The Promise

I was 16, started my first job and feeling scared and very unsure. I had just come through what I call now my ‘forgotten year’ – I’ll tell you about that one day when I have the courage to write it without worrying that people will think me insane and incredibly strange – and I covered my lack of confidence and strength by being difficult. I was over opinionated, defensive and I lacked direction, but most of all I lacked a confidante, a friend, someone to turn too, in a world so full of loneliness and bitterness my only prayers were for someone who would understand.

Anthony was a couple of years older than me, not the most drop dead gorgeous person I have ever met in my life, but the most attractive person I have ever known, how’s that you think? Easy, everything about him was almost bewitching, he was funny, he was nice and he made me feel like I was a complete person again, something which at that time meant more to me than any amount of money could have ever done.

We worked together, he was a van driver, I worked in the office, we was joined together by our loathing of the hatred of the wages we were paid and the boredom of the job, we became friends, good friends.

He gave me confidence to put my life back together and I found the courage to contact an old friend and she and I began to go out drinking/clubbing/shopping etc and one night I went to a club with her (and a bloke who apparently liked me – it seems nasty I guess when I look back now, but he got lost in the equation and I remember little about him that night) and Anthony was there. The drunker I got, the more I realised that if I never told Anthony I liked him I would never know if he felt the same, so I did. Just like that, a drunken conversation and you know what? He did feel the same, we kissed right there in the middle of the club like you do after you both own up to liking each other in your teenage years and that’s where it all started.

We went out for ooohhh maybe a month or two *smile* I was a bitch just as I always have been. And well, he figured me out too easy. He saw through the façade and was honest enough to tell me to shut the fuck up when I went into a fit. But he couldn’t stop me hurting myself and everyone around me with my un-rational emotions and in the end my emotional un-stability was just too much for him to be around.

Sometimes it was like we were normal teenagers, sneaking around to spend time with one another when one of out parents were out, meeting his friends and walking miles to see each other. But other times, the strangeness of me, the separateness of my life was held there for all to see, the way I lacked basic social skills, I would sit in a room so quiet with all his friends, never joining in looking scared and unsure, and then afterwards the angry person would rear her head. I lacked basic understanding of how the world worked, the time to be quiet and the time to speak. I feel both pity and hatred for the young girl I was back then.

We never slept together back then, I was 16 and quite naïve at that – but there started the most unusual emotional tie of my life. After that my life took on a new turn, the phone started ringing, I started living, I still never calmed down, we all know that’s only just something I have been working on recently, sort off. But I got better… I got better at hiding it anyway and got on with things. But every couple of months, years whatever we would drift back together, I felt tied to him. I know he had girlfriends but I never asked about them and he never told me. And then when I was 18, after a drug-induced night, I slept with him. He was my first, I was happy and I knew in my heart I was going to love him forever – whether he wanted that love or not – so I never regretted it, quite the opposite as the years have passed and my promiscuity has intensified I look back now at that time as the most cleanest time of my being – it’s a sad type of life when there has been so many men but I can hand on heart say only two have been emotionally linked to me and felt the same emotion back.

So on the story went, I would see him every few month we would sleep together, talk a lot, I would get to be close to him – I never asked him for me than he gave. I guess in my heart I knew he wouldn’t give, couldn’t give it to me – I didn’t deserve more, not from someone like him.

He was my friend, he was the person who rescued me from a hundred crazy situations, the person who would come round and tell me to sort myself out when I looked on the verge of losing it. He stood my ground many times and told me what he thought honestly in the privacy of our own conversations, I loved him all over again every time I saw him. I wanted him for more than just a physical side, I wanted him emotionally, I wanted the person who saw me for what I really was to tell me that he accepted the real me and could love the person I was back. That never happened and each time the rejection came to me we would blow, arguments would come and we could spend months without speaking.

Then he stopped ringing, changed his number and I never knew the new one, I heard random things about him through the grapevine, mainly about a girl he was with. Then a couple of years later I met up with him in a bad situation, I got with a bloke who I fell for as hard, though in a different way as I did Anthony, he didn’t like it – they were friends – and we end up arguing, after that we never spoke for a long time and both got on with our own lives. I heard he had a kid with that girl.

We started talking one night in a club about 2004 time, just as friends, I remember thinking things would never be the same. He had split up with the mother of his child and was on his own again. We started seeing each other again, it lasted a month or so and dwindled out, nothing major happened, it was just all very confusing, he was recently separated from his ex and I had a feeling he would go back to her. Once again I felt like I didn’t deserve his time.

