I am very easy to please. If someone ever proposed to me, all they would need to give me is this £1.20 keyring and I would be ever so happy!

 

 

Learning

Three nurses and two doctors later, it has been confirmed that there is zero wrong with me. I have been told to stay away from people who are emotionally immature, mentally abusive and who take advantage of me. That last one, I still don’t quite understand.

He said that relationships have different levels and stages. From month 0-2 people should give level 1-2 energy. From month 4 you reach level 3 energy. Then by month six and onwards, you give level 5 energy to a relationship. Then after this, things continue at level 5, but you see each other more, you do more things together, you schedule calls if you’re apart, or plan to move in. What I always get in relationships is people who put in level 5 effort at months 0-2, then we kind of meet in the middle by month three, but by the time we get to month 6, they have checked out. This is the opposite of a relationship. Your partner becomes your number one communication priority the longer you are together, not the opposite. The opposite is a situationship, where one person is in control, the other person is left in waiting. The controlling one love bombs one day, retreats for several days or weeks, can communicate with everyone but their partner, then returns as though nothing has changed. This type of connection causes anxiety in the receiving party, often where the controller blames the receiver for being anxious, where they cause the anxiety. The controller does not take responsibility for their actions, but expects the receiver to be responsible for how they react to being treated poorly. The controller is usually emotionally immature and labels basic human needs and basic relationship necessities as controlling. It is the equivalent of asking the controller to cook a meal together, but they refuse to, because their parents have always cooked for them and they only use ready meals. They do not see why they should cook a meal and see the suggestion as controlling and trying to change them. It is not controlling or changing them, it is maturing. A mature, emotionally intelligent person will communicate and put in level five effort with their partner from month 6 and beyond. They will communicate with a minimum of basic human needs in a relationship. If they cannot, they are not ready for a relationship.

He, also, said that no one is ever too busy. It just depends how low down you are on their priority list. If you are their partner, you will be near/at the top.

My anxiety comes from being stuck in situationships, where I am told that basic human emotional needs are wrong. I am told that basic relationship things are wrong or only in fairytales. I only find people who act like they want a relationship for three to five months, then pull away, stop communicating properly and can talk to everyone else in the world, but me.

The rest of my anxiety is from my sensory autism. I am not exceptionally intelligent, or good at maths. That is not the type of autism that I have. My autism is the type that gets overwhelmed with sounds, especially multiple sounds all happening at once, like multiple conversations in supermarkets, shopping centres and restaurants. It does not mean I can never visit these places. It means that I have to carefully plan my day around busy times. I was able to go on a date to Leamington Spa, over the weekend. They knew that I would struggle with the busy-ness of the train, so they got to the train station early, found the guard, asked them where the quietest part of our train would be and he and the guard helped to escort me across Birmingham train station, at a time that isn’t usually busy, but Arsenal fans were about for the train to their parade. I have never visited Leamington Spa before, and I was able to have a nice time in a place that was new to me.

My sensory autism does not cope when plans change or when people lie. This isn’t something that I can control with medication or with therapy. It is just how my type of autism is. The brief couple of months that I was on Instagram, I found a community of females, my age, who have the exact same type of autism. If someone says they are going to be somewhere and they do not follow through, I have high anxiety for the whole day, even if I try to do something that I like, and it doesn’t ease until I go to sleep. The solution? The doctor says to only associate with understanding people, and that anyone who has respect for me and truly cares would follow through with agreed plans, would clearly communicate if there is something out of their control that happens and they would do this as soon as they knew, so as to provide me with enough notice – I would still struggle, but it is courteous and on rare occasions if I am notified sooner, I can try to try, depending on what the change is. I need to stop being around people who know they aren’t going to turn up to a date, but not tell me or who cannot tell me their intentions in advance, and expect me to change what I am doing at the last minute to accommodate them, when they knew how their week was going to plan out and what day they were planning to see me, but not tell me until part way through the intended day.

