First post of 2012

My first post of 2012.
A year when I have to look on the bright side
When I have to make things happen for me.
When I have to let the bad stuff just wave over me
and the good stuff stick by.
A year when my life starts again.

dix

BR - a cat called norton by Peter Gethers

This is a funny little book written by a chap about his cat. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is not literature but it is entertaining and it doesn't end on a sad note (always good with animal books). He takes his cat everywhere and it fits along nicely with his life.

I found it really easy to read but it made me smile and that is OK. So if you like cats; don't mind the American slant and want an easy entertaining read - give this a go. You won't be disappointed.

Dix

BR - What if God were the Sun? by John Edwards

I have had this book for ages - years even but recently it kept coming to the top and being in my eyesight. I, mistakenly took this to mean that it was a message for me to read it. That this book would help me in some way - would help me feel better or give me a answer to the pain I feel in my life at the moment.

It didn't.

In fact it is a very poor book with little or no story line, is badly written and didn't leave me with any feeling apart from why did I bother to read it, buy it, or keep it so long. He didn't even explore the spiritualism properly. Oh well I can now pass it on and it won't be part of the clutter in my house anymore.

Dix

BR - the accidental by Ali Smith

I found this book really good to read and really bad. I know that doesn't really make sense but it does to me. I would recommend this book to anyone but beware it is written in a style that make is difficult; that makes you question what you have read and re read again and again. Well that is what I did anyway. I really liked the end, which is unusual for me as I normally find ends a disappointment. There are parts of the story I guess I still don't get but other parts that just wowed me. They left me wishing I could write like this; wishing I could get anywhere near this standard.

I don't want to even start to explain the story; it would just sound crap in explanation so if you are brave or if anything intrigues you - read it.

Dix

One Art by Elizabeth Biship

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop


I heard this poem and found it touched me. It touched my heart - so appropriate. I have to learn the art of loosing. I have to learn the art (again) of loosing love.

Dix

I found this quote by Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

I found this quote on another blog that I read. I so hope that it is true but at least for today it has made me feel better.

Dix

Alone and blogging

I haven't really been able to blog for a while in fact there is so much in my life that I haven't been able to manage. I know I may have put this before but to explain my 30 year marriage ended 15 weeks ago now. He left me by sending a text message and ran off with one of my best friends. And it hurts so much. Every day I just hope it will start getting easier - and to be honest in some ways it is. I no longer want him back. I realise that what he has done is so bad and has hurt so much there is no going back. But still I wake every morning with them in my head and I go to sleep the same and in between I have moments of OK, moments of better than OK and moments of utter hell.

I ache inside, I ache with loneliness. I feel it like a pain. I know it is too soon to even be thinking about starting another relationship but I so miss having someone around. After 30 years, even though they weren't all good I so miss waking up beside someone, having someone to talk to, discussing the rubbish on TV, eating with and so on and so on. Some days I really believe that one day there will be someone else for me but most days all I feel is a great be empty hole of the future of being alone, of coping alone. And I absolutely hate it.

Today is a bad day, a really bad day - lots and lots of crying already, up at 5am because I can't bear lying there thinking of them, thinking of what they have done. I can't ring my friends crying anymore - I have had enough of me so I know they have. I want it to stop -I want the days to be better, I want to feel like I can cope with boy and just make a life for myself alone and not keep feeling like this. I know many many people live alone and they do just fine, they are happy and able to live their life to the full. I have done so many things to try and make this go away but it just wont. I am at college one day a week, I volunteer, I have got the house much tidier and have really cleared the clutter, I cook and I clean and I do the garden and I cut wood - lots and lots of things. But I still have so many days like today when I just feel so empty, so alone and can't stop crying.

I know if I just make myself then I should be writing - that may be the savour to my life - if I can write everyday and really get into it I might stop feeling like this but trouble is my concentration span is hopeless, my confidence lower than usual and my avoidance huge.

I have started to do some jogging, maybe physical exercise will stop the pain and help me continue to loose weight and help me see a future for myself.

