The recovery from toxicity

I am a divorced woman.

And so it was that I was inundated by texts wishing congratulations. Very nice they were too. The man that I am dating but not in a 'relationship' with sent a particularly nice one advising to hold onto that feeling of freedom, since it was somthing I had worked towards. He was right, except that feeling of freedom was about not being controlled. When I got the Decree absolute I realised that control doesn't actually exist. It is not inanimate, no more than a feeling, no more than what you allow someone else, or some fear in you to do.

Tonight I was summoned to the pub by a handful of friends to celebrate the legal end to being married. A worthy cause. Earlier in the day I had advised the man that I am no longer married to that we are no longer married. I invited him out for a drink to celebrate. Everyone things once again that I am nuts but frankly - I walked up the aisle with the man and since we did not want to stay married, I feel it befitting that we should end it in a slightly more discreet form of celebration. I could, I suppose wear my wedding dress.Now that would be nuts. Still, I think a final 'Yeahhhhhh' drink together the way to end things.

It was ironic that in celebrating my new start that the pub should also contain the serial dater. There I was charting the beginning of the fun in life when I have to sit in the same room with a man that was my first introduction to single life. Should I have allowed myself to have seen normal behaviour as this, I would never have dated again.

Still, I must remain honest. I still feel some chemistry. Not a sexual, I want to sleep with you chemistry, more of 'still a little in my head' chemistry. Which is doubly ironic since I am still not sure which was the real man. There is still the one that thinks himself to be a real catch, arrogant in body language, cocky in behaviour but perhaps more than that, the reality that deep down, he questions all of that.

Facade. There is no selection process to the daily contact with women - simply an addiction to women to provide the adulation that he needs to feel okay. There is still something unresolved. And I am fine with that. It is no more than an unhealthy fix. I am not the type to feed that kind of addiction.

It caused a host of mixed emotion tonight. The man I am seeing but not in a 'relationship' with, I utterly adore. No matter how much I have tried to feel nothing (and I have) he becomes a little more gorgeous every time I see him. It is a very slow non relationship and frankly, just what I need. So it upset me that I could feel so much for such a gentle soul, such a gorgeous man. No matter his or my issues he deals with them. I want to bolt, he has me sussed. He panics, he tells me. I get on with my life, he gets on with his. If I see him in the street, I see his face and I know that this is an interesting time. If I stay, he makes me laugh like no one else ever has. He has met my children, some of my friends, I have met some of his. All without pressure, all without expectation and labelling. All just the way this needs to be.

So this evening perplexed me. It was not resolved in my head, perhaps it will never be. Serial dater is never going to be the man that I thought he was. Serial dater is never going to be the man he thinks he is. All because he cannot face himself.

So I spoke to him tonight. I asked him if in the wake of a new year we could at least attempt to be civil to each other. He really had no choice but to say yes in public. I spoke to him tonight since I have recognise that facing things makes them less than they are.

The man I am not in a relationship wanted to know about the serial dater recently. He knew who he was since a friend had shared the local grapevine with him. "Do you always fall in love with men straight away?" he asked

"No" I replied "I thought you were an arrogant prig when I first met you"

And here in lies the difference. Last year I fell in love with potential. Ths year, I have the potential to fall in love.

Choice is in the bag

Before the horse has bolted

I have spent all week preparing to bolt. I sat opposite someone last week having a serious adult conversation about expectation and such stuff. I presented as being very in control, very measured, pragmatic and a litte 'take it or leave it' All the while my head was thinking " Oh God, you are gorgeous and I feel like melting'.

I realised I could never say those words. Realising that I was thinking like that was a little shocking and extremely risky. If I told him that I was thinking that, he would no doubt bolt and more importantly, thinking those things meant that I could get hurt and so therefore there was only one answer.

Bolt.

I have had exit lines in my head and on the end of my texting finger for some time. I know the response to any "we need to talk' line because I have them all prepared in advance for the inevitable. Last night I acknowledged that texting my exit line was easier but unfair and if I am now an adult - I needed to call and exit. 4 hours of pacing and I summoned the courage. He was out.

So I spoke to a friend instead. Trained as a counsellor she says all the right things such as "And why do you think you feel this way"?

To which I reply "I have no idea, that's why I am asking you"

And she pointed out what I already know. I am a bolter. I date men that are bolters because it hides the fact that I am a bolter. I marry or date emotionally unavailable men because I think I am only worthy of emotionally unavailable men and since I am an emotionally unavailable woman, this proves my own fears.

I can be achingly honest about all sorts of things. Until I care. This is the point I reveal nothing since this is the point I can get hurt. What I never figured was that in emotionally withdrawing I sort of guarantee that the person I am seeing may be in the same place and me not being honest may make them withdraw. Choosing men with emotional baggage is perfect since this is the point I can turn it back onto them and concentrate on their issue and in so doing, avoid mine. Which in fundamentally, if I show them that I have feelings for them they are guaranteed to reject me. Not showing them I have feelings also guarantees that rejection will occur. Perfect, I don't have to take the risk and it becomes their fault.

So I missed the boat to bolt yesterday and when I received the 'phone me for a chat' message today, I panicked and hid the phone so I could avoid dealing with it. In a bid to try and undue some of this - I had already decided to be honest about how I felt, not in a bid to change the inevitable but in an attempt to leave a relationship having been emotionally honest for the first time ever.

So I called back. It was not the inevitable but merely a chat. My brain shifted as I considered that my fight or flight reaction was always on red alert and that perhaps my assumptions were always based on worse case scenario's. So I bit the bullet and revealed my thoughts. I did not however present it in a healthy way.

"I have something to tell you and you may not like it"

Oh Christ I feel really sick even saying this"

"Oh my God, I don't think I can"

Granted it was an unusual approach to telling someone that you think they are rather gorgeous and that they made me feel uncharacteristically melted. But even more unexpected is that no one shot me, the sky didn't fall in and the world didn't end in an instant.

What was even more interesting is that the fear of saying those words, had griped me for a week and the desire to bolt had almost entirely taken over me. So thank you to the man that made me realise that bolting is about fear and a sensation you can only feel when someone has made you feel something - I hope that one day you deal with this and find happiness.

And thank you to the man that made me feel that he was worth the risk of being honest with and that will not allow such issues to be unresolved. Who knows what the future holds but I do know this: Everyone comes into your life for a reason, everyone teaches you something but it is personal choice as to whether you learn from it. You learn from being hurt but you also learn alot about yourself and sometimes what hurts you most from other peoples behaviour, is what you start to see in your own.

There are no guarantees but at this moment and for this day I learnt that my fear of being hurt nearly made me bolt from something that could make me happy. May be it will, maybe it won't but the only chance I have in finding happiness is accepting that fear holds you in the same place time and time again. Refusing to give into fear and taking the chance that my assumptions could be wrong.

This time they were.

Duh

Life is very short

The anonymous poster is back. Its mid October and the anonymous poster decides upon a derisory comment with reference to a post in September about 'Tank Girl' Apparently, I have been 'had over' good and proper since such expression is used by the poster to mean silly cow.

This has caused me to ponder many issues. The first is why has anyone so little to do but trawl through someone's old post and make such comments. One can only assume, as I have, that they simply have no life. More than that people that feel the need to behave in such a way are generally very unhappy people.

Lets put it in perspective. This week I went to the funeral of a colleague who was killed in very horrid car accident. He was 25 years old. In the time I knew him he never nasty, bitter or unkind. The church was full and rightly so.

There is no sense in this. Perhaps the kind sweet people die for no good reason to teach those that have so much to learn. Perhaps the world would be a better place if all the miserable, horrid people were wiped out but then there would be nothing to learn and if that happened, the human race would have no purpose and I am not sure how long it would last.

