Focus on the Future

I don’t want to dedicate my blog to the ex-Squeeze because frankly, he doesn’t deserve it.  In truth, he really was a crappy partner with a totally deformed romance gene.  Besides, I am trying to focus on the future; more importantly, a future that includes writing.  At the moment, it appears to be working.  I have a new found passion and I am annoyed that I have to go to work; which seems to just be an interruption in my story telling (oh, and paying bills etc...)

Still; I’m prepared to use history and memory as blog fodder and I did have a rather amusing thought this morning as I drove to work.  I was lost somewhere between wondering why the same songs are played repeatedly over and over and over and a glimmer of joy to have Hughsey back on Nova when I remembered a conversation that we had years ago; back when we were “buddies”.

He texted me out of the blue and our two fingered conversation when something like this:

Ex-Squeeze:   “I got dumped by the Doctor!”

Me:  “How come!??”

Ex-Squeeze:   “Her dog died and she said I didn’t show any empathy or compassion…”

Me:  “So what!  It’s just a damned dog!”

Ex-Squeeze:   “Thank God.  I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me!

Of course I’ve used a punctuation license here because he refuses to use any form of punctuation, even in text; but I just can’t do that, not even for an accurate account of history.

The amusing part of that is that driving to work, I could almost picture the next phase of that conversation…

Ex-Squeeze:   “The friendship got dumped by the Ex!”

Someone:  “How come!??”

Ex-Squeeze:   “Her dad died and she said I didn’t show any empathy or compassion…”

Someone:  “So what!  It’s just a damned dad!”

Ex-Squeeze:   “Thank God.  I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me!”

News flash noodle head; there is something wrong with you.
I should have seen the past as a sign. Fact is I probably did, but ignored it.
Or maybe I just didn't have any understanding of the relationship he was in; figuring it was a "new", casual type thing.

Either way, you can't be friends with someone for 12-15 years; date/live with then for 4-5 years and the same month that you break up; amicably I might add, not even send a single text when her Dad dies!  What the Hell is that about..?  I can't even imagine doing that to him...

Still, heartache aside, it was an amusing little thought on the way to work.

The upside is that since word spread through my network that he is “seeing someone”; the replies have been quite amusing and along the lines of “hope she likes snot!” or “glad you got rid of the wart!”  Or my personal favourite, “he was a child, searching for someone to put up with his dysfunctional family shit!”  All absolutely 100% correct; except maybe the wart comment, because even though he is a retarded, spineless emotional cripple; I still like him.

But oh how I love my family and friends; leave it to them to make me laugh.

Tonight, I start Belly Dancing lessons again.  I haven't done that since I was young and living in the sticks but I truly loved it and for that year, I had a washboard stomach.  I’ve lost 9.2 kilo since moving out but I can’t seem to move the next bit so I’m hoping this will help!  Aside from the physical benefits; it is one of the most empowering things I’ve ever done to love your body!

Dating arena…  I had two dates on the weekend; one with a Scot who has a degree in Physics and Engineering and one with a South African Fireman who was well travelled and incredibly interesting.  How did they go..?  Both went okay really and I will probably/maybe go out with one or both of them again however, I’m not in a hurry.  

Unlike the ex who is obviously not one for browsing; I’m not desperate to be in something again without giving myself time to think.  In fact, I’m kind of happier on my own, spending time looking at who I am; working out what I want and where I fit in the world.  And writing....

When I changed…

It is strange how life works out sometimes. 

I had voiced my suspicions to several people over the last few weeks that I suspected the Squeeze had met someone.  They each hoohaa’d it down but that niggling feeling lingered.  Let’s face it…  It’s an ugly, retched feeling.  The person that you loved; that was supposed to love you forever – well they got over you just fine.  Not only got over you, but with swift ease.  It is as though you didn’t exist.  You certainly; didn't ever really count...

Part of me accepted their disbelief.   I mean I remembered just how many times he had said that if we didn’t work out, he was retiring from the dating pool…  Part of me I suppose, had believed him.   But still, the niggling continued.  And I know him well, better than many I expect.

