How did it come to this?

This is a happy post, but a wondering post too.. most of us, if not all, have come to ‘know’ strangers from being online for years. Strangers that have in many cases become more than aquaintences, but not quite ‘friends’ (except for those select few that have reached that height).

I was having a nap this afternoon, and daydreaming as I often do inbetween wake and sleep, and started thinking about all the various people in my life that werent there 5 yrs ago, 2 yrs ago, a few months ago, and wondering how in the world some of these people have become so dear to me. I”m not an overly emotional person and am cautious about who my friends are; you have to earn my friendship as one lady put it a few years back. She’s right. So how did these people become part of my life, part of my heart? And why is it possible to completely and utterly be friends with someone that youve never actually met?

I guess really, the internet has taken the place of old fashioned letters hasnt it? People used to get married sight unseen simply by writing letters back and forth enough to get to know each other so i guess its really no different when you think about it.

Only thing is, my list is growing!

I caved

a certain radio DJ challenged his listeners to go for a week without booze. I took the challenge, even though I drink hardly at all these days; thought it might be good for character building or something. (honestly I dont know why I decided to take the challenge).

but tonight I caved. Been a long week. I hate my job for the most part, and its the weekend. I left work early today too to do something I love doing and I’m having a do=nothing night tonight. I’ll ‘do’ things tomorrow and the next day enough to expend my energies. I have a partner that works harder than I (blue collar job very physically demanding on him) so neither of us feel like going out, let alone partying. (we’re old lol). But.. I decided to skip dinner as I”m not hungry (and why eat if yer not hungry, right?) But its hot today. Really hot. And a nice cool drink seemed like a fine idea, so I made myself a chilled Sake in a martini glass. And then I had another. And then my stomach started to burn abit, so my ‘dinner’ was a frozen waffle in the toaster.

And how do I feel, having caved to temptation? Not bad actually I figure my next drink will be a week or month or three months away, so I feel okay about it.

RSS feed to here

i know i’m being anal retentive, but i cant help it, thats how i am. i like things in tiny boxes all slotted in the right files -whether literally or figuaratively.

this goes out to the master of the blog, mr o’s – i use igoogle. love it. have your personal blog as a feed on a ‘widget’ right on the igoogle tab. gives me the byline of up to 10 of your blog posts if i choose that many. simply click and there it is, your blog. None of this going into the top bar to look at a multitude of feed links and sorting which is which -clean, visual, convenient. all i had to do was look at the bottom of your blog page, click on ’subscribe to feed’ and it gave me options where to stick it (pun intended.) with igoogle being an option. did the same with darraghs blog too even though he’s on blogspot.

however… this blog here? nothing but grief. i can add the RSS feed of course – but no options as how to view it, which means its buried and hidden in my microsoft windows files somewhere – i cant see the bylines, i cant click direct to read one specific entry that catches my eye, and worse – in this day of having a completely addled brain and no memory, what isnt seen is forgotten for days! i really am a visual person – i need (and want) to open my igoogle each day and SEE it there waiting for me.

any ideas how to do this? i realize this is a tech question for the tech geeks… but it bugs me to no end and i know my brain wont rest until its either told there is no possible way for the webmaster/blog owner to change this – or someone comes up with a brilliant solution (and simplistic too) and i can then go on to feel one less impossible situation has been rectified.

bad enough they’re going to muck with our chocolate and start genetically engineering it.

I collect masks.

I collect masks,

The ones you wear to work and out on nights,

Snapped tight and in the aisles of Superquinn,

Sometimes I get special ones from dates,

Bites and walks and those still moments

Halting in the streetlight by your door,

When there are still decisions to be made,

I remove them, gently with uncertain fingertips,

Fumbling with forbidden things and loosening strings,

Invisible, there nestled in your hairline,

Off it slips just as your lips touch mine,

Don’t leave it too long til I see you once again.

(c)

the couple

I was walking in the street and passed by someone I know only slightly. She was walking with her boyfriend who I don’t really know at all and have only met once. He runs a bar and for some reason, probably because of the industry he is in, never struck me as the romantic type. Yet there they were. It was early in the morning. We stopped for a brief chat which led to how early the hour was. It turned out she was on her way to work, he told me he had no reason to be up that early shy of wanting to walk her in. This struck me as the most romantic thing I had ever heard and I smiled broadly, basking in how sweet that was.

Afterwards though it made me immeasurably sad.

Liberate yourself

Last night I did a very liberating thing……I threw out all my “if” and “when” clothes, you know the ones, we all have them.   “I’ll wear that *if* I lose a half a stone”, “I’ll wear that *when* my belly gets smaller”, I’ll wear those jeans *when* I go on a diet and my arse gets smaller”…blah blah blah.  Today was the first day in about a year that I ate without feeling guilty!   I’m not fat, I know that, I’m within the healthy weight range for my age, sex and height.  I’m at the top end of the scale but within it none the less!

Do it tonight, seriously, even if you have nothing left in your wardrobe, it’s worth it!   I feel free, you can too.

Just for a day

I need to be left alone, just for a day.  Not all the time, just for a day.

