For My Lover

I lost my way, somewhere along the road. I'm not sure where or when it happened, but I lost it just the same. I never realised I'd lost it. That's maybe the saddest thing of all.

We don't recognise the absence of light and warmth if we've become accustomed to their lack. Like a seed huddled under the cold, damp, earth, my spirit lay there quietly waiting to be brought back to life.

Your patience is endless. You watched and waited, having noticed me, until the time was right. No pressure; no unwanted attention or affection. Just your presence, calm and reassuring, and your words.

Your words became a lifeline of sorts, a safety net beneath me as I climbed and crawled and clambered my way out of the darkness and back into the light. When I fell, you caught me and set me back on the road again. You guided my steps and brought me out into the warmth of the sun, where I could blossom and grow again.

And to this gift you added a further gift: the gift of self-discovery, and a blossoming into something altogether new and different, something unexpected but marvellous.

We walk this road together now, in the warmth of the sun and the clean bright light of his fires. Together we walk and grow, marching on into the future. A future as yet unseen, but the way is well-lit and clear of obstruction, at least for now.

Copied from SOI, a response to katelyn's 8 minute write of 21.02.07.

Do You Feel Lucky?

Well, do you?

Grinning in most evil fashion.

Only time will tell...

[Rolling Stones, Time Is On My Side]

I know I do. Whether I am or not as was quite rightly pointed out is something that only time will reveal. I certainly feel blessed. Everyone should have someone in their life who can pick them up when they're feeling a little downhearted or hard done by. Someone who can make them laugh.

Someone like that is a useful counterbalance to the people who make you want to just SCREAM in frustration.

I like me. I like who I am, for the most part. I don't think I'm too awful. I have friends, and I also have someone who loves me (and who I love, so that works out nicely).

But, for a little bit over eight years, I didn't much like me. I didn't do things the right way, think the right way, act the right way, behave the right way, say the right things. I ended up almost afraid to say boo to a goose when I was with my ex-boyfriend. And the most awful part of it is that I never even noticed this had happened.

I've had 'issues' about some things for a large part of my life. I think anyone who's ever been thoroughly and consistently bullied over a long period of time (11 years in my case), especially as a child, carries a fair amount of baggage around with them. It took me up until I left home at 17 to discover that I could make friends fairly easily, that boys did actually find me attractive, and that I wasn't the invisible girl in the corner good for nothing but ridicule any longer.

I still carried some of that baggage around with me though, into my mid to late twenties. At the time when I met the ex, I wasn't sure where my life was heading. I knew what I wanted to achieve - I was fixated on my career, determined I would qualify as a solicitor and work as one. I hoped to do that and be a mother too, although as I've grown older I do wonder whether that will happen and if it did, would I want to be a working mum? I suspect I will have no option other than to be one if I do become a mother, but only time and circumstance will tell, should that arise.

I had 8 years of being told I wasn't good enough for one reason or another. I'm not committing myself to you until a happens, then b, then all the way through the alphabet and beyond. Some of it seemed reasonable enough: I was carrying a few hundred pounds worth of debt around with me from my student days and it seemed only right that I pay that off before we married. But other things he wanted me to change were part of my personality, part of the fundamental who and what I was, and am. He fell for a gobby, bright, sparky, sarcastic, opinionated, passionate girl with a tendency to occasional bouts of depression and a low self-image and turned her into a miserable wreck who barely dared open her mouth in his company.

Last night he told me neither of us had changed, we were still the same people we were 9 and a half years ago when we first met (you know, February 14 we would have been together 9 years and I only just thought of that now)? I gently reminded him that we had both changed, very much so, and I had changed at his insistence. He commented that they were changes that needed to be made and I'd turned out pretty well. I chose to disagree with him and said that on the whole, I had become someone I didn't recognise.

He misses the gobby, bright, sparky, sarcastic, opinionated, passionate girl - but he all but bludgeoned her out of existence. She's coming back but it's taking a while to fully resurrect her. Age and experience have taught her to temper some of her opinions, and her sense of humour may be all the more wry at times, but on the whole the older version is maybe more rounded a personality. There's still a way to go, but I've come a long way, I think.

