Coming around again/Noodles

So I think Dec 2017 was my last time here, wishing everyone a bright new year…

Sooo much has changed.

Lives caved in because Mum got cancer.

It was sudden, brutal and too quick but also agonisingly slow. She suffered so much in life and in dying, suffered so much so cruelly.

Why do good people seem to have the very worst kind of shit happen to them?

I will try to write here again, tease out the strands of thought that pile up like noodles…perhaps someone else can eat them and be nourished?
Sometimes they lie heavy, they congeal and get messy but I acknowledge them. At times I spool them around and around, consume them – hopefully before they consume me. Indigestion is a reality when those strands decide against me. I don’t bring them up but they choke soundlessly…best to swallow hard – isn’t it?
I need some liquid, keep things moving, heat, comfort – hence noodles, not pasta, Waga not Mamma! Something for those strands to swim in, to bathe in: start off hot then cool down.
Satisfied. Sated. Still.

Content, until the next bowl of strands starts swimming in my head.

Does anyone understand…?

Reflections

So it has been a long time hasn’t it! I began writing this in August and am tweaking it as we draw to the close of the year.

I was fortunate enough to go to Miami in late June and had a fantastic time.  Back at the end of March a casual comment by one friend saying I should join her out there (as I needed it and it would mean company for her and a cheaper room rate too) led to a conversation with another friend who, to my great surprise, paid for my trip and expenses!!  Yes, there are people who offer such kindnesses and this doesn’t only happen in the movies.  I’ve never travelled alone before, was a bit nervous but then went for it – booked the flight and excitedly made plans, watched programmes about Miami and of course, bought a pocket guidebook.  The weather was incredible, I went the colour of dark gingerbread (!!) and my skin significantly healed.  I’ve been having real trouble with my back since last October/November but mercifully the occasions of pain were few whilst out there.

I spent every morning on the beach, waking up at dawn pretty much every day.  Sunrise was incredible, I had the beach pretty much to myself and I enjoyed the peace, the warmth and the sound and feel of the sea.  It really was glorious in those moments.  If I was back at the hotel in the afternoon/evening, I’d hit the beach again with or without my friend (she was on a course so not able to always join me or go out and about).  I took a book but rarely read it, I had a journal and made sure I filled it, but mostly I’d either people-watch or listen to music, sunbathe and swim.  The sea was the most incredible green and it felt good.  I was happy in my own company and realised how independent I am – so did my friend who was quite surprised, and I found out how very cautious she is which really surprised me.  In life she holds on to the sides  – I don’t!

The trip was exactly what I needed and the friend who helped me get there said that I still look really well and was very happy for me.  I am paying her back little by little despite her saying if I didn’t it wouldn’t matter – she just didn’t want me to use credit cards, for which I was grateful as that was what I was talking about (and how I wasn’t keen) when she offered to pay.  Small miracles if you will…

My son did brilliantly in his first year exams, is over the moon and very excited to head back for year 2.  He has sorted out a place to live with 2 other students, set up utilities and already had a couple of what could have been awkward conversations with the landlord but all is well and he has it under control.  It’s perhaps an even bigger year for him than last year and it is quite something to watch him mature through all of these rites of passage, with my support as needed.  I can be hands on or hands off and my instinct leans towards hands off so that he can learn, adapt to or resolve whatever comes his way.  So far he’s doing fine even though he believes he still needs my advice.  He doesn’t really though – the boy is a man and a kind, good one at that.  There are a few tricks and tips I can pass on but those aside, he knows how to deal with whatever comes up and he only needs a touch more confidence. Yep, I’m a proud Momma bear!

My mum having been gravely ill twice last year is very well and has lost a great deal of weight.  She is lighter of heart even though the issue of my stubborn sister remains unresolved.  I accepted the situation as it stands, but my sister remains pissed off and mum naturally wants her daughters to be sisters again.  It may happen, it may not but it doesn’t cloud my horizon nor cast the shadow of gloom across my face when in her company – I can tell you however that she looks like a bulldog chewing a wasp whenever she has to be in the same space as I am which is a real shame.  I feel sorry for her but unless she confronts what is eating at her (to my face and not in poisonous texts/emails) she will never move forward.  I said we should but she was dead set against it (talking through my ex) believing it would degenerate into a slanging match.  So what?  It might go that way but then again it might not – the point is, shit needs to be thrashed out from her side.  I shovelled mine and buried it already.  If she doesn’t get a handle on her pain, she’ll become seriously ill.  She’s balding and I know that must crush her (she’s only 41), she’s significantly over-weight and lord knows what else.