I am around people all the time, in my work in my private life and I’m getting really fucking sick of it.   If I think I’m on top of things someone comes along to remind me that there are still people who need or want something from me.  I don’t want to be needed or wanted, just for a day.

I can’t win though.

If I were to be left alone for a day with no requests for help or favours then I would feel as if I was useless and unregarded.  Even if it was just for a day.

I don’t know what I want.  I’m confused and neurotic and needy and I wish I wasn’t. 

Just for a day.

Finish yer bloody postal address!

I have a bee in my bonnet about my friends and acquaitences (and strangers too) who live in the USA and expect that just because they put a State abbreviation behind their street address, we’re all suppsoed to know its in the USA.

We dont!

We dont know what MO stands for, or WI, or AB. AB could be Alberta Canada, and Canadians at least put ‘Canada’ in their address!

Please for the love of Pete, take 2 seconds and add USA to your addressess!

//rant over. Thanks.

Time to say Goodbye

I realised over the weekend that I’ve been clinging onto a number of friendships, that have been dead for a while now.  The most difficult one is with someone I was very good friends with in college, let’s call them Friend A.  We were joined at the hip, I even cut all ties with another friend (Friend B) out of loyalty to friend A. But when I started going out with my boyfriend, she didn’t take it very well and we’ve been drifting apart since.  I kept telling myself it was because we were both busy and living in different parts if the country, but I’ve remained friends with other people that live in different countries so I think I have to wake up and realise that this friendship is over, it shouldn’t be that hard.

people dont want to hear about success

I have come to the conclusion that people don’t want to hear about your accomplishments. No matter how good of a friend your friend is, no matter what they say, they really don’t want to hear about it.

I had some fantastic news last week that I was dying to share with someone. I have two friends who live in various world geographies, whom I’ve met in person, spent time with and known on-line for 5 yrs. We email every single day sometimes many times a day, sharing what we’re up to, how the kids are and the job etc, sharing joys and problems. But its all very superficial and lighthearted. These are the three people I shared my news with. The reaction was less than excited lets just put it like that shall we?

I’ve done some thinking about this -deep thinking. Its no different than a few of my ‘real life’ friends – people dont want to hear certain things about your professional life even if its a success -especially if it’s a success. Why?

Are they jealous? Do they wish they’re work career afforded them the same value of success that you’re currently experiencing? Do they just have no interest in your particular career path? Is it ‘work is just work’ and therefore any work is drudgery and not worth talking about? I dont know. But it extends to personal life as well…. I really truely think people are happier:

#1. complaining
#2. bitching that their life/job/etc is worse than yours (and therefore they win)
#3. not knowing that people can be happier than they are (or more ’successful’ than they are)
#4. when they can drag people down instead of building them up

Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m so boring that my friends just dont want to hear about my excitement and my success. Or maybe they think I’m bragging (which i desperately try to not do). Whatever the reason, it sucks. It’s like watching a football game and your team scores against impossible odds, and you’re so excited you could pee yourself, and you turn to whoop it up and share the moment – and remember you’re alone and nobody else there to share it with. Kind of leaves you feeling deflated.

I’m a bad person

I don’t donate to charity, and don’t even make excuses for it.

I change my mind at the last minute about a promise I make, for no reason.

I take genuine pleasure in other people’s misfortune.

I only look out for my own interests.

I never consider the implications of my actions on others.

When I have a problem, everyone else must stop and deal with it for me.

I’ll start a rumour about someone just to get the heat off me.

I never offer help unless I know it won’t be accepted.

I’ll guilt others into helping me, even if I don’t really need it.

I’ll make derogatory, sexist and racist remarks if I think the company I’m in will not pass judgment or ridicule.

If I don’t understand it, it’s not worth understanding. The same goes for tolerance.

I judge people on their looks, address, past and get extremely offended when it’s done to me.

Am I a bad person, or am I just a person?

Without warning.

I have recently fallen madly in love with someone in a way that I never thought possible, ever. This has happened completey unexpectedly and without warning. I was not looking for this.

My problem is that I am  married to someone else. Our marriage is fine, was not broken, did not need fixing.

And then I fall so completley and entirely in love with another. I desperately want to be with this other person, who knows I am married, and who also has feelings for me. Nothing physical has happened between us. (Although I wish it were)

This is the most beautiful and exquisite experience of my life and also the most impossible.

My greatest fear is that I will hurt the object of my desire immeasurably, so I’ve resolved not to act on these overwhelming feelings. Yet that doesn’t feel right either because desire is a such powerful emotion and I desire this person beyond compare.

If I were to act on this it would be the most selfish decision I could make and I’ve never thought of myself as selfish, which scares me a little.

Another alternative is to cease contact with this person but that saddens me to the point of tears to even contemplate it.

At what point did being in love become so difficult and when did it become so wrong for one to love another? 

I know the answer is the day I said ‘I do’. But this was never supposed to happen. In all the time before and since we have been married I’ve never even looked at another, never even felt a tinge of curiosity. Until now. How can something that feels so right be so wrong?

