Hip, Hip, Horror - When heels become a weighty issue

I seem to be storing fat deposits, which is odd - since I am not pregnant.

And so I went off to TK Maxx in a bid to rid myself of the horror of it all by the purchase of new shoes.

Whilst new shoes were purchased, they did little to alleviate the horror of having flesh that is ....fleshy.


I have never worried about my weight and even now, what the scales say- should I stand on them, doesn't bother me in the slightest. But fleshy bits are simply too much to deal with. When I stood in the changing rooms and tried on my normal size 6 jeans, I looked like a someone had tried to squeeze a water snake though and empty loo roll. Just to confirm my worst fears, I slapped my bottom and I saw movement.

That caused the kind of reaction that TK Maxx did very well out of.

Yet for the first time ever, I actually look female, with proper hips and a waist - but only from a distance. Close up and I'd be concerned that should you stand next to me in a typhoon, you may be physically harmed.  To add to my own revulsion and confirm the horror of the situation, I stuck my fingers into the flesh at the back of my waist and lost sight of my finger nail.

This is a new one for me. I have never put on sufficient weight to cause concern, never dieted - but this weight gain would take a level of acceptance that I am not ready to deal with. When I stand straight I want to hear a snapping sound, not an aftershock.

So there was only one sensible reaction and it was not buying larger clothes. It was the purchase of  an exceptionally tight dress and an exercise device that judging by the picture of the man on the front, is rather good at causing bodily tautness.

I shall hang the dress in the snug as an incentive to stomach crunch my way back to stick instectdom. It will be an incentive, since I would rather massage a mans toes than be seen in public with a dress that is that figure hugging. Anyone who knows my aversion to the male big toe - will understand the gravity of that declaration.

And I know with certainty that my friends consider my revulsion at the fleshy bits to be verging on insanity but I say this: without my superficiality, my wardrobe and my shoe collection - where would you gain your entertainment.

Count this as my public duty

Thigh deep in cycling

There are many things you can judge a man on. And whilst I set the bar quite high for integrity, value and morals, it starts with the thighs.

In the years I spent married, I can't say that I paid undue attention to men's thighs. One can only assume that since infidelity is not a practise I would partake in, that there was little reason for  to do. That all changed the day 'It' walked out and I discovered that a well toned body was something to be admired. With divorce came the belated and utter admiration for a pair of well toned thighs. Possibly to an unhealthy degree. If the well toned thighs come with well defined upper arms and a torso with tone - I am done for.

Put me within 5ft of well toned thighs and I lose the ability to communicate normally. There are those that would argue this to be my normal articulation ability, but anyone that has seen me respond to those with the right body - will know that I turn into a total airhead.

Which is unfortunate.

It is fair to say that living with a man that never exercised did little to feed the admiration for the male body. Post dutiful wife role I can see that in fact, the suitable kempt male body- is a thing of utter beauty. Sadly, it can be short lived. Far too many men act like peacocks, with lots of preening in a bid to secure a mate. Once found, they start eating. Before you know it, you are curled up on the sofa clutching someone's muffin top and the thighs become like a shelf for the remote.

But this new adoration for mens thighs comes with a price - and that is the envy that comes with it. Whilst gazing in admiration, I find myself hankering after the kind of muscle tone that feeds my inappropriate thought process. On high level thigh envy, I decide I need start cycling.

So I go to the bike shop and try a girls bike.  It's also very small which given my stature, should be perfect. I sit on it and feel like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I try a bigger one and still look like I have a spine disorder. Far worse, its red and white and frankly, it's a bit girlie.

The mens bike is matt charcoal, so I want it already because I am a girl and we choose technical stuff on important criteria, such as the colour. Sitting on it and it feels almost comfortable, if a little short.

"You are body is better suited to a man's bike" say's the man

"Are you saying that I have a man's body?" say I

"What I mean" he say's, back peddling frantically

"Is that women's bike's are designed for average women, and you are clearly not one of those"

So I leave the shop with my man's bike, feeling inordinately chuffed that I am not like other women.

And then I tackle my first hill. It is not as easy as it looks.

Apparently, it takes more than a mans bike and a lot of Lycra to get those thighs.

A downhill challenge

I haven't been able to write for some time, which is a good thing as much as a bad. The last three years have been a journey in so many different forms and I have spent some time on it, trying to work out both the stuff in my head and the stuff around me. People have come into my life, people have left and I have used this blog to work things out. It's how I stop myself reacting to things.

Writing has been my space for cathartic vomit, to be happy, be hurt, to reframe, to rationalise, to deal with the things that at times, I have found unbearable. I write about things that I am incapable of expressing - which on the whole is my own vulnerability. I'm good at understanding other peoples issues, good at trying to separate someones behaviour from the person they truly are beneath. I am hopeless at telling anyone that I am hurt, or terrified, or vulnerable.