So here is my first blog for a while and yes it is just me feeling sorry for myself - as another blogger puts it a proper visit from the 'self pity' gnome. I don't know if it will help but I have to try, I have to try anything to stop myself feeling like this. I know somewhere inside I have the means to move on but some days I just can't summon it up.

If anyone is reading this 'I am sorry' but if it helps me at all I am not.

dix

It's Official

It's official. I really have no clue what I am doing.

Today I am (well, I think I am meeting someone). I say I think because just at this moment I think it may not happen. Not sure why I think that, just have a feeling.

I am blindly getting on with my life. I still suffer every day. I still feel the pain everyday but hey, I am still here and I am still managing, well more than managing. So does it matter I don't know what I am doing - probably not. Maybe that is what makes life exciting. For once I have no certainty in my life. I don't know where I will be living next year, I don't really know what I will be doing, I don't know if I can manage Boy alone, I don't know if I will ever meet anyone else, I don't know if I can ever get over the betrayal, I don't know if I can ever forgive enough to get them out of my mind, I don't know if I can continue to pay the bills. I just don't know. In other words I am probably like the huge majority of people out there. I haven't a clue.

So here goes into another day - it may be good - it may be bad. It may be exciting or just plain ordinary. But here goes - here goes me who hasn't a clue.

And that is OK right now. It really is.

Dix

You have to believe

"You have to believe"

"You have to believe you can be a writer

to be a writer.

Contrasts

Contrasts

Joy, like a flower
sits in a place
right beside my
heart and blooms,
to happiness, love
and Joy.

Pain, like a wound
cuts in a place
right beside my
heart and stabs
incessantly with hurt, lies
and Pain.

Flowers bloom then
fade around the edges;
a knowledge gained from endings
and pain.
The sadness of
the summer gone.

Summer brings new
growth, and flowers,
bold and beautiful;
returning to
the joy.
The smiles and happiness of
warmth and laughter.

Big Bold Flowers with Them

Orange is gone,
long live the cream,
long live the Big Bold Flowers.
Flowers,
gold, green and brown.
Long live the darkened
contrasting curtains
that hang so eloquently ....

Sitting in between them laughing -
dying inside.
Wanting to run,
wanting to hide
but longing for fun and laughter,
longing to belong again?

My heads fuzzy,
my arms heavy from Pernod.
Knowing I have to stay,
knowing I need to stay.
Stay with them,
Free to be me with them,
Free to be me at last,
free to listen and learn and feel again.
With them.


Dix

With special thanxs to JC and your Big Bold Flowers and Luna - you are special, special people. Hope I can soon learn to be here for you again. Love Ya

Waiting

What am I waiting for?

Waiting for what?

His return?

My acceptance?

I am waiting for my life to change.

I am waiting for change.

New horizons?

Fresh Beginnings?

Hope.

What am I waiting for?

Waiting for what?

The pain to stop.

The hurt to subside

End.

What am I waiting for?

Waiting for what?

His return?

My acceptance?

Hope.

Dix

BR - Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada

I picked this book up by chance on a buy 2 get one free offer.(aren't often the best books found this way). I chose it because I liked books based in this period and thought it might be something like The Book Thief, one of my favourite books. I realise I enjoy books based in the second world war.

I was really surprised by this book - firstly it was actually written just after the war, 1947 by a German who had experienced some issues during war time, secondly that it has been translated into English fairly recently (I think).

Don't get me wrong there are places where the story hardly moves at all but the atmospheric is amazing and that keeps it moving alone. It is a very good book - a proper keeper. The main characters are actually based on real people and many of the characters have the reader really hating them even when they come to a sticky end. It is full of people who are hard to like, and some that are hard to understand and some that you try to sympathise with even though you may ask would you be the same

If you are in any way interested in the second world war and want to have an idea of life in Germany for ordinary people - read this. If you just like and interesting historical read - read this - if you are prepared explore history and personalities - read this.

If not - read this anyway - you wont regret it.