 

 

the cops are right out of control

I dont know how it is in other provinces or states, but where I live, the cops are right out of control. The other night, a woman cop was called to a disturbance and the fellow she went to find out about, ended up collapsing and they had to do cpr on him. next thing you know, he’s on life support with no brain activity and then dead two days later. When the cop was interviewed, when the supervisors gave their statement at the beginning (when he was still alive), they said that she didnt use any form of weapon on him at all – no pepperspray, no taser, no night stick, nothing. When he was dead, and a corner’s inquest was announced by the Crown, the cops suddenly had a new statement for the media and public – she used her nightstick on him below the upper legs and pepperspray. right. and he ended up dead from his legs being beaten. And originally he received no form of weapon on him, remember?

Right now there are all sorts of stories such as this mostly to do with over use or misuse of tasers. I understand the need of police to protect themselves – I was almost a cop myself when I graduated highschool – but it seems to be out of control over here… I’m wondnering what its like in your neck of the woods.

its all good!

i was here a few days or week back complaining about not being able to find the real ‘me’ after chemo. about how my haircuts always sucked and such… well, today i got a haircut at the same salon but i booked with the owner instead of one of the other stylists. the owner is small, dark, curly hair and quite tomboyish – and i thought perhaps i’d leave with a decent cut that wasnt so girly and yet i could still do funky things with it and dress it up when i go out.

i go in, they offer me a cup of mint and licorice tea, and a magazine. then i’m in the chair and she’s in the chair beside me questioning me as to what i want. so… i take a deep breath and say: i dont know what i want. but i know what i dont want! and she listens. and i tell her this and that. and she gets a look formulated in her mind, and asks about time between hair cuts (2-3 months would be great -every 3-4 weeks is too costly and time consuming. She asks if iv’e looked in their book and i say no. she goes for the book, flips a few pages, and points to a picture and OMG its exactly what i’ve been trying to see in my mind!

suffice it to say, my hair isnt quite long enough to look the same, but its a hell  of a lot better than i’ve had so far and she’s the first one that didnt cut the back off or tell me she cant make the back longer than the sides or i’ll have a mullet. it looks great. i can make it wild with hairspray and wax, or sedate with gel and combing differently and my partner loves it too.

i cant believe what a difference hair has made to my well being. i didnt think it would matter, especially after going through the entire cancer thing – you figure any hair is better than no hair and it shouldnt be a priority, but you know what? how you see yourself in the mirror really does have a huge effect on how you feel even if you ‘logically’ know it shouldnt.

oh… and my boss has allowed us to turn one of the smaller offices into a work out room. we now have a step machine, tv and vcr and dvd player, yoga mat and will soon have an eliptical and jump rope. we’re all determined to lose that extra 10-20 pounds!  life is great again.  just thought you might want to hear that things arent all doom and gloom with me

i’m so mad i could… i cant think of anything forceful enough

I have nowhere else to write about this -nobody within my circle of friends or family i can rant about this to without being inundated with their visions of what i should do, or being told.. suck it up and it’ll get better, so i’m here to rant amongst strangers.

my partner is 15 yrs older than me and for the first time, i feel that its becoming a problem. the more we both age, the more he becomes more dependent on me and expects me to take care of him and look after his needs. we’ve been married for ages, we love each other deeply and passionately and are best friends, but… I’m starting to feel hemmed in and more a mother than a partner.

i want to do things with my life before i get too old. There are so many things i’ve put off doing because they dont pay the bills, because i dont have time, because i’ll do them later, because they’re not as important as cutting the grass, lookng after the kids, grocery shopping for the next week, etc.. all the mundane things that you must do to keep it all together week by week. I had always thought that I’d be able to do some of the things on my list as I grew older. the kids are gone, i have less responsibility and i thought more time, but its not so.

My partner doesnt want me to do any classes or courses on the weekends, as thats really the only time we have from work and he wants to leave the weekends open for things that entail an all day event, like going to the park with a picnic lunch, taking the canoe out and spending the day at the beach, etc. Okay fine, i’ll leave the weekends free… so maybe I can do a night course – a music lesson once a week, maybe an exercise class instead, once a week for an hour or two..

But no. He wants me home to do the wifely stuff like cooking dinner. He’s gone 12 hrs, works blue collar for a living and yes, its hard on him physically. He falls asleep on the couch some nights even before dinner… But what the hell? He’s resentful if i go off and do anything that interfers with his dinner – figures he shouldnt have to come home and cook after a day of hard work and getting dirty. I suppose i married a man that is somewhat old fashioned, although 20 yrs ago, he wasnt. He was 5 yrs divorced when I met him and was fine doing things for himself, but the older he gets the more he seems to revert to the old way his parents marriage was.

its not fair. yeah i know life isnt fair. but its not fair. i’ve spent the last 20 yrs being responsible, looking after his kids, working part time, then full time to help build our ‘nest egg’, – when do we women get to put down the mantle and just be?

the more i do things on the side, the more he makes comments to me -not out and out comments, but enough to let me know where his head is thinking… and the more he does that, the more I push back. i’m beginning to think ‘if i were single’.. or ‘i want to be free – i want my independence’. Sure as shoot as soon as you start thinking that way, you’ll start acting that way and next thing you know… you’ll be that way. really, i dont want to go through teh rest of my life alone -i love him. i think i always will love him. he’s just driving me crazy and i cant seem to get through to him about this (and yes, we’ve had long ‘talks’ about what we both expect when he retires shortly).

sigh and grr at the same time. i’m just getting a little more angry each day and dont know how to stop from going down that slippery slo;pe.