Forgiveness is how we find peace.  I’m not coming over all Dalai Lama or anything but it is something I learnt the hard way.  I don’t hate my sister (and she did piss me off for the longest time) but I haven’t felt annoyed by her in such a long time, despite refusing to acknowledge my presence with a hello/goodbye or to even make eye-contact! If I hadn’t forgiven, I’d feel rage and would eventually react (the old me).  I don’t feel anything but pity for her and sadness too.  My lack of distress seems only to make her more enraged – she looks like a bulldog chewing a wasp!  So we come full circle – for her rage to dissipate, she must change or she will spiral further downward whilst pretending she’s absolutely fine.  I doubt she sees herself that way but most of us do.

With the wind in my sails, despite the issues with my back (now improving following weight-loss), I keep trying to get out and go places, see friends or do things that either relax me or give me a boost.  It can be as simple as going to a market and delighting in what I find, walking by the river, painting or going to a part of town I haven’t been to but always meant to. I’m much calmer about many things, including where my personal life is at and where it might be headed.  I used to get upset and tearful about being single when my plan was anything but that.  I was given an opportunity to carve out a different life and I think even more about quitting the UK and living further afield.  I have possibilities now that I never would have had in my forties with the 3 hoped for kids and a husband.  It is an exciting prospect.  For now I seize the moments in small ways with my eye on the future and what I can make of it, encouraged always by my son.  And what’s more, none of that future is dependant upon me being in a relationship or not.

So where am I relationship wise?

I love someone who continues to drink his life away but let him go over the course of the year.  There are periods of sobriety (more this year than I’ve ever known him to attempt) but the following periods of drinking are getting worse and he knows it.  He’s very low at the moment.  He wants to stop but is hopelessly unable to because he tries to do it alone; he is also severely depressed. Taking pills and drinking fuels this perpetual cycle. The pills don’t halt the suicidal thoughts, the drink lifts him briefly and then it quickly goes black emotionally; to dull that, he drinks again and so it goes around and around…  He holds down a job but has said several times this year that he has “…got to put a stop to all this silliness…”.  He hates himself for failing. His marriage ended long ago but an alcoholic afraid of life hasn’t the strength to do anything significant for themselves or the people they say they love.  If you cannot stop yourself from having a drink, how can you march towards a new life?  It isn’t impossible but when you hate yourself that much, life itself seems designed to beat you down and keep you on the outside.

We have not seen each other this year and I think that has been for the best all round.  I remind him of the life he could have had and he finds that painful.  You cannot help who you love…  The passage of time made no difference and took us both by surprise – we did not reconnect for this to happen. We sought to rekindle our very strong bond of friendship. I do not expect the outcome he promised and have quietly moved on.  He has always said that I am the only person he can be himself with and without the need to be drunk and that he cannot get that with anyone else (his words and not overblown romanticism), whether male/female, friend, family or colleague.  Something about me makes him feel normal, at ease.  He relaxes completely and there’s no mammoth effort to hide, no pretence.  It brings him peace and then it doesn’t.  He cannot let go and loving me at a distance is no easier  I can’t do anything about that and he doesn’t expect me to yet I cannot help but feel that on balance, this is the way it needs to be, to preserve his sanity and for my peace of mind.  Married is married after all.  I don’t like the idea that he is troubled and hope that in time it will get easier for him.

The marriage did not fail because of me – that happened decades ago – but they are together. He has in sober moments over the years tried to have that difficult ‘can’t do this anymore’ talk but his wife starts crying, goes to see someone to talk and then behaves as if nothing happened. But married is married and that is that.  I haven’t given up on finding someone right for me but I am not going to cry on the floor in despair if I remain single – I am not waiting in the wings for him like a vulture!  We are where we are, which is nowhere. I’ve been through too much for that and since he will not meet me to talk – I’m sure he knows what I want to say – I have quietly stepped back and contact is pretty much monthly where before it was daily, then it was weekly….  It was the right course to take and I’m not saying it was easy.

I’ve had some interest in the crazy that is me in the past couple of years but neither gentleman was right – one too young and directionless, the other older and filled with self-loathing and deep, long held insecurities.  Know and love yourself before you try to commit to loving somebody else…

Drinking is a selfish game and not a fun one at that.  It soaks your reason, robs you of optimism and all the while it whispers ‘You want me, do it…’, only to remind you later that you really, truly wish you hadn’t. Nobody ever wakes up wishing they had drunk more.  I read that somewhere.  He is where he needs to be though – he needs the support of a woman he sadly doesn’t love, he wants to make a life with me but is afraid and incapable, and so in the end we all lose. He sacrifices what he wants to make other people happy then drinks his way through the months and years making those very same people deeply unhappy.  His wife is long-suffering, almost left him and finds solace in her career, which ironically isolates him further so he drinks after work as often as he can because he doesn’t want to sit around bored and lonely.  You can be alone in a marriage and in my mind, it’s worse than being divorced.