After that we drifted back together a few more times, the same things happened, we made love, me laughed, we argued, we have both battled highs and lows with alcohol and drugs, we both partied too hard and too much though mostly separately what brought us together was something different. When I left the UK we were on good enough terms and have kept in contact since, through facebook and text’s etc. He has always been in the back of mind, its not something that is even subconscious, when I fail or when I fair well I wonder what he would think, what he would say or do if he was with me, he is like a silent guide on my shoulder who I hold my darkness too to see if it brings him light. What I do know is that if he is constantly in my mind right now.

Last night I sent a text message and he rang me today. We spoke for about half an hour and all I kept thinking was tell me something, give me a small grain of hope that if I came running you would catch me. He spoke about how we always have our arguments, but in the end we always find our way back to one another – I am pretty sure he meant as friends, as we all know I have never offered much in the way of emotions to anyone.

But what if I am meant to go back, what if I meant to go and try? People have told me that if I stop listening to the noise all around me I will hear what is being said in the quietness of my own being. What if I am meant to go back to the very start? What if the 11 years that has passed between then and now have meant something all along.

What if its time for me to go and be honest about the way I feel, without pretence without fear, if he rejects me now then maybe I would know that it was to never be. But if he doesn’t reject me, maybe I can try and be the person I know is inside of my somewhere the person who cares and has something to share not just the cold empty shell that people think I am.

I am always going to be difficult, I would not stake any type of bet on him wanting me, of even understanding why I am trying. But what if he really is where I was heading all along.

Insomnia, Tears and a kick in the teeth!

I’ve been lapse in posting here, mostly because I was sick of thinking about the same things minute after minute, hour after hour .

Tonight I broke.

A few days ok I got offered a little work doing telesales from home, nothing too great but at least it was money. Thing is I didn’t have a phone line but I got around it by getting a SKYPE opt in number and using that, luckily for me it only cost just over 4 euro (per month) to set up and I was allowed to just pay one month, I just about had it in my UK account from money that I had got before. So home phoneline – check. Next, because the calls had to be routed through the PC I needed a headset thing so I had a mic … off I go to the Chinese shop and managed to buy one for 7 euros, headset check.

So off I go, and while the money isn’t going to help that much (10 euro’s the first day, 20 the next) at least it was something coming to me at the end of the month. I have nothing now. I don’t possess credit cards or anything so can’t go down the route so this little bit of money seemed like a life-saver.

This week has been hard, I’ve been living on pate and toast because I can’t afford to buy anything else, I haven’t had a cigarette in two days (which is enough to make me a crank anyway) I feel like a prisoner in this apartment, I can’t even go and have a coffee or a drink with my friends the only time I get out is when I actually make myself go for a walk or something just to feel like I’m still alive – I haven’t seen anyone because I just don’t want to face them I feel like a fucking failure.

Then tonight was the breaking point I went to make some calls and the mic on the headphones has gone (teaches me to buy cheap shit) I bought them from the chinease cheap shop so they won’t exchange them and that means that the little bit of money I could make has gone.

I sat on my apartment floor and cried – maybe it was months of frustration, I don’t know but all of a sudden I felt like the most loneliest, stupidest person on this whole planet – it always seems that when life is on a downhill curve everything just keeps kicking you down everytime you try and move up.

I’m not in general a crying girl – in drink maybe – but not in normal, I think deeply for sure we all know that, I hurt myself with words but actually breaking down is not something that I do often and the more the tears came the more I couldn’t stop them. it was like I was looking at myself for what I really was. For all the things that have happened in the last month I left my job, had a massive falling out with my sister, can’t pay my rent, can’t get a job, can’t even buy food. I fucking hate my life and myself right now.

I know this entry sounds aggressive but my aggression is with myself. I’ve always knew I am a nothing, I’ve always knew that I would fail but the truth is I always knew I would fail at relationships, at holding things together, at holding my moods together but to actually fail as spectacularly as I am right now is surpassing my own grim expectations. I’ve never given myself leeway to just let myself be because I know all my shortcomings, I’m my hardest critic – I get there before anyone else because its easier that way, if I know in my mind what I am then when others tell me it doesn’t hurt so much.

The stark reality is that I mess up everything I touch and right now I just keep getting kicked in the teeth.