So now we have to deal with a life in which people with their whole life in front of them, who make all those around them laugh get wiped out in an instant. A life in which people without the balls to lead their own life want to write ridiculous comments on others.

So I did a straw pole with men. I asked them their assumption on a man calling someone tank girl. Interestingly it was all positive. Strong, feisty, scary and sexy. Not sure I have a problem with that at all. Which makes you wonder if the anonymous poster, using the expression tank girl as a means of establishing the connection of silly cow. I think that given the tone, the anonymity and cowardice - that anonymous poster is in fact a little scared and intimidated by women in general.

It speaks volumes that a man would use any term in a derisory way to talk to women, instead of having the ability to communicate in an adult fashion. The other thing I thought poignant was the concept that someone 'had you'. Independent women only give what they want. I for one am happy giving what I want to a man that does not have issues with feeling inadequate.


As for those with clear issue regarding masculinity, adequacy and strength of character. Remember that life is very short. Bitterness and unkindness make for a lonely gathering at the end. If we all aspire to anything it should be that when we die, people miss us.

Sadly, I think anonymous poster need not face this accolade.

Too much text

The man that I am not particularly dating told me that I am not like a real girl. Apparently I am more like a boy. I have also been described as 'a small boy with breasts', Tank Girl and 'The Girl wit the Dragon Tattoo' - though I hasten to add, not all by the same man. I have not been overly flattered but ex-blind date assures me that the Tank Girl one is not an insult.

It would be a fair assessment that there are times where I respond to things like a 'Geezer' and when I respond to thinks like a girl, they tend to be overly girlie, emotional panic rants via text (god forbid that I share emotional panic on a face to face level) Should the unwitting recipient push an emotional button and MAKE me look them in the face, then tears are normally involved. Tears and talking are not one of the multi skills I ever mastered. In fact tears are not necessarily about genuine sadness but more to do with genuine awkwardness at being made to share a feeling. Tears feel so shockingly girlie that they normally render me incapable of speech in the hope that tears are sufficient and the unlucky other party is psychic.

So on the whole, I associate being overly emotional with being girlie and am more comfortable by far sending texts that say intelligent and feminine things such as "Nice Arse"

So having been told that I am a bit of a boy by a man that makes me want to be a bit of a girl, I decide that illness was the perfect time to watch a Chick Flick and get in touch with my inner Barbie.

I was nearly sick. I find it hard to believe that any film can incorporate such bad acting, such airhead mentality, such lip gloss, boobs and banality. I swear if being a girl means chocolate and chick flicks on a Saturday Evening, then I am going for surgery.

Should you ever find your self in the unfortunate position of being sufficiently ill to warrant a chick flick, don't bother. Having endured 90 minutes of torture I think it fair to say that the 'The boat that rocked' (I think that was it's title, was a much better choice'

Continuing on the theme of having my self imaged challenged, I was out texted this week. Never in the history of texting has this happened. I send a pretty sharp, pretty cryptic, pretty clever (and quite long) text and I get one back that frankly, blew mine out of the water. It took me 14 hours to come up with a response and the best I could do was to admit defeat. I am totally flummoxed. I have been out texted by a man.

Perhaps I am more of an airhead than I thought

When the shoe fits.

On a more positive note. I had a shoe fix. At times of emotional dilemma and revelation - always have a shoe fix. It works wonders

Drama Queens and lessons in Life

I am a woman of action. Following last night self revelations, I slept badly. By mid morning I had figured that the feelings of panic that were making me want to bolt, were due to placing myself in a situation that I had done in my marriage. I wasn't being true to myself.

At no point have I ever blamed 'he who cannot be mentioned' for the fact our relationship was co dependant and toxic. We both entered into it for our own reasons and it was doomed to fail because of it (This is not to say that I don't hold him responsible for his utter bitterness and unkindness since, because I do).

I wasn't true to myself. I shut off my emotions because his issues gave me a chance to avoid mine. I shut off emotions because I chose a man that would never be able to emotionally supportive or in tune because nothing existed outside his own issues. Thus co-dependency.

This morning I got it. I couldn't be vulnerable with my choice of husband because I had made my vulnerability something he was responsible for. In wringing it out to dry I made a connection that vulnerability is a stick someone can beat you with and therefore a bad thing. The truth is that vulnerability is part of being me and something I need to take responsibility for myself. In not allowing myself to be vulnerable, I cannot allow myself to love or be loved.

This is going to get confusing - I figured that in denying my vulnerability in the hope of not scaring someone else, I was living my life at the mercy of another person yet again. My panic response was because I was presenting with the same behaviour that I knew could only create the same pattern. Duh!

Then someone made me read the Karpman Dram Triangle - Victim, rescuer and persecutor, how we live according to a script- on the whole negative and how we basically can move from role to role.

"The covert purpose for each 'player' is to get their unspoken (and frequently unconscious) psychological wishes/needs met in a manner they feel justified, without having to acknowledge the broader dysfunction or harm done in the situation as a whole. As such, each player is acting upon their own selfish 'needs', rather than acting in a genuinely responsible or altruistic manner.

Bingo. Owning your feelings is about taking responsibility for them and not expecting others to. My issue with vulnerability is a big one. Then I realised the obvious, if I owned my own issue then I was accepting myself as I am and it is only when you do that, and accept others for who they are and not what they can give you - that you can reach acceptance and stop allowing the past to dictate the future.

Since the past was on the whole destructive and emotionally abusive, it is not a drama that I want to keep playing. So today I was honest about the feelings of panic that I had been experiencing and honest about my knee jerk reaction to risk. I was honest about the fact that if I was feeling like I could get hurt, then that meant that there was something that I was recognising as potential to feel good. Running away will not protect me. Seeing if I can get past the feelings of panic and see what happens will. Perhaps those around me will be capable of doing the same, perhaps not - but the one thing I know is that the only person responsible for my emotional well being is myself. That is not about protection, it is about honesty and respect.

When I stayed in a relationship for over 20 years, I stuck with a man that was indeed passively aggressive, he did indeed sap me of self esteem and confidence but more than that, I entered into a contract were I willingly abused myself because the only person that accepted not being myself was part of the deal, was me.

You can get to a crossroad in life and you have a choice: the route you don't know and the one that is well trodden. I the well trodden one has not been a happy one, self preservation will dictate the unknown. When I showed my softer side today (and believe me the fear nearly made me vomit) I discovered the fear of change is greater than the actual change.

I didn't vomit

Entering into the circles of others

I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness this evening. Having re-framed my thought process into acknowledging that I want no long term anything, want no normal because normal is the death of everything, I spoke with a friend that has just hooked up with someone that has made her so blissfully happy that she has been almost transformed by contentment.

As I explained my newly re-framed thought process of no expectation and happiness in just living for the moment , she said

"That is utter bollocks, of course you want a long term possibility, we all do"

Then I went to the pub. I joined in, I had a great time, I emphasised that I am not 'in' a relationship, just having a good time. At which point the people I was with said:

"Will you stop the negative crap about this going nowhere, you are only doing it because you are too scared to think it might"

They have a point and I feel a tad saddened. Someone I knew last year said to me that they try very hard to think with their head and struggled with the fact they were being led by their heart. In the end the head won and this in essence, is where it all goes very wrong.

I am thinking with my head because my head knows that if I feel with my heart, it is going to get broken. The true irony is that in shutting off the part of my heart that can truly expose myself to emotions, feelings and ultimately, vulnerability - I am guaranteeing that I shut off he feelings that allow you to get past this stage and feel things on a different level.

It is this deeper level that makes a relationship. Thinking with your head may well protect you from harm but it also means that you can talk yourself out of a relationship quicker than you ever talked yourself in. In simplistic terms, you will never get out of a relationship what you are too afraid to put in, which ultimately means that the relationship with potential can never grow and is doomed to fail.

