Blogging…

I keep attempting to start my blog and then keep it going. It never quite works that way… damn it.

I remember in my blogs heyday, that euphoric sense of achievement - and without any real effort on my part. I used to spend 10 minutes a day and my romance (or lack there of) would always, without doubt, give me fodder to work with! Of course I could type faster than I could think back then and so I just sit at the keyboard and let the story unfurl from my fingers.

I mean if you think about it, the Squeeze does and says some utterly outrageous stuff! He still does but he somehow used to be worse… (like the time he went on about his soulmate; and it wasn’t even his ex wife… no she, like me didn’t get a gig for that mantel!) years later I can laugh about it. Like when a photo of the two of them came up on my Google thingo, just passing by… My Mum was there and said ‘oh. Is that your mother Squeeze?’ I cracked up and mum looked about wondering what she had done wrong… (she does look old enough to be his mother lol)

So I keep waiting for inspiration to strike me. For him to utter something outlandish. For me to feel outraged (if I could feel outraged in this colourless existence!). The most I got was "how about you have a little lesbian experience?" Idiot. Oh I wish I could...

And then I realise, not today! So I’m forced to look elsewhere or think of something! Trouble is, it is boring! My life is boring. Today is the first time in 2 weeks I’ve been at work; and I’m doing the front desk of an old people home! Hard to find excitement here!

The highlight of my week is I’ve lost 2.5 kilos…

The Damage

I decided I'd put a short story up for people to read. It is about me, but 'me. prior to brain damage'...  Reading such soul destroying heartache made me remember back to that time (thinking on it, I'd rather be staked to an ants nest than go back to!). Instead, I can look about at my life now. 

Yeah, I could loose a few pounds but looking back I don't think there was ever a time that I looked in the mirror and said 'okay!'  Now I have a house. I have a job (well sort of). I have money. I have the Squeeze. I have my wonderful kids and their spouses. I have gorgeous grand kids. My life is without a doubt better... But... below is how I used to feel; a goodly whack of the time!

The Damage

I knew I had to be here.  I’d known it for a long time.

Yet I had done the dance of humans.  First I sat and wondered, then I attempted to correlate the issues and pin it to one resounding flash in my life.  It didn’t take me long to work out that knowing the cause, didn’t fix the issues.

I didn’t hate my life, not by any stretch of the imagination.  But my choices over the years had been self-destructive and some of those choices were made knowing this was the case.

What did it all mean?  And if I didn’t know what it meant, how could I stop it from my life becoming one extended loop of self-destructiveness?

In the end, I conceded that it was more than possible that I didn’t have the answer; that the ‘flashes’ I had focused on were not the root cause of my choices and behaviour.

So here I sat, awaiting the man that would tell me where I had gone wrong; what was broken inside me; what led me to where I sat now.  What caused me to deliberately look for the person to love, that would hurt me; caused my broken soul to look for the matching soul; my ying to their yeng.  Me searching for punishment, they searching for inflicting pain.

So here I sat, waiting; not hating my life but tired of it.

I knew that to an outsider my words and actions may give that impression, but it isn’t like that.   Although part of me recognised that I searched for the person who would prove my worthlessness, I did not feel that was the action that I took.

Weird really, how my thought process worked.  Most of the time life stuck to the ‘content’ box; and then every so often, it dragged you out and flung you in to the ‘train wreck’ box. 

It was after one of these ‘train wrecks’ that without really understanding why; I was sitting in the office of the therapist.  According to him.. blaha blah blah  - the roller skates yada yada.

She didn’t understand that I didn’t feel grief.  I genuinely just didn’t feel anything.  This was not something that I had been a part of, at least not in any real sense.

The surrounding room smelled of wood and wax with an underlying ugly nylon carpet smell.  The walls were covered with posters that were there to make me feel relaxed; allow me to see just how normal I was.  I didn’t feel normal.  I had never felt normal.  Still, being normal wasn’t going to be covered with this guy.  I planned to get out of there as quickly as possible; as soon as he showed that he had no idea.

So sitting there looking at the posters, I didn’t feel normal; instead, I felt smug; and just a little fearful. Smug because it was my life and I knew it absolutely.  Fearful, because being my life, I knew that there were fragments of emotion that I had tucked away for another time. I just didn’t know what they were.

Pauses between were filled with a silence that got louder in my head as it stretched; broken only by the distant murmur of voices and a faulty clock that ticket loudly, yet was so obviously moving too slowly. A strategically positioned box of tissues crouched on the edge of the desk, mocking me.  One snowy white sail, like the top of a meringue, pointed towards me.

