My Time in the Wilderness

Its my season to be alone. My time in the wilderness, and why happiness is far out of reach, I must learn to be content.

Andrew tried to hurt me, physically. Feet kicking doors, fingers around throat, I was scared of him. So much has happened that I cannot put into words for you right now, so much in the intensity of those months. So much trying, so much pain, then the last night, that look in his eyes that I had not seen before. The gentleness that he had always shown to me, the feelings I had been so sure were still there, vanished. He wanted to hurt me more than emotionally.

I fled, as I know how to do, within 2 hours my whole life was in my car and I was driving. I left at midnight and drove overnight, for those hours, those solitary hours, just me and my the assorted debris of my life in the car I felt free.

Funny isn’t it? how we put so much so value on the possession of gadgets, or the company of others, on love, on friendship, but it is only when I am running, when I am alone that I feel truly free.

I am staying with my sister now, once again bedding in a spare room, claustrophobic with having to be around people all the time, no space for myself, no privacy to gather my thoughts. I feel lost. I don’t want to be here, I cannot go back there. Canada which is still within reach if I should want it, does not hold that same excitement.

What to do now? where to go? I need a job for a few months to get some money together to make some decisions but I can’t find the fight to get out of there.

I have told people little, just of the last night how he turned violent and they condemn him for being like that I agree with them, say how I cannot believe it.

But the truth is inside, I just feel sad, not angry or bitter. Sad with regret, with wanting, sad that something that had so much possibility could not learn to fly.

Running Girl

As I once again am borrowing a spare room containing everything I own in the world, 7 hrs away from where until a week ago my whole life was. I realise I will always have that flight instinct.

My Moment

I have always dreamt big. I dream about far off places, faces and situations. I dream I am everything and anything. I have lost myself in dreams, I have found myself in dreams, I have spent a lot of time shutting the world out by dreaming. For a while my dreams stilled.

For someone so enthralled with dreaming of far-flung , impossible situations, my biggest wish in life was to full in love with the moment I was in, without dreaming of being elsewhere. So in that dreamless stillness, all I saw was my wish finally granted.

A moment in time, a small moment that I had been striving for my whole life seemed to come to pass and for my untrained and often colour blind eyes it seemed like the most beautiful time that I would ever truly see.

I had found my moment in which to fall in love; I had stilled the endless impossible dreams.

But after the stillness, after the dreamless state of being, the words that have always come from me so easily when I write seemed to run dry. The words, that I misuse so much in real life, but brought me so much peace as they danced on blank screens and pages, seemed to be confused and muddled.

With my dreams so quiet, with facing the real world in such a magnificent and then such a harsh way, I found that all words from me became untrustworthy, as if I opened my mouth to speak all that would be there was pain, was anger, was a deep rooted fear. Expression became almost a torment, as if each day I was being strangled by the same words that I once loved.

I had found my moment in which to fall in love; I had stilled the endless impossible dreams.

Then I found my words; but it was not my words I needed now. I needed to hear someone else’s words. But those words came so quietly that against my anger they seemed so silent I could hardly make them out.

So we were just left with my words; my assurances, my opinions, my thoughts. But no longer were there any thoughts for myself. I was trying to use my words as weapons in a war that was not mine to win.

I had found my moment in which to fall in love; I had stilled the endless impossible dreams.

There is myself

and a piece of tin foil.

And everytime I am defeated in the war.

Hurting Yourself.

It’s amazing really, the lengths we go to, to hurt ourselves. The way we take our own lives and all the pain, confusion and heartache that others have caused us, pain that was out of our control when it was given, then we keep it, we turn it around inside of ourselves and use it as a mask against the world. We never wanted the pain in the beginning but after we have been forced to take it, we take ownership of it and never let it go.

For a long time, I have taken ownership of my pain, I have held it up against the cracks to stop the light from shining in and if light does manage to shine on me I run, I hide, I push it away until the familiar darkness once again becomes my friend.

They say that lovers take lovers because they see fragments of themselves in each other, that the chemistry that passes between people is deeper than just attractiveness, deeper than that initial feeling of wanting to be near to someone.

