This is the first thing I see every morning when I open my eyes – yes, that’s right I really did write ‘I am awesome’ on my bedroom wall.  My mum, who was never particularly arty and who has, many times over the years looked at me like I had a screw loose just didn’t get it. She stood there last year, five feet nothing in her stockinged feet, admiring my newly decorated bedroom, enjoying the feel of new carpet under her toes, admiring the new throw and the window seat, and the new shutters, nodding her approval, then she saw the writing and just looked…confused. She genuinely thought I’d lost the plot.

I bet you get it don’t you?  I’d put money on the fact that a fair few folk in our posse would understand the need for validation before they’re ready to get up and at the day. It’s an idea I got from a great lady I spent a couple of years soul searching with…therapy makes me sound very pretentious and actually that’s not really how our paths crossed. Like too many times in the past, I’d decided to go on a diet – it was a Monday, of course (it always is) but prior to the actual day I’d not really decided what food plan I was going to follow, so of course I woke up full of enthusiasm but with no real plan or idea of how this diet was going to pan out. There’s a surprise said nobody!

So anyway, in the absence of a plan, and without wanting to fall off the wagon before I’d even left the house, which would have been a personal best even for me I decided that since one of the things I’d never tried was hypnotism, this might be the right time to have a crack at it. I mean on the face of it, come on it was a bloody marvellous idea. Somebody talking to me in a soft voice whilst I sat in a chair and relaxed, my brain all the time absorbing all the hooky spooky magic, and I’d wake up with a craving for carrot sticks and a hatred of cake. Get in, how come I’d never thought about this before..? So out came the laptop, I googled hypnotists in my local area and by lunchtime I was on my way to my first appointment.

I have to admit that first meeting didn’t go quite the way I’d expected. Well actually you know, I don’t really know what I expected. Mystic Meg maybe? She wasn’t wearing a kaftan or a turban and there was no sign of a watch on a chain. We sat and chatted for an hour about what I wanted (to be skinny) and how I might get there (penny’s starting to drop now that she wasn’t in fact going to magic me skinny) and I left after an hour feeling a bit deflated – that’s not how it happens on the TV. I was still fat, I still loved cake and I had no cravings for carrot sticks whatsoever.

But I went back. And then I went back again…before I knew it I’d been back lots of times. She did in fact agree to hypnotise me once – it wasn’t a great success, even I had to acknowledge that. After snoring my way through 45 minutes that I have no memory of at all I conceded defeat. I mean there’s relaxed and suggestible, and then there’s fast asleep with dribble leaking out of your mouth. Enough said.  But, over the course of a couple of years’ worth of going back I learned more about myself than most people could hope to know.

The more digging I did the more layers appeared and the more it felt at times that I was a hopeless case. I’d describe myself as still work in progress, although I’ve been on an extended hiatus from all the soul searching for the last year or so. It’s exhausting. And if I’m honest, what the blog has done for me over the last two months has probably given me more practical support than therapy ever did. But one thing that I realised as I turned over stone after stone is that I might be broken, wired wrong, fat and not getting skinny any time soon, but I’m still bloody awesome on the inside, where it counts. That doesn’t mean I’m comfortable in my own skin…you know I’m not. That’s why I’m here. But on the inside, I’ve got it all going on.

I am awesome. It says so on my wall.

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