Little House of Ady

Hello everyone ! So much time has passed since the last time I wrote around here, on the blog… Quite often I’ve been thinking about to come back to that routine of mine, but Lord did I struggle ! Everytime I had time to sat in front of my computer and open WordPress, words would simply not come out. Black hole. Didn’t know where to start, what to say and how to say things. My brain wouldn’t work. And it was very frustrating not to be able to get started on that.

But here we are today and I hope it’s a good one this time !

So, why have I been away such a long time, leaving the blog all alone? You may remember or not, I’ve told different times on the blog I had mental health issues. I even talked about the struggle of getting out the vicious circle I was in. These issues would also get mixed with other things ( problems at home and having a hard time balancing the blog, with my mental health and with my job). So, at one point, I decided to let the blog be on a break so that I could focus myself on getting the rest of my life on track. I needed to let on pause my hobby so that I could erase all the mess around me and create a physical and mental space that was clean. Well, I can tell you all it takes quite a hell of time. It took me more tyears and it’s still not quite over. There was always something. Always. And that is one of the most frustrating part, for me. It’s like you try to do everything possible to get yourself and things around you better, but there’s always something or someone pulling you back! This is why I call it a vicious circle, like a snake biting its own tail.

Multiple times over the last 3 years or so, I thought I was overcoming it. I thought it was it, that I was on the irght path. And while I may have been, if you look from much above, my reality was very much different from what I anticipated. Since 2020-2021 my life has been both better (I graduated, got my driving license, got a job, a car, I was finally able to spend money on food and other things without needing to worry constantly about money problems) and both disaster following disaster. I started with losing pets after pets. I think during a time period of one and a half year I’ve lost about 6 pets, including my beloved cat and my dog. All these deaths felt daggers in my heart. I would keep burying. Then, 2024 striked. First my grand-aunt, then my grandpa (both brother and sister), then 2 cousins (not close-related though) and on the 20th of November 2024, last but not least, it was my father. That one hit me with such strength. And even though I’ve always known my father sick, he had always defied illness and death over the years and defeated them. His body was weak but his mind was strong and he had used us to it. So even though he was sick and doctors had warned him when he was about 15 years ago that he wouldn’t get through 55, he never gave up on life and he successfully reached 61. So we were never worried really, we were used to it. But this time, he got hospitalized unexpectedly for some intestine issues and unfortunately the hospital stuff wasn’t competent. Long story short, they didn’t give him properly his daily medication and honestly I think didn’t really care. Here is France, in most public hospitals, for most of the staff, patients aren’t human beings anymore. They are just numbers and no one care if some of them suffers for nothing in their bed or just dies. And if the patient isn’t a regular one, but rather needing extra caution, they don’t want to bother to make an effort and preserve that patient. That sounds cruel and inhumane but alas my father was one of those patients the system wants to erase because “they are of no use for society and cost money”. So they didn’t do their job, he was left more than 30 hours without anything done after he had a stroke (because they didn’t give him his medication). And so, just like that he died.

That last death took so much of me. I was losing my father before being 30, I had to manage his funeral and all the administrative hell that followed. That winter had been very hard. The hardest so far. And now I’m just starting to emerge. But I’m still recovering from it. All the stress and anxiety I’ve felt these last years had built up and hurt me deeply. I have some white hair now, and I’m afraid I’ll never get my old good energy back.

Now it seems things are getting back into my control. I think at least. How many times have I been telling myself this ? I’ve lost count.

Why is it different this time? Well, it’s about my mental health. Even if I’ll never be completely healed and I’ll always be the way I’m (anxious, deep inside, empathic and altruist etc), I was able to get out of a deep hole and get access to sunlight. That sunlight that can nourrish me and give me back some of the energy I needed and couldn’t get, back at the bottom of the hole. As I’ve been (slowly) healing, I’ve been responding differently to struggles and difficulties jumping onto me. In some cases, I’m now able to respond and react in a more relaxed way, which means less anxiety pouring into the vase. Now I can stop the anxiety flow getting into the vase. I’m controlling (kinda) the amount of anxiety coming into me. And that is a huge step in the right direction, the healed state.