I sighed a little and straightened in the chair.  I did not need tissues.  Smugness fought to reclaim my psyche and I crossed my legs and leaned back in the chair, abandoning the hunched position I had previously held.

You could sit before a counsellor forever, but until you needed to banish the demons within; until you understood that to discuss it was cathartic, you clung to it like a life buoy.  You greedily pulled it closer until it was so ingrained in you, it was impossible to let it go.

It sucks getting old...

You go to bed one night at about age 5, and wake up and you're 60. Where has life gone? It seems to have taken forever when I was young to await some birthday or Christmas. These days, I shudder in horror as another year passes. Unless I'm getting senile (which odds are I could be with my brain damage lol)

Suddenly life seems slower. Things don't matter as much as they once did, where I would want to kill someone or cry my eyes out or walk around the house like a ghost because my heart was broken. Now everything is mundane. Like the Valentine's Day cards we gave one another - it lacks romance. 

Now don't get me wrong; I don't blame the Squeeze entirely for that. Everything hurts. My legs kill me because I'm suffering from Poly Myalgia Rheymatica (don't ask for an explanation; Google it). The only way to combat that is to go on steroids; so I'm getting fatter (and fatter) and it's not just fluid although that has pushed my face out so I look like a sponge. So I can't blame him for not wanting to rock things between us; and truth tell, I think he'd get a 'fuck off' if he did want to.

But... I don't want this for my life. It's mundane. I wake every day and it's the same, no thrilling things to look forward too; no groovy places to go and see or eat. As we get fatter, we stay home. Can't go out and eat; someone may see us and think "look at those fatties!". I realise that we have, in effect, given up.

So... We can either diet, or pull the dirt over our head because life is over already! I intend to diet because pulling the dirt over my head isn't really an option!

Romance. What the Hell is that..?

Ok; you probably don't remember but I started this blog to outline my life of romance; or lack there of. I've been out with some absolute doozies over the years, I couldn't even document them all but I can skip to the highlights!

There was 'Yankie Doodle Dandy"; an American that I imported when we first discovered the internet meant that my dating pond went to an ocean of people I had never thought I'd meet. Of course there is probably a good reason why he lived in one country; me in another. He was a dick who intended to come here (after he had spent all his money) and still chat with other women. He didn't last long... The highlight came when I discovered a love compatibility stars on his computer. Here he was, seeing how well he would go with someone born in September. This wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't born in May.

From there I went to PI Boy...

I remember once writing a letter to him; the first line said “I have written this so many times, your chair could explain it to you in great detail.  Yet you, for all of your intelligence, are oblivious to the meaning of the words”.   After five years, I understood that he had understood; yet had been telling me over and over with his actions and cavalier attitude, that he could never love me. 

Perhaps my chair could have explained it to me, if I could have just listened.  Ok.  Maybe not the chair; but my senses, gut instincts all those intrinsic things that I felt and ignored because I didn’t want it to be true; didn’t want to acknowledge that this was the truth.  Those five years hurt me.  In fact, it was worse than hurt; it was soul destroying.

But I dragged myself up and on. That's one good thing about me. I'd never be anyone's stalker. As soon as it is over in my mind, they simply cease to exist...  I don't give them another thought.

So then it was on to the Squeeze... Now I’m a neat freak.  In fact, some might say I am serial killer neat. My house is always clean.  When friends come around for coffee, they don’t have to wonder what is at the bottom of the coffee cup and I'll admit that I like it.

As far as obsessive traits go, sometimes it is a handy one to have and let’s face it; it’s not like I’m burying ex-husbands in the garden under the lilies.  I just like things neat and organised.

I used to think that opposites attract.  I mean one man’s mental illness; is another man’s life rope. Right?  And they don’t come anymore opposite in the art of cleanliness and organisation, to me than the Squeeze, who would appear to ball dance around the house in slow mo, dropping things at will.

I decided to do some research into how we could better blend and so my first order of the day was to type “being a neat freak” into Google.  Imagine my surprise when most of what I got back was regarding mental disorders.  There were sites on OCD and clutter-phobes with all the words and descriptions that screamed the word ‘nut job’.

Nut job?  Seriously?  Just because I like my house clean? Damn; I guess the Squeeze was correct...

  

 The sad part is, he wouldn't ever

notice if I let it get in this state

(which I never would! This is a stock image!!)

Wonder how I ever found the time...

As the years fly by, I wonder how I ever found the time to sit down and blog. Back in 2010-2011 it was almost a religion and I'd sit and just let my thoughts pour from my fingers. They were always funny and lengthy to boot and I effortlessly found something interesting to blog about.

I could always rely on the Squeeze to do something outlandish and give me the shock factor to work with, but these days the things he does don't seem as outrageous and he doesn't do them with any regularity.