My sister and I are doing a Vietnamese cooking course and while searching my red balloon account for the date we have booked, I noticed the ex-Squeeze hadn’t gone on a tour I had given him.  Figuring he had forgotten about it, I shot off an email to say “you’re supposed to use these; not waste them”; I got no reply.

Now we all know that this guy is never away from technology.  He reminds me of an old Dean Koontz book where the people of a small town begin evolving into something less than human.  For most, that was wolf like dogs with razor sharp teeth that took to running through the streets and surrounding bushland after dusk, mauling on anyone they came across.  But one guy; his evolution was to start to meld with his technology – because it was always in his hand.

That is the ex-Squeeze; so unless he was dead, which was unlikely, he was actually avoiding me. 

This immediately made a small thud in the back of my head begin.  The only reason on the planet he would ignore me, is if he went back to the Harridan or was seeing someone else.  After all, isn’t this the guy that just last month was trying to win back our friendship..? 

So I send off a reply, asking outright and this time, it elicits a response.  Unlike my birthday email, it is back to his usual non-punctuated, no care style.  A bad sign I realise before I begin reading.  And of course I was right; it was a bad sign.  The person that loved me; was supposed to love me forever and grow old with me has moved on; is seeing someone.

Even typing that created an awful emptiness inside my stomach.

One of us dating means it really is the end.  There is no more distant glimmer.  No tiny slice of a possibility that at some stage down the track, that horrendous kid would either take out a classroom and be in prison, or have evolved into a less selfish, cleaner, partial adult that was no longer connected to the strings on which the Harridan tugged.  And maybe, just maybe, we would stumble into each other in a bookshop; having been single for a few years…  Where upon we discovered we still loved one another…  So we buy a small house in the middle of nowhere to laugh and write and play music… 

That was the future I had counted on for the last five years; and now it was totally gone.  Annihilated.   He had gone with scorched earth and that tiny glimmer was snuffed out.

Oh why couldn’t it have been that he had slunk back to the Harridan’s reptilian grasp?  That would have given me a tiny ember of joy.  He would be dead within a month; his heart wouldn’t stand that vile, demanding bitch.

This morning… Today; I feel a little more composed.  In some ways, I guess this is better; a swift cold, cutting out my heart.  This will allow me to let go of the ‘glimmer’ and move on…

I don’t hate him.  In fact, I love him enough to hope that he finds happiness.

How unlike me…  When did I change..?

Another day; another whatever…

The ex-Squeeze is 60 in November.  I started the blog when we were dating; he was 55.  We’d been friends since he was in his forties.  I miss that more than the rest, because let’s face it; he was a crap boyfriend.

Still, life goes on and I am only 52.  I don’t picture myself spending the rest of my life alone.  I never did.  Man drought..?  Who cares!  I’m just not your average run of the mill 50 year old.  I’m funny.  Articulate.  Love.  Am loyal.  Okay, that didn’t seem to compete when up against the potential serial killer, nose picking, snot wiping manipulative swine of a kid.  And power to him and the Harridan.  They got their wallet and baby sitter back.

Fool that the Squeeze is, and my last five years doesn’t really change anything; well maybe for him.  But not for me.  I still want a life… Want to be in love.  Want to grow old with something I actually like.

Well, tomorrow; I’m going on my first date in five years. 

This ought to be interesting.

On the outside looking in

Christmas last year, I spent at St Leonards with my children, Mum and Dad and my brothers and their families.  I’d spent twenty years wondering if each Christmas would be the last I would have my Dad.  Last year; he looked good.  I didn’t wonder.  I guess I’d stopped wondering; believing his off handed claims that he would live forever.

But I regress.  This was not a blog about my Dad, even though I still can’t quite believe how it feels not to have him in my life and I wonder how long it will take to get to the part where I smile when I think of him instead of feeling like there is a ragged hole of a wound where someone stabbed my heart.

