The Good Side of the Bad

I believe that we are only ever given as much as we can handle at one time.  I may be naive about this but it is something I very much believe in.  In saying that, I am ready for the next thing to be thrown at me because I know, that no matter what it is, I will be alright.

Some people will say that I am just burying my head in my hands and that I need to take time out for myself, and I totally understand why they think that.... but for some reason I just don't feel the need. Sure things have been pretty shitty for me this year, from the recent passing of my father, to my in-laws both currently being in hospital, to my having to lay my soul saviour Mack to rest yesterday. But you know what, this year is almost over; this means that there's only good stuff that can come now.

I have been very lucky this year too, because through all the bad stuff, through all the dark days, through all the times I have wanted to scream, shout, rant and rage, I have had a mountain of support. My man has been my rock, he has been there for me at every step, sometimes quietly in the background, sometimes pushing me forward, or holding me steady.  He has seen me cry so much but has kissed my swollen eyes telling me I am beautiful.  He has put his arms around me and told me that he is sorry for my losses.  He has held me when I needed him too and pushed me away when I was just being plain stoopid.

He has made me laugh, frustrated the bejeebees out of me, loved me unconditionally and accepted me for being the crier that I am.  But you know the one thing he has never done?  He has never told me to get over it.  He has always just let me be me.

I am grateful for him and to him.  I am so blessed that he chose me to be with me and that he knows me like he does.  This year hasn't been a good one for him either.  He has faced his own challenges, his own heartache and his own issues.  Although we are both going through stuff, we have always managed to be there for each other.

Some people say that a great relationship is all about the sex and of course, communication.  To a point I agree with them.  But what happens when you are both so tired that you can't stay awake after 8pm or one of you goes to bed while the other one stays awake because they have so much running through their heads.  What happens when one is so depressed that all they want to do is crawl into a ball and cry for hours on end.  What happens when the talk stops too?

For me a great relationship is born from mutual respect, the not wanting to change the other person. It's about each person's acceptance, or even love of all of the others idiosyncrasies.  It is the way that person looks at you and sees your soul.  It's the little touches like a hand on your back, the squeeze of your hand when you place yours in theirs.  It's the way they let you be your own person but aren't too scared to pull you up and say "hey I think you have gone too far there".  It's the anticipation of hearing their voice on the other end of the phone.  Of looking at the phone and thinking, "hmm I haven't heard from my man or girl yet".  It's the counting the minutes until you are in that person's presence again.  But, it is also knowing and accepting that you each need your space.  That sometimes, just being under the same roof is all that is needed from your other special someone.

I don't believe there is a perfect relationship, I don't believe that any one successful relationship should be what others base their "I want one like that" future relationships on.  Each relationship only works, or fails for that matter, because of the two people in it.

Something else that I have been blessed with this year is friendships.  From people I have never met to my best friend and everyone one in between.... you have all been there for me.  You have made me laugh when I needed to and allowed me to cry when I wanted to. Your support, your messages of love, and belief in me, your understanding of what is going on in my life and your encouragement toward me making it through whatever it is that is going on.  Reminding me that tomorrow is a new day and that no matter what happens, you are there for me.  It is all of you, and more that I am truly blessed with.  If I hadn't of experienced the hardships I did this year, maybe I would never have known or even realised any of this, I could even have unconsciously taking each of you for granted.

So thank you universe, thank you Higher Powers, thank you to each and every one of you.  You have helped to make this, a truly amazing year so far.  I can't wait and I am super excited for the remainder of the year to come, and to lessons it may teach me.

Ramblings of My Addled Brain

The sound of silence echoing

A resound with a hollow ringing

A void of never ending emptiness

The travelling noise is silent

I can hear the tapping of my fingers on the keyboard, the clock ticking in the background, the ringing in my ears and someone sleeping soundly not too far from where I sit (not sure if the gentle snore is coming from my partner or the dog).  My mind is travelling in different directions, my heart is heavy and my body aching.  I feel sick, I feel tired, and all I want to do is curl up in bed and go to sleep.  So why am I still sitting here, wide awake, writing this piece of god knows what?  I don’t even know the direction this is going to take even, as I sit here writing it.

There have been times over the past few weeks that I have felt totally disconnected.  I don’t feel I belong anywhere.  Something that consumed me over the past two years no longer has a hold on me. I am sick of the infighting, I am sick of people not being able to voice their opinions but that is only because they don’t want to hear anyone oppose them. 

I am sick of talking people down off the ledge, telling them things are going to be alright.  And I am sick of waiting, but I know not what for.  I want to change my life, but I don’t know why. I want to do different things but I know not what.  I want to dedicate a year of my life to writing to see if I can do anything with it, but there are so many people out there trying to do the same thing, that I don’t even know if I can be bothered.