I never thought I would fall like I have for Andrew, I never though he would be the kind of person I am looking for, I never expected to feel the way I do. I never expected him to be as lost as I am, just in a different way. I spent my life running, and now when its down to something that I know the world will tell me to run from, I am finding it impossible to run.

 

Andrew is a heroin addict.

Crowd Scene

In the last years I have become good at standing back from the crowd. When I was younger and still not quite questioning the destructive of my temper or the hurt that my actions could cause both to myself and to others I would crash headlong into new friendships and adventures. Being solitary was my quiet time, my own time, but I partied hard and I pushed the boundaries at every given opportunity.

The last years however, maybe it is as I head towards 30, I have looked at myself more, where in earlier years I could pick myself up, brush myself down and just keep moving to the next crowed scene without taking blame on my own shoulders, its not so easy now.

I am much more aware of my own shortcomings, I am much more aware of the catastrophes I have caused.

I, despite my ramblings here, am not an isolated being, rather a solitary figure who passes through the crowd. I stand apart from the crowd because I never feel I fit in, which has meant that I have hundreds of mates all around the world but never a true best friend, never a group of people who I can call on to ground me, though that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who think they know me, because there is. Many of them. they just don’t realise that they each know only one of my aspect of me, and rarely do they know the truth of me.

 Andrew, I think, finds me confusing. The shades of colours I bring to a day, the never quite knowing which side of me he is going to wake up too. He hears me laugh and thinks I am the funniest girl he has ever met, he hears me talk about my aspirations and feels confusion as to how they change all the time. He listens to how I talk about my past in such a matter of fact way and doesn’t realise how hard I have battled. I guess he thinks my life has been easy, because that’s the image I project. Sometimes when he sees me weak, when I am worrying about money or something going on with a member of my family or a friend far away, he tries so hard to reach me, to help me. That small shred of weakness makes him think that his masculinity is being redeemed, he feels like he is looking after me. But when I pull away just as quickly, when I just continue on, when that independence that has been mine for so long starts to show its head he is left feeling bemused.

Its like he has takes two steps towards me and three steps back and I feel sorry for him, I am not the girl he thought he had met. He saw me in bars and cafes with my ready smile and quite chatter for those who keep their distance, I am the drinking buddy who can chat to you all night, talk funny, talk deep, talk culture but when the party is over, I retreat back and he is trying so hard to find a way to figure out how my mind works. I guess I should be grateful for his strength of character, but mostly I feel guilt for his confusion. If I can’t even work myself out how can he expect too.

Just Strange

Things are strange for me right now, in one way I am the happiest I have been for a long time, in another way I feel like I am drowning in unknown waters. I have days when I wake up and look at my world and feel like the luckiest person there could be, I feel safe in this private world I seem to have created. But then other days, like today I feel trapped, I feel that by sharing my privacy, my complete life I am nailing my feet to the floor.

I want to write more, but my words are just not coming right now. my feelings are confused and muddled and I am uncertain as to what I really am thinking.

Life’s strange, and to someone like me, this whole trying to live a ‘normal’ life is strange.

Reverse Decisions

I’ve sat down and started to write a blog entry numerous times over the last couple of weeks but can never seem to find the motivation to put my thoughts on paper. My blog had become my place of letting out my frustration, and also my deepest fears and now all of a sudden I feel like I am facing them fears head on.

The strange thing in all of this is I finally realised what I think people have been trying to tell me all along, it was never about anything but my perception of myself, of my own fears and doubts about myself.

My background, my childhood, has left me with many issues with myself, the fight or flight mode, the constant niggling doubts about my own worth, the all encompassing hypersensitivity that allows my mind to tell myself that by being cold, being distant, never showing my true colours will allow me to escape without further harm in this mad crazy thing we call life. The deepset paranoia that manages to ruin everything I touch, simply because I let it. Funny how my fight mode only manages to fight against myself when it comes to stopping my own happiness, my own emotions, it never manages to fight against myself when it truly should.

It’s not going to be something that I am going to be able to ‘fix’ overnight, but it is something that the more aware of it I am, the more I can try and learn how to control. This fear of mine that stops people getting close to me because I am so scared that they will see this other side of me, this wildcat side, this crazy thought pattern of mine also stops me letting people see the true side of me this one that is craving acknowledgement, is desiring to be cared for.