My focus for this entry is on the photos taken Christmas day; more specifically, a series of me and the ex-squeeze.  I know that they say the camera adds kilos, but I look back at those photos and I see an empty stranger and wonder how the hell I became that person.  We look like a pair of dumplings.  Pudgy faces and bodies… 

As I look back, I see that although we had metamorphosed into something else, the reasons why and what we saw when we looked at each other was completely different.

I still saw the person that I loved; but became the person I felt he saw.  It amazes me the physical impact emotions can have on a person.  I wasn’t valued by the person I loved; therefore, I must not have value.  I was vapid; and as I look at the photos, I see that at least on some conscious level, I was aware that I was becoming invisible.  I wore a bright green and red dress on with red and green streaks in my hair (it was Christmas, after all).

I walked out of that door and have shed nine kilo; I’m writing… I’m saving. Life isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s good.  Last weekend I spent down the coast with my best friend.  Today I’m off to the other side of town to catch up with another friend.  My kids come and go; work is busy… 

I always thought that my life would run to script.  Meet someone, fall in love, get a home, grow old; but steps one and two would appear to be next to impossible; maybe they just weren’t for me.  Maybe they were never meant to be for me.  Now I see that I need to forget those steps and focus on getting a house and having somewhere to grow old at, on my own.

I need to get back to discovering myself.  I need to write.  Focus on turning my life back to the course it’s supposed to be on – whatever the Hell that is…  Having said that, if the perfect guy lands in my lap, I’m not going to slam the door in his face.

Fairy Stories

Finally, I have started writing again.  It had taken so long I wondered if I was ever going to get back into it.  So I went off for a long weekend with my best friend to "writer's boot camp"; which was great fun I must say. One weekend and I had a whole new structure for a book I was stuck on!

Part of boot camp involves my established writer friend tossing "exercises" at me in between us pouring champagne. My homework was around writing a fairy story but from another characters perspective.

First up, I was to provide her with a page detailing what story, character I had chosen; and why. This is Hansel and Gretal; renamed because it will now be mine.  

Lydia

The first time the possability of reverse engineering a fairy story occurred, I was at a book launch.  I could barely contain myself; finally, I could add a dollop of my kind of fairy story to the ‘oh so boring’ Snow White and her band of short men, half of whom I have married at various times in my life, I’m sure!  

So what was I going to write when darkness came to town and people have been put away in their boxes…  Let’s face it; I was always going to choose the Queen.  Each adaption of the movie saw this metaphorical step mother, drop a little more humanity and develop an ugliness that went beyond the visual.  Yet to me, the Queen and her untold story, was far more interesting as a character, so I would have no option but to write her story.

The book launch progressed; the wine flowed and eventually I staggered home in a red wine haze not giving the Queen a second thought; until this weekend.  Presented with the assignment yet again, I realised that perhaps my initial choice of the Queen from Snow White was a little hasty; and although I am loath to admit it, somewhat predictable.  Maybe, just maybe, there was someone else out there in fairy tale land that hadn’t had the opportunity to tell their side of the story.

After familiarising myself with some of the stories from my past, I once again gravitated towards a step mother.  I have selected the story of Hansel and Gretal; or more specifically, the step mother. 

The original story is centred in a land steeped in famine.  Brother and sister duo, Hansel and Gretal live in the woods with their woodcutter father and his shrewish second wife, who although would appear to be the impetus for child abuse and abandonment, wasn’t deemed important enough to receive a name.

In order to tell her story, she will require a name so henceforth she will be called Lydia; a fine step mother name; sharp and cold.    

So what made her tick?  As I remember the plot, the land had plunged into deprivation and Lydia, fearful that they would starve to death and probably livid that these children were consuming too much food, managed to convince her husband to take Hansel and Gretal into the woods and abandon them. 

Overhearing the plot, Hansel sneaks out and fills his pockets with white pebbles so that he can leave a trail to follow back home.