Scared as I was of divorce and the whole difficult process and aftermath, it was worth all that pain as it gave me back a sense of myself and the chance to re-write my future.  I didn’t think I’d be ok but it was definitely a risk worth taking.  I feel alone sometimes, different from lonely as you know, but it doesn’t pull me down like it used to.  I had a blip in October with low mood but shook it off and am ok now.  I really felt so bleak about my health and my future because my back was getting worse again and I thought dear God, is that what my future will be?  Alone, in pain and unable to do anything or share the load and with everything, everything, on me?

Sidebar: What is it about me that attracts such men?  My whole life it’s been men who are attracted to my strength and then resented it (ex) or men in deep despair/confusion!! It’s a whole other blog.  I’m Cancer with Aries rising, the moon in Gemini and Venus in Cancer (I thought Taurus was in there but it seems not) which made a lot of sense as I’m highly changeable and spontaneous – the moon, the twins, all that water and some fire, all softened and soothed by Venus…  No wonder I’m often misunderstood and defy pigeon-holing.  I confuse myself half the time!!  There’s a lot going on and sparks fly I guess…

Christmas is a few days away.  As usual it has come out of nowhere despite being a fixed event on the calendar!  We’re already eating the shortbread and have broken the seal on the chocolate tub but so what?  Life’s too short to save the treats for one week of the year – besides, this way we can pace ourselves (at least that’s what we tell ourselves!!).  I’ve planned days out to surprise my son and so far, so good.  He hates the phrase but I’ve decided it’s ‘Year Zero’ for us – this Christmas we do it our way and I have put him first, not mum, not what the family wants/expects.  It’s time.

With all the madness and violence kicking off this past year with shocking speed, and threatening to mark out the 21st Century as being bloodier and more cruel than the last, I am even more determined to make the most of life.

Anything or anyone that can brighten life or soften its’ sometimes hard edges is most welcome! On that note, I was told yesterday that my holiday is a Christmas gift so I do not have to repay a single penny which has left me overwhelmed.

And so it begins…

The year has ended better than I thought it would on so many fronts.  Change is ahead but we mustn’t fear change.  Plan as best as you can but don’t fear it.

Merry Christmas everyone and a bright New Year!

x

 

 

 

 

 

It’s been a while…

Life continues apace but I feel the need to splurge ‘verbally’ and get stuff out there…

I will re-group with my thoughts and feelings about a multitude of world and smaller news – the smaller stuff being about me and mine.

Lots to say and share, the good, not so good and the positively great!

Back soon!

 

Statute of Limitations

I’ve been a bit fed up in recent weeks.  I heard once in film I think, that if your dreams aren’t working out, get some new ones!

Is there a statute of limitations on our dreams?

Now my gripes are small for the most part, but one or two are insurmountable: 1. I can never have another child of my own; 2. Any childless man who wants children is not an option for me.  Yes, there is adoption but the hoops you have to jump through are daunting.  And yes, a childless man might say I mean more than the gift of children but life has shown me that if somebody really wants to have children, that feeling never goes away and it would be wrong to deny it and end up feeling unfulfilled or worse, resentful of your partner. Someone in my family thought his current relationship would be his only relationship but he is young, younger than me, his partner is much older and has children already.  He spent years saying not having his own kids was fine, but now as he approaches his forties the climate has changed and their relationship is in trouble.  He wants children. She doesn’t and is now too old (in her eyes) to have a baby with him.

I saw on the news a couple of years ago that a woman without a womb had a baby via a womb transplant and I thought, “There’s hope…”.  But not for me.  It is a dream I have applied a limitation to, but honestly have a bit if trouble accepting  almost 2 years after the hysterectomy.  I still feel a twinge of anger towards my ex-husband for refusing to have another child with me when our son was six.  In retrospect he was right because of the hell that was our “family” but it still hurts, that I could have had a beautiful daughter or another lovely son.  I would have loved to have known a girl version of the two of us and our son is so wonderful that I know he would have made a brilliant big brother.  But it was not and is not to be.  I know I am lucky to have been able to have one child before my womb waged all out war on me.  I was lucky to get pregnant at all and carry my son to 8 1/2 months as it was.

What else am I fed up about?  I’ll share a few of things here.  My weight for starters which is something I can act upon and have begun to do more about.  I lost quite a bit of weight last month but recently, through being fed up, I put almost half of it back on.  Damn it…  I’m making a more concerted effort now because being in my forties I need to take even better care of myself if I’m to avoid a miserable, illness ridden old age.  If you want to be well in your 60’s and beyond, your 40’s are the Last Chance Saloon.

