Crazy

I want to write.

It’s been so long, time has moved so fast that often I wonder if soon everything will be over and there will be no new times to look forward too. So much has happened, so many dreams came to life and I threw them away, so many times of happiness and sadness that I cannot get back and I didn’t write about them – didn’t bring them alive through my words.

I was loved. Truly loved. I made him go away.

A year of life summed up in that sentence. A year of my life that I cannot talk about in more words as I don’t have them to explain. He tried so hard to love the unlovable, he tried so hard to break down my barriers. I couldn’t do it, my craziness took on a new edge as I felt stifled, confused, trapped. My anger took sinister turns as I pushed and pushed and finally made him leave. The coldness of my soul was put before him in all its evil glory.

He used to call me the ‘Queen of words’ because he felt so many of mine were untrue. It always struck me as odd, as my life has always been one big lie and when I tried to tell him the truth that too was judged as a lie. And me, this Queen of words, never found it in herself to write even though I tried so many times.

After he left I sought help, I knew I had needed it for a long time but I made myself gain the courage to ask. I was diagnosed with Pure O – a form of OCD. Some of it fits but not all. The medication started, and it helped me to live normally, it took the edge of life, of my feelings and worries but it also took the edge off me, it killed the thinking that drove me to this late night blog. Pain, happiness and sensitivity were numbed. Everyone told me how good I seemed, how happy I seemed. I made new friends, I started to carve out the career that I had let flounder for so long. I was living, but I was not real.

It’s only now, 18 months on, after a week not taking those little white emotion killers, after an evening drinking red wine and thinking about the new person in my life that I opened up this blank white page and started to fill it with words.

I want to talk, I want to talk so much, but when I talk I want someone to listen, I want someone to try and understand what makes me the way I am – try and understand my past and the mistakes I have made. I want to come clean, I want to talk in the dead of the night and be heard but still loved in the daytime. Please God, I want someone to see and know the truth but accept me anyway. I’m crazy, a little more each day.

Missing Words

Where did my words go?

Sometimes I sit here looking at a blank page and will the words that used to come so easily to dance upon the white background and provide me with some salvation from the craziness of my reality.

But they don’t come. I want so much to tell you the truth, to tell you how I have self destructed in such a big way that even my blog friends, who always have a positive and warm thought for me could not justify my actions.

I had it all … everything that other people dream about, but I threw it away, rejected it and then destroyed the giver simply because I can’t function in the real world like other people – I need to be shackled, locked up in a mental hospital where they can keep me from poisoning the world that surrounds me.

I’ve walked so many lonely roads, battled the wilderness but still I do not learn my lessons, still I hurt and destroy, still my words come so harsh in a world so gentle.

I am here … all the time I am here …

It´s not alright

and I am not ok.

But words are so hard to put down when in a room full of people, when there is no silence.

I´ve stood with a noose around my neck and only just found a way back.

And …

She’s off again … going backwards …. back to the place that felt like home.

Volcanic Ash Part 2

We are recovered taken back to where we started from, the insurance company paying the cost of a taxi … as it Spain on a Sunday … no recovery truck willing to do the distance. I am sitting there in the front of that taxi with the overwhelming urge to cry, my chance of getting to France now lost; no idea what to do next. Already I had taken the kindness of strangers to the limit.

I swallowed my proud and made a call to an old friend from the taxi, asking for help … it seemed so wrong that after one year of being away I am ringing them again asking for help, putting my dramatic problems on their doorstep – not the way I wanted to go back … not the way I planned it at all. He offers me a place to stay immediately, so I head in the direction of the place I called home for the first time in a year.

I turn up looking like a Romanian Gypsy, eyes as dull as coal, face bare and hair scrapped back. I feel ugly, I feel useless, I feel old. We sitting at a café drinking coffee and catching up, then back at his house all of a sudden the room is full of people, my tiredness and my rusty (and never that hot) Spanish making it impossible for me to keep up. I am giving 2 kisses and saying hello and after that I fade quietly back to the sofa. It’s funny but that’s when I first saw Mario – he is from Chile he rents the upstairs of my friends house – I remember being introduced but I don’t remember registering him.