I have completely empathised with the serial dater recently. You meet someone, it's great, you get swept away with all the possibility in it and then you make that fatal mistake. You use your brain. Your brain takes over emotions and gives you 150 reasons why this will never work. Survival mechanism kicks in, turns off your ability to feel emotions and you walk away because you can now justify that you no longer feel anything emotional for that person and so it becomes a no brainer. Except that it is your brain that has convinced your heart that the risk of pain is simply too high.

And this is the position I find myself. The head is taking over and in extricating myself from emotional risk means that I have entered into something that my head recognises is emotionally risky. Emotions are switching off. Yet deep down, I know that this is an action on my part to avoid pain, because I know that I am capable of feeling it.

For someone that can see self fulfilling prophecy a mile off in others, I appear to be creating my own. I knew when I met the serial dater that he had entered into my life for a reason. I had hoped that it was that I learnt something from it but instead, I appear to be replicating it.

Life sucks.

Pregnant Pause

More strange insight. Having harped on in my head that I find myself in another no win situation, I found myself somewhat dreading any call that might lead to heavy conversation.

Last nights conversation was not heavy. Hum drum normal, which was great until he asked about what was going on with the house, the divorce and that 'ex husband' person. There is clearly concern. There was advice on making sure that I had everything read through before every signature was penned. The other evening there was bewilderment that I should have chosen to spend most of my life with a man that had different morals, ethics and views on life, different expectations, philosophies and heart. I had not really considered any of that but once pondered - had to confess that his bewilderment was nothing compared to mine.

It was a surreal conversation. It was normal, it was what people talk about in a 'relationship'. But we are not in one, we are simply seeing each other. I realised that 'normal' is not somewhere I particularly want to go. The normal in life is frankly so dull or depressing that I would be entirely happy to keep it out of any 'non relationship'. I do not want to talk about ex husband since the days when he does not enter my head are so much better than the days he does. I do not want to talk about mortgages, MOT's or gas bills - I want to lie in bed with someone and talk about philosophy, art and other people.

The poor confused fellow who does not want a relationship is unwittingly stepping into relationship territory and I am panicking because I feel really uncomfortable with making anything normal. It seems that the man I find myself in a no win situation with, is in fact in a no win situation himself.

On a more amusing not, I nipped out to a friends house this evening. She was already in her third gin and tonic when she declared that I was 'glowing'.

"Physical attention' say I, followed by "And why are you glowing'?

It turns out that she had been benefiting form some unexpected and rather enjoyed attention herself. "How lovely" say I - until I spot the pregnancy testing kit.

Which would have been normal had she not been 51 and 6 months into a menopause. Post periods or not - she has a metallic taste, off wine (unheard of) and feels 'odd'. So I refuse to leave until she completes the pregnancy test.

It was quite hysterically funny, she couldn't read the instructions properly since her eye sight is no longer what it should be. Add this to the very strong gin and you end up with a negative test result, aided in part by weeing on the plastic and completely non absorbent end of the test.

She has assured me of her intention to retest in the morning with the assistance of sobriety and daylight.

Serial Dating Disaster

A rather shocking development has occurred. This morning, without any time for rational - it crossed my mind that I had developed a tad of empathy for the Serial Dater.

I feel quite rocked. In fact, there have been a couple of times recently when I have behaved in a similar way. One was last month when the man I have been seeing admitted his utter terror of the fact that I have 4 children and that I was the absolute opposite of the woman he was going to marry. It was a meaningful conversation and we both went to bed happy, until I woke up.

This is when I sent the text that said 'Can't do this. It was nice, you are lovely but not for me. The hidden message was 'Oh God, you are going to hurt me and I need to get out of this fast, before you do' What was really disturbing is that it was uncannily similar to the text I received from the serial dater in response to my 'We need to talk' text.

So this week things took another turn and I find myself in another 'relationship' that is not as easy as it should be, and it was then that I realised that shutting your emotions down and backing out before things get complicated is very much easier. People can cause huge heartache and when they do, the pain can be unbearable. Shutting the door to protect yourself is self protection but in doing so, you shut the door on so many things and only open yourself to a self full filling phropechy of non attachment. Frankly, it all sounded quite appealing this morning.

So I mull over the many ironies in life. The first is that I realise that I do not want to be in a relationship that involves any form of commitment other than monogomy for the period that it lasts. I want no promise or thought of the future, I want no expectations for responsibility of another and at this particular time I want dinner and sleep overs with someone I like.

That is great, except the man I am dating has never been married and seems to fear that every single woman has an expectation of commitment. I really don't, which as the the word commitment appears to make his heart race for all of the wrong reasons, is quite a good thing. Or would be if it were not for the fact that his past experience has taught him otherwise and he is a bolter. The more we have to talk about it, the more my eye is on the door and the more I am thinking 'How fast can I run'

Do not get me wrong, he is so very lovely and I enjoy the time I spend with him. But I also dread the prospect that we could be immersed in deep conversations at any moment. He doesn't want meaningless anything but the minute it has meaning he sweats. If it becomes meaningless then it is not what he wants. Yet again I find myself in a no win situation.

It's really simple. I want to meet up, have fun, conversation, laughing and intimacy. I want to be excited that your text and not fearful of where your head is at. I want you to cook me dinner and then I want to go home feeling good. I want to be happy that you are too busy to call for a couple of days, not worried that you are freaking out about the meaning of it all. I want to feel like a goddess when I see you and go home to my domestic hell in peace. Do I want marriage or commitment? No because the minute you see someone every day, all of those things will evaporate.

I think I may be a man and all the men I meet are in fact, big girls. I also realised this week that men say the total opposite of what they mean. Serial Dater used to say 'I am really worried that you are going to hurt me. Roughly translated this meant "I shall screw with your head and once I am there I shall rip your soul to shreds'

This man keeps saying "I am worried I am going to hurt you" What that really means is "I am really worried that you are going to hurt me" Which I might. I wouldn't do it on purpose, nor with malice but since I have no idea what the future holds, I have no ability to make promises.

So I am now pondering the reality that I am attracted to emotionally unavailable men. So I googled and discovered that one of the reasons you can be attracted to such men is that in fact, you are an emotionally unavailable women. Woman that do not believe that love is all that it is cracked up to be, that expect disappointment and rubbish cannot be committed to a worthwhile deep and loving relationship since they do not believe they exist. In dating unemotionally available men, they prove it. I can be committed, and frankly after sticking with an emotionally disconnected man for all of my adult life, I think I should have been.

So I almost bolted again today. Perhaps I am attracted to emotionally damaged men because I am in fact as emotionally damaged myself. Perhaps the reason I understand them is because I relate to the feeling of things that seem good will never work because they 'never do'.

I don't want completely meaningless, I do want emotion and tenderness but commitment, marriage and children? When I say that I have no expectations or demands I really don't but mainly because I do not want any placed on me.

I was on the verge of a full scale bolt today but the sheer horror that I could replicate the behaviour of someone that chose to cause pain made me stop. So I may get hurt and so may he - but we may have fun and we may still like each other tomorrow.

Today, my inner man grew some balls.

Drawing the Line

I wonder if it is scientifically provable that bikini lines grow quicker when you are dating. There must be a hormone thing going on. Hormones go crazy and follicles that have lain dormant suddenly over react. Perhaps it is natures way of ensuring that you maintain everything to perfection to ensure furthercreation of the human race. Lets hope that bit doesn't work.

I once noted that transatlantic travel makes your eyebrows grow quicker.

I am never having sex on an aeroplane. I get off in New York looking like prehistoric man

Doughnut Dating

I appear to have met my worse case scenario. Ticking all the boxes of men that I will not date, I find it somewhat alarming how much I am beginning to like him. When you are a forty something divorcee (or about to be) with 4 children, one of the worst case scenarios has to be a man in his 40's with no children. If you are single man in his 40's that has no children and yet wants them - the absolute worse case scenario is a nearly divorced woman in her 40's with 4 children.

