A Personal Journey: Part I Prologue

Originally written Tuesday, June 10, 2008



Ok, where to begin? How far back does this thing have roots? Does it matter, really?
You don't care after all..

I don't know if you have ever been in a place where there seems absolutely no chance that anything nice could ever happen again, and you know for sure and certain that there will be no more lovers, no more romance, no more togetherness?
I've been there... I'll get the violins bit over quickly I promise.. You know the story already anyway. I don't enjoying taxing people's compassion much, it's in short supply these days.

First I should say that when my last relationship ended I gave up taking all the "recreational" drugs I had been using constantly since I was a teenager..
.. Anyway, there I was at 38, minus the man I had thought of as the total love of my life and completely lost, with nothing to do but blame myself for everything right from the beginning on. How could I have been so blind (again)? How had I allowed this person to have been more important to me than my child?.. How could I have ignored all the clues so spectacularly? etc etc ad infinitum.

I unplugged the stereo for good and became a hermit, living in silence and gloom, never going outside in daylight, never contacting friends (did I even have any?) living on cigarettes and strong coffee and going quietly insane.
I piled on the weight. What did I care? I just wanted to not wake up in the morning, and nothing could persuade me that my daughter would not be better off without a loser like me looking after her. Goodness knows how she managed. She became quite self-contained and self-reliant and completely unlike me in character.. GOOD!

Everyone was doing it; Death was in fashion... Anji, Rupert, Angela, Mark, Gary, Martin, Jonathan, Simon, Sally, Tim, Sean, Steve, Jeremy, Shaun, Bill, Robert, Jim, another Simon, another Tim, another Mark, Stuart, another Mark, another Martin, another Steve, Sara, Lasse,

the list goes on and on .........everywhere I looked, my contemporaries and friends were giving up or giving out, either tired or worn out by life lived on the edge. At the time I felt it to be a personal tragedy that I was doomed to be the survivor.. which shows how screwed the mind of a clinically depressed person can be I guess. Obviously, a doctor would only have made things worse for me, so I was
completely on my own.

Time kind of telescoped out and in, and out of existence; as the next I remember, it was three years later and Mother could bear it no longer and she forced me to go swimming three times a week. This at least provided enough boot to the butt for me to become aware I'd lost three years almost without trace. I was in trouble with the Tax office about some forms that had been filled out wrongly and I realised things had to change. The coffee and cigarettes went...


BEST THING I HAVE EVER DONE FOR MYSELF!!!!!!


Seriously. I cannot stress to you how much difference getting free of caffeine and nicotine has made, much more of a difference than giving up hash and hallucinogens certainly. I've been addicted to caffeine since I was 4 years old for goodness sakes! I know *now* that it makes me psychotic.. I had no clue at all. My body was so accustomed that for all my life I genuinely believed that even the strongest coffee had no stimulant effect on me whatsoever.

Giving up smoking ought not to have been so easy I guess, but I had an absolute graveyard cough that persisted for six months of the year by that time, and a chest infection of a particularly unpleasant nature was the final nail in that habit. I was just too ill to smoke and by the time I felt well enough again I just didnt want them anymore. I put a lot more weight on though ! LOL!

Celery is a good thing to eat when you are giving up smoking.. it takes a lot of chewing, occupies your smoking hand, is not so delicious that you want to
pig out on it, it's cleansing and also you can eat a ton of it without feeling gross).. Sadly for my waistline I didnt have enough celery I guess.

Not long after all that I started wondering how come I was still alive I guess, and without wanting to be an evangelist about it and bore people, I realised that "My Redeemer Liveth" and was within me and I realised that I had been saved by the love of Christ. Probably a strange thing for a dyed in the wool atheist to conclude perhaps, but it certainly made a lot of sense to me and still does, although in a
much more assimilated and integral way now than at the time.

I began to attend church twice or more a week and I got a great deal of
new life-force from it all. I certainly dont think I would be where I am now without that as my comfort and strength. It meant a great deal to finally be Confirmed in the Church on April 22 2007.
Finally I felt safe.

