Standing Down By Being Stood Up

There are quite a few things you have to be conscious off when you get the desire to start cleaning your apartment at four o’clock in the morning, mainly the neighbours, though why I am giving them a second thought I know not. Seeing as these are the same neighbours who I labelled ‘coffin builders’ because for months on end I was woken at all sort of odd hours with them banging, or using electrical noisy machinery outside my bedroom window. And trust me, when you work long and late hours sleep becomes almost holy and anyone who dares wake you from it is immediately cast as demonic.

But anyway, that’s what just happened to me, I was sitting there all dressed up and nowhere to go (literally) after I had been let down by my work friend. The same friend who introduced me to the young one.

He asked me to go out with them all tonight, and at first I didn’t think I really wanted to but he seemed keen and in the end I thought why not, August has been a long month for us that work in tourist towns and celebrating the end of it seemed quite an exciting prospect. See I leave work, go home and change, and sit and wait for him to call … and wait … and wait. Finally at four (I did tell you we work odd hours, we finished at two!) I gave up.

To say I felt a little put out would be an understatement, you see when something like this happens, I don’t think how other people think – I don’t put a logical explanation like maybe he fell asleep, or they didn’t go out, or something else. No, my first thoughts are ‘what did I do? Why don’t they want me out with them? Is the young one trying to avoid me? Did they ask me out of pity? For a laugh?’

Then instead of getting an explanation tomorrow and going with it, I will just think its an excuse. I can’t help it. Paranoia is something I have had in heaps ever since I can remember, it’s the bane of my life and something I get accused of having often, which in turn makes me paranoid about having such obvious paranoia.

So I’m sitting here, wondering what the hell is wrong with me. When all of a sudden I start to get hypercritical about the state of my apartment, about the dishes on the side, the floors that really need sweeping and cleaning and I want to fix it, but being aware of making noise and pissing people off, I just (quietly) put the dishes away, bring in some washing to fold and start planning a major de-junking of my living space.

Its while planning that, that it hit me what my intentions were – you see when I moved out here (one year and three months ago) I came with a suitcase and holdall, I had sold everything that I had acquired over the years in the UK ready for my new start – so here I am living here for over a year and I have acquired junk again, I could not fit what I have now in that same suitcase and holdall and I think that’s what scares me.

Realising the fact that if it all went wrong tomorrow I could not pack up and leave just as easily as I arrived worries me, in knowing that this is worrying me I am seeing that I want to run again. When I was younger I ran away to my mind, to the secular living of non-reality, as a teenager I hid myself away at home for almost a year, as a young adult I escaped through drugs and drinks, sexual relationship to sexual relationship, moving from job to job, friends to friends, now I literally flee for real. Gone are the days when just moving on in my mind or local surroundings are enough, now I need to change towns, cities, countries.

Meditation

Recently I have discovered guided hypnosis tapes (well Limewire downloads) and have become somewhat addicted to them. I can’t say if they are working, but I can vouch for the fact that after listening to them I feel calmer and more ready to face the world, more in-touch with life. I am listening to them most nights before I sleep and sometimes in the afternoon before I head out to work.

This has led me to think that I might take up meditation, I have always been a meditative person in that I can sit and think in complete stillness for hours – my own company is always joyful and serene, but never before have I explored my sub-conscious mind as I have been lately.

I don’t really know where to start with meditation, I do a lot of it is to do with breathing and that’s where I think I might find difficulty, as a heavy smoker and someone who has suffered panic attacks my breathing is not something I have ever been able to control. So being me, I google it and find a very simple ‘counting elephants’ theory:

· Breathe in slowly saying to yourself: “One elephant, two elephant, three elephant…”
· Then let the breath out slowly to six: “four elephant, five elephant…”

Which I have been walking around my apartment for the last half an hour practicing, I also tried some posture control exercises from a yoga download I had, which works on the fact that having good posture makes breathing easier. It seems to work (my back also feels great and aligned right now!)
So now, I think I am going to keep practicing these breathing exercises and then in a few days try this meditation malarkey. Maybe it will help me in my quest for calmness.
Anybody got an ideas where to start?

