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  For some reason I felt compelled to write about a corner of my past that hasn't been part of my blog before. a heads up to anyone who might be upset by this topic I will be delving into emotional abuse so feel free to stop reading now if you don't feel able to carry on. When I was in my late 20's I met a guy on a night out. He was a few years younger than me and honestly looking back threw up a couple of red flags early but I didn't trust my own intuition plus I was only a few months away from finishing college and planned to move to Edinburgh in a few months so it wasn't like it was going to be anything more than a brief fling. However as time went on I became more infatuated with him, there was an intensity there and he seemed sweet but damaged. Like a perfect modern fairytale I thought I would be the one to fix him. somehow plans changed and he was going to follow me over to Edinburgh, get a job there and we were going to live happily ever after. at this point ...

I've not been having the greatest of weeks. I am not sure if there is any particular reason for this but my mood has been low and I can feel it hanging over me like a cloud threatening to spill rain.  Over the last year or so I have been working that bit harder to look after myself and to give me what I need. I decided some time ago that I needed to be the someone who makes me happy because leaving that up to someone else hasn't exactly turned out to be a fool proof method. I started writing this blog post about two weeks ago but I was really struggling to form a coherent post expressing myself clearly and so I shelved it but now as I go into my second last night shift of the fortnight, the overall message seems more poignant somehow. For me one of the main elements of making myself happy is building self care into my week. I am the person best equipped to meet my needs at any given time and I try to keep this in mind on a daily basis. Sometimes this means giving mysel...

I have a tendency to be a little to introspective for my own good. I spend far more time than is reasonable inside my own head unpicking social encounters, normally in an effort to criticize myself for not handling human interaction better or to make sure I am spending sufficient time cringing at whatever awkward thing I did or said. How long is long enough to berate yourself for awkwardness because I can recall things going back years when required. The other thing I do an awful lot of is examine my own behavior and motivations and try to unravel what shaped them or where exactly they originated. So far I am not really making much decent progress but doesn't seem to discourage me in any way shape or form. This is the kind of stuff that springs to mind each time I have a guy ask how someone who looks like can be single, as though the simple fact that they find me attractive means that someone should have made me their girlfriend by now whether I like it or not. The truth of...

I am a verified disaster. This is a fact, an absolute. I am starting to believe that my sole purpose in the realm of dating is to drum up hilarious anecdotes for the benefit of friends who are happily settled down and perhaps coffee really is my one true love. So I had been on a dating site and happily strung more than one blog post out of my encounters there which have been more about the contact I have had than actual dates. That website however has grown stale, no promising dates have emerged. All the perverts have already sent me their dick pics and it feels like nothing more will come from it. Anyway this blog post is not a sob story about how Im not getting mail on a dating site because that would be very dull indeed. I recently joined a new dating site. Normally when you do this you see the same faces cropping up again and sometimes very silly men forget they have spoken to you somewhere else and try and message you there as though you've never spoken. This site I think...

I don't intend for the title of this post to be misleading but just incase anyone picked it up wrong, this is not a post about the difficulty of having larger boobs (honestly mine are not that large) although all the same I would not recommend running downstairs or shaking a bottle without a bra on (things get pretty jiggly). Plus they do prohibit me from wearing many designs of vest without looking like busty wench is the look I was going for. Anyway as I was saying, this is not the subject of this particular blog post. In fact what I mean by this title is that the problem is big and not that my boobs are. The problem that I am referring to here is the obsession that men have with all things boobs and cleavage. Obviously not all men share this fixation, some are ass men and some just keep it to their damn selves (and well done to them for managing this simple feat).  Now in many universes, I, a lady possessing boobs and they, men with boob fixations could probably peacefully...

For a place that was my home for such a long time, Waterford has a strange feel to it. I don't know if I ever really adopted it as a new place I lived or did I just treat it like the various places I rented in my time there, a temporary living space, no point in buying anything too fancy because I wont be there that long. Its coming up to a year now since I left which also means a year since the break up and I can conclusively say this summer is going better than last even if there are still some feelings attached to both anniversaries.  For some reason, in the time I have been gone, I have developed a weird aversion to the city. Really I should still have some positive feelings lingering there and coming back should allow me to revisit my favourite haunts and yet I have mostly felt a strong desire to stay away.  Initially part of it was about avoiding my ex, the break up in its earlier stages was a lot easier when I mostly pretended he didn't exist. Then we had that b...