The next day, after precious sleep I spend the day with the 2 boys my friend and Mario, we sit drinking small beers outside, after the previous week of not knowing if I was coming or going having two people concerned if I was eating enough felt overwhelming, the kindness of one old friend and a stranger both looking after me was all encompassing.

That night we friend has to go to work, Mario is taking me out with his friends, we are heading onto one of the strips, on the back of scooters … remembering the life and the freedom that I loved so much once upon a time, before the moss begun to grow under my feet.

I don’t remember who kissed who, I don’t remember where it happened or why. We partied until the sun come up, I remember leaving the bike at a club and us walking back to the apartment, I remember laughing constantly and I remember falling asleep entwined with Mario. For the rest of the week I moved upstairs, for the rest of the week he become my 24/7 companion. My friend, far from being annoyed, seemed delighted, the 3 of us spent the days together … eating, talking, laughing. Of a night I visited old friends with Mario in tow, or made new ones as he took me to his haunts. I watched them dance salsa and try to make me join in.

We made love … a lot. We talked just as much, in broken languages, told our stories, laughed about things that seem to transcend cultures and times. By the time it was time for the airspace to reopen I was left wishing that the threatened brother of the volcano would erupt and leave me safe in this moment. But all too soon, the flight was booked and it was time to come home.

Volcanic Ash Part 1

150,000 British people will have a story to tell … I heard them everywhere, in the chaotic airports, as I passed on the street, in the bars …

Landing in San Javier on the 10th filled with apprehension, going back so close to the place I called home for nearly 3 years of my life, a place I tried to put roots down in. When I heard my sister had made her way back down to the white coast I just wanted to go back, to see, to touch, to feel the place I felt I belonged for so long.

Heading to Orihuela, I spent the first few days in sunshine lit bars, catching up on tales of the life she has led since I packed my backs and returned to the UK … messages from my old friends laying dormant in my phone and on my facebook as I tried to get the courage to head closer to Torrevieja … so scared of seeing Andrew, so frightened of facing the hurt, the feelings that once flowed like water but that I have frozen out like ice.

There coming again, the words, the words that my family seem to say so much, the spitefulness, the shouting, the throwing of fists, like many before her my sister has the anger inside of her … like always my face is the face of someone who deserves to feel the rage, like always I am the agonistic, the irritation that brings the rage … I just want to go home … suitcases in street, the feel of her force … the tears that come so easily.

I’m in a taxi heading back towards San Javier, the drink is blurring my feelings I can make no sense of the situation … the airport is closed, a military base it does not stay open overnight, I am asking the driver to take me to a 24hr bar I will sit and drown my sorrows before catching an early flight. I walk into a bar in La Santiago de Riberia, strangers are taking pity on me, the rag a tag girl with the suitcase, offering me a place to stay for the night, my fear is becoming confused with what is the more frightening prospect being stuck in a bar with Morrocan drug dealers or staying with British strangers … I go with the people from home, they are good people, helping me anyway they can. Next day I am unable to get a flight as the Volcano has brought Europe to a standstill, I don’t know what to do, my desire to leave the country and head back home is all encompassing.

The strangers put me up for one more night, their kindness is killing me, I find a lift with yet more strangers into France, they are heading back to Germany and offer to take me as far as Perpignan, from there I plan on getting a train to Paris and then from Paris to Calais and then from there the ferry crossing to the UK … we set out at four in the morning, I am tired but glad to finally be on my way … finally the journey home is starting and I can escape Spain. It’s raining, the rain feels like it is an echo of my mood, we are close to Valencia and I can see the bend in the road, we are going too fast just for a split second I think please god, the car is skidding, we are hitting the barrier … thank god nobody is hurt …the car is not so lucky.

To be continued …

The Almost Baby

Years ago, almost 7 in fact, there was nearly a baby.

Sometimes I wonder how my body conceived, not only did I take my birth control regular as clockwork, I also abused my body with a constant supply of illegal drugs and my closest friend the bottle, but mother nature has a funny way of working and I managed to fall pregnant.

The father – God… the father – was (sadly still is…) my itch, my itch that cannot be scratched, the person of my nightmares, the person of my dreams, the one who holds the power to bring my world crashing down and then raise me to the heights of heaven in a one minute conversation. I hated him, I hate him, I was obsessed by him, I am obsessed by him. He is, to put it crudely, my very own non-curable STD.