Sensuality Questioning

I am questioning my sensuality. Simply because it seems that the young one (as he is now christened) doesn’t want to come back for seconds. Not that I have asked. It’s just that he is being so normal. So bloody, freakingly normal. Not even a raised eyebrow or hint in sight. It’s like we have gone back to just being people who know each other because they know the same person.

He came into my work tonight – - I should mention here that the reason I know him is because he is workmates friend and now housemate – to see our mutual friend, he stood at the bar chatted to me about nothing at all really, general work stuff while he waited for our mutual friend to finish what he was doing so he could talk to him, and then left.

I’m pretty sure that I picked up our mutual friend tell another co-worker that he was off to see a German girl, which didn’t make me jealous, just a little bit disheartened that he really isn’t coming back for more.

Surely, I keep telling myself, that he should want too? Maybe I really have lost my talent for sex.

Maybe, I was kidding myself all along and never actually had it.

I’m so glad that I don’t have a phone number for him. I would probably end up doing some drunk dialing to try and find out exactly what he is thinking.

It’s stupid really, I had no intention or inclination to take this any further, I just don’t like the fact that I don’t even have the chance to do so even if I wanted.

A 21 year old has had one up on me, I wonder why strangely, that makes me smile.

Tori Amos

After the deepness of my last entry, wrote late last night, I woke this morning with a song that I always associate with the way I feel about myself in my head.

 

I also headed straight back to reread one of my previous entries ‘Time Line Therapy’ to reinstall in me the thought that I am trying to make a change that things will be different if I work at it.

 

It’s weird but Tori Amos has actually sang me through my feelings about two of the most confusing times in my life.  This song ‘Crucify’ makes me think of the inadequacies I feel I carry because of my childhood. 

 

Visually, it is arguably one of the worst videos ever made.  Lyrically it is arguably one of the best songs ever written.    

 

 

 

The second song that I relate too is ‘Silent all these Years’ while I know that in the song she is talking about her relationship with a man, some of the lyrics describe exactly how I feel about the relationship with my real Mum. 

 

I got something to say you know
But nothing comes
Yes I know what you think of me
You never shut-up
Yeah I can hear that

 

Or

 

Years go by
Will I still be waiting
For somebody else to understand
Years go by
If I’m stripped of my beauty
And the orange clouds
Raining in head
Years go by
Will I choke on my tears
Till finally there is nothing left
One more casualty
You know we’re too easy Easy Easy

 

Can I pick your brains?

I’m a new reader to Glazie’s blog, but after reading her tagged question I figured that this was as good as time as any to tell a little of my childhood story and how in my search for answers I found that I need to look within myself to right the wrong.

 

Q: What is that moment which has changed you and your life forever – to who you are now?

 

A) My childhood resembled an Eastenders episode in that the Slater’s, I am sure, must have been long lost relatives of mine.  My sister is my mum, my mum my nan, my sisters my aunts.  My parents did not want me – alcohol, parties, drugs, being young was more important than me.  As a baby I was both abandoned and detested.  As a child and more so as a rebellious, mixed up teenager I was detested more.

 

Its not easy being a person who really should never have existed, it is not great for confidence to know that not only do you not fit in anywhere but also that you was not really ever wanted anywhere.  An upbringing of pity leaves you lacking feelings that others take for granted.  Like a flower, people grow with love and tenderness; those that have been forced to grow in the dark are not as beautiful or as vibrant.  This was my life.  I grew in darkness, in confusion, with pity.

 

When I reached adulthood, instead of rebelling like I did in my teenage years, I looked for answers, for a sign that I wasn’t all bad that something about me was loveable.  I wanted someone to tell me it wasn’t my fault, that I was a victim of circumstance – that things would be alright in the end, my time would come to shine, to breathe, to smile without sadness in my eyes.  Nobody did.

 

When I moved away, I thought that distance would put a wall between the person I had become and the person I was.  It did not, instead I failed in everything I did, just as I had known all my life there was something about me that was strange, wrong, different, people also saw that in me and they hated me just as much as those in the past did.

 

Last Autumn my real mum and her partner came to visit me, we pretended like we always do that things are fine.  We do not talk about the past.  Until one afternoon when she had been drinking and she started talking about how much a victim in her life she was, how all her mistakes were made because of others, not because of her own doing.  I took this time to question her on the not very important subject of me. 