I have been told that I am already doing the right thing by going to the supermarket at quieter times, by not pushing myself to do anxiety inducing things when my mental capacity is struggling. I am learning how far to let a partner push a situationship until I cannot cope anymore. I am learning how to use noise cancelling headphones effectively. I am learning how certain textures help me. I am learning how to plan places and trips to make things easier for me. I know not to let someone else plan things and not tell me anything about the day. I am learning that people who lie to their family and friends about me are not worth trying to fix things with.

- Josie -

Jack & Sally

I have spent the entire bank holiday weekend making things. I sewed a pink frog, for my colleague, Amy, whose husband decided last weekend that he wanted to divorce her, because she has saved up enough money to buy them a house. I sewed three green frogs last weekend that went viral, as 11,200+ people liked them and over 400+ people left me wonderful messages and I have replied to each and ever person. Thank you.

I have, also, painted Amy three pebbles (one for her, one for her daughter and one for her son). I have painted the three squishies that Tracie bought me for my birthday and I have made the cat cushion that she bought me for my birthday too. I do have photos of them that I will share at another time, along with my three green frogs from last weekend.

 

Today is the day for my 48 hour craft make. On Sunday and today, I have made two of my favourite characters out of felt. I partially used a craft book, but the instructions were awful and the pattern wasn’t removable or single sided and it had to trace parts by putting my phone beneath the page and tracing over it with bumps and it was awful. The pattern was just for a simple rag doll though and I wanted to make something special. I have recently read ‘All Hail the Pumpkin Queen’ and ‘The Houe of the Pumpkin Queen’, which I enjoyed. Also, my ex-partner loved these too. He was my Jack. I definitely wasn’t pretty enough or goth enough to be his Sally, but I like to think that he would have thought of me as his Sally.

This is the long and slow process of making me Jack and Sally dolls. Sally isn’t completed yet. I didn’t have enough red yarn for her hair, so the yarn is just resting on her head at the moment. I have ordered some red yarn from Etsy and I am hoping that I will be able to finish her next weekend.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

- Josie -

Life's Hard, But I Am Writing

I am still struggling with missing my ex and hating how he changed into the person that he said he wouldn’t and became mentally abusive. The past few weeks have been an emotional yoyo. I keep going from being okay, to crying hysterically at my desk, to feeling like I can get through the day but being very fragile, to hating everyone and wanting to be on my own, to missing the old/nice him so much that I can’t concentrate.

Today, however, I forced my thoughts to concentrate and spill all of my fragile and yoyoing energy into a teeny, tiny little early Arcturus High #2 paragraph. It isn’t polished or edited and I haven’t even completed all of the dialogue sentence parts, but I needed to try to prove to myself that I can still write…

 

“Caitlyn, may I have a word outside?” Mr Penn announced to the room. Caitlyn’s head shot up. Her eyes widened, as she sniffed a sharp inhale. Looking towards Mr Penn, Caitlyn gave a small nod, as she rose from her seat to follow her teacher toward the back of the classroom. As she shuffled past Lyra, Caitlyn’s line of sight was drawn to Fabian, who plonked himself back down in his seat.

“What did Mr Penn want?” Pete asked him. Sensing Caitlyn’s stare, Fabian looked up. Their eyes met. He gave Caitlyn a soft smile. A warmth prickled in her chest and Caitlyn felt her cheeks begin to burn. She shuddered out of her thoughts just in time to avoid bumping into Carlos, who was waving his arms around.

“I failed my Chemistry test,” she heard Fabian tell his friends. “Mr Penn was just giving me extra homework.”

“You failed?” exclaimed Oscar in disbelief. “But you’re the smart one. What hope have the rest of us got if you failed Mr Penn’s test?”

“I dunno, I guess it was just harder than I thought.” Fabian’s voice faded into the background of the Naeniam Exponentia’s experiment chatter.

