Sally Morgan tonight!

Going to see Psychic Sally at the hexagon tonight... totally intrigued to see what happens, she was accused of being a fake just recently in the papers but I have an open mind and having watched her show on TV I thought she was pretty convincing.

Feeling more positive

Starting to feel in a more positive frame of mind, life is shifting back on plan and it feels goooood. Thank goodness! Love Boyf. so much, and the family has been awsome too. We have booked a lovely cottage in Coniston in the lake district for the second week of November so Boyf and I are really looking forward to that. We travel there on Guyfawkes night so I'm sure there will be fireworks going on! It's a beautiful place so I know we will have a nice break and we can chill out for a few days. We can visit Windermere, Ambleside and all those lovely places, and hopefully Brantwood House where John Ruskin used to love will have fireworks on!

Tick, tick, tick. A few things ticked off the list....

Summer house painted. Tick. Garage Roof re-done. Tick. Getting the house tidier. Tick. Snakes cleaned out. Tick. Food shopping done. Tick. Ok so getting back in control a bit more. Still feeling very anxious but, getting there.... I think I know what makes me tired, it's the constant worrying, worrying about who you're letting down all the time. It may be Boyf or it may be a friend or it may be a family member but it's constant. Always I feel like I can't do enough.

Things are going fine...? Right, time to drop a right clanger.

Yes indeed. Life in Lottie land could not have been going better; Boyf has been talking about the marraige thing and even hints about having a family, so naturally I have been getting very excited about that. I know I am totally in love with Boyf and have been since the day I met him so this is very definitely feeling right. Hopefully for him to. So why oh why do I have to let my weird brain interfere and end up dropping a right clanger into our lives?? The long and the short of it is; I got a tattoo. Yes, a very permanent tattoo on my forearm, which says 'Hydrocortisone' and has a butterfly aswell. The problem with it is it is too big, it literally goes halfway up my arm and also I don't think I like the butterfly. It was a mad, crazy thing to do, it was like I was compelled to do it... I had wanted to get the word hydrocortisone but only very small underneath were I have the medical symbol tattooed. Somehow when I got into the tattoo shop it was like I had entered another dimension and the women who had a brain vanished and the loony, anything goes women appeared. When they placed the wording on my arm, I remember everything in my body said 'No, this is too big, it's wrong don't do it' I even said to them actually this isn't really what I was thinking I need to go away and think about this.... but somehow they kept trying to put it in different places and telling me they couldn't make the word any smaller because the font wouldn't work and it wouldn't be readable or look right. So, I started to think 'right so I have to have this, this is what it's going to be', but why? Why couldn't I have thought, 'no, it doesn't have to be this, I can say no, get out of here and maybe get some jewellery with my required words on'. That would have been the sane and sensible thing to do. Instead, I sat there and let the guy tattoo the word on me. This then snowballed into me also having a butterfly done, 'to make it look prettier'. Oh dear, it was like I was looking in on myself and watching this odd thing happening to me. I couldn't stop it and once he had started I thought I must let him finish because it will look odd if I leave and it's half done. I think shock hit my brain just before he was finishing it. It zapped through my brain like a train collision, I was looking out of the windows of my eyes onto the world and I almost couldn't take in what I had just done. When you see tattoos on other people you think about whether you like them or not and what perhaps they mean but you don't question whether they actually intended to get that tattoo done and how very permanent that marking is on them. Not until you have one yourself. This tattoo which, by the way, I am now going to have removed, cost me £75. It will now take over a year to remove by several different lasers and even then it possibly won't completely vanish. At least it will only be ghost marks and for me a healthy reminder to keep my feet firmly on the ground. I am going to a professional place in Goring called the Chilton Clinic, www.chilternmedical.co.uk they are very kind and friendly and will do everything they can to help sort me out. It will be expensive and painful, this is very clear. The lasers basically cook the ink in your arm so it breaks down into smaller particles so over a period of weeks (approx. 8 weeks) the ink breaks down and is re-dispersed into your body. This means several sessions of burning laser every 8 weeks until your undesired tattoo is removed. I cannot tell you the heartache and fear this incident has given me....and Boyf.....and my family. I feel blown out of the water, any confidence I had has flown away and has been replaced with this nervous, kind of wobbly feeling. Like I don't know myself anymore and I don't know my own body. However, I am not giving up. I am fighting back, looking at the positive side, it is getting sorted out, and Boyf is helping me. We are 'solid' - this is what he tells me, 'no matter what'. I have been to my doctor and I'm being referred for some CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), something which should have probably happened a long time ago ie. before the tattoo incident. I am very hopeful this will help. I am also volunteering at my friends charity Ostomy Lifestyle which I hope to do on a regular basis, so I'll be back in an office environment and kept busy and it's helping other people. I kind of feel like I need to do more than what I am doing. Although I still get tired, I think the more you do the better you feel and it gives you less time to dwell on your worries and fears.
What I wish for more than anything else in the world though is to finally marry Boyf. I love him so so much and I can't imagine spending the rest of my life with anyone else. We have been together nearly two years which may not seem long to some and ages to others but at 32 and 36, I think its different. You know when you know. I just want to be the best I can for him and prove to him that I am worth it, that I am worth spending the rest of his life with me...... I better stop now, I'm getting emotional and thats not good, I've got to make the dinner in a bit and I need to concentrate otherwise it will be burnt offerings, also I have just remembered the washing finished about 2 hours ago and I still haven't got it out! I will forgive myself though, because with the help of my dutiful father I have managed to get the summer house painted. Granted Dad did most of it, which was amazing but I did manage to paint all the windows. I will post a piccie soon. Life can be sweet but it can be bitter too. It's learning how to make the bitterness into sweet thats important. Weirdly I think I almost feel better for having my mad trip, it has snapped me back into reality and although it was horrible and I mean severly horrible (couldn't eat, sleep or stop crying for two days) - I think I will come out of this better, a better person and I will be more determined to be something and do something. Or at least acheive something... watch this space.
PS. I will post a photo of my tattoo and forthcoming removal pictures so you can see what happens and how it fades.