 

“Did you ever feel any guilt?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“About me? About the things you have done, did you not ever see how lost I was, how I struggled to breathe in a world so full of confusion? Of lies? Did you not care that I wanted to die?”

 

“Why would I carry guilt for you? You do not know pain.”

 

No, I do not know pain.   I do not know how it feels to wake up each day and feel like the worst person alive, I do not know how it feels to never be loved or wanted.  I do not know how it feels to live a half- life.  To never belong, to always be alone.  To always live in fear.  I do not know how it feels to just want to be so oblivious that my mind cannot focus on the excuse of a person I am.

 

My life changed that day.  How it will end up is yet to be seen.

 

 

My question to all of you, is simply this:

 

What does it feel like to fall in love with a moment you are in?

Will he even remember my face?

-           

 

In the movies this would be the start of a seducing time, he would pursue me, seek me out, turn up where he knows I will be.

 

But this is life, not a Meg Ryan film. 

 

So I wonder if he will even think about me again. 

 

He is probably married.  

Sexual Morals Come Calling

What is it about this sex thing that ties us up in so many knots?

 

I’m 27, yes… I’ve been around a little bit, had my fair share of practice (and failings) so how come all of a sudden I think I have something to proof when it comes to getting down and dirty?

 

There is a back-story here, he is younger than me, a little baby in fact at 21 – but has that tight little tanned body that most young Spanish do (such a shame that the majority lose it before they hit 30!) my attraction to him is completely apart from relationships, deepness or anything else, it boils down to that purest form of animal instinct – lust.

 

What he has going for him, has little to do with anything else apart from the fact that he is (very) ummm blessed shall we say.   In the trouser store he scorns at the trouser eel department and heads straight for the snake wear.

 

So the makings of a night of raw and dirty sex are more than there.  So why did I find myself acting like a no-nothing virgin and letting this young one take the floor, why was I not passing my carnal knowledge down to him with a bit of practical teaching?

 

I’m not going to talk about how everything hits south when your getting closer to thirty, I’ll leave that for the sex and the city bloggers – my body is in pristine shape thank you very much.  Nor is it to do with the fact that I am less sexually uninhibited as I was back then, it’s a true old saying that practice makes perfect, and I perfected the practice scores as I danced (cough cough) across my single years.  I bought the T’shirts, wore them, used them as blindfolds and left them laying around beaches across the continent and further.   No, its not that at all.

 

Its all about emotion, jeez, I dislike this word.  You see the thing is, this last year I have had a bit of a moral dilemma, in so much as the fact that I have started to think about things a bit deeper than before.  Being labelled, being rejected or not being respected in the morning were never things that bothered me in the slightest before – I mean why would I care if I was respected after the event? The fun part is in the deed. In respect there is no fun – correct?

 

Or not. 

 

All of a sudden I find myself wanting to get to know someone, finding out what makes their mind click and not just their organs rise.   Like a man who has talked to the breasts of a woman for so many years and then finally finds himself concentrating on her eyes, I am in confusion and more than a little turmoil. 

 

Phone numbers that were once left on scraps of paper around my various homes that used to be thrown away or forgotten about with the shutting of the door, are now meticulously stored in my mobile.  Where once I could not wait for them to leave in the morning so I could ring my friends and start arranging my day, minus their memory now I find myself almost wishing they would offer to spend the day, hasty exits once so normal now gnaw at me like a huge rejection. 

 

And the sex bit, god-help-me-for-saying-this, is not half as much fun when this little voice in the back of my mind is questioning the morals of the situation. 

Dreaming about Teeth

Lately I have had a recurring dream, in it my teeth start to fall out in small pieces and I am left with broken teeth, my mouth resembling what I perceive to be like a Victorian fictional witches.

 

After a particular heavy drinking night last night I woke up this morning at half four with what I call the red bull alertness (I don’t actually drink red bull but it reminds me of the days when I used to think red bull was a good mixer with vodka …) which means that half of me feels like death and wants to sleep and the other half is wide eyed and eerily alert.  I decide not to lie in bed and wish for sleep but to head straight to the internet and look up the meaning of this dream.