Dix

BR - Michael Caine - The Elephant to Hollywood

I actually finished this book some time ago but haven't felt able to blog much recently. Will talk about that soon. I thought it was ok. He came across quite well and I enjoyed bits of the books very much, especially when he was writing about films I knew and liked but other bits were frankly a bit boring. I wouldn't read the book again but if you like Michael Caine this is defo worth a read.

Dix

I am living

I am living on paracetamol
and pain. They're my
constant companions.
Each time I think about the lies
and betrayal,
it hurts so much.


A pain that sits beside
my heart, behind my
chest bone. Inside me.
I find the lies the worst
making it all my fault,
justifying what they have
done.
I cry at thoughts of them,
I cry with temper and
anger at thoughts of her.
I cry when I talk about them
I don't want to talk about them
anymore.
I don't want to talk,
I don't want to think,
I don't want to cry,
I don't want to anymore.

Dix

BR - Bluebeard by Angela Carter

This is a Penguin Mini Modern Classic. An interesting read but not as good as I hoped it would be. It kinda stated the obvious about old classic fairy tales and didn't do anything new. We did an exercise at Uni about rewriting or writing a fairy tale and I was hoping these would be more like this in creating new ideas around old stories.

Anyway quick to read and a bit of fun although I felt it was kinda judgemental and sarcastic (if that is possible) and superior in away that took away the fun and even interestingness of it.

I must admit I have never really liked moral tales that much and this points out the morals and the alternative morals and that just irritated me.

Dix

BR - A Tiny Bit Marvellous by Dawn French

Over the last couple of weeks I have read loads of books (well quite a few) but not blogged my reviews yet so here is one.

I read this book initially whilst I was away with boy and then finished it at home. I did enjoy it but have to say with the change in my life circumstances it didn't seem so good.

I think it is well written and enjoyable. The characters really stand out and parts of it made me laugh. The main female character ended up getting on my nerves though. Maybe she reminded me too much of me. I don't know. But anyway I would recommend this to someone as a summer read - I really would and I think Dawn French can really write (if she did write this of course but I suspect she did). I enjoyed the differences in the characters language and style and found this an interesting way of writing.

I will probably give this to my friend to read (and her daughter maybe) as it was fun if nothing else.

Dix

Strength and Weakness

At the moment I am on this roller coaster ride of pain. One minute I feel strong, I feel like I can do this, that somehow I can make it in the future and everything will be OK. The next I am afraid and weak. I want to see him. I want him to come around and tell me everything is going to be OK because that is what has happened in my life for the last 30 years. I am especially weak when I know he has to visit or I know he is seeing my daughter.

On the good days I feel strong - I feel like I can face everything that is to be thrown at me and in the future I will find happiness and kindness and love.

On the bad days I feel weak and ugly and think that I deserve this, that I was a bad wife, that I am a bad person and that I just can't manage without him. That if I just really promise the earth, if I just tell him how afraid and ugly and bad I am and that it was all my fault he will come back and I will be OK.

The truth is I don't really want him back. I really don't. Sometimes enough is enough. He has hurt me so much. If he had just gone off with some stranger it would have been more bearable but he left with one of my friends. Someone who I had been friends with for a long time. Neither of them give an absolute stuff about me and my feelings. They are selfish and nasty. Neither of them care what they have done to my family.

I know I can't go back because if I did I would not survive. I would lose myself completely. But I also know I hate that he is happy, I hate that they have done this to me, I want them to feel just a bit of the pain that I feel. I want to know that my future is going to be OK and that one day I will find happiness and feel loved in some way. I just want to feel good about myself.

I have already lost a stone in weight and hope this trend will continue. I know that being slimmer will help my confidence and help me feel better about myself. But I also know that my strength needs to come from a much deeper place than this. I know that in order for me to have the future that I need I will have to learn to love myself much more, I will have to be strong and confident and just give it all a go. I will have to take the bad (and I am sure there is going to be lots of bad) and move over it. Get through it.

At the moment I have good friends and my children have just been amazing. I know I can't go on leaning on them as I have but am grateful of the help at the moment.