            Lowering her head, Caitlyn made her way outside of Mr Wye’s music classroom and into the corridor. A lump formed in her throat. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out, looking up at Mr Penn. “I was too harsh on Bentley, wasn’t I? I didn’t mean to; it’s just he wasn’t being careful and-”

“You’re not in trouble, Caitlyn,”

“Sir, I’m really sorry, I-”

“I said, you’re not in trouble, Caitlyn.”

 

- Josie -

My Wish List

 If anyone can find me this custard cream plushie, I will be in debt to you forever. The original post for this photo, on Instagram, says that they found it in Tesco, but I have seen two posts since saying it was in Matalan. Custard Creams are my favourite biscuit and I adore this little character so much.

 

Update 12/05/2026: I have found out that this is a Snuggle Buddie brand. I bought my ex-partner a pizza slice from this brand, but I never got to give it to him. Now I hold a little more hope that I might be able to find it, although I do know, from the comments on various Instagram posts that this is incredibly hard to find. 

 

- Josie - 

Struggling

My last day’s holiday was the 1^st of January. My next day’s holiday is the 24^th of December. I can’t believe we aren’t halfway there yet. I feel so mentally drained. Yes, I am grateful that I get the weekends and bank holidays off, but it is still 230 days until I get eleven days off, because of how Christmas falls, unless of course, I get another job and I work somewhere that doesn’t close over Christmas, then I will never have another day’s holiday. That is a little scary.

I was supposed to have been off work this week. I was supposed to be in France. Instead, I am single and without a holiday, possibly ever again. I will try dating apps again, but I am so scared that I am just going to keep meeting people that give me severe anxiety, and blame me for not coping when they treat me badly.

To add on top of this, I found out a few days ago, someone who was once my potential father-in-law has passed away. I feel so guilty that I have no been close to him for the past ten years. He helped me a lot growing up. He helped me to study for my A-levels. He helped me to understand British history and revise for my English Civil War exam. He taught me football, so that I could join in with the boys. He and his wife gave me a safe environment to be in, growing up, when my own home was toxic and broken. He was a very caring, loving and welcoming man. It hurts to hear that he has passed. He retired from teaching last summer and apparently passed away in January. Someone casually told me of his passing casually, as if that was just a normal things to say in passing. There are a lot of wobbly thoughts and upset emotions surrounding me at the moment, as I haven’t really had that chance to properly process this.

It has made me really understand that life is too short. I want to be able to treat every day as though it is my last, and never wish that I had said things or done things differently. I can never have another opportunity to have another conversation with him. To thank him for all that he did for me all of those years ago. I regret the distance that there had been for a little over ten years. And now it is too late.

 

- Josie -

My New Planner

Eeep! Okay, I can’t help it! I need to share how absolutely wonderful my new planner and the tab stickers that I got from a seller on Etsy are!

          My planner was custom made, on Personal Planner. They are a Swedish company and it is the most high quality notebook I have ever had. The pages are so thick, my new EnerGel pen, by Pentel, is never going to bleed through to the next page. I got to personalise the front and back covers. I could have used my own photographs, but I went with something simple, a nice mint green, and my writer’s name is along the bottom. I was able to personalise the inner cover (with contacts in case it ever gets lost) and I got to pick a theme for the pages, the design, the colour, the font and the layout. It just looks absolutely perfect.

  

 

 My only downside was that I loved the page tabs on my old planner (that ended in December 2024). As I was personalising a planner in May, and regular page dividers were never going to fit a spiral bound planner, and I would have had to cut slits into them and they would never sit level and that would bother me, so I found a creator on Etsy, who makes personalised mini tabs. They are stickers that you stick right on the edge of the page. I am absolutely in love with these. I got to pick the colour, the font and the three characters that go on them (May, through to April, then STO, LST, DRM, NTS and EXT). I have just stuck them all in and I am absolutely over the moon. This planner is my baby. Now, I just have to hope that I can find something to look forward to, to plan in here. I should have been in France this week, so I am going to be very mopey and feeling sorry for myself. I am trying really hard to keep busy, so that I don’t get upset.

 

- Josie -