Love Language

I have an absolute awesome man in my life and he is almost perfect except,  when it comes to romance.  I don't think the poor love would even know what a rose looks like.  But that's okay with me now.

I used to be the girl who thought she wanted full on romance.  Surprise dinners, secretly organised weekends away, flowers every now and then, the romantic song dedications, brushing of my hair, the snuggles on the couch while we watch a romcom..... and I remember vividly asking my mum in heaven to make sure she sent me a man that could make me laugh.  I remember thinking after I met Steve, thanks Mum, he is perfect, we laugh everyday..... but should I have asked for more?

What is romance? Is it the flowers, weekly restaurant dinners, the secret little notes and the entwined limbs lounging on a couch?  Is it the phone call every day, or a text every hour you are apart? Is it a rose on my pillow and breakfast in bed? 

Initially, the romance between my partner and I was all about not being able to get enough of each other.  Sneaking away for a 5 minute tryst or a long love making session that involved laughing and play fighting for top position.  It was fun, it was amazing, it was the time of my life, or so I thought.

As time goes by and the one year rolls into another, the passion fades a little as the aching back, the headache, the bad day at work, the "why can't you put an empty container in the bin" and all the little things start to become big things that annoy you.   Hours turn into days turn into weeks and on occasion turn into months without intimacy.  Thoughts start to wander, if we don't do "it" soon is he going to look for another way to release that doesn't involve me, but does involve a diminishing bank account or working late becomes a "habit".  If we don't spend more intimate time together is he going to start thinking that he doesn't love me?  Why does he want to play golf each day over the weekend instead of spending time with me?  OMG am I loosing him?

The short answer is no.  Not even close.  I was looking for him to show me love the way I expected it to be given to me.  I expected the dinners, the candlelit love sessions with the scented candles.  I wanted flowers and perfumes and weekends away, I wanted to be shown love demonstratively.  As it turns out, materially.  I wasn't looking for the signs of "his" love.

Then I learned about love language and how just because I wasn't getting what I thought represented love and romance the way I thought I should, didn't mean I wasn't getting it at all.  I started to look at my man and his actions, his, love language.

He always treats me with respect.  He always listens when I talk (even if I am rambling on about something he isn't interested in), he calls me during the day and says "Baby baby, I just wanted to hear your voice".  He kisses me good night every night and good morning before we drive off to work together.  He calls me "The Girl" and always says when asked to do something, "I will have to check with The Girl".  He never questions my whereabouts, he trusts me explicitly.  He always goes to bed before me but within minutes, is calling out to me, telling me "Janeen it's getting late" and he never turns the light out unless I have come to bed.  

He talks about me with people and always says he doesn't understand how my heart can be so big and unconditional, and he smiles at me when I say I can't watch a documentary about animals in the wild because I cry if I see an animal in pain.  If I see a cute dog, he says before I get the chance to say something "no, you can't have one, we already have enough" and he always looks at me with love shining in his eyes, even when he is angry with me..(usually for good reason).  He loves me regardless of the way I look.  The only comment he has ever made about my weight is that he wants me to lose it because he doesn't want to be living without me and he worries about my health, not the way I look.  

He may sit on the couch and watch sport from countries I have never heard of, and he might breathe heavy when he is eating which drives me mad, and he may not put empty bottles in the bin, but tonight he is cooking dinner, and he is asking me if there is anything he can get me, and he did the dishes and made me a cup of Chai, just the way I like it.

So my closing thought is this, to anyone that is listening.... be sure when you are looking for that special someone to show you love, that they aren't already doing it....... their way, telling you using their love language, just how special you are to them.

In Sync

I find myself asking the same old question every now and then. Am I happy?

I should be happy.  I have a great life, a good job, a man who loves me, makes me laugh, and whom I trust with my darkest thoughts and deepest feelings.  He enables me to be my own person and accepts that about me.  He is his own person and he and I fit well together.  I certainly wouldn't be without him by choice.