 

It seems that my dream is foretelling a bad time for me, various meanings seem to say that either my own business or health is going to be poor, or the sickness of someone close to me.  The thought of this feels me with dread.

 

But I am choosing not to take that meaning, instead I found a meaning that stated this:

 

Dreaming of teeth falling out may represent insecurity. These dreams often occur at a time of transition between one phase of life and another. When we lost our milk teeth, we also gradually lost our childhood innocence. Loosing your teeth therefore show that today you have similar feelings of uncertainty and self-consciousness as you did in childhood. The dream could also highlight your worries about getting older or your sexual attractiveness.

 

This would make sense with the way my life has been going lately, I am going through a phase now that I know will make or break the way I live my life in future years.  The last two months have been spent looking at the women in the mirror and questioning not why she is like she is so much, but how to make a change for a happier way of life.

 

And yes, it has left me insecure, there is nothing like facing who you are, admitting to your own flaws and agreeing on what needs changing to make you feel pretty lost and insecure in yourself.

 

Childhood innocence is not something I ever had, my childhood can only be described as difficult and different, but what I did have was the ability to make myself believe that I wasn’t in the wrong, now, after many years of blaming others for my struggles, tilting the blame on whoever bore the brunt of my moods … that’s gone now, I looked at the woman in the mirror with the black eyes and the trail of destruction and placed the blame firmly at her door.

 

So maybe dreaming about losing my teeth is a sign that I am really beginning a new phase of my life that my transition from the difficult young women I have been is underway. 

Single Women Vs Motherhood in the workplace.

Back when I actually had a career, bills and a real life in London and wasn’t just bumming around in Spain it was known for me to pass (quite a few comments) on parenthood.  Motherhood in the majority.  It never failed to irritate me that I had to get second choice on holidays, cover meetings that weren’t mine, work the majority of unsocialable hours all because not only was I single … I was (and still am) childless.

 

There were more irritations granted, like the fact that as a single, childless person I paid more tax, had less money coming in but still had to pay my bills just the same as the next person.

 

I shared an office with 5 working Mums, four were part time and one just back to full time – it also never failed to get my back up that the full time worker often took days off because her 15 year old was sick or had a baker day – come on now, does any 15 year old really need her Mum at home with them?

 

Anyway, all the aside, I could never quite comprehend just why these women complained so much, I was told time and time again that I was lucky that I had such freedom (luck has nothing to do with it – it’s a personal choice to have children or not, and I chose ‘not!’) I was also told that motherhood is by far the most difficult thing that any women would do, and that I had no comprehension on the difficulties of juggling motherhood, keeping house and working. 

 

To the woman I was 2 years ago, these comments sounded patronising and way off the mark. I was 25, single, working full time hours in my chosen career, and also working two extra jobs (in a pub at weekends and data inputting on the evenings) just to keep my own head above water – and still I was struggling.   Being told ‘I had no idea about real life’ from women who were only working part time hours, had husbands to help them (and bring in a second pay-packet), and who got to spend much more time at home than me was something I resented greatly.  I wondered how they thought my essentials (housework, washing etc) got done as I sure as hell could not afford a cleaner and trust me when your struggling with day to day life with no support the last thing worth spending worrying about is the last time you watered your flower boxes (couldn’t afford somewhere with a garden!).  But, the core base of their argument was that motherhood is a hard job, and one of which I could not comment on.   And as I had never spent a whole day with a baby or young child on my own I kept my silence. 

 

Until today that is.

 

You see I have been thinking about this subject today and I started to think that there must be other people who think like me – so I’m after some opinions, tell me your views? Do you think single women in general are getting a raw deal? Or do you think I am completely off base and should be more sympathetic to those who chose motherhood?

Madonna

Getting divorced.  Not getting divorced.  Adopting a three year old Malawian child named Mercy James.  Not adopting a three year old Malawain child named Mercy James.   Having an affair.  Not having an affair.

 

Who cares? Just someone please tell the woman that a reinvention is necessary and that its time to dump those fame-type leotards.