Mirrorball

I wasn’t going to write this here but fuck it, it might help someone else in the same situation so it will have done some good. My friends will all know this is me but maybe they’d be kind enough not to point this story out to others.

I was the most humiliated I’ve ever been in my life the other night.

We’d met through a friend, we were both single and she was obviously a thousand times too beautiful to be hanging around with someone like me, yet she did.

We had a bite to eat a couple of times, a movie, texted, mailed, communicated pretty much every day for the last couple of weeks, nothing more serious. Nothing overt to make me believe she liked me in a boy/girl way shy of the usual “why is she agreeing to see me?” curiosity that’s natural in a situation like that. Don’t get me wrong either, I wasn’t in to her just because of the way she looked – far from it. We had lots in common, talked for hours, she was interesting and warm and smart and layered and just the right side of left of centre that always piques my curiosity.

I liked her in a boy/girl way very much but all the time the voice inside me kept saying “she’s way out of your league, you’re reading this wrong”.

So we were out in a group the other night in a club, her looking like the stunning mirrorball that all the light in the room was bouncing off. I was only really there because I wanted to see her. We sat next to each other, she fixed me when my outfit needed slight alteration, we bought each other drinks, I told her how stunning she looked.

Later she met friends she knew and was chatting with them, she was the object of much random male attention simply because of how pretty she was. I was dancing with my friends, I popped over every now and then to see how she was getting on, tried to shepherd her in the direction of the dancefloor thinking I would very much like to try dancing with her. Eventually, just as I’d given up she came down and away we went, doing the twirling each other over the head thing that drunk people think they do so well.

It was lovely, fun, light, almost sexy and then it all happened very quickly. A tall, handsome guy, far better looking than me started dancing up next to her, all of us in the same space to start. Then they peeled off leaving me dancing by myself, alone. I hung around for a while but when it became obvious she wasn’t coming back my way I just sat down.

I went off for a drink, chatted to my friends, came back and they were still dancing but at this stage with his hands on her ass. My friends all knew I liked her and when one of them who had seen what had gone on asked me if I wanted to go, I said yes. We left without saying goodbye, she was too busy. I went home broken up into stupid little pieces.

What knocked me for six for the few days after wasn’t that she went off with the better looking guy that she’d only just met, far from it, that’s only natural. She hadn’t expressed any interest in me beyond friendly involvement. We weren’t on a date or anything like it, nothing of that kind had passed between us, it was merely that I’d read the situation so badly in thinking that she might have some boy/girl interest in someone like me. Of course she didn’t.

My little voice was right all along.

I allowed myself to think for a while that there might be the potential spark of something there with someone way out of my league and I paid the price for my presumption.

Punch your own weight.

Pettiness: The revenge of the intimidated

Many things disturb me about Sex and the City, like the representation that relationship troubles happen with romantic interests while friends are always supportive and caring.

I have a group of old friends that I share a long history with but there’s been a natural moving-on that took me over a year to get used to but it was the best thing that could have happened because I was a horrible version of myself in their company.

Not with any great intent they made me feel intimidated and inferior; helpless and with such a sense of unworthiness that I felt I should wipe out any trace of my bloodline from the planet, never mind just wipe out myself.

I don’t act anywhere near my age and as time went on and the gap in maturity between us widened, they respected me less and I became the outsider and my paranoia reached new heights. Any comment or tone was a sign of their disrespect. All my experiences were inferior to their standard-life-cycle ones. Sometimes the bitterness made me secretly glad that they had difficulties having children or finding partners.

Through trivial ends I’ve lost all contact with some while I still hold telephone relationships with others. I’m in a good place with them now that I have the air of being moved-on, but only takes a few moments in their company to bring back the weakness of the worthless state. It’s not a happy place.

Kidhood of a clown

I grew up with an alcoholic mom and a dad who pretended there was nothing wrong.

I don’t remember much of life back then, but there are two images that haunt me that I would really love to get rid of – the first is of my mom stumbling into my room at night and waking me up.  She told me she was leaving us, and then vomited on my bed, all over my teddy bears.  She collapsed into tears and appealed to me for a hug but all I could do was hug my knees and wish the monster would go back into the closet.

The second image is of me and my sister being hugged by my dad while my mom screamed and smashed the furniture downstairs.  She came upstairs and found us, then accused my dad of being a paedophile because he was squeezing us so tight.  We listened to the endless confusing words… sex, under-age, abuse, prison… and through the tirade my dad just hugged us tighter.  Mom called the police that night but I can’t remember what happened after that.  There’s other stuff too that I will never talk about because it’s locked away and at the bottom of a deep deep sea of level-headedness.

It’s so increadibly fucking hard to have two sets of parents like that.  One set is wise and caring and loving and the other is evil and violent and spiteful and so so passive agressive.  Me and my sister tried to change things but we were told we were only making things worse so my sister left as soon as she hit 18.  We don’t talk much now.