Writing for the sake of writing!

Things are still not looking bright – it doesn’t seem to matter how many streets of bars and restaurants I walk or how many people I speak too work is not forthcoming.  I knew it would be difficult this time of year, I remember knowing people who were in the same situation last year who ended up on a plane out of here back to their homelands and I remember saying ‘it can’t be that hard there is jobs if you really want one’  

 

But I just got hungry and ate those words.

 

In fact I have been forced to eat a lot of words I have said over the last year.

 

It’s about being in the right place at the right time out here and due to the fact that I have been constantly depressed I guess I have been spending a lot of times in the wrong places at the wrong time.

 

I also have a feeling about something else that is going to make this situation I am in even worse.  But now is not the time to go into that.   Right at this moment I can barely admit it to myself let alone put it out here for you all to read.  

 

I haven’t seen the hippy man either – nor have I spoke to him since the last time when I told him I needed to wallow in my own self pity for a few days, I have no idea what he is thinking right now – I feel bad for the confusion I have brought to him.  I feel bad for a lot of things.

Pointless Games and Addictive Chat – www.playandwin.co.uk

The hippy man asked me to go over and lock lips with him over a bottle of pink champagne, but I declined.   Very unusual for me to turn down an offer of drinking something that has bubbles in but I was feeling pretty low and wanted nobodies company but my own.

 

I spent the night surfing the night … but avoiding my blog … and ended up at www.playandwin.co.uk frustrating myself by playing a card game called Egyptian Pyramids which is incredibly pointless but a little bit addictive.

 

While I was playing I had one eye on the chat box that flows down the right hand side of the screen and I ended up getting a little bit enthralled by the drama that seemed to be going on in this little game chat room.

 

It seems that nowadays people don’t talk to their ‘boyfriends’ until they come into live chat.  One woman was SHOUTING into the room that her boyfriends ex had her way, they are separating.  She was also asking the rest of the room to go over and look at her profile, seems the ex was writing (death non the less) threats on her guestbook.   Scary stuff being cyber-stalked.   It left me wondering if she had ever even met her ‘boyfriend’ except for in the confines of a live chat box.

 

Next up came a young boy abusing the rest of the chatters for swearing (found it quite amusing myself … I mean all he was doing was sharing the advice his Mum probably gives him everyday) but it seemed that his whole family was in there and by family I mean new-age family as in Mum, Dad, Step-Mum, sister, half brother all very dignified and a little bit strange. Why would you invite your husband’s ex-wife to play Egyptian Pyramids? I can just imagine the conversations when swapping children from one house to the next:

 

SM: ‘Hi, the kids have been great, we spent the weekend playing Egyptian Pyramids’

 

M: Egyptian Pyraminds? Sounds Great.  Err What the hell is it?

 

SM: It’s this completely pointless and silly little game on www.playandwin.co.uk – FANBLOODYTASTIC!

 

M: Oh fabulous sounds amazing.  I must join, see you there!

 

Come on, you know you can picture it.  

Hell Behind the Frontdoor

Tonight’s events have made me realise I have little to complain about when it comes to the grand scheme of things. Lately, every entry I hate wrote seems to be me whining on about how bad things are for me well tonight made me sit back and think that my selfishness has become all consuming.

I was ‘allowed’ to read something tonight that my friend had wrote, something from the depths of her being that she put down on paper in the hope that it would calm some of the eternal storm she carries inside.

She was abused. Sexually abused. By her Dad.

The same man that is supposed to protect her from the hells the world had to offer in her youth actually made her walk into hell.

I could have said I understand, after all I too know what it’s like to be the victim of a sex attack, but it would be a lit, I don’t understand. A monster who spiked the drink of a strange woman – who had in fact had too much to drink anyway – is in no way to be compared (in my mind) to a father putting his daughter through years of hell.

In a world where evil can lurk in every shadow in every dimly light street we expect the comfort of our own houses, the warmth of our family to help shut that same evil out. But what if that evil is contained behind the façade of a cosy welcoming house.

True horror, it seems, lies behind red front doors and white picket fences.

Dead-End Search.

Three strips of bars later, the local newspapers and a few random phone calls I am still jobless.

I met up with my friend along the way, who I have to admit put all her efforts into helping me. Have to admit it was more than appreciated, even the job search was redundant having someone trek around the bars/restaurants with you sure makes it easier. She even went and bought some drink and invited me round for a girl’s night at hers tonight, which I am looking forward too just to take my mind off things if nothing else.