He has been my endless infatuation … he has never been my love. I have been his constant whipping girl … I have never been his love.

But the baby … the baby was different, it was pure, it didn’t know that it had been conceived by two of the most egotistical, fucked up beings that it would ever have the misfortune to know.

I found out (I am told) that the baby existed a bit later then women normally do, as the realisation dawned on so did the peace, I remember feeling tired, so tired all the time, and I remember feeling I had a secret that I didn’t want to share, I wanted to keep it all for myself.

Until the blackness arrived … until the blackness of what I really was started running through my veins like heroin, until I started looking in the mirror and seeing the outline of a bump and looking around me and seeing how my life really was. The genes, which created me, the genes of the people who destroyed me, were running through me into this new life form. How could I – the hated girl with the black eyes and paranoid-fuelled temper – pretend to myself that I was capable of being a parent any better then the ones I had had myself? Would it have been possible for me, the girl whose only sense of directions points the wrong way, the girl who could outrun the fastest cheetah to not run away from that baby … to not destroy that baby.

I didn’t have the kindness … I didn’t have the wickedness … to try …

He was meant to come with me the day they took the baby away from my body, in the end he didn’t bother, I remember his words …I should be there …I remember thinking what am I doing. I went alone.

There were protesters outside I was too numb to take in what they were saying, it seemed ironic to me at the time that most of them were men. I sat and waited for my name to be called in a waiting room full of couples, all ages, some looking tearful others so certain. I nearly got up to leave six times in ten minutes.

Your not supposed to see the scan they tell you to turn your head away but my eyes fixated on the screen, I needed to see the baby, I needed something to crucify myself with.

I cried when I left that day, sitting in my car in the carpark protesters still in sight, my body feeling empty, my evilness all consuming, I cried like someone who wanted to shed every tear that could possibly exist.

Sometimes I wonder who I was crying for … sometimes I wonder for whom I am still crying for.

No longer…

forgotten, just unwanted. Always unwanted.

Even my words do not want to find me anymore.

Tired

The lights of Covent Garden surround me as I lose myself in the crowds; a solitary figure weaving in and out of the crowds; eyes black as coal and hair falling down my back. In the city of my life its easy to once again become the forgotten girl.

I stop and listen as a man on a crate; scraggly haired and unshaven tells me that God’s fire burns bright but as I continue on my way back into the crowds I know its not true. Nothing is real in this life.

The lights of Christmas time are shining bright; glistening in front of me like unshed tears and I know its finally time to say goodbye.

The train leaves Charing Cross and I’m on it; my head full of shame hung low. Mumford and Sons are playing in my ear … telling me the liar not to cry. The tears are whispering down my face, there for the crowds to see, unabashed and unashamed I let them fall without wiping them away.

It’s morning and I am driving to work; I don’t even watch the road as I plan the music I want them to play the day I finally feel the peace I have wanted my whole life.

I’m at work my pushy nature coming through; no-one listens to what I have to say, no-one cares I wonder if anyone has ever stopped and noticed that for someone who talks so much I say so little. My anger always on the edge of reason; waiting to explode. The words that fall from my mouth are always so ugly; so meaningless. In a world of light I am nothing but darkness; in a world of fools I am the foolish of them all.

I see in the mirror someone so lost, I feel so misunderstood but I wonder now if it has always been simply me who has misunderstood myself. I carry nothing good. There is no possibility; even when I look my best the ugliness inside shines through.

I put on my make –up, I wear the dress, like a lady of the night I smile in the right places and nod my head. I take the drink; I eat the food, I laugh where I am supposed too. There is no feeling; no escape from the weariness inside.

I’m so tired; tired of myself, tired of constantly battling the woman in the mirror; tired of trying to see a future where I know there is none. Tired of wanting to be someone different, someone new, someone liked.

I’m so tired of it all.

And sometimes…

the words just don’t come at all.

Self Love

My ‘Coincidence date’ turned out to last the majority of the weekend, and I have to admit I had a really good time.

Not least because the company was easy, I had forgotten what it was like to talk to someone about ‘real’ life. My few years in Spain have passed by in a cloud of drunken hazes, non-stop people and a feeling of being completely out of reality. Being back in the UK has brought home to me a lot that my life there was make believe, the situations I faced, the things I took part in, made part of my life, have very little resemblance to what is judged as normal living here.