Beer Goggles

It was reported in that fountain of all truthful, open minded, political correct tabloid newspaper (tongue firmly in cheek here) that is know as the Sun today, that the University of Bristol have carried out research and apparently proved the ‘beer goggles’ theory correct.

Tell us something we don’t know? Of better still, why not just interview Ulrika Jonnson, how else would she have been able to bring herself to sleep with the weasel look-alike Sven?

“La Playa” by La Oreja de Van Gogh

I was sitting bleary-eyed in a café on the other side of town from my home in Southern Spain, it was early morning and apart from me the café was filled with working men, drinking coffee with ice and laughing amongst themselves.

I sat, the lone women, trying to gear myself up for my Spanish lesson, wishing I could fast forward a year down the line so I could at least follow half the conversation going on … thinking that I would never learn the language to the extent that I would feel comfortable even trying to use it.

There was also a man of my mind, a Madrid boy visiting for his holidays ‘Carlos Fernando’ with his chocolate eyes and easy smile, whom I had had to say goodbye to the night before.

On the TV in the corner the Spanish music station was playing, and all of a sudden I heard the most beautiful intro music and then haunting lyrics filled my mind. Even without understanding I knew from the way the song touched me inside that this translated to something I could emphasise with.

That afternoon I headed home and downloaded the track, since then it has been my most played. And even though, I can still not appreciate the lyrics fully in Spanish, I have translated enough (through the net and my friends) to know that just as I thought back then, I was right – this song is hauntingly beautiful and I can emphasise with the lyrics on such a deep level.

Lyrics:

No sé si aún me recuerdas
nos conocimos al tiempo
tú, el mar y el cielo
y quien me trajo a ti

I do not know if you still remember me,
We met on time
You, the sea and the sky
And the one who brought me to you.

Abrazaste mis abrazos,
vigilando aquel momento
aunque fuera el primero
y lo guardara para mí.

You embraced my hugs
Keeping watch on that moment,
Though it was the first,
And (though) I kept it for myself.

Si pudiera volver a nacer
te vería cada día amanecer
sonriendo como cada vez,
como aquella vez (Previo)

If I could be born again
I would see you rise (wake up) every day
Smiling like every time,
Like that time

Te voy a escribir la canción más bonita del mundo.
Voy a capturar nuestra historia en tan sólo un segundo;
y un día verás que este loco de poco se olvida
por mucho que pasen los años de largo en su vida. (Estribillo)

I am going to write you the most beautiful song in the world,
I am going to capture our story in just one second.
And one day you will see that this crazy forgets very little,
For all that the years pass in his long life.

El día de la despedida
de esta playa de mi vida
te hice una promesa:
volverte a ver así.

The day of the farewell
Of this beach of my life
I made a promise to you:
Once again to see you like this.

Más de 50 veranos
hace hoy que no nos vemos
ni tú, ni el mar ni el cielo
ni quién me trajo a ti.

More than fifty summers
It has been today without us meeting
Not you, nor the sea nor the sky
Nor who brought me to you.

In my life I have two obsessions…

In my life I have two obsessions…

One is the late and great Audrey Hepburn, the woman who with her elfin features and graceful elegance enchanted the whole world every time she appeared on the silver screen. I adore her, my apartment is a shrine in the making…ok so that’s an exaggeration, I have a print above my bed, a cushion hanging on my headboard and a picture box where I keep my bracelets and a mug in my kitchen. But the collection will grow. And I have something more, I have her films.

When I am feeling like everything in my world (which is quite a lot) is going wrong, and I feel alone, ugly, afraid, lost I tune into one of her movies and imagine I am here for just a little bit. She lights up the room, she proves that you don’t have to be a blonde sex siren to turn heads, her cute kooky characters, her amazing wardrobe selections, her sweet little voice. I want to be her or I mean I want to be just like her!

My other obsession is with Frenchmen, or I should say one particular Frenchman who has brought me to my knees without so much as a hi or bye. In fact this man has turned me into an obsessive French wife wannbe, not only of his glorious self but of the whole culture. I mean really how can anyone not find that language with all its Je’s and Ja’s sexy, I can pretty much turn to mush just by overhearing a conversation in French! I guess the next steps would be to actually learn to speak/understand the language…and well, to get this amazing man to actually look in my direction!