I’m fed up with the cracks in the house that the developer and property owners are still doing zero about more than a decade on.  My neighbour and I keep fighting them and they make one step forward then ten steps back.  She got rid of her carpets, put in wood floors but because the wall we share keeps bloody moving (hence the cracks) the edge of the flooring is being pushed in and up gradually.  It is so frustrating.  So many promises have been made, some effort was put in a couple of years ago but because of the high turnover of staff, any permanent resolution is nigh on impossible to achieve.  We’ve sent shitty emails, we’ve complained nicely, had people in and out of our homes checking, umming and aaahing and promising and agreeing there is a fault in the construction, to still come to nothing.  They are taking the piss because they think we know nothing.  Unfortunately for them we do and we’re not going away but without a solicitor we are severely limited in our actions and neither of us can afford legal representation.  It’s a fucking joke.

I’m fed up that I don’t have enough money to have a break in the sun, say Italy or Greece with my son before he heads to Uni.  I’m fed up that my ex husband (who never has any money and took out a loan to revamp the garden at my sister’s house, where he now lives) has been able to go on an expensive summer holiday every year without fail with my sister and their daughter and sometimes with my mum.  Great way to make your son feel wanted…  Now he could have chosen to holiday closer to home – or not at all – these past few years and I could have afforded to pay for our son to go away with him and them. This year that was never going to happen because son and father are barely on speaking terms after the Christmas incident, conjured up by my sister and which put the final nail in the coffin.  My ex keeps trying to mend fences but our son is having none of it.  Sad thing is, my son told me the other day that last year, things were actually improving but now, there’s no hope of a good relationship between them because of what his Dad did. It still makes me sad and I am limited in what I can do here.  I worked furiously behind the scenes to get them to a good place and then my ex fucked up large.  I can only counsel my son to not pick up the phone to tell his Dad to go to hell and even that is not so easy to do, particularly if he’s pissed about something.

The second part of my life looms large and I think maybe this is what we call the mid-life crisis.  Trouble is, I have plenty on my plate but don’t want any of it!  I’d like another menu please – send this shit back to the kitchen!!

The reality of living alone doesn’t exactly fill me with joy and it could go one of three ways:

1. I get very fat watching movies and documentaries whilst snacking on the sofa.
2. I plough into all the crap I have to do but don’t want to and feel a sense of achievement as I tick each miserable, boring, soul destroying task off my list.
3. I change what I don’t like, do something new, get fit, meet new people and enjoy my freedom.

Perhaps what will occur is a combo of all three and potentially in that very order.  It’s all such a cliche though isn’t it?

I’ve watched movies (yes sometimes whilst snacking so shoot me) with divorced men and women waving good bye to their kids, then joining an art or foreign language class, moving to Tuscany, falling in love and having a fabulous life after a few hilarious hiccups along the way. A friend of mine actually suggested I join a book club,. get back into swimming, etc – and so the cliche is complete! I groaned inwardly and gave myself indigestion. I’d never join a book club for a couple of reasons:  My attention span is such that I read several books at once and it would take a really good one for me to read it in a week or two so the pressure would be too much and I’d be tempted to skim it and likely miss something vital.  Secondly, the idea of discussing in a group setting what made a particular scene a stand-out in the story just makes me cringe. If you’ve watched “Date Night” with Tina Fey, the book club scene is exactly why I don’t want to join a book club!

I have good friends and family, great people in my life who love me, I have a job, a roof over my head, food on the table, I am not being attacked by my womb anymore to the point of death… But the bald truth is that I am alone. In fact I feel very alone sometimes.

And I don’t like it.

Not. One. Little. Bit.

I need to engage myself more in looking up and out and less on looking down and in.  I can do it, I have done it but something is different this time.  It’s harder to see a happier future for my lone self right now and perhaps it is because of the stage of life I have arrived at presently.  I’m not alone in that – one thing I can be confident of – but where do similar souls go?  Is it really art classes, the gym or book clubs?  If so, nothing will change anytime soon!  I like taking long walks and going to museums and galleries.  I can strike up a conversation with a stranger but real life is nothing like the movies . You don’t end up in a bar together realising you have everything in common and wanting your life to begin right there and then.  I can flirt but I lack the confidence it takes to chat someone into a date.  I want to be found and swept off my feet.  Yes, ironically, just like the movies…

Is there a statute of limitations on my attaining lasting happiness?

Quite frankly, time is against me at this point.

Running & Tired, blog post by Drem

This is a searingly honest window into the soul of someone who is beautiful and damaged. Note I’m saying “beautiful AND…” not “beautiful BUT damaged”.

The difference is critical.

We feel what we feel quite uniquely; no-one can understand what it’s like but there are a few who can come close to being a sort of comfort when these lowest of low times hit. I sincerely hope Drem, that you have or will soon have a person or a couple of people with whom you can feel more like the person you want to be, instead of feeling like this. It’s shit, I know. If you’ve read any other pieces on my site you’ll know I’ve suffered with physical and emotional pain. You know yourself that there are better days and there will also be more bad ones, just as I know that too.

Rooting for you.

