster. My cake did not even raise. It stayed flat like a damn pancake. To make it worse it stuck to the pan and broke into pieces when I tried to get it out of the pan.

Well then. The cake flopped, but there’s still the icing to look forward to that my sister is busy making. Lordy, that was even more of a flop than my cake.

I ended up dividing the pieces of cake between us and threw the watery icing over it like a sauce.

Over the last 3 weeks I have lost most of my silkie chickens and some chicks due to cold weather. It’s a big loss for me.

A month earlier my partner that owns the chickens with me wants to sell a few of our breeding pairs because she can’t bring her share financially anymore.

It feels like I am losing my dream to breed and make an income out of my precious chickens that I am so fond of. It makes me angry and frustrated. What will I lose next?

I wonder what it means to be truly happy and carefree.

Lots of circumstances contribute to me feeling like this, mixed in with a bit of depression. Hopefully this will pass soon.

With days such as this, I wish I could be alone, far away from other people.

I feel like I want to howl like a lone wolf on top of a mountain.