Another friend of mine, one who shared the up’s and down’s with me when I first ventured out here has also been cheering me up with a memory fest on Facebook. Even when your depressed looking back on some of the funnier times always manages to bring a smile to your face. I miss her. A lot. More than a lot on fact.

In other news I have been suffering with terrible stomach cramps. Now is not the time to get ill. No siree, though it would figure that it would happen now – I’m way past thinking luck has something good in store for me.

One Way Ticket Into Hopelessness!

I left my house last night and sat in the bar; I know that’s not such a clever thing to do for someone who is completely broke but it never worked out too bad. One of my neighbours stood me a couple of drinks and then two very good friends of mine done the same. After being deprived of alcohol for some time it went to my head. While it felt good to be out of the prison that my apartment is coming being drunk also reminded me that I am on a slippery slope into nothingness at the moment.

I did what any self-respecting depressed girl would do; I drunk dialled Nicholas (no answer – shoot … I deleted his number this morning so no more of that!) then I came online and drunk commented on a few blogs, before giving up and headed over to facebook to complete my drunk-make-a-fool-out-of-myself marathon.

Good going I think.

As of this morning I have 15 euros to my name, take out of the cigarettes (I don’t care if they are counted as ‘luxury items’ I’m down ok, nicotine withdrawal is not something I can withstand right now) I am about to go and buy, the washing up liquid that is needed in my house and the bottle of drink (soft drink guys – honest!) then that’s me pretty much done.

I’d like to say I can not get to a much lower point in my life than this; but that’s just tempting fate as I know in my heart I really can and over the next days/weeks I am going to visit it.

Right now I am going out to tread pavements in search of work but I am pretty pessimistic about the whole thing. I’m thinking I just bought a one-way ticket into hopelessness.

I guess this is why being in a strange country away from family, friends and everything you hold familiar can sometimes suck more than anything.

This Seasons Man?

You know every couple of months (Ok I am lying make that weeks … days even) I change what kind of man I want, city-boy, rich- boy, gypsy-boy, earthy-boy, work-with-his-hands boy, I dribbled over the idea of a hippy-boy until I met current squeeze.

Now being jobless and really needing either work or free money my imagination is soaring to bar-owning boy or to the other extreme gangster-boy (actually they could be one and the same here in Spain). So what is a girl to do?

Should I be sowing my oats and going through every kind of man I can imagine (no comments from those who think I already have ok?) until I find the one that clicks, should I stop dreaming or maybe I should stop at a red-light for a minute, take a long hard look at the cars passing by and put an end to this promiscuous phase of mine (9 years can still be classed a phase, right?!)

But do you think it’s really possibly to just be able to settle for one person? I mean we change our clothes often – we have too – our idea of what looks good varies from one week to the next. Just three weeks ago I was loafing around in silver flip-flops with the cutest little stones imbedded in them but when I looked at them sitting in my wardrobe this morning I thought of them as looking kind of ugly and a little worn.

Can’t the same be said for men? After the novelty of the new wears off, surely we can treat them like last seasons Chloe handbag and upgrade to the new. Or should I really be looking to invest in the male version of the LBD. One of those classics that we take out and rematch or reaccessorise and keep on wearing. Divinely cut and suitable for all occasions?

I guess my problem is, I never did find a LBD that withstood the time of fashion.

Just Another Lost Soul

I was sitting on the sofa in my apartment, legs crossed, glass of Cava in my hand, his sitting on my rug back leaning against the sofa.

We’re talking the idle crap that seems to come so easily, he is telling about a problem with a guy he works with … I’m listening and commenting but when it comes to me sharing my ill-fated Malaga adventure I breeze over the facts and tell him just a simple outline. He is looking at me, I can sense the confusion and I have learnt very quickly that he always asks when he wants to know something.

He is telling me that I confuse him, he can’t work out if I want to be with him or not, his telling me sometimes he thinks I do and then he thinks I don’t. I try to tell him in my haphazard way that this is just how I am. I want to tell him not to expect too much from me but I don’t. He continues thinking outloud:

‘how do I get to know someone who is cold?’

I don’t have an answer. He will never know me. I turn it into a joke and tell him the last place on earth he wants to be is in my head. I don’t want to be there all the time he states but just to know something every now and then would be good.