Drem - Artist

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(best if viewed on page)

Yesterday I woke up and knew it was a bad day. I smoked  a lot of medical and it made it fucking worse. So I laid in bed and cried awhile. Didn’t tell no one about it. Fake it till I make it, right? Yeah. We gotta be good actresses to not let no one know what the fuck goes on in our swinging up and down creatively-cursed minds.

I think I cried drips of acrylic paint.

It stained all my sheets and made me all different colors.

And then I ran really fast far, far away from my bed… I lasted a few hours.

Been fighting my MS as hardcore as possible. Been running from it. I can’t conquer it. I can’t take my life back. It’s a waiting game that fluctuates my level of production during my inflamed lesions. I cried again in…

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History repeats itself

So the love of my life doesn’t want to be the love of my life.  I knew this was coming before we even got started.

He’s an alcoholic.  He’s depressed. He’s suicidal. He hates this life, his life. He loves me but doesn’t want me to love him. He doesn’t want to be important to me. I guess that way he can slope off to die quietly, and without my knowledge.

He pursued me knowing all the while he shouldn’t. He isn’t capable right now (maybe he never will be) of functioning well enough to support himself, let alone in relationships.  I let him in, again, and hoped for a better outcome this time even whilst having this nagging feeling that we’d just end up disappointed.

Doubt thou the stars are fire,

Doubt that the sun doth move,

Doubt truth to be a liar,

But never doubt I love.

So said him to me a year ago when I expressed doubts – and he was stone cold sober.

I want to shake him…

Shake him out of his depression, free him from his prison and drag his sorry arse into the light.

I have suffered from depression and sometimes it returns – everybody has been there and goes back again in their lifetime, to highly varied degrees.  It is not the same experience for everyone.  You can’t be talked out of it amongst friends, you can’t be drugged out of it. I talked to my GP and that was the extent of the professional help I got; the rest of the heavy lifting I did alone for the most part.  I have sought solace in a few drinks to numb the pain over the years and I still do, but not to the extremes that he does.  I have felt suicidal several times and in fact just a few months ago.  I survived a life threatening operation to return to a life that continues to hit me.  But that is life.  It isn’t pretty most of the time, it can be bloody boring too much of the time but there are bright spots and I seek them out.

He sought me out: “…the only and one bright thing in (his) life…”.

He said: “…I need you in my life…”.

But here I am, covered up again, filed away under what exactly…?

Am I an idiot?  Don’t think so.  I didn’t fall for a line/s, my eyes were wide open, he wanted to marry me and I knew within a few short weeks that it would never happen.  He lacks the courage and will and force to make a change that will benefit him and those around him. It is easier to hide behind your pain than to get out in front of it.  To do that takes effort, it is a monumental shift in the brain that sadly, some never rise to.  I want him to rise, and he simply cannot.  I’ve been there and fought through.  It took me such a long time… But all my experience comes to naught here. The arrows miss their target, the seeds lack fertile ground…

I hope he reads this, I hope against hope that it breaks through.  I want my friend to be well but I can’t tell him that in a text or email and he is avoiding a face to face. I get it.  The last thing you want when you feel like this is to be told there’s a better way. And yet he has said he didn’t want me to stop trying.  The man is a walking, talking contradiction in terms:  “Don’t wait for me, move on, I’d hate that you did but you should, I love you, I need you, I have no right to want you for myself or feel jealousy, I love hearing from you and then I don’t, I want to hear from you, be with you but I can’t handle how you or I feel.”.

I don’t want to be your all and all…

What a mind fuck, you say – except it isn’t because I was prepared.  The defences were much better this time around.

Dark soul that he is, messed up as he is, he is and always will be one of my bright spots. We shall, I hope, maintain a friendship but that is up to him.  He has hidden behind texts and has not seen me in months, yet a year ago we were in one another’s pockets.  I do not apportion any blame.  He is a sick man who needs professional help and isn’t seeking it beyond drugs that utterly fail to control the extreme low cycles he experiences.  He is barely clinging to life and it is a crying shame as he has much to give.  The state of his mind does not allow him to see this or believe it. He is locked in a prison largely of his own making and the depression makes that worse, a condition he simply cannot control without help and support.

So what do I do?

What I’ve always done with anyone I love and care for:  be a friend, watch, wait.  I’d like to see him but he probably can’t handle it.  As his friend, I am involved and care for him like really true friends do.  The fact that I do love him more than a friend is secondary.  All along I made it clear that if he couldn’t handle “us”, our friendship mattered more to me and I was not willing to lose it again.  He agreed but I do wonder if my greatest kindness to him would be to disappear for a while with little or no contact.  Hard to know what to do for the best really…  I must just keep working on loving him less but enough to keep us both sane and stay friends.  We don’t do so well apart and the friendship is important to us both.

I sent him this poem today.  I came across it earlier in the week and it’s by Adam Lindsay Gordon:

Life is mostly froth and bubble,

Two things stand like stone:

Kindness in another’s trouble;

Courage in your own.