Like a bird with a broken wing I find myself being made to learn to fly again, but not by stifling it and putting it in a large cage but by allowing it to fly free in the open air, but with it knowing that if it fails we will pick it up and help it on its way again.

The last few weeks have been strange for me, my decisions have surprised myself more than I have admitted, this huge decision to stay here in Spain because of a man I had known just days, my decision to not only stay but rush without care into this has left me bemused when I think about it. But never unhappy, nor disappointed into myself. This is not just about him, this is me, this is me allowing myself to take a chance, to make a reverse decision from normal. Always my choice is to run, always I decide to flee before I get hurt, this time I have decided that come what may, tears, hurt, fun or the opposite I based a decision on giving my emotions a chance to run free.

I traded my world for a week and it feels so good.

Sometimes in the middle of things going out of control something amazing happens and brings you more happiness then you ever knew existed.

I met somebody, not just anybody, but something so out of this world that in one week I have deferred my plans. I want to write everything, I want to tell you how for the first time in years I am not questioning. I want to write that I can do this, that I can be this person he makes me feel like I am.

I want to tell you that despite what the world thinks, sometimes you just know.

I want to say all and of that and more, but I don’t have the time right now, because I am too busy off living, and loving every single second of the moment I am in.

A little bit sad

I wonder if it leaving that makes you question everything you are leaving behind again, or if it’s a fear that you might regret your decisions. I don’t know, but I have been feeling pretty melancholy last few days, I have hardly set foot outside my door, nor have I told any of my friends here I am leaving, and the way its going I will be leaving a week tomorrow.

I haven’t even told my landlord which I must do tomorrow, he has been good to me so I feel bad that I am giving him such short notice anyway.

Its weird isn’t it? how you think of people that you never quite got to know, or wanted to know and never had the opportunity, like the French man who I had some an awesome crush on, he was the reason I started blogging, not on this one but another one I started before. Or the guy that sits in he bar across my road everyday and drinks coffee with me that I always wanted to kiss.

Or the girl that works in the restaurant down the road that always seemed to be alone, but I never found out a way to befriend here.

This week is going to be difficult, not just for those silly reasons. But because I believed that I was putting down roots here, I believed my constant changing was going to stop, that I was going to find something.

My first year or so out here was fantastic, the friends I made, the nights I had, the memories I have made. But in the last few months things have not been great and I know that it’s the right time to go, but still there is sadness.

But I am also proud of myself, as this time I don’t feel like I am running, more than I made a decision based on maturity about my situation. Its fast, like it always is with me, but I think my reasons are better this time.

Guns Blazing

What if I told you that this morning I woke up and rang my sister and asked if she will fly out here and drive back to the UK with me?

Then what if I told you that I went online and applied for my visa to Canada.

Guess I took the ball by the horns this time and just went for it.

Sexual Secrets

The last few months my blog has lapsed, not simply because I did not have time, or I did not want to write, but more so because I did not want to share what I was doing.

I make a lot of mistakes, I have always been honest about the legendry fuck ups I make in my life. More so, I put myself out here for all to judge me and wear the clueless to real life award I gave myself on my sleeve like a protection from having to be sensible.

We all know how I felt when I could not find work, being in a strange country alone is hard enough without being in one where you can’t make your rent payments and because of your lack of money the social life that you have created falls by the wayside, so the loneliness that you can feel anyway from being far away from all that is familiar becomes tenfold when the make-shift family (your friends) are out of the loop of your life.

I have mentioned before on here that I had started doing phone sex as a way to make money. Its not something I ever thought about doing but the more I tried to find work and the more I found nothing the more I began to feel that I was going to have to return to the UK with my tail between my legs so I resisted. I spent days/weeks on the internet trying to find jobs or other ways to make money when I came across a site that told me about being a Phone Sex Operator, it seemed that it was money for nothing and through the site I managed to build some fantastic friendships with the women who were doing the same job.