Nobody knows about this side of my parents except for very close relatives, it was strickly kept behind doors.  It still is.  There is no getting the subject out of it’s cage so it stays inside me and it festers.

I give it up to you.  Sorry you had to read it.

Revenge

How much energy should I put into it?

I was wronged, seriously wronged to the point of being physically attacked and publicly humiliated.  It took place in a room full of people, but the people who witnessed are all so scared of the person who did this that they won’t come forward.

So here I am – scarred both physically and mentally with no witnesses and nothing but my word.  My word won’t carry in court any more than his will.

I have nothing to do but take what happened to me and chalk it down to experience,  But why should I?

If I could harm this person in some way and make sure there were no witnesses, would that make me as bad or would it make me even?

Is revenge ever worth it?

Tomorrow

I’m scared about tomorrow, not in some rhetorical or philosophical way, just scared. Tomorrow I have to face up to a stupid and careless mistake I made.

I’m not running away from anything, I have to take what’s coming to me.

In hindsight I could blame a dozen people or circumstances for my actions, but they were my actions and no one else’s.

I’m scared for the worst and worried about the least that will happen to me.

My Father used to say that tomorrow never comes, I bet it’s here before I’m ready for it.

Sheep

Last night I witnessed the wind change.

Lying in my bed in the dark with the window open and just thinking myself to sleep.

The wind changed and I immediately thought of how significant and influential that simple natural occurrence can be. Then I thought about how insignificant I am. Even though I had witnessed what some people will never witness, it didn’t matter. The wind changes whether I notice or not.

Maybe I think too much.

I’ll try counting sheep tonight.

Last night I learned…

…she’s definitely an alcoholic. I had to carry her out of the pub. She’d missed my calls, despite the phone sitting beside her on the bar. She was supposed to text me when she was finished her pint.

I’d made her promise not to drink shots anymore after she was assaulted on her way home, a night I wasn’t with her, after shots. It was only a little scuffing of the eye though. The gang were really after the guy that had walked her home thinking his luck was in; they only threw her to the ground. I think I might actually owe that gang a debt of gratitude.

When I arrived last night she was sitting chatting to a guy she’d just met and her friends were gone. She’d been drinking shots. She was legless.

I put her to bed. I put her to bed twice actually, picking her up after she’d rolled onto the floor. I slept in the spare room. She was suprised to wake up alone. She wept when I told her she’d chosen the company of a stranger over me. She’d really chosen another drink or several over me though.

I told her to stay in her place tonight. Tomorrow I’ll meet her. She has another chance.

Thus far the language of apology already sounds

a little too practiced.

i still need a second nipple

part of the reconstruction process after mastectomy is putting in an implant (tissue expander) to stretch what remaining skin you have, larger. The skin isnt enough because they slice you in a cat’s eye shape and take the nipple (cancer usually follows the milk ducts – hence being called ductile). once they sew you up, its puckered and has to be stretched back out with a saline implant that they can add saline to over weeks/months and make larger. when its large enough, they do another surgery to remove it and put in a permanent implant – either saline or silicone depending on what you decide. After thats all healed, they can form a new nipple either with a flap of skin they pinch and sew, or by taking a chunk of your ear cartilate and implanting that under the skin. i opted to not take any more body parts and do the pinch bit.

once thats all healed, once your new boob has stretched abit and had a chance to drop (sag) you go in and get a tattoo to define the parameters of your new nipple. except that i havent done that yet. Except that my new nipple has all but flattened out and is nearly indistinguishable. Except that my boob hasnt ‘dropped’ much and is still more like a softball than a breast and is still under my chin rather than sitting well with its neighbor. and my doc wants to put a larger implant in, since i’ve gained nearly 20 pounds since my chemo and my natural breast is now larger than the implant (which was larger than the natural breast a year ago)

i feel weird about the whole issue actually. i dont know if i even want a tattoo there – unless i can find a good artist (which i think i can) its going to look completely fake (which i can deal with) but also flat. like the difference between a dye job on hair all the same color, or natural hair which is made of many colors.. your nipple isnt a flat pink or brown. also.. it means the tattoo guy has to compare it with teh real one. somehow i dont mind showing my fake breast to the various people who need to see it – sans nipple its more like them looking at my back or my elbow if that makes sense? maybe i’m just tired of everyone and their dog seeing my naked chest.  my partner said i should get a lady bug tattooed on there instead or a sunflower.. and at one point i seriously considered it. i mean…why not? its never in a million years going to look like its twin. why not do something wacky and so completely different? but now i’m becoming conservative again so i dunno.

maybe i dont want a new nipple because that will signify the end of my cancer journey. maybe i dont want it to end – of course i want the cancer to end. what i mean is.. maybe i dont want to say – this is it. this is the best its ever going to look, the best it will ever be. the finality of it is perhaps something i dont want to face. who knows… i’ll take it as it comes i suppose. maybe i’ll be one nippled till i die

Hmmm…

What’s your biggest fantasy? I don’t mean sexual fantasy, because we all have them.

If you could get away with anything, what would that anything be?

And if you knew there were no consequences to your actions, would it still remain a fantasy?