I still haven’t found a job here in the UK, though I may have a little one lined up that will help me while I find real work. Its nothing at all great just in a shop, but it gives me breathing time while I continue to send off CV’s and applications for things I actually want to do. 3 years out of normal work doesn’t really help me with finding work here in the UK right now, but as always I have to just keep applying myself and hope I turn a corner.

This weekend has brought me some smiles I have to say, Friday night we went for drinks and just ended up talking about all the years that have passed since we saw each other last. The conversation was easy, was fun and there was obviously still an attraction after all this time.

Saturday we spent the day together, wandering around Folkestone, seafood on the harbour, drinks in little pubs by the sea, exploring the coast, we tucked ourselves up in the corner of a restaurant as night set in and swapped stories as we ate. It really was a pretty memorable day in a quiet relaxed way. I have a feeling we are going to be seeing a lot more of each other. BUT, I also know that before I can commit myself to a relationship I have to face some things about myself.

My drinking habits have to be controlled. I’ve dropped major hints in this blog about my actions in drink, I have literally destroyed so much in my life and in other peoples lives because quite simply, I drink too much and I have another side of me, probably the ugliest side you will ever see in a person that rears its head when I full on drink.

But if that was the only thing then I would be ok, but there is of course more, there is the way I view myself and the way that view of myself comes across in my conduct. I’m not lying when I say the world scares the shit out of me, the thought of living in the real world makes me literally shake, you see all the time I am letting myself go along in my own bubble, all the time I am simply running and not facing up to the consequences of my actions I can shut out the real world, I can hide away from the questions, but its no longer right for me to do that. I have to learn to accept that I am a person, bad or not, and I have to live by the rules to an extent.

I have debated with the notion lately that I may be bi-polar, the shoe seems to fit, but in other ways it doesn’t seem to fit at all. Probably because I know I have a problem while I am led to believe that bi-polar sufferers in the majority don’t. One thing I do accept is there is a side of me that is hard to label. I have heard many times how paranoid I am, I am so highly conscious of what isn’t said in words from other people, I am so hyper sensitive about things that are said to me, or the way I say things to other people. My self esteem is low, its got to be, even though sometimes I can appear confidence, the truth is people scare me to death, I always think I am saying, do, thinking, acting the wrong way. It’s almost like sometimes I mirror other peoples actions so I appear normal. No matter what happens in life I have this voice telling me I will fail. I destroy things before they even have a chance because of that voice, I retreat, I run away, I literally press that self destruct button and explode in front of people…anything to bring on the finish of something.

I don’t want to live like this.

I know part of it is to do with my childhood, I know that, but at what time can I stop blaming the past, at what time can I truly stand up and say no it won’t ruin my present anymore? My real mother both made and destroyed me before I had a chance to grow like normal people, its true that babies are like flowers, without nurture, without warmth, they grow weak and wild. That’s what I am, I am wild, I take chances that most of you will never have too, I make decisions and live moments that most of you would never bring on yourself. I am wild, but its is my weakness that makes me wild. Its not strength that has kept me going, it’s the opposite. Inside I am scared, I am vulnerable, I am lost. I grow half in the light, half in the dark, I wasn’t covered or prepared for the changing of the seasons I just had to battle it out as they come along, there was no guidance. My moods are notorious, I feel pain in as greater force as I feel the highs, but neither of them is rational, neither is calm. I only feel calm when I am truly alone.

I am jealous of those who know love, I am jealous of the stars, of the moon, of the random man on the street, I am jealous of each of you that has love in your life. My adopted parents have tried hard to love me, I know, even when I have made it incredibly hard for anyone to like me let alone feel love towards me. But always in between their love is the fact that they love my real mother more … simply because she is their natural offspring. No matter how much she has destroyed me their love for her is unwavering, is real maternal instinct. An instinct my own mother never possessed. The day my real Mum first abandoned me to their care, she took her dog and left me, I am jealous of that dog, where she would have a kick for me, she would have a pat for the dog. All the years afterwards with her in and out of my life, even as an adult when she still feels the need to slight me at every turn I make, still I let her, still I feel each pain as if its new.