I carry on drinking, the bubbles have gone to my head and I am feeling light – we joke and laugh and talk about random situations in life. His telling me that he does not ever want to have children and I find myself feeling for the children he will never have, he has such a gentleness, it seems to my untrained eye that he would make a wonderful parent.

The more he talks to me, the more I am thinking that in my confusion right now about my life I have missed something about him. Being me, I go to the my room and pull out the black bag that holds my tarot cards – just for fun I tell him, are you going to share what they say he wants to know. No, no its just for me, I want to know.

He’s stuck.

It’s so simple why did I not see it without the cards. He has spent time just being, being this easy going calm man, loving and giving to all around him, befriending the earth and the people but really he is lost. His cards hold so much hope but all of them reversed – so much to give, so much good to be had, but his stuck. Unsure about what to be or where to go. We’re stuck in this moment together and for some reason that makes me want to reach out to him more. This is not forever, this is our moment to join and be.

After that we get back to being lighter, I feel safer in the knowledge that for all his confidence he is just another lost person.

We’re pulling at clothes on my sofa, the cheap champagne helping us along, his rougher this time but even the pain comes with a form of gentleness. It’s the morning, he is leaving to go to work I get up to see him out and then start my own day, trekking around looking for work. Nothing. Nada. Every road seems to take me to a dead end.

In the afternoon he is calling me ‘I just need to come to your house for a moment’ I open the door and he kisses me, he spent no more than three minutes here and it was just to kiss me.

If I was another girl I would be left with warm feelings. If he was another man who I knew would play the game I would be left with warm feelings. As it is, I was left feeling nothing but guilt.

I managed to avoid seeing him last night and then again tonight. Instead I have sat in my apartment and wiled the hours away on the net, I have no motivation, no money and as the depression sets in I withdraw from the world.

Six-Word Secrets

There is more to tell about the hippy man but for now I am shying away from the fucked-up deep-thinking life of Lou-Lou posts and putting some rational thought into what is really important right now.

Here’s the deal. We all know I am currently jobless; the move is not on the cards anymore after the ruptures within my family ties. I have paid my rent so I have my apartment until the 7th of November, but in my money bag I have only 25 euros left and due to the fact that I sold everything two years ago when I left the UK I haven’t got a freaking thing to sell to help me on my way.

Finding a job is proving difficult. Living in a tourist resort is great in the summer, money is plentiful, the place is alive with people. Come the winter months it’s the complete opposite, people are laying off staff this time off year not taking on new ones.

It seems I am well and truly up shit street without a paddle, or however the saying goes (am sure I have that mixed up, why do you need a paddle in a street?) I don’t even have the money to get a flight back to my homeland, nor do I want to return to the UK.

And to top it all off, people keep saying things like this to me;

Well yeah, thanks.

I am sure one day I will look back on the poor, unemployed, lost, bitter twentysomething woman I am right now and say wow that was a hard lesson but I gained so much – but right now being stranded in a foreign country without family, money and hope looking to the future and thinking of the lessons that are going to be learnt just ain’t something I am all that keen on doing.

So in response to a blog entry I read earlier today about six-word secrets at The Rest Is Still Unwritten here’s mine;

Life’s fucked up; pass the vodka

Fragile Wind

Nitin Sawhney – Fragile Wind 

We’re drinking small beers in a Spanish bar, there is people in the room but I am not sure I could remember them. There is an AC/DC record playing and he is telling me he liked them, I have no comprehension about them and wonder if the ten years in between us are like a vacuum of lost moments we are never going to get to share. I am starting to feel trapped, to feel unsure.

He is so nice to me, too nice, its starting to scare me my mind is going into overdrive ‘please don’t think I am a good person, please don’t think I can give you what I don’t have’ it’s time to leave, he is asking me if I want to go back to his apartment. I find myself agreeing even though my mind is elsewhere.

We’re in his apartment, hardly talking, hardly touching. I’m lost.

He puts a CD on and I am falling, we are standing there, holding one another, barely moving but I feel like we are dancing. I’m listening to the words of Nitin Sawhney and losing myself. His asking me if I mind if he doesn’t hurry, he wants to make love to me – how can he know that I am cold inside and nothing can melt me. He is reaching inside of me, finding something to grasp that is not real. I cannot stop him looking for what is not there, I do not know the words to say to tell him to keep his feelings, to be like the rest and look and see all that is lacking. I’m holding onto the music ‘inside my head I can be anything…’

He is making love to me, I am responding but there is always something holding back. This gentleness is too much for me.