He didn’t respond and I didn’t expect he would.  We all have troubles and heaven knows I have mine.  I was struggling with something yesterday. I wanted to put the past few weeks behind me for so many reasons and meet up, shoot the breeze, not talk about problems. He couldn’t meet up but when he texted me later and at the end of it, said that he didn’t want to be important to me (after I had said how much he mattered not just to me but because he is so intelligent, etc), he knew I was not in a great place. Timing is everything. It’s never going to be a good time to be negative but it didn’t exactly brighten my mood. That’s not his problem though and it’s not as if I wasn’t expecting it.  Still, it wasn’t fair was it.  I only said it (again) because he told me 2 weeks ago quite out of the blue that he came close to ending his life.  I have no idea what stopped him and he typically didn’t elaborate.  All I can say is that I knew it was coming because I know him and his family didn’t and still don’t have a clue.  He won’t tell them.

He has so much to say and is so intelligent which only makes his illness all the more frustrating because it blocks him.  I almost always get a lift when I hear from him and there is a word that I came across a few months ago:  Sapiosexual.  I am a sapiosexual person – the mind is more attractive to me, than the physical.  A much younger man has shown an interest but I find myself having to explain the simplest of words/phrases and I feel like an English teacher!  I want conversations to flow, not to stop every 10 minutes to explain the vernacular.  He isn’t available and although he might be in future I just can’t see myself as anything but a good friend. We have a giggle, there’s great chemistry and he’s lovely but that’s it. I have a best friend just like him. If I could feel more that would be great as he ticks most of the boxes, but I just don’t – and it is not because my heart is elsewhere.  Head and heart need to be engaged: the physical tale is told in the first kiss, which seals or breaks the union.

Ah life…  I shall plod on with my projects, fun and not so fun, keep up with my growing circle of friends and not expect anything to happen in the realm of the heart.

Perhaps I shall be taken by surprise.

We live in hope…

 

 

This life

So, it’s been a trying time.  Mum had been having TIA’s and kept them quiet.  She finally went to the doctor and within days was told she was at very high risk of a major stroke. In under 2 weeks, she was rushed in for an operation.  That was 6 weeks ago and Mum stayed with me for a month.  Lying about the last TIA before the op ended up causing my son and I a great deal of stress and was the last thing he needed with exams upon him.  He cracked spectacularly 2 weeks ago; I had seen it coming but it was more terrible than I had imagined.  It had had a tremendously bad effect on his mocks.  All looked bleak and lost in that moment.  He became just like his Dad and there was simply no getting through to him. That man is not an example to follow, no model of how a man should be by any stretch of the mark and I said as much the next day.  An apology is words and those words are always welcome, but an apology backed with change is what really means something. His Dad was and is barely about the words and has never changed. My son utterly despises him.  “Watch you don’t become him – or like your Aunty.” is what I said…

To say Mum’s illness came out of the blue is an understatement.  To say it revealed my sister’s full and ugly nature is also an understatement.  She chose that time, when it was highly likely Mum could either die or be paralysed and unrecognisable, to offload a year’s worth of poison.  I opened the door to her nonsense because I got defensive about a particularly nasty comment and could not let it ride.  Still, it taught me something:

When you’ve tried over and over to reach someone and they just don’t want to hear you, turn your back, shake the dust off your feet and walk away.  

So this is what I’ve done.  I no longer have a sister.  Moreover, she no longer has me.  The loss is entirely hers.  I never had anything in particular to gain from trying “to be all peaceable like” with her.  For most of her life she has brought me and others, nothing but grief.  She could not even be civil while our Mum was going through one of the scariest periods of her life.

So many of my friends wonder at her anger and why she is so bloody pissed off at me, the wronged one?!  After all, she got a house and garden, the daughter I longed for, my ex-husband…  What’s the problem?  Who bloody knows…  According to one of my friends, she and her ex no longer have a hold over me and that lack of control has made them both nuts and they despise me with a passion, bordering on the psychotic in my “sister’s” case.  I am not joking.  She really did and still does think she can call the shots and doesn’t like to be told no or reminded of her failings – well nobody does, do they?  She however is sitting inside a glass house and has no right to literally dictate to anybody!  She tried to dictate to my son a few months ago after ruining his Christmas and then again to me a few weeks ago.  Bollocks to that, love.  Those days are long done.She is still pissed off about a dinner for our Mum that I did not plan but is convinced I did in order to spite her.  For that, I am “dead to her” and should “stay the fuck out of (her) life”.  Really?  If anything, it ought to be the other way around and I wasn’t actually in her life nor wanting to be.  I was just trying to get things on a better footing and not just for the sake of civility but because we are supposed to be sisters.

