Rosalia Rambles

Tag: therapy

  • Redundancy Review: Day 78, “Better On The Inside, Better On The Outside”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia’s Rambles)

    Good morning homebodies and wanderers, welcome to Day 78 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    So with me putting together a cosplay at almost the last minute given my initial plans fell through, what I am technically going through is my first experience of con crunch.

    I do not know how cosplayers can do this on the regular. My head is in near constant pain due to worrying about needing to put things together and the stress of having things continue to go wrong even up until today is really taking its toll on me – not to mention this is compounding on top of work and personal stress leaving me paranoid about a lot of different things.

    But I carry on, I persist.

    Part of the Redundancy Review is recording how I feel on a daily basis, sometimes through the lens of an annoyed rant, sometimes through rambling self reflection. Today we are going for the latter, talking about what I have decided to title the review today.

    When it comes to improving myself, I simultaneously want to be healthier in body and mind. Over the years I have put on a significant amount of weight due to various coping mechanisms I engaged with both previously and persisting in to today, with the usual reasoning of everything that happened during COVID not helping the situation either.

    To put it in more practical terms, since 2017 I have added on about 30cm/12 inches to my waistline. My goal with slimming my body back down is to fit in to my oldest cosplay, Junko Enoshima from Danganronpa, and that goal stays in my mind when it comes to losing weight, even though getting back down to that point would bring a multitude of other benefits – the only one in sight is being able to fit into old clothes once more.

    I had committed to Beat Saber as part of a workout routine, but that fell off once heatwaves had started setting in along with getting ill again, and I keep thinking about restarting, which will probably be a post-convention activity at this point.

    But when it comes to being better on the inside… that has been a long time journey, and I am not really any closer to figuring out how to be so. My awareness of my own mental health stretches over twelve plus years now, and whilst I can definitely say I am in a far better place today than I have been at any other points in my life; the challenges that define my mental health have also switched drastically during that time.

    Academics, friendships, transitioning, career changes: all of these have shifted what battles I fight on a daily basis, and being real for a moment… I do not think I am winning any of them right now.

    I carry on, I persist, but ultimately I feel as if I am drowning most days. 

    I have always had a difficult relationship with my depression, especially as someone who experiences, for all intents and purposes, a life of relative comfort. On paper I very rarely have reasons to be sad, and yet the sadness remains, feeding into my stress & paranoia to make me feel I am in danger of losing everything that keeps me together right now.

    My hard work does not feel like enough some days, constantly feeling as if the immense pressure is going to crush me at any moment and I will find myself in a dark place very quickly.

    I am terrified of being alone again, but some days I feel like I am closer to that pain than ever before. I know it is ultimately all inside my head, but for all the therapy, medication, and healing I have tried through this long journey of having a shit brain, sometimes the hardest part is leaving my head for a short while to see that things are not so bad.

    It might just be the last three months talking in all this, even though I have said I might finally feel like I am healing from the initial hit of redundancy a few weeks back. Maybe recovery is a lifelong journey for me, or maybe I will never truly be the same again, building upon scarred tissue a new life with the pain of the past still prominently present even today.

    Or maybe I am just tired, in desperate need of a break I cannot take.

    Regardless, I will be here. A record of my every day uploaded for the world to see, a slice of vulnerability in the landscape of cultivated profiles.

    …feels a bit weird to go in to a review about shoes after baring my heart out about self-improvement, but that is the way we roll around here.

    Specifically these shoes are New Rock M-WALL373-S11 platform boots. I bought these ages ago back in March specifically to act as part of my cosplay for my upcoming convention whilst also finally getting a real proper pair of stompers that were not from AliExpress.

    Sizing was the primary reason I decided to purchase from New Rock, as an extremely tall trans girl my feet are absolutely massive and were even classed as wide when picking up male shoes back in the day, meaning it is extraordinarily difficult to find cute & stylish shoes that fit me – so you could imagine my relief when I found that New Rock not only included my size, it went beyond my size too.

    The boots are extremely comfortable, having plenty of space around my toes to ensure nothing feels pinched when I am walking around. The platform itself feels extremely solid too, and the bolts embedded into the side walls of it give the perfect industrial gothic look that I was looking for.