And this is exactly the situation I find myself in. Still dating a man with lots of children didn't guarantee a rational being and marrying a man and having four children did not guarantee great fatherhood, so what do I know. Life hasn't gone according to plan so far so I am taking the open minded approach. He is taking the lets thinks about this carefully but I really don't know what to think approach.

All I can say on the matter is that staying with an attractive man and not crossing a line is rather like eating a doughnut but not being allowed to lick your lips.

Frozen in time

I have a task to convert tiffs to jpegs. Dull but necessary. Still, 4 months ago I didn't know what a tiff was. There were lots of things I didn't know months ago and now I do. Life is simply like that, one small lesson after another, one huge jigsaw.

So instead of Jpegs and tiffs, I lie in bed, mulling.

I woke this morning so tired, that I walked sideways into the wall and bashed my face. Last day of term and so I looked for the cards I had written to the teachers. I looked in the fridge. It didn't bode well for the day ahead.

In fact, in the short period that I could stay awake, I managed to rewrite one press release to appear as if it had been specifically written for tall people, for male people and for people that had a blank canvas. I am still waiting for the clients response on my copy line for the gay market. Pretty nifty work I thought, until the whole thing was scuppered by intermittent internet. Technology was never my forte, that was always the art of the tenuous link.

I had a call from my work guru today. A formidable business woman with the softest heart, she called to say that she had won another pitch. She hadn't really expected to since the woman she was pitching to, was intimidating. Apparently, she stares directly at you, completely expressionless. It turns out that this is not intimidation but the result of too much Botox. She has no expression because her face is frozen.

Having recovered from the hysterics I found myself with, it got me thinking. The way we present to others is easily misconstrued and all too frequently we are unaware of the impact on others. A bit like the business meeting I attended in which I realised that my silence was taken for quiet authority and made me the focus of the answers. The other person could have no idea that I was silent simply because I had absolutely nothing to say.

So in my skill of the tenuous link, it got me mulling on parts of the conversation that took place

last night. We all go through life making an impact, good or bad on others and likewise, people make an impact on you. Acknowledging that for what ever reason, someone else see's something in you that was good, should never be a hard thing, it should never be something that you recoil from. If you do, there is something that has gone very wrong.

One of the things that I have enjoyed most about being single, is the freedom of thought and of choice, unhindered by misplaced guilt. Next month I am taking the children camping. A trip with friends and with my ex-blind date and his children. This man is an important part of my life. I met him, liked him but do not want a relationship with him. We are adults, we like each other, care about each other and I feel priveledged to have him in my life.

What I could never do is dismiss him as a person simply because his feelings for me did not match mine for him. On a completely superficial level, I feel honoured that he cares and feel equally priveledged that anyone shoud care, even if the feelings were not reciprocated.

So this is the perplexity. If I tell someone that I care, or cared about them - it would be reasonable to assume that they should not have some form of panic attack. It doesn't make sense. If I told He who cannot be mentioned' that I cared about him, it would be reasonable to expect him to panic - since he would not be sure of my motives and deep down he would know that the world must be about to end. However, if I told him that I had cared about him, even he would get that it means nothing more than the statement it is. And he gets very little.

I knew someone once that had been abused as a child. In fact, 'he should not be mentioned' had an extremely emotionally abusive childhood and the effect of that is palpable in the behaviour he has as an adult. The thing about the person I knew, is that they thought they are so good at hiding it. They weren't. I always thought that the saddest thing about this person was that the one thing they craved most was love. It was also the one thing that terrified.

It didn't matter who tried, they were always pushed away. Abusive childhoods come in all shapes and sizes and the scars, if you allow - it can define your entire life. This friend was sexually abused. She could do the relationship, until the sex. This is the point she was numb, the point she recoiled and this is the point that the relationship was on it's way out. Only it was never her, always another reason and always about the other person. It was never the reality, never that she had an issue with intimacy. One that was not her fault, but in not facing it - she was allowing to control her life.

The hardest thing about caring, the trickiest task as a friend, is in allowing them the freedom to think that they are just fine. When you really do care, you have to go along with the pretence, because sometimes people simply cannot face the past.

And until they do, there is no future.

For the rest of us mere mortals, when someone saw something in you that they considered good, don't acknowledge that by being unkind. That, is an issue

Mr Big shrinks

I did something today that I needed to do along time ago.

I sought clarity. I didn't gain it in any form of true honesty, but I gained it in the way I expected.

Defensiveness means people are too fearful of putting themselves on the line. True honesty is when you can let the barriers down and true honesty is something rarely seen in anyone.

Frankly, partial honesty would be a start. In seeking clarity this evening, I am not entirely sure what I expected to achieve from it and yet I gained a lot. What I really gained was the knowledge that sometimes people, too afraid of their own honesty, will turn things around in a bid to avoid answering things they are not comfortable with. Before you realise it, their issue becomes your issue and sadly, they can believe this to be the truth.

If there is one thing that I am renown, is that I will be entirely honest about my view on you. If I think you are an arrogant arse - I will tell you. If I think you are an arrogant arse that is an arrogant arse because your mother refused to give you ice-cream as a child, I will tell you that too.

What I will never do is tell everyone else that you are an arrogant arse and smile sweetly to your face. It would simply never happen.

Another thing I learnt tonight is that people invairably have hidden agendas. I met someone recently who was so addicted to another person that it bordered on a clinical obsession. A long discussion had ensued where I had voiced the opinion that I simply did not believe that another was as simple, or as hard as appeared on the surface. My experience had not been a parallel and I couldn't agree that it. It clearly didn't go down well as the next evening I was blanked in the street. It would appear that the translation of this conversation was very different.

This, I find fascinating. Someone so addicted that they have befriended as a way of staying close. Someone so alarmed by another having shared some level of closeness that they would feel the need to manipulate a conversation to reflect badly. And someone else, seemingly naive to friendship and of female manipulation, would need to believe something in order to justify their own behaviour. It seems that all have a hidden agenda.

What I realised tonight is that sometimes people are stuck at a certain point. They may well never get past it but their need to deny it, to make behaviour appear acceptable, means they have to twist and turn and dump the blame on someone else's door.

The only clarity that I gained tonight was the one that I already knew. Clarity is not the same as honesty and in a sense, nor does it need to be. Emotional intelligence is of higher value than cognitive intelligence. Fear protects you from absolutely nothing. An ability to be honest is not a weakness, an inability to be honest is.

I also learnt that rumour is something you hear and you believe the bits that you fear most in yourself. If there was a rumour about you with no credence to it, it would be water off a ducks back. If you know it to be true and reflects badly. . . . Ouch.

Reputation is something that you earn from behaviour. Reputation never comes from one rumour. It comes from the experience of others or a multitude of the same rumour.

Question rumour and learn from reputation.

I cannot choose what people believe but I can choose reputation. Sometimes people are so stuck in their behaviour that they can be oblivious to reputation. Sometimes when people try so hard to appear big, it makes them appear really small.

Deflection, defensiveness and inability to be open. What I saw this evening wasn't a kind person, nor was it a person lacking arrogance and no matter how much I believe that deep down is another person, this is the side that reputation is built on. And yet it was their ability to misjudge me that I was more fascinated by.

I was hoping that tonight that I would gain enough clarity to be able to be angry. I failed.

I felt pity.

Such a shame

all this itching....

When I was a little girl, I picked at scabs. I couldn't help it, the minute they started to heal, I would start to lift the edge to see how far I could get before the pain or ickiness was too much. Then it would heal and I would do the same thing all over. I suspect that nothing has really changed.

Sometimes things cause me pain and I leave them alone. Then, after a while when I realise that there is still the potential for pain, I go back for a bit more. It appears that unless something has completely healed and dropped off, I have a compulsion to route around to make it all last a little longer.