She holds onto grudges like The Tower of London holds on to the Queen’s jewels according to a cousin of mine.  How true that is and how shite that must be for her.  She has barely contained rage coursing through her veins whenever I am near. Me? Calm as fuck because I am calm as fuck.  I dealt with my demons with respect to our sorry story; she needs to deal with hers and stop trying to blame me for how she feels/how she claims others feel because I finally put my son and I first (and which I do without malice).

My son turns 18 soon.  He can’t wait and I suspect he may run a little wild and loose over time and take this whole “I’m adult” thing to it’s fullest however, “My house, my rules” still apply!  He’s off to Uni before too long and I am happy for him to spread his wings and really embrace change.  I will not be a grieving Mum, crying over baby photos and old toys, wondering why my boy has gone.

I can’t wait to watch him move through this next phase.

 

 

 

 

Let Evening Come

BY JANE KENYON

Let the light of late afternoon shine

through chinks in the barn,

moving up the bales as the sun moves down.

 

Let the cricket take up chafing   

as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn.

Let evening come.

 

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned   

in long grass. Let the stars appear 

and the moon disclose her silver horn.

 

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.   

Let the wind die down. Let the shed go black inside.

Let evening come.

 

To the bottle in the ditch,

to the scoop in the oats, to air in the lung.   

Let evening come.

 

Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid.

God does not leave us comfortless,

so let evening come.

David Bowie, RIP

I know I am late with this but in a way I’m glad.  There were so many others blogging and tweeting and what not when David Bowie passed away.  Here’s what I wrote a day or two later:

I cannot call myself a fan but there are many, many songs that I like and he was a prominent, colourful feature of my 70’s and 80’s childhood. I didn’t like everything he did but what I really admired was his unflinching approach to his artistry. Bowie very much did what he pleased.

Now that is what you call an icon. Go be like that if you have the courage to do so.

As a South Londoner I was proud of the fact that he was one too, a local boy made good and never starry in the least.

He is not a bad person to seek to emulate in terms of quite fearlessly being yourself – the young can (and often) do a lot worse these days, following the antics of “stars” like Justin Bieber, Arianna Grande, Rihanna, Jessie J. Sadly the list is endless… It is so much so that I struggled when talking to my son, to come up with an equivalent artist of these times for whom a palpable feeling of loss would be generated when he reaches my age. Lady Gaga, Lana Del Rey – yes they are outside the box but they have not set the world alight in the way Bowie did. And they are outside the box in a wholly marketed way – something their fans cannot see. Everybody has a feeling about Bowie, good or bad. Too many artists these days generate no strong feelings either way and to a certain extent, modern music lost its’ way some time ago and we have lived these past 30 years or so with mimics and wannabes.

True originals are hard to come by. That’s my feeling anyway. It’s probably why the majority of the music I listen to is a throwback to my youth. Metal keeps evolving and I still get a thrill from it. I listen to modern RnB sometimes but it is all very “samey samey”, increasingly misogynistic – and Chris Brown seems to be all over every track! My taste is eclectic to say the least. I like Michael Buble for example, but he’s a repackaged Frank Sinatra/Harry Connick Jnr both of whom I love and both of whom, I think, are better.

So, David Bowie, I salute you, your originality, your creativity and your fearlessness.

Rest in Peace.

New year: Better me.

I’ve been quiet for a while and not because I had nothing to say but because there was so much to say that I didn’t know where to begin.  Conversely, there was so much to say that I could not be asked to blog it, the whole matter being so boring in that I’ve pretty much been here before so I will not go into great detail.  But this time was worse…the person who got badly hurt was my son.

I was left shocked.  It effected a change in us both from which it seems there is no coming back for any involved in the whole sorry affair. So…

I poured myself into the pages of a diary, one of many that I own.

I talked to friends.

I took long walks.

I kept myself busy.

I sat and quietly reflected.

You know, the kinda things we used to do before we blogged about the minutiae of our lives!

I’ve been adding another layer to my shell.  I’m tougher but not watertight – never will be, wouldn’t want to be.  I feel my way through life; it’s who I am and who I always will be. And sometimes I get it wrong. I never want to shut down and shut out the world so completely that I end up being unaffected by something awful.  It happened to me once and it scared me.

Being numb is an odd “feeling” – you’ll understand if you’ve been there.  I didn’t like that version of me.  I had no more to give, I was running on empty and life held little meaning. It felt like my heart was blocked.  When you get like that, you feel nothing at all.  And for a sensitive, feeling person, that’s nothing short of horrible…

I don’t think that being numb would have been useful as a coping mechanism for the drama that was the run-up to Christmas.  Not giving a damn about anyone but my son and (relatively) calmly vocalising that was necessary and useful:  my Mum got told, in a way she hadn’t been told before that her part in this mess, going back many years, was appalling.  Whatever upset she felt about a family torn apart was not my problem to resolve and she just had to accept it; my son was my priority – not making her feel better because her “life is shit”!  And, in fact, it was my son’s life that had been shit, having borne the brunt of this awful situation alongside me.  She needed to stop pussy-footing around my “sister” and pull her into line – she’s the parent and she needed to do some parenting!!  Of course, she didn’t and I don’t know what that’s about… I told her she could not rely on me any more to be the “good daughter”, who bends for everyone else’s benefit, getting shafted time and again.  I had made clear months ago that enough was enough and that those days were long over.  But here they all were again, dragging us down to their (cess)pit just when my son and I had been feeling good about ourselves and about life in general.