I want to travel the world and meet with some wonderful people I have met online, but I know not where to start to organise that.  And I want someone other than me to be the person that makes a decision in my house.

I am scared my cat may be dying and I am so frustrated that I don’t know if he is 13 or 15 because I can’t remember when I got him.  Was it 2000 or was it 2002?  I know where I was working when I got him, but I can’t remember the year.  I am really frustrated by this. 

I am totally over having to wear glasses because everything is so blurry, and although I have now lost over 10 kilo’s I am totally over this fight to find a healthier me even though this is something I will never give up on. 

I have to fly to Brisbane for a two day conference yet history has proven to me that although what I will be told will be at the time, absolutely the truth, the truth will change as it faced with circumstance.  Why listen to the vision when the vision is subjective, open to change and interpretation?  Can I just read the report that comes out of the conference? Do I need to know any of this information in order to do my job?  I am excited though and can’t wait to be proven wrong. It would be great to come back saying that spending my time at this conference was totally beneficial and really informative.  I know that is the outcome the organizers of the conference are trying to achieve.

I don’t understand why people find it so hard to believe I am an introvert and being around a lot of people all the time totally does my head in.  It really isn’t that hard to believe is it?  I had to go to a wedding this last weekend and my partner knew more people than I did.  He gestured to me to go with him yet I resisted saying that I would just stay where I was.  Then I turned to the people I did know and uttered words to the effect of, “My god, he wants to introduce me to people and he wants me to actually talk to strangers.  Why would I do that?”  That is just stoopid and totally goes against my introvertedness yet…… an hour later and two or three glasses of champagne (wasn’t really counting) and I was dragging him around demanding that he introduce me to all of these people I didn’t know but that he did.

I want to find joy again but can’t be bothered looking for it.  It should just come to me.  Gawd, I sound like an entitled little shit, but why is it always me that has to go looking?  Just for once I want something to come to me.  I don’t want to be the one that does everything.  And I am sure there are many of you are nodding your heads in agreement with me here.

I have a mountain of ironing (literally) and three baskets (big ones too) of washing that needs to be done, yet I can’t be bothered, or rather, have no energy to get up and do any of this.  Mind you, 2.15am in the morning really isn’t the best time to be turning on the washing machine and dryer anyway….. But why can’t I do it now.  The fact that I have to get up and go to work may have something to do with it, but then maybe not.  May be, I just can’t be bothered.

I want to learn how to cook, I mean, really cook.  I think it would be awesome to be at home, planning a menu for the week then spend two days cooking it all.  But I don’t have the freezer space and, OMG…. who could be bothered doing all those dishes anyway?  Hmm, maybe I should go out for dinner tomorrow night, that way, there are no dishes for me to clean.  But then I could also leave the ones I do have for the cleaner but I don’t have one of those either, so maybe that isn’t such a good idea after all.

I want my in-laws to choose life (choose, chose, I always get that wrong).  I don’t want to have to worry about them and whether we are going to get a phone call to say that one or both of them are on their way to hospital emergency.  I want to yell and scream at them to get up off their asses and doing something.  I know it’s hard for them, they are both suffering lung disease of some sort and you’d think, that having just watched my father die of a lung related illness that I would have more compassion for them.  But you see the problem here is, my Dad wasn’t given the choice of life against his death.  His disease made that decision for him, but if he could have, he would have made the right choices if he had been in my in-laws shoes.  And that knowledge really annoys me.

Sometimes I don’t want to be strong, sometimes I just want to curl in a ball and cry my ocean of tears.  Having to deal with eyes so swollen that when lying on my back my eyelids could almost touch the ceiling, really doesn’t appeal to me and helps me hold them back somewhat.  Then, having everyone say, “gee you don’t look well, are you okay” is so good for the self-esteem NOT!!!! Who could be bothered with that anyway?  I also have a tooth ache, but I hate the dentist so maybe I will wait until I can’t bear the pain anymore before I do something about it.  That’s what you do isn’t it, always put off until tomorrow what you don’t have to do today…   I know, the right saying is ‘Don’t put off to tomorrow that which can be done today’, but hey…. I am feeling a little bit rebellious today so I am not going to do anything.

And with that comes my conclusion.  Thank god my scattered brain isn’t an everyday thing.  Reading back over what I have written I sound entitled, selfish, ridiculous and totally sound like a winging brat.  The good news is, I think it is all just because I think I am coming down with the flu.  My sore throat and aching limbs are a pretty good indication that this is the case.  So with that, I bid you adieu and until next time, please ignore the ramblings of my addled brain.