 And yet the blog has become the place where in fact, I cannot purge too many thoughts. There are so many observations that I have made, so much that I have worked out but to say them, to work it out here, would be picking away at the people I have cared about. (This clearly does not extent to IT) Which is a shame, since some of the best observations I have made are about the behaviour of others almost buried alive by their own baggage. Still, it's not like I am without mine.

 So, some time back I bumped into a man I once dated. We had a drink (in the company of others) and it was one of the biggest head screws I have ever experienced. The entire conversation was tinged with subtext and though they did not understand the specifics, made all present, most uncomfortable.

 Now I am a quick witted girl and I can hold my own on quick fire retort. What I couldn't do is keep up with who said what. By the end of the evening I wasn't even sure of my own name. There was lots of "don't you think if this happens, someone can project this onto someone who once did that" The general gist was "I recognise I was a bit of an arse but someone was once a bit of an arse to me, so that's okay"

 I say this - Life is full of people being unkind, of mothers that bullied, of fathers that ran off. Girlfriends are unfaithful, dogs bite, people die. No matter what it is, none of it makes it okay to treat someone else unkindly. No one is perfect, we all have issues but hey, lets all try and work those out with some honesty and not by 'projecting'the same onto people that come into you life and care.

As I drove off, the thought occurred that generally speaking, the people that screw with your head are generally people with screwed up heads. Trying to rationalise with a screwed up head is quite a tricky affair and probably best left to an expert in screwed up heads. But what a totally an utter waste of someones life. To be so damaged that you push everyone away has to be the ultimate road to loneliness.

In that moment of clarity on what is strikingly obvious, I realised that I do not need anyone messing with my head anymore and what I really needed, was to find something bigger to focus on. I needed a challenge that made the issues of others pale.

So three days later, I got on a plane to Bulgaria. I have never skied, I have never wanted to. I loathe the cold, much more of a SE Asia kind of girl. So I booked a three day skiing course, by myself. All I knew was that Bulgaria was somewhere in Estern Europe and I hated Skiing.

I cried in fear every day, I nearly died in the process of experiencing Bulgarian alcohol and my skiing isn't hugely better than it was before I left. I cried (like a snivelling baby) not because I found skiing difficult, it's not really that hard (theoretically). I cried because I avoid doing anything outside my comfort zone. Facing downhill on a slope in some alarmingly slippery skis, tapped into my bigest fear. Being vulnerable.

The ski instructor's plied me with empathy and shots and by the end of it, assessed that whilst I could ski, my biggest problem was that I refused to believe that I could. It was the perfect example of how fear prevents you going further in life.

On finding a challenge to make all the things that had become bigger than they ever deserved, it worked. More than that it taught me that I'm stronger than I thought. I cried in front of strangers and the sky didn't fall in.

So I'm vulnerable, I'm human. And despite the ridiculous heels, the acerbic tongue and the ability to think one step ahead, I cry like a girl on skis.

Occasionally.

Parasites and parenting

I sat with a dear male friend last night and whilst he was keen not too - I pushed him on an area of his life that is a little tricky. He loves his other half. She love him. He doesn't want children, she does.

I took the hard arse route, as is my way and partly from a weariness of mens inability to understand that women fill in the gaps with words they want to hear. As a collective group, we need to understand if there is a gap, it's because there is nothing in it.

Women think "If I love him long enough that he will eventually come around". Most men avoid thinking on the basis that if they are not thinking about it, the whole thing will go away (even if he knows it won't).

So as hard arse militant female, I point out (and no, he didn't ask me to) that if he doesn't want to have children then he needs to end the relationship and allow her the chance to find someone that does want children. Hard to do when you love someone, but in the end it will be a relationship filled with resentment or with children that weren't really wanted. I have vivid recollections of the night 'It' shared that he had never wanted the twins, but thought it might make our marriage better. Since it ended in divorce, I guess he was right.

It became clear that the real crux of the matter was dear male chum did not know if he wanted children and there were perhaps some deep routed reasons for his reluctance. And that's the crux, he was looking for answers to questions most of us don't ask until it's too late.

So to the male friend that doesn't know if he wants children - it's a healthy start. Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but there are no answers to anything, certainly no guarantees. You may hate parenthood, you may love it. It is hard, heartbreaking and tiring with periods of mirth scattered amongst many years of tiresome slog. It's not about you, it's about them and they will serve no real purpose in the short term.

As one famous for voicing thoughts, I have spent several years of my life loading washing machines, finding cereal bowls under wall hung loos and picking cornflakes out of my underwear drawer and asking myself 'What exactly is the benefit of having children? and never really coming up with a conclusive answer.