But, how did I manage to get to that better mental health state ? It has been about patience (with time, with myself, with others) and focus. I had to be patient with myself, with my slow progress, with other people not understanding or knowing what I was living through and with the idea that things take time. I had to get into my little head that sometimes, you just have to wait. Doing in order to get better is important, but sometimes there’s nothing you can do, except waiting and precisely doing nothing. Just letting time pass and go.

I also had to stay focused. Focused on my job. Focused on making sure the house was kept in order. Focused on administrative papers being up-to-date. I had to stay focused on one thing at a time. I couldn’t do multiple things in the same time. I had to accept that and just learn how to keep my eye and energy on one thing and then get to another one. I also learnt how to stay focused on simple things, like just making sure I was going to work with a smile and make everyone laugh. Everytime I would do that, I would create a positive atmosphere around me at work, make it more enjoyable and grow out of it. Plants need sunlight and water to grow, so do people. People ( at least in my case) need some warmth and laugh around them to get in good mental health.

I’ve been doing that around for more than a year, with ups and downs. Until today.

So, how do I know I’m healing ? Well, there’s been some signs. The biggest of them was writing and inspiration. Before falling in that deep hole, I was actively working on my novels, poems and so on and then I fell into the hole, everything left. Nothing left. I had no more inspiration. I would sat in frontof my novel, waiting for the words to come out and nothing came. I was stuck into a dark corner where my eyes couldn’t see anything, where my ears couldn’t hear anything and where my imagination couldn’t reach me. I was an empty bottle with a lid on top preventing anything to pour down into.

Then, a few months ago, something happened. Like a light bulb lighting up all of a sudden. I had the words for continuing my novel. That day, I wrote about 2-3 pages. Not that much actually, since in the past, I could write at least 10 pages in a row. But consider the black hole and hollow state I’ve been in since then, being able to write these few pages was like a miracle for me.

I didn’t write more over the weeks following that day, but I was optimistic. Inspiration was slowly coming back, and surely. I was getting out of the corner and back into the world. Then, a few days ago actually, inspiration hit me hard. Among my novels, most of them are only ideas, depicted with a title and a few sentences telling what it is about. And there was one of them I didn’t focus that much one since I wish to focus only on my ongoing novel (one thing at a time, remember ?), but as I was scrolling around all these different “drafts”, my eyes got stuck on this one and suddenly ideas would flood in. I spent the entire afternoon, on my computer, a piece of paper and a pen in my hands, writing the whole scenario of that novel. I confess I would have prefered that much progress on the novel under writing, but you can’t really control inspiration. You just have to take what she gives you when she comes to you. That’s how it is.

Another sign of healing for me was when I realized that the last Winter was already over. Over the last years, Winter was my nemesis. It would last like an eternity, never ending. and during that lapse of time, I would easily get worse. But this time, I didn’t see Winter pass. It’s like I didn’t have time to get worse and Hop! the first flowers of Spring were already here, dancing in the garden, right in front of me. I would always feel like an eternity for me between Christmas and Easter, but this year, it almost felt like a Summer night. That was another big sign for me.

And then, I finally found the strength to do something I wanted to for a very long time, a building project in my room. On one Spring day, it came to me. The vision came to me, the missing ideas came to me, through the sun shining through the windows and the willow dancing in the breeze. It’s like something inside me clicked. I started this project of mine and whereas it took some of my energy, it also gave me something in return. I don’t have the word to describe it, but it was like nourishment for my soul, my mental health. And it had allowed me back on the blog. As I’m writing this post, I’ve also been working on another post for a few weeks, a post where I’ll be sharing with you that building project. Once again, I’ve been spending some time on my computer, working with pictures and words and God it has felt so good so far. It makes me so happy seing that I’m able again to do that. And it makes me a bit more confident for the future.

So do stay tuned for the next post. I’m working on it as fast as I can. Promise. However I can’t promise things on the blog are gonna come back as it used to. These two-three past years has shown me how life can be so different from your plans. For now, I will do my best working on that big post and preparing a few posts (smaller) for the upcoming months so that I can come back on track.

I really hope this time is the one time I can get back doing things I enjoyed so much. I really hope I can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Fingers crossed.

Thank you for being patient all that time and waiting.

Thank you for keeping reading and exploring my blog while I was away.

Thank you for not giving up on my little house.

Thank you so much.

I’ll talk to you soon,

Until then, take care of yourself ❤

Ady ❤