I have also started to recognise some other things. I am acutely over sensitive. When I feel over sensitive, I feel vulnerable and when that happens, large heavy doors of defence come slamming down and this is the point people assume that I am an emotional hard arse.

And I can be. Shutting out vulnerability is at times, a whole heap simpler than experiencing it. If I think someone is about to hurt me, my inner male appears as if by magic and I have the emotional responses of someone with a large degree of testosterone pumping around their body.

And this has happened several times this week. I am the emotional hard arse that is not fazed by anything or bothered by anyone. Except it is not entirely true. I am the emotional hard arse because if I had to put my sense of intuition on the line - someone would no doubt stamp hard on it - so I don't.

There is no question that I am strong. I can deal with most things, but I struggle with honesty and pretence. I struggle with people that pretend everything is okay when it clearly isn't. I struggle with people that cannot look you in the face, I struggle with people that suck you in and spit you out, I struggle with people that appear genuine and are not really and those that say one thing but who present body language that say's another.

I do not struggle with clarity and yet it seems one of the hardest things to obtain. What I struggle with most - is those that are as defensive as me. If you can get past the defensiveness, you get to the loyalty, if you don't - you get the emotional hard arse.

I thought last year, that I had met my match and I think I did. I had truly believed that they had been too good for me. They never were. But by the time I realised it, they had already started messing with my head. This is the point that the inner man started kicking in. I may well have met my match and he certainly had, but at this juncture of his life - he wasn't ready to get off the pedestal he needs to be on and I wasn't someone that would keep him on it.

Yet there was something there that left me vulnerable. There is no sense, no logic and it defied all reason. For someone with a long history of being an emotional hard arse, it truly irkes that I cannot make sense of my emotions being out of line with my logic.

Perhaps I met someone as defensive as me, perhaps a genuine emotional hard arse. Perhaps I met someone who is so wrapped in spin that he no longer has a real sense of self. Perhaps I my long standing guidance by intuition overrides logic. Perhaps I never heard honesty.

What has messed with my mind is the intuition being diametrically opposed to fact and this is what I need to understand. So rocked by the spiral of mixed messages and emotions, that my barriers are up and I am risking scaring everyone away with my extremely hard arse.Either way, there is something that reminds me of my rather unhealthy habit of picking at wounds as a child.

And yet I would rather die than voice that. My reputation and my defences depend on it.

Perhaps PR & Marketing is the only career for those that talk utter bull. In which case, I shall be very successful.

Maintaining standards

I spoke with the solicitor today.

Following a discussion with he who cannot be mentioned, in which I had told him that despite legal advice to the opposite - I would concede a clean break in exchange for securing the house. He would retain his house, his company, his pensions, assets etc and protect his future earnings. Since he apparently has none at he moment and no children to hinder his hours - it is a good deal.

So I was quite surprised by contact from his solicitors stating that I would consider a total clean break, one in which he retains all of the above and saves him from a necessity of providing any child maintenance at all, ever.

I think, perhaps, that the entire universe has gone quite insane. Thank god there are judges. There is not a judge in the country that will agree to a man who has his own company, owns a house, has an income, has capacity to earn - to being able to walk away from any need to provide money to someone else, in enabling them to raise said mans children

I suspect a full moon must be imminent.

Hardcore View

'Everyone looks at Pornography'

"Perhaps they do, but not everyone downloads hardcore porn,' Say I

'Well' says the other person

'Someone said to me recently that if you removed all the porn from the Internet, you would be left with one page that says - Where has all the porn gone'?

I was stumped by the statement. More so that anyone could consider this to be a reasonable claim to make, particularly as none of the pages on my computer hard drive have any pornography on them. So I google 'Where has all the pornography gone'? and there are 5,410,000 pages answering that query. I cannot validate the content, since I had no desire to open them. It does blow the 'normal' theory a little out of the water.

I do not take a puritanical stance on pornography. What ever floats your boat, it is not my place to judge but there are levels in which I see it as an issue. Pornography used in a relationship is an entirely personal thing. Pornography used in a relationship where only one person is being made aware of it, represents a potential issue. Hardcore porn would be a major issue.

A long time ago, I turned up at the office of he who cannot be mentioned proffering spontaneous administration duties. Whilst it appeared not to be an issue at the time, there was an extended period of sulking after. Apparently I am a selfish person since I was only offering what I wanted myself. I couldn't disagree, since I couldn't understand why I would offer anything I didn't want.

Even more importantly, why would you want something someone was not willing to give? Which is where I have the issue with pornography used as a means of avoiding dealing with real life. Real life means that people feel crap, they feel snubbed or they feel inadequate or rejected. The answer to any of these issues is opening your mouth and not the dodgy emails in your inbox.

When someone uses pornography as a way of avoiding intimacy they achieve one of my favourite terms 'the self fulfilling prophecy.' You use porn to avoid intimacy and then you have difficulty creating intimacy since you are using the unreal world of pornography.

I am, I think - fairly broad minded. The confines of a relationship make it fairly safe to experience whatever you want, as long as you feel safe to do so. Yet this only works within a good relationship, Fulfilling someone else fantasy is perfectly fine if it is simply a fantasy. When one partner has started seeing pornography as an escape route to real life and objectifies it to a level where women are willing and able to do whatever you want without question, with a lot of grunting and the kind of facial expressions normally associated with severe oxygen deficiency, It becomes not fine. When one partner becomes aware that the real world only exists in the fantasy one and feels obliged to behave in a way that excludes intimacy, it creates humiliation. It's a high price to pay for someone else's issue.

The risk for those with a thing about hardcore porn, is the inability to separate real from some fairly strong viewing. Watch enough of the stuff and it is fairly likely that you will become deadened to reality. Good sex is about intimacy, it's about safety, closeness, being comfortable and being free to experience whatever you feel comfortable with. Good sex is about a creating a relationship where you can be one thing one day and another a next. Good relationships mean that you can have intimate loving sex or a quickie in the larder. Good sex is not about needing to pretend you are something you are not to enable someone else to enjoy what is on offer.

I profoundly hope that I never get to the stage where I do not feel I can turn up at someone else's office mid way through the day but they had be pretty damn comfortable with the fact that I am doing it because I want to.

Drinking partners and dementia

A friend called this afternoon to find out what I had thought of Monday night.

'What happened on Monday night' Said I

'You met that man for a drink' She said

She pointed out that since it was already Weds and I had forgotten Monday, that this was unlikely to go any further. Since I had forgotten I had gone, I had given no thought to going again.

As a guide for dating, it's a good one

A Defensive Move

One of the things that I have always found moderately disconcerting about myself, is my ability to run 100 things through my head at the same time as having a conversation.

I went out tonight with close friend and we discussed everything. At the same time as discussing everything I ran several things through my head simultaneously. The first was the Mother-in-law/husband thing. The conclusion I reached was that normality is relative. Their level of normality is so far removed from mine, and that of most people - that there is no chance of them ever seeing their behaviour is a different way, since the way they behave is entirely normal. To them.

The other thought I had was that the Divorce and upcoming court case is the death knell for eldest child and fatherly relationship. I think there is a sad certainty that since his father appears blinded by the true cost of all of this, the only thing he will gain is the absolute certainty that he will lose his son for good. Fortunately I am not in the position myself but should I ever have to choose between money and my children's respect well frankly, it would be a non brainer. I feel much the same about my own self respect.

On another note. Ex blind date has told me (and he is not the first) that I have the emotional responses of a man. Having read some of his texts from women, I was genuinely shocked at how girly some of them where. Apparently, my shock is misplaced since I am, as he says 'not like most women'.