After all, a fantasy is usually something that would never happen under normal circumstances, so with those circumstances altered by lack of consequence – what’s the attraction?

Hmmm…

The 7 year itch…

… is a curse which enters the soul fast as lightning and leaves just as quick.  I dunno who put the curse down in the first place but I wish I’d known.  Don’t be fooled, it doesn’t arrive on the anniversary… it waits a month or two and then pounces on you with your first potential true soul mate and knocks you for six.

I thought I had it sorted, this relationship lark.  My partner is my best mate and other people just didn’t enter my mind at all – strangers were just faces, the opposite sex was just a potential friend.  No sexual tension whatsoever.

Then this other person crossed my path.  This person was idyllic, same characteristics as me, same sheepish lame comments.  I was showered with attention, with a few fleeting saucy comments thrown in my ear from time to time that set me on fire – there was a lot of electricity which was hard to ignore and that person haunted my thoughts for months and months.  I fretted and fought the temptation and didn’t say a word to a single other soul about this secret obsession.  I tried to fantasize about new explicit scenes but found that I couldn’t, because my fantasies had to include my partner somehow, which was increadibly hard to imagine (not even as a threesome!). 

When I caught myself daydreaming about my parnter accidentally dying in some random car-crash or heart-attack scene so that I might become available again, I woke up.  The curse had me wishing for my best friend’s death and it twisted me up inside. 

It scared the shit out of me.  I’m so fucking lucky to be in a trusted relationship and I know it, but this other person… I hate having to avoid them and walk away and I dread meeting them in the future when what I really want to do is find out everything about them and above all, I’m worried about what’s to come.  Temptation is cruel.

The 7 year itch is a bitch.  Be ready for it and be strong.

Sleep

I feel rising anger…

..the anger is inspired by the erstwhile positive comments on an earlier post about “Bad Parenting”.

The anger I feel is because everyone assumed that the person who needs to sleep late, or sleep in in the morning, must be suffering from depression.

I am a late sleeper.

I am not depressed.

I’m very protective of my sleeping patterns.

I sleep as late as I can on week days and sleep til 12, 2, 4, 6 on week ends.

I see a Sunday of sleeping all day as a Sunday well spent.

There’s nothing worse than waking early and not being able to get back to sleep.

I really hate waking up early.

At Christmas I take extra time off just so I can have a good run of lying in. Last Christmas I made it over two weeks off, cause I couldn’t face getting up early again.

This does not make me a depressive.

I just have a different natual sleeping pattern to the inflicted Western one.

I’m putting it out there with emotive aggression for the late sleepers of the world.

We don’t need to be accused of mental deficiency.

We don’t need unnecessary sympathy.

We just need recognition as equals.

Now I’m off to bed…..

Lonely #2

I know it’s already been done, but i’ve never felt so lonely. Actually I’ve always felt an undercurrent of loneliness but it’s just so terrible right now.

I have to stress though, i’m brilliant at acting ok, I’m seriously very good at it. But while i’m smiling and joking, or trying to, it’s always there. And then I always think that it’s so unfair, that i shouldn’t be crying, because there’s so much happening to others that is much worse. And I just can’t help myself. It’s so fucking stupid. i’m finding it really, really hard.

And i don’t expect anything other than maybe letting it out might help. At least writing this has stemmed the tears a bit. It’s so fucking stupid.

I am not what I appear to be

My friends think I’m this wonderful self-less saintly human being and I’m nothing of the sort. I”m selfish, I’m a terrible friend, I am cynical and bad tempered at times, egotistical and impatient. They think because I have a charity project that I run, because I donate my time and money to a charity project, that I’m almost saintly or something. I guess mostly because I’m doing more on the charity front than they are. That doesnt make me better than them, and it pisses me off sometimes when they act like it does, or when they act as if I think it does. (I dont).

Sometimes I think its the guilt they have for not donating any of their own time or money, that drives them to put me up on this pedestal and give me this hands off approach and it sucks. Take me down! I have clay feet; I dont want to be up there. I dont want your guilt to motivate you to make me into the next Mother Teresa in your eyes! If you feel guilty, then DO something about it on your own terms. Dont drag me into it.

Thats all. Just wanted to dump it out in the open

The girl in the little gold dress

I went clubbing last weekend with friends. Had a few drinks. Danced badly a bit. Met a girl. Stunning. Beautiful eyes, short sexy dark hair, dark skin, not too thin with curves in the right places, short gold dress. The sort of girl who demanded attention in a room. She fixated on me in the way that girls like that never do. To the point of throwing herself at me. I could quite easily have taken her home I think even with my sometimes inaccurate reading of situations like this. My friends both male and female were convinced on consultation. I was lonely and horny and shocked. When the end of the night came I avoided her and went home by myself. Afterwards I thought over why I did that when I could have had a night of what most guys go to nightclubs for with the sort of girl most guys go to nightclubs hoping against hope to go home with. There were three situations involved. One: she was young probably nineteen or twenty at most but I don’t know she could have been younger. Two: she was very, very drunk to the point where she at times needed to hold on to me to stand up. Three: I’ve reached a point in my life where adolescent sexual fantasy no longer holds sway over me and all I feel when I wake up next to someone I don’t know is emptiness and a hole inside me that noone can fill regardless of how much pleasure someone has brought me or how much I have brought to them in return. All I want is to wake up next to someone who looks at me and makes my heart stop beating. I don’t know who that is. She may not exist. I don’t know what happened in the club but I think it has exposed a raw nerve. I walked away when almost everyone else would have not. What is wrong with me?