I have an amazing family, three sisters who in their, and my worlds, all deserve medals for bravery, awards for their integrity and honorable mentions for being role models in my own life.  I have friends from around the world.  I have met some, some I have yet to meet and others will probably only every be friends on the other side of a keyboard, but the are still friends just the same.

I have a roof over my head, food on my table and two pets that show their love to me every time I come home from being away.  I have the ability to see, to speak, to think, to make up my own mind, I have a soul that listens to music and a body that wants to dance to it.  I have reasonable good health, nothing some weight loss wouldn't find beneficial.  I don't drink to excess (too often), I can laugh, I can walk, I can do everything an able bodied person should be able to do.  

So am I happy?  There has not been anything in my life happen that I haven't been able to either overcome, celebrate or achieve, or leave behind without learning the lesson that goes from it having been a part of my world.  There have been trials and tribulations sure, but to some, my life has been an easy ride down easy street and to others it has been nothing but an uphill climb since my early teenage years.

I have been bullied and probably even bullied myself, but I would never do it intentionally.  I stop and help strangers, cuddle children and love with an open heart.  There is so much that I can and will do, but I am happy?

I may not have laugh lines around my eyes, but I put that down to a good skin care regime rather than the fact that I don't laugh.  Because I do.  I laugh all the time.  I may not be the world's prettiest person, but I am not coyote ugly and I don't know of any man that has bitten their arm off in order not to wake me over the years.  I get tired, and I yawn and I crave my bed, but I can only sleep for a couple of hours at a time, after that, I am wide awake for a couple of hours, then I go back to sleep again.  Is this healthy?  Probably not, but it works for me most of the time and when it stops working, I just crash on the couch for the weekend and catch up.

So again I ask myself the question, am I happy?  I have a father who is terminally ill, an aunt who passed away on Saturday, and I have spent the whole of Friday night of the last weekend in hospital with my partners parents - yes both of them.  I have aches in my body because I keep forgetting to take my vitamin D, and my favourite TV program is still about 8 weeks away from being back on TV.  I am wishing my life away all because of a TV program.  Can you believe that!!

I have all these things in my life.  I live a life that is filled with music, even if it is only in my head, and I have a life filled with words, that I put down on "paper" and I write stories, poems and blogs just because I can.

So am I happy - #HELLYES !!!!

I Saved a Mans Life or Did I

I am listening to music for my Soul.  I write to this music all the time, it soothes me.  It takes me to places where I can either run and hide in a fantasy, or sit and write about something that has been on my mind, waiting, wanting to be released.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaoaZiTPiik

There are no words to this music, no prescribed direction, no one telling me about heartbreak or happiness, no sweet words or melodic voices whispering their words in my ears.  It is just music. Sometimes its quiet, sometimes it's crescendo sneaks up on you, sometimes it is just light, it is, the music to which I write my life.

I can listen to the same song over and over and each time I go somewhere different with it.  Like today. I find myself wanting to cry, I am feeling lost, I am feeling overwhelmed with the responsibilities of life, I want to curl into a ball and cry a mountain of tears, yet as I sit here writing this to you, none fall.

My Dad is dying, my weight is stagnant, my father-in-law is ill, my ankles are still swelling.  I am hungry all the time, but I don't want to eat.  I know I should be exercising, but instead I sit here writing.  I have a tonne of washing to do and about 6 hours of ironing, but, for now, it can all wait.

I saved mans life a few days ago, literally.  I was the first on the scene of an accident between a push bike and a car.  Naturally the guy on the bike came off second best.  I actually think I was out of the car before the guy hit the road after being flung in the air.  I heard and saw it all happen in front of me.  I reacted, I didn't think, all I knew was, that the rider was going to be hurt and would need help.

We were sitting at a set of traffic lights at a cross intersection, we had a red light.  There was a car turning into the street we were on, but she turned in front of a guy on a push bike.  I heard the guy say "Oh Shit", I heard his bike brakes activate, I heard him try to gear down and I both heard and saw him hit the car, fly into the air and slide down the back of the car all in a matter of seconds.