I received a text the other day from a man who suggested we meet for a drink. I was unable reply for hours since I could not find the right words. If I wrote that would be great, or 'that would be lovely' he may think I was keen. I was perplexed, not for want of game playing but purely because I didn't know if I wanted to go or not. Nice legs, very good thighs but a man that didn't appear to get me and in my mind: if you don't get me, you won't get me.

So I deliberated all day and in the end wrote 'On the drink front -that's fine' Granted not girly but I am past any stage where I feel any need to try and impress anyone with something I am not. So I met him, I had a good evening but at the end of it, he made a couple of assumptions that got my back up and that was it, door shut.

I though about it and realised something else. Shutting the door on something is about me being defensive. People can make me cry with ease and yet they think that I am the last person to have this response. Those that get to see me do it more than once are few and far between. Last night hook up thought he should tell me that I was clearly very strong and he had heard I was pretty feisty.

I can be strong, I can be feisty but as I learnt this year, I am also very susceptible to being very hurt and it is not somewhere I want to revisit. Getting to know someone is no doubt about them getting to know that you are not quite as the world assumes that you are. This is the point that they can trample all over you. The minute people feel they can make personal assumptions about me, I want to cry and this is the moment that I turn into an emotional hard arse.

So for the man that thought I was strong and feisty, the door is shut.

The joy of work

I can hardly bare the excitement.

I have calculated the benefit of working full time. Factor in the increase in income and the decrease in tax credits and it is a staggering........£56.00 a month.

I am so excited and simply cannot decide how to spend it. Or I was until I added the extra childcare I need and worked out that in fact., I am worse off.

On a positive note, it can only improve

The true cost of parenting

A horrid few days.

After a 18 months of abuse, he that should not be mentioned emails to ask if I need any help with childcare in the holidays. With only 3 weeks until the next court date, suspicion is aroused. Apparently he is no longer angry. Since any increase in contact has previously led to a decrease in income, I remain sceptical.

Having agreed that he would not want his children to be raised in Trowbridge, he then went on to tell me all of he reasons why his children should be raised in Trowbridge. Non of those reasons were for the benefit of the children.

Then I receive an email from his parents. An email in which they were utterly horrid about their eldest Grandparent. Apparently, adding to the acrimony, telling a child you will take sides and that you loathe his Mother is all perfectly acceptable as long as you send gifts. When said child has no wish to accept the gifts on the basis that the behaviour was such that should not warrant being condoned - then you are free to send an email stating that this child is selfish, spiteful, ignorant and self centred.

So I send an email back stating that I am glad that they feel comfortable behaving in such an unkind manner, but their need to be so mean about their Grandson said more about them than it ever could about him. The response back..... I need some form of therapy.

And perhaps they are right. But the difference is that if I thought I needed counselling, I would get it. In fact, since having had to come to terms with what really went on with this marriage - I did have therapy. Far more dangerous are those that think they are beyond any need.

So I range he who should not be mentioned, who considered there was nothing really wrong with his parents latest correspondence and since he didn't write it - it had nothing to do with him. It appears that he believes that since my own family and one of his, have wisely and maturely taken the course of not putting the children in the middle of this, they must be ****** saints.

They will be delighted. My father spent most of my childhood claiming he was in fact, God.

And perhaps I thought so too. I certainly placed him on his very own pedestal. One that he fell off for a long period until I accepted that he was in fact human. That is the thing about parenthood, we all stuff up and we all make mistakes but surely the mark of a good parent is one that can accept those imperfect moves and acknowledge them. When it comes to my own offspring, I refuse to sort every little thing for them, but when it comes to protecting them emotionally then you had better be prepared for a long fight.

For a 15 year old to witness a broken home is not a great thing. I fear far worse than of a younger age. A pinnacle and confusing period of your life and one that can probably leave a bigger impact than at any other time. Suddenly your life is turned upside down. Your standard of living drops, you have no stability since you don't know if you are staying in your home. Too stubborn to articulate, too proud to acknowledge fear and hurt, then it is down to the adults around to be in tune with what is really going on. For those adults that cannot acknowledge this, they may as well stamp on his head.

For any child that remains this angry or this stubborn has an issue and one that is completely understandable. What is not, are the actions of anyone that adds to it. For Grandparents to feel they have the right or desire to write words that can only cause hurt and for a Father that fails to acknowledge any responsibility in contributing to a situation where one child has felt he had to make such a stand that he refuses contact with both.

Sometimes Divorce is necessary. The acrimony, the extended damage to children and using property and money to try and exert power over another is not. It is clear that there are some that will fight for everything they can get at the cost of everyone else.

Maybe they will get what they want, but in doing so will risk losing the things that make life what it is. Friendship comes from giving, Love comes from giving, respect comes from giving, integrity from within.

All cost nothing and all are priceless. When you can look someone in the eye, you know you are being genuine.

So the children's future is dependent on me to provide it and a third party to decide what is best for them. It should be the parents but given the current situation, this has to be a better option

I remain sceptical.

A steady stream....

Many years ago, after a night of copious alcohol, a very good friend of mine mistook me for a lamppost and wee'd on me. Fortunately, I had consumed a comparable amount and thought it no more than a mental aberration. Until I woke up in the morning.

I had thought it was the only time in my life that I would be mistaken for council furnishing but it appears I was incorrect.

One of the small offspring has been unsettled for a period. Irregular night terrors, regular night time wanderings that invariably end in my bed, overly vocal in declaring undying love and a propensity to declare adoration at the drop of a hat. There are conversations that have been had, tucked up in bed with a stuffed kangaroo that have made the reasons understandable, but none I thought that would lead to a second incantation as a lamp post.

I was asked recently if people get married after they are divorced. Having assured him that I was in no rush to consider such venture, small child had proceeded to state that when Daddy gets better, perhaps we may remarry. Somewhat confused at the better part of the statement, it became clear when he stated that Daddy may get 'Better at being nice to you'

And therein lies one of the route causes. Children are not stupid, the observe and then they come up with their own conclusion. Months of watching Daddy not be able to be civil in response to any verbal contact, Daddy refusing all eye contact and Daddy walking behind Mummy without speaking on the few unfortunate occasions that we have shared tarmac. Since their friends have questioned the normality of the situation - you can magnify that thought process by about one thousand.

So the unsettled nights have been no surprise and the fact that they have continues even less surprising. Finding small distraught child crying on the top of the stairs 4 hours after he went to bed was not necessarily a surprise. What I didn't anticipate was the lamppost. As I walked up the stairs, I did take note of a strange sensation on my stomach, I noted it even more as it continued down my body. By the time we were at mid thigh level, I realised that I was in fact being urinated on.

Great. I am a lamppost.

WHEN THE BALANCE IS IN MY FAVOUR

I have a love hate relationship with Birthdays. I say that they don't bother me and then they leave me feeling flat. It is not an age thing in the slightest, I have never associated a single day as a point that defines my mortality. Besides, the older I get, the happier I feel and the more sorted my mind becomes. Despite this, I still associate it with a time of expectation that invariably fails to deliver. The best protection has always been to expect nothing.

Perhaps it is not this at all. The minute that I am told that something is the way it is, or should be the way it will be, I want to challenge it. Like booking a a taxi for a night out will guarantee a worthless evening. Preparing for a worthless evening and driving the car, is normally sufficient to guarantee a fantastic night.

So tonight I was proved wrong. Stage one birthday was spent consuming too much Vodka and ended with in depth conversation into the early hour with ex blind dates chum and another founding member of the 'Single people at Sunday Lunch Club. It also ended with the sobering realisation that my car was in a part of Wiltshire which I was not.

Apparently 'proper' birthday celebration was delayed until the weekend for the benefit of the boys, who are quite partial to birthday celebration and particularly ones in which cake is involved.