So tonight I revisit a website forum from the early days of being a mother of multiples, and discover that the 10 year old son of one of the regular posters has just lost his fight for life. Then I finally understood the day to day purpose in having children. The benefit is intangible, it is unseen. It is the kind of love that you do not know how deep it runs until you have something go terribly wrong or if you have the most painful experience in life of losing a child.

Having children is a pre-programmed need to keep the human race going, little more. For those that think that they bring some sense of meaning to your life, prepare to be disappointed because on a day to day level - they can make your life pretty meaningless. You need to be looking at the wider picture. Look not at what you seek to gain but at what you will gain from giving.

Children will drive you insane, they will leave you exhausted, frustrated and feeling like a total failure. Yet they can only do this if you were hoping to gain something from having them. An unwise expectation.

Yet if there was one role that children have that they do well - it is that they make you less selfish. Parenting is about giving and those that fail to do so, fail to gain anything from the experience of having children.

Children are parasites by nature, they take everything from you in order to survive. Once they have mastered the art of feeding themselves and stealing chocolate from every known stash in the house, they take your possessions and your money and once thats over, they take your sanity. Only at the point that you expect nothing from them, is when you see what you gain.

And it's this: when you learn to truly give, you gain a level of pleasure only attained when not seeking in return. If you were not loved as a child, you won't fill the gap when you are an adult - you will just spend a lifetime trying to be a better parent than yours were. When you were marginalised as a child through lack of opportunity and you push your child to achieve, don't be surprised if your child sticks two fingers in the air and refuse to gain employment in anything more than the local kitchen. When you buy your child gifts instead of time, do not raise an eyebrow that they do not want to spend Christmas with you. Their purpose is not to make you feel fabulous and validate the choice to have them, their purpose is to grow into a loved individual who carries on the human race.

And giving to that degree is what good parents do because children do not ask to be born, we choose to have them. They are not here to serve you a purpose, they are here to continue the human race and whilst we all think of ourselves as having given up so much of our lives in having them -we don't realise just how much they gave us, until they leave. Or die.

And only those that have suffered the unimaginable pain of losing a child will understand just how deep routed that love is, just how much their lives were changed as a result of that child being born and just how much they really gained from that short period.

As for my dear male friend. You would make a great Dad.

x

It's all relative, unfortunately

It always fascinates me that the expectation is that relatives are the ones that support you no matter what, whilst friends come and go.

It is a strange expectation since the reality is that friends generally support you no matter what and relatives generally, annoy the hell out of you.

The last couple of weeks has seen an upward rise in my level of sheer exhaustion. For some reason life has been a tad relentless and not even the weekend provided for a later start. From teenage pick ups to Sunday morning Rugby - as much as I hankered for a little loafing under goose down, it wasn't going to happen.

It's when really tired that I find it hardest to switch off and so, with no common sense whatsoever - I embark on insane de-cluttering. Within 4 days I had removed 4 packing boxes full of 'stuff' and deposited them across Wiltshire's charity shops. My huge jar for make up, one for nails, one for hair - an entire Georgian cupboard full of body lotion and boob tape, a medicine cabinet reminiscent of a pharmacy and a store cupboard worthy of a nuclear shelter. Everything was halved.

Including my energy levels. Monday morning felt like a Friday, starting a little chaotically when I realised I had neglected to buy food. The week deteriotes. Everyday at work alongside trying to sling in 2 parents consultations, one 3 hour meeting with the visual impairment team, the EA IT specialist, Head of year and Head of SEN to try and trash out a solution to the multitude of problems for one of the offspring. Tuesday sees a home visit from VI lady and the mobility specialist. By the time they left, I had 8 minutes to get to a business pitch. By the time that finished, I had 26 minutes to finish some work that was sure to take longer. And so the week has gone on.

Then there are the minor things, like keeping up with the washing and mess created by four other people sharing your space, the 45 emotional melt down, the big argument with one child, the homework, the general chaos and having to find time for a bath every morning.

Last week was little better and at one weak moment, commented to a member of the family that I was in fact, utterly exhausted. Following a typically relative reply about how they had done their time working, I pointed out that they had never had the added bonus of being a single parent to four children.

'Well" they said "It was your choice"

"I beg your pardon" I reply in my most incredulous voice (IIIII BEG your parduuun?)

When (not unreasonably, I thought) point out that no one in their right mind would have 4 children by themselves through choice and in fact, not only had the ex husband been really very controlling, he had been doing things he ought not with a woman with a preference for married men and Polyester. Clearly if anyone was making a choice, it was him (And thank god he did) Given the circumstances, I think choice was a most irritating view.

"Well" they say "You could have forgiven him"

Thank god for friends.