Do people actually stay friends with their ex's or is that just a myth. Like real friends,  the kind where you're happy to stay in touch, keep up with their lives and not vomit when you hear they have started dating someone new. I'm asking for a friend,  that friend is me. I personally have never experienced it. That being said I've only really had three serious relationships . I suppose I have been involved with other guys in a more casual fashion. It could be said that we dated but I wouldn't have gone as far as introducing them to someone as a boyfriend. But my first serious relationship did a bit of emotional damage and it took me a while to allow someone close to me again . My second serious relationship was worse. When it ended, there was more cause for a restraining order than there was the possibility of friendship. It was a dark and twisty one that didn't relinquish its hold on me until long after the break up. So my last and longest relationshi...

To be a woman online is quite a daunting prospect. This is a fact many men have great difficulty fathoming but I would say it is probably more unusual for a man to be made to feel deeply uncomfortable or unsafe from just internet contact. Now, you there in the back, before you hit me with not all men. I know this. I fully accept that not every man I speak to is going to be a creep or in any way a threat to me but on the other hand it is fair to see I have had the misfortune to encounter many who fall into this category and it makes me a little wary in my online interactions. So I have a little bit of online presence. In that I use a variety of social media so I suppose it does make certain details of my life somewhat accessible. I obviously have this blog but I have never had unwanted attention because of that. Largely I believe because my following is pretty small and I would say 99% of my readership are people who have actually met me in person but that's cool because this i...

I don't think I'd ever really been on holidays by myself before and I will admit to being a little bit concerned at the prospect. I had wanted to go away for a few days last year but my ex (then actual boyfriend) was a bit put out at the thought that I might go away without him (even though in truth it was mostly relationship related drama I needed a break from) and persuaded me to go away with him which went as well as you might imagine and we split up two weeks later. So I was worried that I might be bored or lonely if away too long plus I still wanted to get in some training and I had an appointment I couldn't cancel on Thursday morning and then I decided I would have a mini break Thursday to Sunday. I had already cleared with my parents because they own the house I was staying in and I had to make sure they weren't going to be using it.  As I discovered over the few days, I am actually very well equipped to travel alone and I had a lovely and relaxing time. I ...

It's been a big year for me as these things go and I'm sure anyone who has read more than one recent blog post is well aware of this fact because I can't seem to shut up about it. Sorry about that folks I lead a busy life and I don't have time to keep up a blog and a diary so this is a bit of both. Anyway I have found something weird has happened to me in the last year or so and it's that I seem to have lost the ability to make plans. Which is how I have ended up with an expired passport and two random weeks booked off over the summer but no actual plans made for them ( I left it so late I just had to take weeks that no one else had booked rather than being able to pick times I'd like to be off)  So last summer I was in the same predicament but that was different. I know why I was so indecisive. I guess ultimately I knew my relationship was ending well before my ex was willing to admit it but then again he was a bury his head in the sand kind of guy (by sand...

In some ways I feel like I have been single a really long time and in others it feels like its only been weeks (without the feeling really sad part that would follow such a reality) but the truth is it's been nine months. I did actually have to count because I haven't been keeping track. When I first split from my ex I thought I had cracked the break up formula with a distraction technique so within weeks of the split I was set up on a dating site and flirting my little heart out. Who knows what I thought I was doing because I certainly wasn't ready to start dating again at that point. I don't think I need to argue my case when I have already admitted to taking up with my ex again when we first ran into each-other post break up. Then continuing to see him on a casual basis for about 3 months until I could no longer deny it was a very silly idea. That was back in January and since then I have dusted off my dating profile and updated the info and photos as relevant. I...

It seems like almost every day now as I log on to Facebook it seems to keen to remind me that on this day some time in the last four years that I went somewhere scenic with my ex. Given that I have unfriended him and updated my relationship status, I am unsure what algorithm decides this is content I want to see and yet there it is. Me standing somewhere scenic. Facebook doesn't show me doing all the driving on this outing or himself being a narky fecker because the dope didn't eat before we headed out. Anyway that's not my life anymore and I'm fine with that but I'm doing my very best to carve out some adventures for myself. In many ways being single again is a very freeing experience and I like spending my time outside of work exactly how I want to but on another level there is an element of slight terror to it when you realise that you need to make your own adventures now and sometimes that involves pushing yourself outside your comfort zone. With all of th...

I don't know if I've mentioned it but I've recently dipped my toes back into the murky pool of online dating. I'm not looking to be in a relationship right at this very moment in time so you could say it's an exploratory exercise. I have found in the past when Im very keen to be coupled up that it comes across in my exchanges and that quiet air of desperation is ever so off putting. So it seems smart in a way to see what's out there now when Im reasonably content in my own company. Now if this little adventure led to me meeting a guy who I felt had the possibility of more, I surely wouldn't run away but I'm not looking to rush the process. With all this in mind, today I received a message from a man that I've been in contact with a little while  but had yet to successfully arrange a date with. I opened a message from him to find he had sent me a lengthy diatribe. To be fair this in itself from a man I have spent no time with is a major red flag...