The Harridan, has moved into real life now where she doesn't contact the Squeeze at all and doesn't speak to us whenever we meet. And stupidly, I find that I want to act like a grown up and bury the hatchet because Grand kids need us all to get along. 

I've grown up. We have settled into a life that is normal...

For Valentines Day this year we decided we wouldn't get a present, instead just getting a card. And as I look at the cards we chose, I think to myself "where is the fucking romance..?"

Today. Hump Day.

Well I guess it would be if I was at work...

This is week two of not working; I've decided to embrace it.  The house needs a good clean, the garden too. Which basically means all my time spent in this enforced hiatus, is spent cleaning and going to doctor's appointments! So I guess this kind of falls into both the Plus and Minus (house is spotless - plus; all my time is spent on house/garden - minus). 

Great heights. Great lows. It seems a really intense life I'm living! And yet strangely, I feel as though I'm not really living anything. I just biding time; almost until the end. But how does that work? I've got possibly years yet! It does my head in thinking about it.

So; I thought I would focus on Baxter...  Who doesn't have that long to live now; he has cancer poor baby. He is a beautiful boy with a big heart. Like my dog who lives with 4 cats; Baxter lives with 2 of them - who are just part and parcel of where he lives.

We were all shocked because Baxter's the youngest of all our assortment of dogs that live in the extended family. He is a baby by comparison, although doesn't look so now although he still full of life at the moment! 

 

Baxter. Ode to a beautiful boy.

After 1000's of dollars couldn't save him, they are just going to let him live out his life doing what he loves and I can think of no better way to go than that.

Life Going from Plus to Minus...

It's funny how life seems to run backwards. For all intents and purposes, I'm actually getting younger! Every week! The countdown is on until I've the mentality of a little kid! (trust me, I know, I just went out to visit my mother who is 85 and living in aged care - much to her dislike!) and we had the same conversations that we did last week, and the week before... The beauty of it for her is she doesn't realise.  Me however, it is a completely different experience.

The Squeeze, God bless his black heart, must be positively babyish!  And I'm keeping young by comparison.  I intend to keep score for a couple of blogs, ie... Plus. Minus....

And when I think about it, I was young once... Sigh, I may look like a crone now, but in my youth I was pretty good looking and nice too boot.  That is possibly why I have 3 husbands (plus) who are all ex husbands (minus) and were all by 30 or so, so I had the marrying down pat and decided it actually wasn't for me!  

The middle husband broke a record of love turning to hate soon enough, and it seems the dislike hasn't diminished in all these years.  Enough said (my mother always said 'if you can't say something good about them, don't say anything at all'. 

Husband 1 was fantastic; we were just too young; but he got killed in a motorbike accident (minus). Husband no 3, I loved for a long time, but my dicky brain and going in and out of hospital took its toll (on me... not him - which is strange). He no longer speaks to me (minus) which is sad. I thought we did divorce well.

Now I live with the Squeeze, who I like a lot. Friends we began as and mostly, I still feel as though he is my best friend.  My three children are grown; 2 boys and a girl and I relive divorce through this generation. My older son is divorcing now, but I love my daughter in law and her kids (minus). My other son just got engaged (plus). My girl has given me two perfect angels, one of whom is a replica of her at the same age (plus). Here he is...

Isn't he adorable?!!

And I wait and see what fate has in store for all of us...

Life is serendipitous; in a weird way

As life whizzes by (I'm 60 now - wtf?) I'm only left to wonder if everything happens for a reason, or if life is a boundless journey of serendipity!  I mean I've experienced the normal person's life's 'up's and down's'; more than most I'd say but still, at least I feel like the pendulum has swung in my favor more often than not.

So; in the minus column, we have my brain damage. That's a pretty big minus I'd say... Except if I didn't go through this, I'd be living the same life I had 10 years ago. Not that it didn't take some bloody awful years in the interim; but now I feel as though my life is going in the right direction.

I've gone from a spend thrift with nothing to my name (mind you, I had a great friggin wardrobe!) to owning a house.  I've changed from a person who liked animals well enough; if I paused long enough to think about them. But not inside... never inside; to a person who is now the proud owner of a dog and 4 cats that all live inside and I can't imagine my life without them (including the newest one Sheriff, helping me blog...)

My life continues on this weird adding to the plus column and taking away again. This is what it is like; what it's always been like!  This week, they rang me to say the girl at work I was replacing while off sick is better and she'll be back at work full time - so I don't have to come in.  Minus.  Then out of the blue, I get this email of a lawyer who says the hospital, without taking the blame, are going to pay me a sizable amount. Plus.

Weird. Pluses and Minuses. That's my life.