Although I’m uncertain how, it seems that no one in the family had ever heard of the existence of the cannibalistic witch who lived in a gingerbread house, covered with lollies. Obviously, no one can paint a pleasant picture of this character.  In every telling of this fairy tale, she would appear to be squat, unattractive, stooped and possessing a penchant for a Jeffrey Dahmer life style. 

But let’s dig a little deeper.  If you read about it on Wikipedia, you’ll note that the mealy mouthed woodcutter initially said 'no' however, he collapsed under Lydia’s vitriolic onslaught and meekly slunk out into the crisp morning air, dragging his offspring behind him.

Fairy tales, it would seem, are often penned by misogynistic small men.  The villain is usually the woman; the man, a long time suffering innocent lamb.  Poor baby.  How horrific for this piece of human trash.  His second wife lay in their marital bed instructing him to take his children into the woods where he will abandon them and they will die of hunger or worse.  He puts up a watery argument, but then “finally and reluctantly, he submitted to his wife’s scheme…”

My father gave me a moral compass.  We are each responsible for our actions.  I refuse to believe that a father would ever capitulate to such a request and that concept in itself, creates room for argument regarding the misogyny of the Brothers Grimm.  Surely a better ending would have seen the woodcutter back handing her off a chair?  Instead, the woodcutter would appear to be a paradox inside an enigma!  One imagines he would be big and burly since he chops wood for a living so on the one hand we have a visual of this hulking man in a plaid shirt.  Yet the tale shows him to be an intimidated, constantly berated weak willed man who would rather murder his own children than go against his rail thin iron willed second wife.  I can seriously picture his chin; I'm tipping his lips just slide off to his neck!  Chinless wonder!

What this one sided tale doesn’t tell is that this was probably a simple case of a woman, falling in love with a weak man who has baggage and however sweet the fairy tale attempts to paint the children, the truth is weaved through the words.  They were obviously pudgy, greedy children who ate all the food.  They displayed stalker-like behaviour, creeping around at night, listening at doors.  They were wilful children, sneaking out of the house at night in the search of pebbles.  And finally, they were stupid children; who the Hell would want to leave a trail of pebbles that would take you back to the two people who wanted you dead in the first place?

Lydia is now trapped in the middle of the woods with a pathetic, weak willed man and two fat, wilful, stupid children.

I suspect the truth is more than likely that Lydia had reached the end of tether and shouted to the woodcutter “It’s me or them!”

Maudlin outpouring and failed relationships

No.  This isn't about any of that.

I have been slack in updating my blog.  This is not due to the fact that I am run off my feet by dating and suitors; although I have had my fair share of contact…   I’m just not sure what I can say anymore; at least what I can say that hasn’t been said.

I didn’t want to turn this blog into some maudlin outpouring of words about my failed relationships or how much I miss my dad, or even how worried I am about my Mum now that her world has caved in around her.  In truth, I decided I was better off going with “if you can’t say anything nice; don’t say anything at all”.

Still; life goes on.  Albeit not in the fashion I imagined.

So where am I at..?  Well I started a coffee table book on my dad’s career as a policeman.  It’s something he was very proud of.  He should be; he was well respected…   Of course looking at old photos of him in uniform means I drink copious amounts of red wine in an attempt to fortify myself.

This works up to a point but to some degree, is like dancing on the edge of a sword; one mouthful to much pushes you over the edge to crying in your cups.  That is ugly and basically means I just go to bed early to escape myself.

As for dating, I am glad I started throwing a profile out there early because so far, all contact has been from people that are either quite persistent and far too young (wtf is that about???) or too old and thinking they are the next Don Juan without realising just how much they give away.  News flash noodles out there in dating land; if you are acting like a little boy in a lolly shop, it probably means you’ve spent your life being unattractive to the opposite sex.

I’ll throw an addition in there too, it probably means they have a small penis.  Just saying.

Still, I like to think that I am in reasonably good shape for a woman who has now turned 52 (sheesh, I was in my 40’s when I started this blog…) So I’m not ugly, nor the size of a house.  I’m funny and somewhat articulate.  Surely someday my prince will come!