    And in terms of high-quality footwear that fits my feet, the price point of New Rock was not actually that bad, being €257.62 or around £222, a reasonable price for larger than normal shoes and with such good design.

    However.

    I live in the UK, and if you have paid attention to any UK politics within the last decade then A. I am very sorry for your loss and B. Brexit is a thing, which meant that, as New Rock is a Spanish company, I had to pay import tax on these, adding a lovely £54.30 on to the bill.

    But hey, taking back control am I right?*

    *this statement is a joke, if you have not already guessed that my politics are extremely left-leaning then I am clearly not doing a good enough job here.

    Think that covers everything I wanted to talk about today, thank you for reading this confusingly honest edition of the Redundancy Review. I hope getting past hump day has been easy enough for you, and that the weekend is not too far away for you.

    For more information on New Rock products, visit their website here: https://www.newrock.com/en/ 

  • Redundancy Review: Day 36, “Neuroplasticity”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia’s Rambles)

    Good morning geniuses and boffins, welcome to Day 36 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Yesterday was a little difficult honestly, ended up needing to have a bit of a cry away from my desk cause of having some intense emotions spring up as I was trying to get through my work. The afternoon was a bit more settled with me actually being able to get some stuff done, even if I did not feel too great with it.

    Part of my contracting work involves topics I am somewhat familiar with due to my degree, but considering I graduated in 2020 and abandoned what my specialist subject was, it does not feel entirely fantastic to be working with it again – even for the day rate I am receiving. 

    I have booked an appointment with my therapist to discuss how my life is going. I last saw her in April when I started to pick up the writing on the wall for my old company and talked about wanting to make a change in my career before the shit approached the fan at a great velocity, and part of my main plan moving forward has her advice ringing in my ears once more.

    Whenever a challenge comes my way and I told her about it she would always emphasise one thing:

    “Neuroplasticity states that the brain needs twenty one days to start adapting to a change”

    Catastrophising is something I fall into often, especially when it comes to trying to maintain my professional identity. Even when I know the people I am working with I can often develop feelings of inadequacy about my output.

    But today is only my third day, and whilst I have struggles I do have wins as well, with me being certain that new stuff will appear soon enough that takes my interest a lot more.

    For now, I will try take each day at a time, take pride in when they go well and seek comfort on times they are harder.

    Comfort is going to be the theme of today’s review, with me talking about one of the most important aspects of being transgender. 

    Is it a good bra? Not today, although having been eaten alive by underwire that is definitely something to properly invest in.

    Good shoes? Shoes are important to everyone, I just wish finding comfy goth stompers was not so difficult for my massive feet.

    Nope, what I want to talk about today is an essential aspect of comfort to trans people and one of our most recognisable stereotypes.

    Yup, it is time for me to talk about the lovable IKEA shark: BLÅHAJ.

    Pronounced either as spelled or as “blue-hi” for those wanting to conform to the Swedes, this shark plushie comes in two sizes as a 55cm variant for £5 or as a 100cm variant for £22, both are incredible plushies even outside of the meme. They are extremely soft and squishable, making them perfect to hug tight on hard days. 

    I have had my own personal BLÅHAJ since 2022 when I moved out of my parent’s place which enabled me to start living my truth, and “Sharky” as my main one is called has provided me a massive amount of comfort on my harder days, to the point he is very flat now with the stuffing deflated from multiple cuddle sessions.

    To be loved is to be changed though, and whilst I would not mind getting him professionally cleaned, I do not think I would want to get him restuffed for a while yet… especially as I do have a fresh BLÅHAJ who lives on the sofa for that exact reason… and two smaller ones who live on my giant plushie shelf.

    Even as my nephew was born the first gift I sent to him was a 55cm BLÅHAJ, both as a perfect soft toy for a newborn but also to serve as a reminder of who his Auntie Rosa is – a badass trans woman who will cry a lot, but still get the job done.

    And I definitely cry a lot still, especially over these last few months, but I am still here, and I am still getting the job done.

    That will be all for today, I hope you are enjoying the cooler weather wherever you are and that hitting hump day is not too hard for you.

    For more information on BLÅHAJ, visit the IKEA website here: BLÅHAJ soft toy, shark, 100 cm – IKEA UK