Two sides of the same coin

To a man I was in a relationship with, "Everytime we hurt someone, we make it a little harder for that person to love the next"

Since he nodded his head vehemently, I took that to mean he understood the concept. He may well have done but on reflection, failedd to grasp the responsibility in the statemnet. It seems that for some, for whatever reason - there own issues overtake the need to make sure that those who have been close are not unnecessarily damaged in the process of knowing them.

So this is where I ponder the responsibility. I have realised of late that following the couple of relationsships that I have had, I am developing a deep sense of mistrust in others. If it was an overall scepticism, I could probably live with that but this is a full scale analytical panic if any man is nice to me. In my head runs the same script "Why are they being nice, what do they want, are they flirting, are they making a play, are they trying to screw with my head"?

It is a deeply disturbing experience. I want to believe in the good, I want to believe in authenticity, of kindness. Ireally, genuinly, wholeheartedly want to believe that people are genuine but if they have a penis, I have a million red flags flying.

I hate thinking like this. It seems I have gone from one end of the spectrum of trust to the other and it is not a pleasent experience. If a man is being nice, is being genuine - then he probably wants to have sex and he will undoubtedly try to screw with my mind at the same time.

In midst of full on panic that someone was about to mess with my mind, I phone a friend. A male friend. I snivel down the phone that I cannot bear not trusting people. He tells me never to trust any man. Great.

So now I have to question the responsibility issue. Is it someone else's responsibility to make sure that your trust in humans is not anhilated by their behaviour or actions, or is it mine for allowing the actions of others to have a negative impact on the way I view the world.

I am really not sure but I profoundly hope that any impact I have had on men I have ever been in arelationship - is not one that makes it harder for them to care about the next person.

Friends with benefits

"When I first met you, you were one of the most intelligent women I had ever met"

Pause.....

"And over time, you have just got progressively thicker"

It would be easy to take offense at such comment, butit is quite the most amusing thing anyone has ever said to me. More than that, there is clear truth in its content. Sometimes I say things that surprise me with unexpected astuteness and other times, I say things so spectacularly stupid they border on impressive.

Last week I had a text from a man who kindly told me that I light up the lives of others. In the same text he told me that I was erudite. I had to google the word.I now suspect that I light up the lives of others, primarily due to my moments of utter and complete denseness.

It was in this text I had to consider other areas of stupidity. Such as having an extensive collection of utterly gorgeous male friends. I love male friends. Male friends are straight in what they say, they have (on the whole) a sharper humour, less sides and are less interested in fluff. They also speak less than I do, which is pretty convenient, since I rarely pause for breath.

Married, in relationships or single, male friends are my bench mark for emotional security. They make me laugh, they roll their eyes in affection, they hug me if on rare occasion I cry and they are always, always kind. More than this, my male friends are safe because they are all emotionally stable and secure.

Which makes me wonder why none of the beautiful male friends I have in my life are men that I would ever date. This alone must indicate some spectacular level of dimness. I find them all attractive in their own way but not one of them has ever sparked chemistry. And that is because they are lovely. If I put them into a dating category they would only say nie things until they got what they wanted. Keep them in the friendship category and they always say nice things. I have long said that the idea of something is always better than the reality. One of my oldest sexiest male friends is a man I went out with in my 20's. I never slept with him and swear blind that this is why we are still friends. I recognise that I may have some control issues going on here!

One of my dearest friends is a man I met on a date. I adore him, he more than tolerates me. I love his children, he loves mine. We go out regularly together, we go on holiday together. Yet despite the fact that we get on so well, I feel no chemistry and as such,not even a kiss has passed between us. In between dating and in moments of boredom I will get random texts asking me for some sort of sexual favour, but we both know that once my mind is made up, nothing will change it.

And like all of my male friends; if he wasn't so nice, wasn't so stable, wasn't so dependable I would probably find him stimulating in a multitude of ways. Now that is stupidity.

Or is it? Any relationship that starts with chemistry will surely develop into a calmer state in which friendship, respect, tolerance and most of all - acceptance will become primary features. And yet it is this state of acceptance, perhaps contentment that causes the likes of people like me to break out in a cold sweat.

Which makes me wonder - what in gods name is contentment? Is it a compromise, a word with negative association - of old couples that want nothing and totter about in anticipation of Coronation Street being aired. When I was married I accepted my lot but I never felt contented, I spent most of it wondering what life would be like if you met your soulmate.

So in fact, if contended is not wanting for more but being contended with what you have then perhaps contended is better than acceptance. Then again, perhaps you only reach contented when you have reached acceptance of yourself and others. Acceptance is clearly about accepting the things youcannot change and sotrting out the crap in the things you can.

Perhaps it is all simply too confusing.