I have said it numerous times, but I feel immeasurably privileged with friends. With all the rubbish being thrown my way in terms of Divorce and trying to financially manage 4 children - I fear that I would be in a very different place without my army of buddies. No matter that sometimes I feel that I am not dealing with things as well as I might - there is always someone that gives me a hug, or simply demands an explanation if there is anything less than a spring in my step. Tonight, when I had a moment of somewhat subdued demeana, rarely witnessed by others - one of the mafia congratulated me. Apparently, so used to me being positive and full of determination, they all breath a sigh of relief when I am quiet, since it means that I am relaxed enough to be myself. Fair point. A word of warning though, if I am quiet, have a set jaw and am staring at you directly - it could be time for you to be alarmed.

So birthday stage 2 and its perfect execution. Child 2 makes an enormous chocolate cake. Admittedly it takes two hours to clear up the kitchen but it was a fabulous offering. The evening has been carefully orchestrated and I am not allowed a part, except attendance. At 7pm, someone turns up to put my children in the bath. I am then ordered the same. A scented candle lit in preparation and as lie amidst the bubbles, a knock on the door and a glass of chilled wine appears by the side of the bath.

By the time I appear, there are others and an accompanying abundance of food. Child 2 has found lights for the chair, the table is laid and flowers and tea lights have arrived. I have not lifted a finger. Sometimes, with the divorce, the pittance of maintenance and It's determination to force a sale, I wonder what I could possibly have done to deserve the way he has behaved towards us. Yet In balance, I wonder what I have done to deserve tremendous friends. Who knows, perhaps some form of balance.

It is the perfect birthday celebration: out of my control, perfect children, perfect friends and a perfect evening.

Perfect xx

A Sporting Chance

Sometimes I look at the boys and feel overwhelming pride. Sports Day is one such time. Not because they can kick arse on the track, nor can they throw further and harder than any one else but simply because they are unbearably cute.

Every year I get to Sports Day a few minutes late. Every year I watch them scanning the sea of faces to make sure that I am there. Every year they stand there grinning and waving so much that they almost miss their place. Every year I look at these scrawny creatures with their innocent happy faces and want to eat them. By the time they get home they are tired, bad tempered and I want to jump on their head.

Not this year though. Yesterday was my birthday and they spent it with he that is best not mentioned. Today they came home from Sports Day tired, hot and secretive. They disappear for long periods, reappearing once in a while asking for another piece of fruit. Since hunger is a common sensation after school and particularly so on a day of great physical exertion, it was of little surprise.

And then they both crept in, bearing a birthday gift of fruitt salad with homegrown strawberries and the last of a much favourite melon, all garnished with flowers.

Now I really want to eat them. If they retain any part of their ability to love and to be loved, then stand a sporting chance of happiness as an adult. And the makings of what makes a real man.
X

The cold front

Tonight was a different kind of night. One of those ones where everything should be right, but it just isn't.

I compartmentalise things. Lots of people do but most people are capable of doing so long before things are 'sorted'. There are things that need sorting things in my head is just one of the very complicated things that makes me very complicated.

So in an exceptionally brave, uncharacteristically 'lets deal with this' I tried to deal with something that was never dealt with.

In dealing with things that are not dealt with, you have to take a risk. I am on the whole a spontaneous risk taker. I have a focus of how I am going to handle things and I stick to it. This invariably involves not appearing vulnerable and never exposing that someone has the ability to hurt you. Occasionally spontaneity takes over and I feel the need to expose the one thing that terrifies me most — me.

So tonight, after the night that should be right but wasn't, a moment of spontaneity took over and I decided that things I hadn't fully sorted, needed sorting.

The one thing I never allow for is that my moments rarely coincide with anyone else. I met a brick wall, a block of ice, and it upset me to a level that I thought I was incapable of.

Not only had I risked showing that my air of nothing getting to me, was possibly a front. I had to face the other thing that I fear most - That some people are just cruel. They may not be underneath but really, does underneath matter that much when other people have to fight so hard to get to the underneath? Whether there are issue that cause it or not, there is no necessity in life to be cruel to other people. None.

So it was an odd evening and one that ended badly. I am staggeringly upset.Upset because no matter those around me that say I should be more open to being vulnerable, more willing to be honest, they are making their assumptions on their own experience of dealing with peoople capable of being honest.

Mine is not so great. Being honest, trying to deal with stuff in my head is not all that it is cracked up to be.

When being me isn't me

An interesting night and one sure to cause much reflection.

I was set up. Spontanious BBQ, requested early attendance to assist friend, who turns out to be single. I am touched, initially not overly delighted but in fact, it was a lovely thoughtful gesture and it wasn't a man that was weird, short, ugly or old.

In fact, as a hard core runner and cyclist - he was a man in good shape and as the evening progressed, it was clear that there was potential for something, not sure what but definately something.

However, he is a good looking, man partly transformed from his military history but burdened by family duty which frankly, makes him very............traditional.

Traditional is not necessarily good, traditional can step into old fashioned, which can step into narrow minded. Narrow minded is never good. Family duty is admirable but to the level this man is bound, probably a curse. Bound by tradition and responsibility is an unlikely combination to appeal long term. I fear Responsibility is drawn of duty and not the same as being driven - which is far sexier. I suspect that the reality is that I am simply too challenging for a man like this and in fact I have met another cute man that stands zero chance of ever understanding me.

Now I have an issue. Nice man, nice body - both something I could benefit from for a short period and not something likely for a long term.

In some senses, this is all great - I am not sure I want a long term. On another level it raises issues for me, such as getting involved with someone you have no intention of anything serious occuring, is so far removed from the me that is currently me that I am quite perplexed.

Me being me is not a moral judgement, it never has been. It is just very me.

Last night made me question whether I should drop the old me completely and just start having fun. He did have nice legs and so I feel it sensible to review my thought process.

It also taught me that I was right about other things. Gut instinct and sexual attraction are not mutially exclusive. Having one without the other is just different.

Sometimes I think I think too much

Eyeball table tennis. Game Suspended

In between vodka and eyebrow wax there was an opportunity for eyeball table tennis. Having considered that the scope for attractive and possible was fairly limited in local region, I was surely delighted.

And then I decided that I simply could not be bothered.

Yours liberated

X

In face of revelations

Sometimes, life is just one revelation after another. Sometimes you think you have faced all of the revelations that you could possibly face in a lifetime.

Sometimes, just as you believe that, you are faced with another.

Then you realise that the true test of being a woman is pulling yourself together and telling yourself that no matter what else is thrown your way - you will simply just deal with it, since there are only two choices: Deal with it or throw the towel in.

I decided on a stiff Vodka and an eyebrow wax.

Bring it on, I can face anything.

A new religion

Thank you to the person that sent this. Brilliant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atBg9zLI2bA

Penis Envy

I went back to work on Saturday. Whilst working on Sunday I got a message to say that they would contact me about return to work training. After I had returned to work. Enough said.

Having to work to pay all the bills and support the children is turning into an eye opener. Not the working, that is not an issue and really, being in control of my own life is always going to be better than someone else controlling it, but in terms of managing time and the effect on the children.

I worked all week. I am having to work 4x the amount I should because I am working in an area that I know little about. Working for yourself means that a lot of the time you are working, you are not actually earning any money at all. The days are shorter because of the children and so that doubles the time. One day without children is like two days with. Without children, you can start early and finish late. With children and you are running from task to task and never really feeling as if you have achieved anything.

So this week was full on. Tuesday, with the added requirement of attending some kind of group meeting, I left the house at 8.30 and got home at midnight. Weds, I left at 8.30 and got home at 7pm. The rest of the week were just school hour days, and I then worked Saturday and Sunday. Somehow I managed to get some food shopping and finally got the washing done. I am not sure how and I think I saw the children but I cannot actually remember when.

Last week was their first holiday in childcare, the novelty of which ran thin fairly rapidly. They are used to holidays where they get to lie in, where they get to go out and generally we all sigh with collective relief to have a break from the hell that is the school week. No more - from now on they will get holidays in childcare. I suspect they will not be overjoyed and frankly, I missed them and they missed being at home.