We’re falling asleep, like a fallen angel he is looking at me in the dark, stroking my face. He cannot see my tears I just want to sleep and forget, always I want to forget.

Its morning, my resolution is hard, he is waking me wanting to make love to me. I cannot respond, my mind is not so much blank but bleak… the winter has set it. I’m nothing but cold. He guesses I don’t want too, but he is trying to persuade me, he thinks his sweetness, his openness, he’s feelings are enough to change my mind.

I’m laying there, wishing he would stop, he keeps trying, he is acting with compassion, wanting to make love to me – I feel like I am being raped all over again my mind is another place, with another man, with someone who hurt me, who made me colder than I already was. He is gentle but all I feel is someone else’s hand on me, someone who tore my life to pieces, a monster I cannot forget.

He stops, gets ready for work, I can see the confusion in his eyes, he feels like he has gone to bed with someone who is pure sunshine and woken in the middle of the coldest winter.

His leaving, I pretend I am sleeping. I get up and leave, careful not to leave any piece of me in that apartment, I stand at the door with tears in my eyes and tell his absent spirit that I am sorry, I am sorry but I cannot change.

I’m driving, the miles between my home and Malaga, as the miles pass I feel myself relaxing, I’m alone, driving through mountains, wishing I could stop time and stay there. I want to get out of the car and climb to the top and sit and be. My fingers are curling the rosaries hanging from my dashboard I’m praying for a sign, anything that lets me know I can feel, that I am human.

500 miles later I arrive, I have listened to the CD he gave me last night so much that my speakers in my old car have blown.

Everything seems fine, I paint on my smile and for three days I stay with my sister it seems ok …

We’re drunk, words are coming, she is shouting, I know I have said something wrong – I always do – my mind is going over and over, her words are stinging me. I want to go home, but I do not know where home is.

I’m texting him, telling him I want to come home to him. I need something to believe in even though my heart knows its not reality I am chasing. Its half four in the morning and I’ve had too much to drink but I am in my car driving back, the miles pass so slowly, my tears are drying, the anger is coming, then the hurt, the confusion, the guilt, the awareness that I always fail.

I’m resolute I will never speak to her again, I’ll never look back.

I’m home, he is waiting but I do not go and see him. Instead I lie in my bed of broken dreams and dry eyed I wait for sleep to take me.

I have no money, no job, I cannot pay my rent he is calling me but I am going further into myself I know this is not what I want.

I’m drowning …

And I cannot swim.

Invierno

We ate Sushi in a back street restaurant, I felt like I was sharing in his magic light, so often I have seen him, so often he came into the restaurant where I worked, his hippy style of dressing, his smile that made me want to smile right back.

Before I left work I commented to a co-worker about the secret crush I had harboured for the last year ‘I have no idea why I think about this man so much but I do’ I confided, the day after I left that same co-worker passed on my number and the hippy is ringing me … so there we are eating Sushi, we’re talking random thoughts in broken English, a man so different than anyone I have met before and there have been many men, so many different types of people with whom just for a night or a little while I have let myself share in their light.

I confide how confused I am about the move, how for some reason just before I am supposed to be leaving I have found myself feeling that its not time for me to move, I do not tell him about the running, but he knows, I know he knows, I can see it in his eyes. ‘You’re a very different type of girl’ he tells me. I spend my time being as normal, as inconspicuous in this world as possible I tell him that I am boring. He laughs, he disagrees, you say that so much he tells me but you have no idea how non-boring you really are, your different, its ok to be different he tells me.

Why am I so different? I don’t know.

He tells me about his sailing, his carpentry, he takes odd jobs around both of his loves, he tells me about his visits to Thailand how he is learning the language. About his life where he comes from in Madrid and the girl that owned his heart for a long time. There is ten years between us, him older but in some ways while so open minded he seems so naïve. He has lived in a world of kindness and compassion, he shines with his acceptance of himself and those around him. I, the girl who only feels live when she is alone and seeing the beauty of the natural earth around her, wants to reach out and touch him.