The truth is it has only been 2 weeks and I shouldn't beat myself up for having these moments of weakness. I should except them and move on. I should not think I am a bad person for sending him a silly text saying I don't know if I can go on alone. Sometimes I will be weak but these moments will get further apart and each day will not start the with the same pain of loneliness and unhappiness. Somewhere alone the line I will find a way for me to survive without the constant pain.

So today I need to except I am only human, that I will make mistakes, that they have really hurt me and that sometimes this will show and that is OK. Some days will be bad and others will be better because I am only human. I really don't deserve what has happened to me and I must stop thinking that I do. Nobody deserves this. I have to give myself the compassion that I would give someone else.

I know some of this is easier said than done but I am gonna try.

Diana

Bad Day

Yesterday I had a bad day. A really bad day. I couldn't stop crying. I was mowing the lawn sobbing. When I spoke to anyone I was crying . I was crying in public. Yesterday I felt so much pain and so much doubts.

Yesterday I felt useless and ugly and hopeless. Yesterday I missed him so bad. I felt that I just couldn't go on without him. That somehow I had to speak to him and make him understand how much pain I am suffering, how much doubt I feel. How so totally alone I am.

The future opened up in front of me like a great big hole that I can only fall into, that I can't control and that will only involve pain and suffering. Yesterday I grieved for 30 years of marriage and a relationship that if not very good was a least something. Yesterday I was a bad 'mum' to Boy and a bad mum to my daughters. Yesterday I was a pretty hopeless person.

I didn't contact him because I knew it would just make me feel worse - not better. I just kept going got through it. I got through yesterday and just hope there are not too many days that bad because I don't know how if I can cope with them. I don't know.

Today I am not going to do this. It will be hard and I will have to use all my strength but today will be better. It has to be. I have to be better for boy and my lovely daughters. I have to be better for me.

So I will breathe, I will tell my mind to stop, I will try to believe in me and hope there really is a future out there for me. I will just go through the next few hours believing in these things. I will start trying to love myself, something I haven't done for a long, long, time.

I hope I have the strength.

Dix

Keeping busy but...

There were times yesterday when I didn't hurt so bad. I kept busy, really, really, busy. I chopped wood and gardened and the front of the house looks a bit better. A long way to go but at least I now know it is do-able.

I was knackered. Actually sat in the chair and fell asleep. Another good thing really as I haven't slept like that for over a week and it felt OK to sleep because I was tired. But the trouble is as soon as I stop, as soon as I have a moment all the terrible thoughts just come back and I am eaten up by the pain and the anger.

I don't want to be but I can't stop my mind. I woke up the morning after a pretty good nights sleep and realise I was dreaming about her, about telling her what I thought, about telling her just how much pain she had inflicted on me. And it was awful. I don't want this to happen but it happens anyway.

Then I get up and I feel the physical pain inside. It is like grief and I guess I am suffering grief. A pain of loss. Yesterday I thought about the feelings I have for him. Guess I do still love him (or maybe it is just care for him a little bit). But we had 30 years together and even though he doesn't thinks so - most of the time it was good. We were friends, he was my support. We had good loving sex and were together. Now I don't have that anymore. He told me it is over and that is that but I just can't get to that point yet. I will I know I will but for me it is going to take a lot longer that just a week.

I realise that I shouldn't beat myself up about this. 30 years to a week - nothing. I realise it is OK to be frightened, even though things were bad he was still about, I still depended on him for a lot. These are the things I have to get used to. I can't ask him about cooking, I can't ask him to help with Boy, I can't talk to him about my beautiful girls. These things I can't do anymore. Yesterday I nearly texted him about where something was. I didn't. I get it - I can't anymore. And all day in my head I kept thinking about reasons to text him. I didn't. Instead I asked myself why I wanted to do this. And I guess the answer is above.

In my mind I know things will eventually get better for me (even though I suspect they will get worse first before they get better). In my mind I know that learning to be strong and independent will be a really good thing for me. In my mind I hope that one day I can find someone new and be loved again. Even if it is not a permanent thing. In my mind I hope I can bring up Boy on my own and do a good job. But at the moment my mind is also racing full of all the pain and suffering and the hurt. So there is a lot of competition in there.

And that competition is not always such a good thing.

Dix