One of the small ones is still clingy and this is not helping. Tummy ache on the phone on Saturday and 2 episodes of night terrors all ready and it's only 11pm. Pile it on. I have a guaranteed 48hours of trying behaviour before some kind of normality returns.

It is times like this week that I feel I might be inclined toward penis envy. I used to think it was strange that it was on the whole, an assumption that women were the ones to be the resident parent. I could understand that from my experience they were the ones that were closer to their children and more in tune with their needs but I had a mental block with the assumption.

If I meet a non resident father that says he works hard in the week, I may be forced to punch him. If you think working all week is hard, you should try doing it whilst looking after 4 children. Oh and add alternate weekends on to the list too. I think I have finally worked out why so many men are so keen to walk away from responsibility, because the real responsibility is just plain hard and for some, just too hard. Perhaps this is the test of a real man.

And on another aggrieved note. It is round one in court this week. Aggrieved because it all such a waste of money. I originally requested that round one was an FDR, which is a way in which you go with the intention of trying to come up with agreement that avoids all the extra court dates. The opposing side agreed, except they didn't actually answer any questions.

You cannot go into an FDR without all the information. So it was changed back to a first directions appointment. The judge resides, you burn money at a barrister and all that is going to happen is that the judge will decide which bits of paper really are required and tells you to go away and find them.

Having seen the other sides Form E, there were a few questions asked. Actually, having read the form E - there were a few things that I had to read and reread in incredulity. Some of the things on left me so stunned that I had to laugh hysterically, for some time. So staggering that I have decided to save it all for prosperity. If people can actually convince themselves the truth in untruths, then the world is indeed a scary place and I fear for my children.

So fundamentally, you only go to an FDA because one or both of you is not being open and honest and providing all the information they have been asked to. What you are doing is spending thousands on something that could have been done for nothing. This is what I call true insanity.

On the plus side, this is not my insanity and I know that as soon as this protracted, money burning episode of my life is over, I can actually get on with my life.

Children are more important than money ever could be.

Now that is perspective.

By the hair on my head

I finally finished the divorce paperwork and went to bed at 5am. I lay there getting increasingly more irritated at the light shining through the stained glass panel in the wall, until I realised that it was not a light but in fact, the next day. I gave up after an hour.

I think that courts should allow extra time for resident parents. Half term, working and 4 children make mundane issues like paperwork a real challenge and so they get left to the last moment - at which point they cease to become mundane and become more of a crisis situation.

I detest the fact that enormous sums of money are being thrown at a situation that could so easily have been catered for by communication. Simply answering questions would have saved thousands. However, I concede that part of the reason for divorce is a marriage that lacked communication. Oh and infidelity, but even that kind of dishonourable behaviour and dishonesty, fundamentally has its routes in a lacking of communication skill.

I am simply exhausted.

For some foolish reason I decided to tint my hair in the midst of this. I forgot I had decided to do it and left it on for an hour. The end result is alarming. All I need to complete the look is to over pluck my eyebrows and wear gold earrings. Slap on a tad more take tan and I would pass for anyone working at the local funfair.

I am not entirely sure why I thought it would be a good idea to alter the colour in the first place, not only do I look slightly rough but it has the texture of an electrocuted skunk.

Looking hot.

Divorced from reality

It is a regular occurrence in this blog that I should question why people cannot look me in the eye.

I have just read the divorce paper work.

I have the answer.

Tenuous links

When you are as mouthy as me then writing 250 words on anything is a huge challenge. More of an extended twitter than an article. Yet I achieved it.

250 words on mens propensity to wee on the side of the road, all tied in nicely with water conservation measures for the South East. The art of the tenuous link - one of the few abilities that I excel at.

It's journalism - but not as you know it.

It has got me thinking. My self esteem declined steadily in the last few years unhappiness and writing took the hardest hit. I fear I may be some time off a return but I am beginning to get the familiar niggle of wanting to scribble.

I am not sure there are many markets for pieces on male scenting on roadside but life is full of strange unexpected occurance.

Driving Ambition

I am supposed to be writing a sample column on motoring. My mind is blank. Apparently, Quentin Wilson is writing his sample to and for free. Thanks to his generosity, the increase in budget means that I am getting paid for mine.

He is no fool that Quentin. He can happily offer his wise words for free since he is unlikely to get turned away. I am happy to take the money on the basis that should I continue with my mental blank - it could be the last funding I see for some time.

Women and motoring........................nope, nothing.

A worm in the head

I am having to draw a reluctant and decisive line under something.

For some time I have been involved in a round of mind games. A series so subtle that I have had to question whether I may in fact be going insane. I know I am not. I have had to acknowledge that in this bat and ball mind game, I have enjoyed it. It has been titillating, exciting, mentally challenging and thought consuming. So very few can challenge me in such a way that I remain hooked - never to be beaten by the latest subtlety, constantly pitting my instinct against my imagination.

I like it. I like the ability in this person to keep me rapt. Its like cerebral sex and like good sex - it is equally addictive. Except I don't want this from this person, I want more and I always did.

I finally got it the other day. This is the bit this person is good at and equally I can hold my own, but I can do the next bit too and they can't. I always did want the next bit and all I have done in becoming rapt by the mind games - is guarantee that the next step could never be attained.

Mental challenge, chase and titillation is safe sex in the extreme. Since you cannot put your finger on it and dare not say it aloud then there is no risk. No blatant emotions on the line, nothing to get called up on, nothing concrete that could have accusation or demand attached to it. What I achieved is a few weeks of mental foreplay and whilst in ways that has been what I like -it is not healthy or good for me.

If there is one thing I have always been certain of is that you are unlikely to meet anyone quite like me. Good or bad, I know I am not any ones idea of predictably female. I can live with this. For all the minus's attached to that, there are a hundred pluses.

I know that my moral gauge is higher than most and if you fail to reach it, there is nothing that you will ever do that will make me lower mine. If you lack integrity then mine will not be dipping to get in line. If you want me to react like a girl, I will react like a man. If you want me to tell you what you want to hear, you could be waiting a long time but if you want me to be honest about the way I see things, then you had better have a pretty comfy seat.

So in this sense I also know that I will never fear being just one in a long line of many women, I may well be one in a line but if there is one that will bug the hell out of you, then it will most certainly be me. If there is one person that will make you question how good you feel about something when you behave shabbily, that may well be me too. And if there was one person that told you that you were beautiful and meant it, that would probably be me too. If there was one woman that never said anything she didn't mean, it was me. If there is one person that may niggle away at you - guess who.

So it is equally in this sense that I know that despite the fact that I like the mind games, I like the hook - that I also know I am worth more. This is not good, it is not healthy and if I am going to get involved in cerebral foreplay it needs to be with someone who can perform. All I have done is feed a situation in which the chase and the tease become the existence and this, is the part that this person was always good at.

It saddens me immensely and I have been a fool. I don't think I was wrong and yet I cannot create a situation whereby someone can trust others. Life is dangerous, there is no real security in anything, I get that. However, that does not mean that you should spend your whole life running from the one thing you crave.

So I disappointingly resign myself to being a worm in the head. Such a waste, it could have been so much more, but I am no ones imaginary muse. ~I was definitely and whole heartily worth the next step.

And another clear observation. When someone cannot look someone in the face it is invariably because they do not feel comfortable doing so and almost certainly that their own behaviour makes them feel too bad to lock pupils. They cannot make eye contact because this would involve guilt and since they do not want to accept any responsibility, they cannot face you. So for anyone in my life that cannot look me in the eye - deal with your issues, life would be so much easier and happier.

And for those that can maintain the merest glimpse of eye contact, the eyes are a window to the soul. I never, ever say anything I do not mean.