We’re in a bar its named after the dark moon – we’re sitting on cushions. He is laughing at me again, you call me the hippy man but look at you. Your no different, maybe more so. I look at myself at my clothes and think about the comments people have made in the past about my bohemian sense of style. I know other looking in would think that was what we are, but I am wondering if I am being a chameleon, I am so good at that I can blend in with whatever is happening around me to go unnoticed. You can never be unnoticed he tells me with a brightness in his eyes. For a moment I feel like he is mocking me but soon see he is not.

I tell him about my family, but just the facts, not about the pain. It seems to quaint to talk about causes when I am finding myself telling him the truth about who I am, I am telling him about not liking people, about my obsessions with the spirit world, about my pretence about liking the things that people are supposed to but never really wanting to be there or understanding what I should like about it – about my beliefs, we talk about believing in god and he tells me he wishes he could believe, my confidence in my own beliefs surprises myself. How can you not I say, when you are on your boats and you look around and see all that is real, all that is amazing how can you not believe. My church is the world I say, my church is in nature, not in cold stone buildings and words of a bible. I am part of something that no amount of scientific talk can take away the magic.

His pulling me towards him, we’re kissing and touching like teenagers, in bar empty apart from two other groups we’re sitting in the corner reaching for each other.

We speak so much, we say little about the past or the future, we speak about the present and the things that are important to us every day, he tells me about caring for his elderly Father, I tell him about my battles with the many facets of myself about how I never feel in, am never quite accepted – I feel like I am saying too much, being too honest for the world of lies I have built around myself, its only here in my written word that honesty feels so natural to me.

He takes my hands and speaks to me in low tones; People are scared of anyone that is different, you are much more different than most, your anger at yourself is because you are trying to put yourself in a box, so you can be part of this thing called normality. But you cannot fit, your different and it makes people insecure and it makes you angry.

I wonder if he is right, at the time it seems so real, but in the back of my mind I know he is seeing me as something pure, he is seeing the good, honest side of me – the girl that like the quiet life and just wants to be. There is another side of me that I fight with so much, the self destructiveness, the anger that he has not yet seen.

We walk to the promenade, we sit smoking cigarettes in the early hours of the morning on a bench, the sea is behind us, black with the night and alive with the wind. We’re sitting close, silence has descended and we’re just being.

Then we are in his apartment, laying close, touching, in the darkness he is whispering to me in Spanish, he kisses me goodnight, tells me I am beautiful, my body is aching for him but he does not do anything more than hold me as I fall asleep.

It’s the morning and I am feeling him wake beside me, I can hear the shower going and then he is back, laying next to me and stroking my face, through bleary eyes I gaze at him and wonder if I can stop the thoughts that will turn me against him in days, the thoughts that come so easily to me to make me not want someone, even when my heart and body aches for someone I can turn myself against them. My emotions are like a winters morning, when my mind turns cold it freezes my feelings. His leaving for work, telling me to stay and sleep, I doze on and off and then return to my house.

All day I am thinking about him. Then its nine at night, he is ringing me, I can hear the tiredness in his voice and we arrange to meet tomorrow.

I’m in a bar, Nicholas, someone I have known for a while is with me, we’re matching drink for drink, laughing at stupid things and having difficult conversations with our broken attempts at each others language. My heart is telling me that I don’t want to do this, my minds pushing any thoughts of good away, this is the night, I belong to the night.

We’re in my apartment, kissing, clothes being torn off, biting, touching… we’re in my bed, we’re pulling, tugging, the sex is rough, sweat running down our bodies, we’re everywhere, hair being pulled, swollen lips being chewed, I look at us in the mirror my eyes last night so bright with warmth are now black as coals, void of anything except lust, his hurting me treating me with the lack of respect that men keep for whores, my body is reacting with desire, I want to be hurt, I want to feel the pain it makes everything real, there is no gentleness, no soft kisses, this is what I do, this is what my body is made for, like a lady of the night I want more and more, I take everything he gives and come back harder.

We lay side by side, his rough hands bringing me to climax, making me call out.

His leaving, it’s half four in the morning and we’re done. We swap chit-chat at the door, one last kiss. I close the door lay back on my bed and stare up into the darkness, I have a voice in my ear telling me to feel humiliated, telling me that I promised myself I was passing this, that it was not needed anymore. But like an addict craves the drug of their choice, like an alcoholic craves their drink of choice, I crave pain, I crave the feeling of loss of abandonment, of emptiness, of emotionally void encounters that make my body react and my heart feel cold.

I do not cry. My winter snow is not yet ready to melt.