Before I even knew what I was doing, my seat belt was undone, I was getting out of the car as I simultaneously checked the traffic to make sure I could get to the rider without being run over by a car myself and I ran to him.  I yelled out to him "don't move, don't move, stay still, I'm coming" as I moved to kneel by his side.  As I approached him I could see no obvious injuries on the side I was approaching him from, but as I moved to the side facing away from my direction, I was faced with his right arm.  It was almost severed off, I saw his artery pumping away his life's fluid and his arm dangling, literally by a piece that was only about 2 inchs/5cm of skin.  He tried to move his arm, his shoulder moved but his arm didn't.  With that movement came a spurt of blood.  He had cut the artery and his blood was pumping out with every heartbeat, which you can imagine, was pretty rapid.

Talking to him calmly, I started to ask him generic questions, as I knelt down and clamped my thumbs onto his arm, just above the cut where I could see his artery and my fingers went to the back of his arm pulling it toward me to effectively holding his arm together.  I yelled out to someone to get me something to wrap around his arm and someone handed me a scarf. While I was keeping the pressure on his vein with one hand, I wrapped the scarf around his arm, swapping one hand for the other, the whole time keeping the pressure on his arm.  Then I held on for dear life.  They tried to take off his backpack, but I said, no leave it, it is acting as a tourniquet for me, and I held on.  People asked me did I want them to take over.  I shook my head, said no, I'm good and I held on.

The Police were on the scene pretty quickly for all the good they were worth, trying to get statements from everyone that saw the accident happen.  The poor girl who hit the rider was hysterical, but no-one bothered about her. Everyone just crowded around "Andrew".  The ambulance arrived and took over so I was left to go on my merry way, with Andrew's blood on my hands.  I didn't have any water to wash them, the police weren't forth coming with anything to help me either.  Once the ambulance man got there, I was redundant and no longer needed, a hindrance it would seem, to them continuing to save Andrew's life.   And that's okay.

So I left the scene with no care and went home and on with my life. Until I tried to go to sleep that night.  Then all the questions came flooding into my head...... Was the scarf I used going to cause an infection, will he lose his arm, did he live, why didn't I use Steve's belt as a better tourniquet, why didn't I raise his arm to lessen the blood flow, Why were my hands so sore, why didn't I stay until he was placed into the ambulance, why didn't I get more of his name to follow up to see if he was okay, do I want to know if he is okay, do I want to see if there was anything I had done, that could have caused him more injury, why didn't I insist that the police take my name and number OMG did I do the right thing, did I hold his arm tight enough, did I hold it in the right place, did I even want to know the answer to any of these questions, OMG did I do the right thing?

These questions have been running around and around in my head and I just want them to stop.  Even though I know I did everything I could, I did what I did and when the ambulance came, Andrew was conscious, breathing and most importantly, alive.  I can't stop the questions, the wondering if I did anything wrong, Did I do anything that has caused him to suffer more when my intentions were to only help.  Why can't I get these questions to stop.

I still don't know if I am even asking the write questions and when I feel like this, when I have the need to work out what is in my mind I write.  I never know if it is going to be a poem, or a blog or a short story.  I never know what is going to happen.  But the irony between this, is that I can accept that I don't know the answers and keep on going everyday without a worry.  I don't even think on the fact that I never know what is going to happen from one day to the next.

I don't get crippled by fear and I don't second guess everything I do, or say, or do, or, say.  So why was I questioning myself now?  I guess maybe, it is because what was on my mind wasn't about me. It was about Andrew.  The guy who was riding his bike on a Thursday afternoon home from work who didn't get there at the time he originally anticipated, but hopefully did or will, still get there.

Feeling like I needed to do something to stop the questions, I came to my computer to put the music for my soul on, I sat with my eyes closed, waiting to see what would come out and started to type, unconsciously ready to type whatever came to mind first. Would it be about me, or would it be about Dad or would it be the start of a new story that has been playing around in the background of my mind.

As you can now see, this is what happened when I listened too my music for my soul.