The Torch…

The brilliant and very famous Dear Lover seems to have stepped back into the shadows and passed the torch on to us.

http://dearloverblog.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/dear-lover-29/

Fair enough.

Mail us – thelivesofothersblog (at) gmail (dot) com or just post in comments.

I, Me, I’m tangled up

I am though… I’m tangled up, I’m trippin’, I’m stumblin’

I tie myself in logic knots and drink ’til I forget

Everything I do frustrates me, but I love what I do

I dread the phonecalls from my boss, but I love the adrenaline rush

I hate the “being” of drunkness, but I love the rush of geting drunk

I am a mess, and I love it. But I hate the messiness

Reading back through the posts on this ultraanonymous blog - I am apalled and amused by the common themes…

If we have freedom to blog, we confess… we tell tales of alcohol and despair, we whisper about indfidelity and we hint at depravity…

I know, I am, a dark soul. I am trapped in a job I love and hate. I have money, but I worry about money. I get well paid and then hate my job…

I’m a stupid, pedantic, over educated, moron.

And I love it.

Can I go home yet?

I feckin hate my job. I work with a bunch of incompetents, and something just happened this morning to confirm that. Thank g*d the guy didn’t kill himself in the process. I’m just so feckin tired of this shit I could go nutters. Really. And quitting isn’t an option. There are very few jobs around that pay this well, and I need the pay. My only other alternative would be a dead-end minimum wage job, or a job at another firm within the same industry – which would put me no further ahead, since it’s the industry itself which is full of fecking incompetents.

How does it come to this? How do we get so tied up in our occupations/jobs/careers that we have no way out when we suddenly hit middle age and hate it? And I fecking hate it! Its a conspiracy I tell you. By the time you want out of your chosen career path, you’re too old to start fresh somewhere else, owe too much money to give up a good paying job and are married with children and tied to sticking it out till the bitter end. Then you’re lucky if you get a watch fobbed off on you to retire with, no pension most times, and all for what?

Gawd I hate my fecking job!

The Certificate above the Kitchen Door

I rememer as a child, being fascinated by a certificate that hung in our house. I know I was a child, because it was before we moved – which means I was 11 years old or under.

The certificate hung above the kitchen door and the only way to examine it, was to climb the stairs and kind of lean over half way up. It was both a prominent and awkward place to put it.

It was my parent’s marriage certificate. A beautiful thing in its way, with calligraphy and gold lettering. I think it may have been a blessing from the church, or something else, because when I think about it now, I’m not sure what the script was.

In fact I only thought of it the other day. And it struck me hard.

The great shame in my life for a long time was that my marriage failed. I didn’t get married in a church, I have only a certificate from a registry office. And that has no calligraphy, or gold lame, or anything ornamental about it.

It hangs above no door either. And I have no eager children to scramble up the stairs to study it.

In fact, I don’t know where it is. I’m more concerned by the whereabouts of my seperation agreement and the inevitable agony of the final divorce.

I blamed myself for the collapse of my marriage. Both correctly and incorrectly.

I kicked away the stool, I let the weight fall onto the rope, I did the final deed of execution, but it had been dead for a long time before that.

That statement is of course deliberately disingenuous, because I know in my secret heart that I self destructed things. I did bad things, I thought bad thoughts, I let bad things happen.

But, but, but, the other party was equally at fault.

On a dark day, I would describe them as a nasty, aggressive, small minded, stupid, irritating, ungrateful, spiteful ignorant cunt.

On a dark day.

It took me a long time to let go of the anger. And the hurt. And the shame of failure.

It took me a long time to stop blaming myself.

Oddly, it’s taken longer again for me to admit that I was at fault. And this is the first time I’ve done that.

And I don’t think I have the courage or the will to tell the other person.

Because I’m still angry.

 

 

north american mainstream radio sucks.

explain how chris martin gets his new song violet hill on my local hard rock/alternative radio station? explain why they’re suddenly playing jack johnson and tom petty instead of iron maiden, nine inch nails and white stripes? does it have anything to do with the fact that coldplay, petty and johnson are all playng a huge summer music festival here? and so what if they are? whats that got to do with my station, unless someone is being paid off somewhere to add these three to the setlists? payolla is illegal, but i’d imagine there are other incentives such as sponsors and advertising and marketing that will equal out to the same thing really.

and who decides what music is good and what isnt? certainly not the public. if record sales and concert attendance were what radio stations had to abide by for popularity, surely there would be other bands in the top 20 rather than the ones that are there currently? and i hate that the music industry seems to be wanting to water down the talent pool and make everything the same. sameness sucks. what ever happened to diversity? in todays music business i dont think the likes of Dylan would make it.

mainstream north american radio sucks.