I'm still loving the fact I can wander off in a daydream of my own in a store and not have to suffer being yelled at and made to put back whatever it is I've picked up while browsing and get a telling off for not dogging the heels of who I'm with. I think it's fantastic that I can get frustrated and yell and pout and stomp and it's realised that it is not aimed at you personally, but you're here so I'm going to yell at you because you're here. I know that isn't terribly grown up of me, but sometimes it's the only possible way for me to deal with whatever it is that's frustrated me. And I can snap and be irritable and it not be taken as a massive personal insult and spark off a row or lead to hours if not days of sulking, because it's recognised that one snap and I'm done, that's it, over and done with, apologies offered and accepted and the situation resolved.

The greatest thing about it of all is that because I do these things myself, I don't get worked up when someone else does it to me. I understand this behaviour absolutely because that's what I do, too.

I think that's probably the nicest and best thing about life right now: someone out there actually gets me, and I think I get them, pretty much.

Further musings

Well. I was right to be anxious about the snow.

Finally arrived in Frankfurt around 1 pm on Saturday rather than 9 pm Friday. I hate the fact that we lost a night and (by the time I'd run round the airport finding my bag, which was brought to a different part of the airport than we passengers were offloaded to) all of the morning and half the afternoon.

It doesn't help much either when we're both so exhausted having not slept on Friday night that we're fast asleep before midnight (although only one of us slept till gone 3 pm on Sunday and then didn't stir from the bed much before 8 pm).

To add insult to injury, the trial that straddled this weekend was adjourned on Tuesday, so I could have gone to Germany this weekend as had originally been planned, so the snow wouldn't have been a factor and we would have had the time that we expected to have.

Still, at least we had some time together.

The downside is the crash after I get back here. For a good couple of weeks my mood sinks lower and lower, and this is only compounded on this occasion by the fact that work is beyond hectic and means neither of us has much time available to keep in touch, as well as the fact that his broadband connection seems to have turned up its toes. I do tend to get a little bit miserable when I've had one short message since the early hours of Friday morning, and that some time on Sunday.

[Note to self, approximately 14 hours later: do not type Blog entries whilst under the influence of gin...]

The Day After Tomorrow

Two more sleeps! Two more! Two! Count them!

That's if the six inches of snow we're to expect overnight tonight don't totally ruin my plans...it did say that would be the hilly parts of the Midlands - the M1 between here and Birmingham does rise a little bit as it goes round the side of the Derbyshire Dales.

I just don't want to be in the situation where I either can't get to the airport or my flight is unable to take off due to bad weather. At the moment and indeed for the last three days, the sky has been a beautiful, cloudless azure during the day and adorned with a myriad twinkling stars by night. So believing all this snow is imminent is kind of hard.

I intend to pack tonight, anyway. I have some new items to pack which we should both enjoy, as well as some presents for next Wednesday (I can't let February 14 pass by without notice, I'm far too soppy for that). Goodness knows what I can expect to find in the spare room when I do get there. I have had vague comments, odd text messages and have heard more filthy chortles in the last week than the previous three months put together.

Planning to get in for 8 am on Friday so I can head off at midday. Surely 6 hours will be ample to do what is normally a 90 minute journey at the worst, right? As well as getting checked in and onto the plane? Flight leaves at 18:10 and I intend to be on it!

I do wish weekends were longer. And that 'our' weekends had a little less time between them. But this is how it is, so there's little point in muttering and mumbling about it.

Bullying

You know, I had hoped that as I grew older, bullying would become less and less of a problem. I fervently hoped that this would be the case when things were at their worst. It was only the thought that one day, this won't happen any more because grown ups don't do stuff like this that kept me going.

I really was naive, wasn't I?

There's a bully at work, but a nasty, insidious one. She's the adult version of that simpering little pigtailed brat who would run to tell tales in no time at all, who would sneer at you for no apparent reason and who loves to feel intellectually superior even though she isn't.

There are also bullies by the shedload on-line. This is a huge disappointment to me. You would imagine that it would be so much less of a problem, but no. It seems that jealousy and hatred are just as prevalent on the internet if not more so. And just when you think it might have all died down, it all flares up again.

It's really very tiresome.