Good night!!!

Maybe On Day Five

As is quite normal for me at the moment, I woke up with my father on my mind.  Since his funeral some three weeks ago now, I’ve had a dream about him that I woke from crying, moments of clarity about his passing and how it is better for him now he is no longer in pain, and numerous bouts of watery eyes that I have consciously prevented from turning into tears.

I have taken the past two days before the weekend off from work because I thought the tears were close.  But again, events in my life have stopped me from shedding the load of tears that I feel I am almost drowning in.  Nothing of significance has happened just little things.  Like I thought I was going to be home by myself for 2 days; as it turned out, it was only one.  I was too busy preparing to get my cry on for day two to cry on day one, that I forgot. The odds of day 2 not happening…… well, they were pretty high.  Needless to say, when my man came home on day 2 of this 3 day trip, I didn’t get to cry on, on my day two either.

Then the weekend came (let’s call these day three and four) and I thought great, here is my chance today to do what I didn’t get to do yesterday or the day before; Cry. Today, I was saying goodbye to my stepmother.  She was leaving to live with her daughter in Queensland, about to start the rest of her life now as Dad had told her he wanted her to do.  I was happy that she was going to spend the time with her daughter, but I knew that her leaving was going to hurt.  Even though our relationship had been tried and tested over the past 25 years, I knew she loved my Dad and my Dad loved her and I did too.  So to me, her leaving felt a little like I was losing Dad again and it was because of this, it left me feeling really sad that I was going to be saying goodbye to her.  On the other hand though, this did have me thinking, great, I will now be able to let loose with the tears once she was on the plane.  Finally I was going to be able to cry.

As it turns out, there was a mix up with the flight and we were at the airport one day early.  Although there was room on the flight that we had arrived for, it wasn’t possible to get my stepmother on that plane because of the “paperwork”.  I felt like saying to the airline attendants, “For god sake, just write her name on the piece of paper with all the passengers’ names on it and let her get on the plane.”  My stepmother was visibly distraught, almost tormented that she wasn’t on the plane, that my own ‘woe is me’ was buried again and I went into action mode.  I had to help sort out the problem, placate my stepmother and get her booked onto the next available flight for that day.  I did, she left but………. I was so worried about her state of mind, that I didn’t get the chance to get my cry on, so……. I didn’t cry on day three either.

That brings me to today; day four and my final day of my time away from work.  I haven’t slept well.  I have been awake for more hours than I have been asleep.  Sitting at the computer, watching heart-warming videos about rescue dogs, old moments in movies that have previously be known to bring me to tears, reading the saddest part in my favorite book, all in the hope that I could cry, finally!  Nothing! Zip! Nudder! Niente!  OMG not even a skerrick of water, in fact, my eyes are feeling quite dry from sitting in front of the computer for the past seven hours.  I even watched a TV show specifically about the relationship between a father and his daughter, hoping that would help.  Still, nothing!

The only thing I didn’t do as it turns out, was sit with my eyes shut, in totally silence, and remember him. I didn’t think to think of all the things that won’t happen anymore.  I didn’t even think to allow myself to get really, really, sad.   As it turns out, all I had to do was remind myself that Dad wasn’t here anymore.  He wouldn’t be on the other end of the phone telling me about his day with as many reminders of his being a pensioner, or what did I do today that wasn’t done his way.  No longer were the words of his wisdom going to be able to guide me through my life, no longer is the sound of his voice going to make me want to cry with longing for I have missed him so much, for I will never hear it again.  No longer will I look at my inbox and see an email from Tom, who was seldom in, hence his email tomsseldomin.  I can’t hear his voice inside my head, I can’t picture him smiling at something that amuses him and I can’t hold his aged spotted hand in mine.  I can’t feel his kiss on my cheek, or feel his arms around me. 

Now that I have started though, I can’t keep crying.  You see, my man is now awake and I have to start my day.  I am going to have to dry my tears that have only just started to fall, literally.  I am going to have to wait for another day to remember and honor my father.  I don’t think I will get to get my cry on, on day four either.  At least day four has shown me what to do to get to get my cry on.  All I need to do is remember.

I know Dad wouldn’t want me to cry, I know he would only want to see a smile on my face and laughter in my eyes and I promise you Dad (as I turn my head toward the sky and send the silent promise to him), I am trying.  But right now, I miss him and this makes me feel sad.  This makes me want to curl into a ball and let it all out.  And I will.  There will be a day that I will let the tears fall, that I will feel the immense pain of his passing, and I will at the end of all of that, dry my tears and stand tall for him.  That is my promise to him.

Maybe on day five?