Its safe to say break ups are not my strong point. I haven't actually been in that many relationships and two of them were absolute disasters so its fair to say that when the time came to split with my most recent ex that I didn't have my own good example to follow. The break up had gone relatively well up to a point. I mean obviously in the beginning I was horribly sad and cried a lot and ate more chocolate than should be legal for one woman to consume. But then I moved to Kilkenny and started to find my feet down here. I was exploring the city, attending girlcrew events and just being more active. I mean I was also receiving more dick pics than any woman would want to see online  ( if there in fact is a woman out there who actually requests them) so I suppose while I was enjoying my own space, the big bad world of dating didn't look terribly promising. Then 3 months post split I ran into my ex in Waterford and we started contacting each other again. Even then I knew...

A lot of people have a relationship they look back on fondly, the one who got away and so on. Well if think this is what this blog is about then prepare yourself with disappointment because I don't have one of those. My most recent break up is more likely to fill me with sadness than trauma when I look back on it but that's not the one that's been haunting me.  Very recently an ex of mine got in contact. Not someone I had thought about in a very long time and to be honest someone I didn't particularly wish to think about. If anything it made me feel quite old because we split about 13 years ago and nothing about the relationship gave me warm fuzzy feelings. He wasn't looking to see me again so it was reassuring to know he hasn't completely lost his head but he had just been through a difficult break up with a woman who hasn't treated him very well and this has made him reflect on how he behaved in previous relationships. I think he felt his uppance ha...

In the last few months my life has been through many changes and this is hardly a secret to anyone who reads my stuff here or follows me on Snapchat. Admittedly at a first glance it may appear that I am over sharing but in my own way I am really just processing the upheaval in my world and connecting to those around me through a filter of my choosing. I dont mean filter in the photo sense but more that my words are carefully selected to project someone I am trying to be if that even makes sense. Now I will admit readily that it has taken me a long time to over come my self consciousness about small things like eating in public, particularly alone. I have often felt as though I'm being watched and judged at every moment and it has taken me a long time to realise strangers dont care about what I am doing nearly as much as I do. I can now eat lunch or have coffee pretty much anywhere with only half a care in the world with my book or my phone for company. I am nothing if not a wor...

Even as I type this I know there will a few people who are judging the socks off me for looking for dates in the online arena and the vast majority of them will be smugly dating/married to someone already so them I say shame on you but also read on because you're bound to find parts of this entertaining. I have been single for about two months now which is mad because in some ways I feel as though I have been single forever but it feels very new and fresh at the same time. I had dipped my toe into online dating at other stages of my life with mixed results and a few weeks after my break up I decided it would be worth another shot. It was probably way too soon for me to even be looking but I wanted something to take the sting of out of the break up. I knew even then that I had walked out of a relationship I wouldn't be going back to so I wanted to prepare myself for the reality of dating someone else and also work out how to flirt again as I was seriously out of practice .It...

Getting your hair cut after a break up is supposed to be one of those quintessential steps that every woman goes through. I dont know why and I am saying that as a woman who has quite recently gone through a break up and now gotten a dramatic hair cut. Well given the fact that I have had some sort of bob in my hair on and off over the last 33 years, its not all that dramatic. (exhibit a, much younger me) I will admit I wasn't really waiting until I felt it was time to take this step. It's not as though I had to get through the crying and adjusting to single life before I could chop off loads of my hair in a fuck you type gesture, not at all. Now I have diligently gone through all the other break up steps by the book. I cried so much during the first few weeks and ate so much junk that I termed the recycling bag (which I filled with various wrappers in this time ) the recycling bag of shame. It did not help that its transparency made my gluttony  all the more ob...

All of the things that have happened to me so far in life have shaped me into the woman I am today. You could say I currently have a 100% survival rate because I have survived every bad day so far. I always find it strange when I recount things that have happened a long time ago and find myself becoming tearful because it brings home how much an impact certain experiences have had in my life. I can't change my past though, however much I want to. I can only learn from it and try to find that tiny sliver of light in even the darkest days. I was bullied quite a lot in my secondary school days and this has cast a shadow over my memories of those years even though not every day was terrible. It led to me suffering anxiety and depression in my final years in school and not getting the results I wanted or being willing to ever go back to school to repeat the subjects I messed up. As shitty as this was at the time I am a stronger person because of this. I did eventually redeem myself ...