Despite peoples stereotypes these women are not sexual deviants sitting at the end of a line playing with themselves, more often than not they are family based women who are trying to earn some extra money while their children are in bed. Nor are they finding the work a turn on, its more like lets turn Eastenders down in the background or surf youtube while we listen to say the right things at the same time, granted an imagination helps a lot, so does knowledge of fetishes (I know so much more than I ever thought I would and trust me, not even half of them are something I personally would find a sexual turn on.

But and here goes my shameful secret, through doing this I found out that I could earn more money by going one step further, and always the girl to take the next step without thinking I went ahead and did it. In the space of three weeks I had moved on from just ‘supplying’ phone sex to taking my clothes off on webcam.

And this is when it gets grainy, at first I didn’t feel anything, I was like a robot going through the motions, I could smile and pretend I was enjoying it while my mind was completely elsewhere, my only fear was that someone I knew might see me – that to me was the ultimate in humiliation – but as the months passed something changed, I knew I could not do it long term, simply because I did not have the personality for it. I have never hid the problems I face with promiscuously, how I switch from sleeping around to being an ice queen, how I battle with faithfulness, how I fail a lot when it comes to being intimate, for someone who is desperately crying out for someone to not only want to be intimate with me but respect me also and care about my mind I don’t put myself in enough situations to receive anything but casual sex.

Webcam for me is the same, at the beginning – I will not lie here – as much as I did not find it a turn on, listening to people tell me how amazing I looked, how sexy my body is, how pretty my face, how desirable the way I moved or my accent was, was enough to make me feel ten feet tall. I am not really an in-love with myself girl, I have a fake confidence sure but inside I am a quivering wreck. So many compliments made me feel special. How naïve can I be.

The thing is now, now I hate it, now I think of these men, think of myself and feel nothing but disgust. I have been away for three weeks, I went back to the UK, I felt happy and it was nice to have some familiarity and feel so much warmth after the bleakness of the last few months but now I am back home in Spain and with no hope of finding a job here yet (probably not until the tourist season starts in March) I am left with continuing to do this until then.

Unless, unless I make another decision.

A friend of mine is in Canada and she is urging me to go home to the UK apply for my year Visa (you have to be in the UK to do this) and go out there for a year. I would need to be in the UK while my application is going through and also because I would need to temp or get a short term job for a few months to get enough money together to cover my expenses.

I have a lot to think about, and I guess as the weeks pass you will go through my decision process with me, but I just wanted to catch you up with what is going on. And hope that you will not judge me.

Rainbow

I am a rainbow.

Ever disappearing, every colourful, ever elusive. I have no beginning for you to find or an end where you can find that much-wanted pot of gold. Instead I glow only when the weather changes and for a moment I am bright then I fade until its time again for me to show the vibrancy of my colours.

We are all rainbows, our beginnings do not need to be found as we have no beginnings, while the start was a time it matters not when our present is where we are and our ends cannot be found as they are not yet there, we have no end, our end is simply not yet decided.

I am not completely forgotten, sometimes those I care about deeply forget me, lose me as they walk the twists and turns of the maze that represents their own lives but in which I am not walking with them. Sometimes I make myself become forgotten as I take turns in my own maze that they do not understand and cannot accept. Sometimes I forget myself when the world seems to be in nothing except darkness and my eyes are not yet trained to look through the pitch black of the night.

There are times when I forget through my own laziness or being too busy with other things to clean my windows and mirrors and then I wonder why my view or my reflection of myself becomes murky and unclear. When the view is not pristine I become too involved in my own doubt to step back and realise that all I need to do is simply take a cloth and clean what I have forgotten to so then my view is clear again.

I am not an ogre that lives under the bridge waiting to pounce on small children or hurt others intentionally, nor am I am Angel flying above with only the need to protect others with no need to look at my own self and see if she needs protecting. My world is not black and white, it has many shades of red and grey and pink and purple, shades that may not be shared in other peoples worlds but are a part of me.

I am not fixed, not cured, nor maybe do I need to be fixed or cured, maybe my own growth is simply slower or faster or in different directions to others.

My choices are both right and wrong. My mistakes are not always mistakes. My lessons are not always learned.

I am a rainbow.