Mum uses emotional blackmail; my “sister” and my ex are bullies who have no interest in building bridges.  What they want is control  – of me and of the way I live.  Why?  Heaven knows. I gave up trying to figure out those idiots a long time ago.  The effect they have on my son is a major concern though.  They pretty much ruined Christmas for him, so I did everything I could to make it one to remember for good reasons.  I hope I succeeded – it was certainly different and we did many memorable things.

Being me, I do care about them.  Hard to believe isn’t it, considering what they’ve done and how they continue to behave?  What I don’t care about is what they think about how I do things or how I choose to live my life – I do not need their approval, I do not need their love or attention:  in short, I do not need them.  That said, the ties that bind run deep, especially when it is my “sister” and the father of my child that we’re talking about. I will always care.  I cannot say at all that the feeling is reciprocated, but no matter!

My concern now is the total breakdown of the relationship between father and son. I can’t force it – tried and it didn’t work.  I was told to back-off by both of them – I did in the main but now it’s worse than ever just when it was improving.  My ex shed copious tears about the latest breakdown in their relationship, but is now as cold as stone.  He hasn’t tried to see our son since Christmas. Disgusting really but then again, what is our son losing exactly?  Not much if this is how his Dad chooses to be.  He’s never had a positive male role model and that bothers me. He’s a fine young man, loving and considerate, bright, funny, independent, honest, open and confident (though he doesn’t think he is) but all this drama has definitely hardened him even more against his Dad.  I’m not happy about that, because of the damage it does to him.

Still, if being that way means he avoids repeating our mistakes, more power to him I guess…

No matter what distance I put between “us and them”, their reach is far and it had me feeling trapped again.  I had these wild notions of packing up and leaving the UK to live with my cousin and her family as soon as my son went off to Uni, in order to put as much distance between myself and them as I possibly could.  My son was alarmed and said he is still dependent upon me until he finishes his degree – and that where I go, he goes!  I said he needed to branch out and so did I and, who knew what would happen at or after Uni? He may meet the love of his life or get a great job in another part of the country.   Anything can happen… Of course I know he’ll need me around for a while longer but, in that moment, I felt like a caged bird under cover of darkness.

All I wanted to do was run, as far and as fast as possible.

So, my plan now is to become less financially dependent upon my ex and I am applying for a second job which, if I get it, will make a substantial difference to our quality of life.  My son turns 18 this year and if my ex refuses to stump up towards the costs of his party, I would like to think that by then I’d have this job and so, could manage to pay for it without being broke for months afterwards.  I put him on notice about helping pay for it – he, typically, did not respond.  That means he won’t stump up.  And you can take that to the bank if you pardon the pun!

Plans to leave these shores are not quite a pipe dream and are a definite possibility – something to keep in my back pocket if life here doesn’t work out the way I’d like it to, but there has been a sea-change in me these past 2 months.  I am not exactly in battle mode but I refuse to pander to my “sister’s” histrionics (including bombarding my son with a string of texts after rowing with him and being told, by him, to leave him to study!).  If my ex doesn’t hold up his end, I take the issue to him and leave it there.  He still has stuff at my place, so I have been getting it down to him, throwing things out and commandeering what’s useful. He has had no say in the matter – been there, done that.  The last time around, it was 18 months before he acted:  his crap was everywhere, I was coming out of hospital and with it all being a trip hazard it had to be sorted.  When he didn’t show up recently as promised to take more stuff, I didn’t chase him up.  Those days are over.  I’ve boxed it all up and it will all be heading his way very soon, unbeknown to him.  It took up every weekend and most of my week nights for the past 6 weeks but it has been satisfying and liberating to do so.

I could cause a great deal of trouble for them and they are worried that I will. You could say I’m in control but I have no desire for that.  I made enquiries connected to something that could affect my son; my ex saw it as a threat.  Now, what I might have to do hangs over them. That’s their problem.  My son comes first.  I’ve been getting on with my life, immensely relieved to be free of them and their strange outlook.  Above all I just want what’s best for my son.

We’re getting there…

So life gave me, indeed us, lemons (again).  I made lemonade (again) – no “woe is me” here!  I am open to change and much less afraid to take the bull by the horns.  What I have to avoid are rash decisions when I feel hemmed in and there, my son is a great leveller.  I raised a smart kid.

I have options.  That feels good.