I want to know about this thing called love, but I need to learn it from inside, I need to heal, I need to learn to find something to love inside of me. I just don’t know where to start.

Amusing Coincidences

Paper diaries long since stored away in the attic of the home where I spent most of my time growing up, diaries not looked at, not thought about for years. I take them down and look through, searching for my entries about him. So few, so typical of me never to write about the day to day happenings, so typical that my words are kept for times when I simply don’t understand, when I want to reflect or grieve or put to rest.

I read the first entry, my words seem to fit with my eighteen year old mind, I was so naïve, so vulnerable. Turning 18 to most people means being given the keys to the city, first legal drinks in bars, finally being a fully fledged adult. 18 to me meant something different. It meant I have survived the stormy childhood years and more deeply to me, it meant I had survived the solitary times that come after my 15th birthday, times that I know in my heart I need to write about, to set myself free from, but I have never in the years that have followed managed to find the words, I am still not sure if any words would be enough to tell you how the forgotten girl really did become forgotten.

But I am swaying … back to when I was 18. Living in my maisonette I shared with a friend, running around wild, I was alive, I was free. Hair down to our waists, gold jewellery, frilly gypsy tops and floating skirts. A mark 4 Escort … constantly grinding my gears, Whitney Houston sang My love is your love as we passed the joint around the room and we lived on curried spring roll and chips from the chip shop downstairs.

17th August 1999

He’s so handsome, just a fraction taller than me, dark skin with eyes as dark as my own but bigger, its like he has stepped out of one of the books I read and right into my path. When he came and sat next to me in the car today and started telling me how pretty I was and asked me to be his girl I thought I might have to pinch myself to believe it, how could he possibly have noticed me?

Fast forward a few months, surrounding by empty bottles, half smoked joints, dramatic comings and goings that seem so normal at that age, snuggling in single beds, eviction orders, sleeping bodies in the bath and on the stairs, one day I noticed he was no longer there amongst the debris of our assorted lives. He just vanished, I never knew where and I don’t remember trying too hard to find out.

Who would have thought back then (we didn’t even have mobile phones!) that one day we could just log onto a social networking site like Facebook and find people so easily. Which is exactly what has happened. And strangely (check the dates here) ten years on I receive this message through facebook

17th August 2009

it’s mad that we have found each other on this! Look I have really enjoyed catching up with you through these messages and was thinking since we’re both in the country right now how about we meet for a drink? Completely up to you, no pressure but thought it would be fun to have a proper catch up! x

amusing coincidence no?

Full Circle

I seem to have come full circle. These last few months I seem to drift from day to day with no routine and certainly no aim. I am back in the UK, I spent a month licking my wounds in Spain, staying here and there, trying to find some sense of purpose, of reason, a lesson that I could take with me after the craziness that Andrew brought to my life, to my mind. I found very little, instead I found myself yearning for home.

So I came back, tail between legs to the people who are as good … no sorry better … than my own parents ever could have been and here I am. I have licked my wounds, I have moved on from the time. As I always do, no tears after the initial drama, no long conversations with people about the ifs and whys. Just matter of fact me. It happened, life happens, let us all leave it be.

Now I found myself feeling stagnant, I have no job, I have no money, not used to relying on people to help me, not used to feeling so claustrophobic I seem to find myself looking around me a lot trying to keep my running shoes in sight even when those shoes need repairing.

6 weeks, at the beginning when I still had some money I kept up my façade of being a social butterfly, sure I laughed in the right places, told the right jokes, drank the right drinks – I’ve gotten good at pretending. But as the money dwindled away and the nights out become less and the quiet time crept in I found myself reverting to my own mind for company and that’s still where I stay.

I am still in the wilderness. I know I should be trying to find my way back home to me, trying to gain some sense of direction so I can lead myself out of here, but instead I seem to be dreaming of impossible things, of people who don’t and never will exist, losing myself in sweet yet destructive day dreams.

My friends here seem to be simply people of the past, moving backwards has never been an option for me and now I am trying it I understand why that was, the past is simply that, the past. It is not in align with the present.

I wish I could write when I feel upbeat and positive but as each day passes I feel a little bit more of that fall away.