Cubicle

I don’t want to be here anymore. I hate my desk, I hate my window, I hate my cubicle. I’d like to just take my jacket now, clear out my bank account (small as it is) and run. Run far away from a life I don’t want anymore, from where I’m trapped and just hit the next plane to somewhere they’ve never heard of me before.

Work in some bar in Ibiza, live on what I have a for a few months, drink, live in the sun, forget everything I am now.

But I can’t do that because I’m chained down by adult life in the 21st century. Family, bills, mortgage, car payments, our place on the “career” ladder and just the everyday nonsense that stops us all upping sticks and disappearing at a moment’s notice.

Today the pull is strong though. Not for any particular reason, just that somewhere else is a real life calling to me and I’m getting further and further chained down by my debt, commitments etc. when really all I want to do is live a simple life somewhere on next to nothing with a job making enough to lie on, a few paperbacks, drinks, simple food and some friends.

I know it’s all bollocks. But every now and then I glance over my own shoulder and the shoulders of all of us and wonder why do we plough away in this rut? Habit? Not knowing any better? Fear?

Probably fear.

Rose-Tinted.

I suspect the things I find cute and endearing about her now, in the nascent few months, are the very things that will annoy me about her in a few years.

The rich stay healthy, the sick stay poor

i’m eternally pissed off about this and need to vent. was watching the news tonight on two different channels – one has local news and very little world news, so i flip to the other channel to watch the bigger picture.

the one station – channel 11, was talking about a telethon they had this weekend to raise money for the new children’s hospital. our local gov’t is pitching in 3 billion dollars. the hospital still needs to match that with 3 billion. yes billion. so they have a fund raiser all weekend on tv and the local station pitches in with air time and reporters etc. Meanwhile, the other channel highlighted a story about local kids pitching in to raise money and awareness for national hunger week.

what bugs me? that channel 11 never talks about issues such as homelessness in our city, our hunger or poverty issues in our country, or the wars in darfur etc… they are more than willing to pitch in for children’s hospital, cancer foundation bikeathons, cops for cancer, united way stuff, but when its a poverty issue – forget it.

i used to think it was my imagination, but the more i view the newspapers, watch tv etc.. the more i’m convinced of what a short irishman said in an award ceremony years ago – if people in france were starving on even half the scale of those in africa, the world would be up in arms. If even 10 % of north americans were dying of HIV/AIDs or lack of clean drinking water, or malaria, the world would do anything to stop it. I truly believe the only reason we arent doing more is prejudice.

people such as you and I, we want to help and think the problems are insurmountable – what can we do? we’re just one person right? yes and no. we can do something to affect change in one person’s life and we’ve done something fantastic. we cant fix it on a large scale -you’re right. So many of us dont start, or even try. But we should we must hold our elected officials accountable for charity at home, charity across the board.

it bugs me that organizations like the cancer society get big bucks to spend – we’ve spent how many billions of dollars, and how many years of research and we’re no further ahead to prevention or cure? and i dont consider being poisoned, burned and diced up, a cure. Would we ever allow gov’t to throw that much money at Africa without results? I realize without research we’d still be in the dark ages… i realize we need the United Way, we need some of the various organizations and they do good or decent work.. but why is poverty such a four lettered word? we lump it in the same dark alley as homelessness and mental illness. just bugs me is all.

Yes I washed it afterwards

When I was a kid and first figured out what my lady-garden was for I experimented with a carrot.

The bleed that followed scared me so much that I went off eating carrots for 2 years until somebody told me what a hymen was.  Carrots make me cringe ever since.

I’m Drunk

I’m more than a little bit drunk at the moment, I claim to be a food and wine snob but in reality I’ll drink any old plonk if it gives me that buzz.  I need it to take the edge off, I miss my old life so much at times, I love my partner but jesus, I loved being single.  I loved the buzz of trying to pull on nights out.  I had the best friends in college, we were all single and loving it.  We’d separate in the night club and pull men/women and then dump them at the end of the night when our lips were sore from snogging.  We’d never go home without someone, always looking out for each other.  Never into one-night-stands, just out for the kissing, the quick fix.

Lasting Guilt And Worry

This is strange, I have to be carefull and its strange, and yet I can let it all out here, and I still feel scared. Im telling secrets and the feeling of, “Ooooh you might get caught out” is rampant through my body… and its so exciting

My story starts a few years back where I hurt my partner deeply I did something stupid and I cant even go into detail or they will know who this is, even now im looking over my shoulder and im not even currently with them!

So I did something stupid and I hurt them but not sleep with someone or anything like that! but I still hurt them and we fought and made up and its now a few years later and its a perfect relationship.

I know I have nothing to worry about but I cant shake this guilt I still carry with me over it, we have moved on everything is amazing and yet I feel guilty for hurting them, and because of it I sicken myself every time I dwell on it. Its not an everyday thing, its not taking over my life or anything, but its there.

For the longest time I also carried another feeling around with this guilt, the feeling of worry that they would try to get their own back on me and hurt me in return. They never have, and I know they never will, and that hurts me even more.

I love them so much, How could I have hurt them in that way ill never know I am delighted for what we have right now, I just wish I could forget this feeling but I guess I learn from it and its the least I deserve for what I did.