Very very gradually, I started to talk to people, learned to smile again and was hit with the full force of everything my Mum had done for me in the background all the time I was so wedded to my illness, sorrow and confusion. I felt like I had been in a coma... not just since 2002, but since I first began smoking hash all those years ago, and was only just now awakening... having lost most of my life to a fog of drug induced delusion, apathy and inertia.. and with no idea at all how to be any different. Starting out afresh as a 43 year old divorced mother of a teenager is no joke.

I haven't really done anything. I've been an astrologer, a sailmaker, a nursery worker, a haberdasher; none was a career. I'm bright.. actually scarily bright. I know that, but not in a "bankable " way perhaps? How on earth to exploit my gifts? I have no idea!

I am a natural researcher.
I can find all sorts of stuff out about you that you wouldnt want people to know. I know where your parents live, I know where you went to school. I have an aerial photo of your pool, Baby; and dont stand near the window when you come out of the shower.. oh and I know how much you paid for that pad. I have the realtor's details you know..

I know all sorts of stuff about your grandparents and great grandparents that even you do not know. That is my strength. Its what I do. It's what I spent six years honing to a fine art, when that was all I was able to focus on; but also something I have done all my life. Family trees have always been my fascination, and the scope of that is a lot wider than people think. I am so far back in history with my own tree now that it's not even turning me on any more. I'm in need of other trees and fresher meat.

Anyway, all that aside, the slightly new me, woken up, sitting up and taking notice for the first time in forever was still living in silence at the beginning of this year.




I think it was the E-Bay Song that did it
Anyway... I rushed out the next day and bought the DVD "Weird Al" Yankovic Live! and WHHOOOOOOSH! Suddenly I'm on a mad rollercoaster of crazy fun and lovely new friends on WOWAY and MySpace


This is me on the 11th February of this year

"What on Earth has happened to me?

In a week and a half I feel like Ive got ten years younger.. which has to be a good thing. My appetite has gone totally and I'm losing weight visibly.. I actually RAN part of the way home! (Something I'm pretty sure I haven't done so far this century) Combination of things perhaps?

New life, New music.. Thanks Al...
Yeah, I know that sounds like a stupid fan-girl...
... but I haven't even been able to listen to ANY music in the longest time, without bursting into tears.
I remember way back; must be in 2002, dining with my dear friend Pete in his Italian restaurant; Pete actually had to turn the music off in there just so I could get through the meal (Mind you, in my defence it was Dido; not exactly conducive to emotional stability!)
And now a sudden change, overnight pretty much. I've learned to laugh and smile again. Its GREAT!
I've been such an idiot.. what a waste of another 5 years, grieving over someone so utterly unworthy (again)
I could kick myself, but then again, that'd stop me bopping about the room and trying to "rap"

hehe"

And me again three days later

" I have a strange relationship with music. It's intense, and has always been intense to the point where I'd occasionally buy an album I didn't like just to hear a single song, and maybe not so much as a song, but even just a single musical phrase that had a stand-alone beauty.

Music has filled my head all my life, even in the silent years when I just wanted stillness. It's so mathematical, so precise and logical. Sadly, you get a lot of other stuff as well, flowing in with the sound; other people's pain and loss, their insecurities, their hang ups and prejudices.. to a point that becomes unbearable for someone who (was) so plugged in to it all, to whom every note was poetic.

(This is not much helped by being, umm, shall we say "amorously disappointed" by a musician, I guess)
I picked up my guitar today for the first time in probably six years... (almost unbelievably it was still in tune!) It took a lot for me to do that.

I don't know yet if I will take it up again. I never was much good at it, though I could do a solid rhythm if I say so myself.
Remarkable what an injection of good humour can do really isnt it?"

So now, having met some quite remarkable and amazing people I am suddenly in a position where I have only a few weeks before flying out to the USA to see my MySpace friends Jim and Nancy and Weird Al for real.
I have never been on an aeroplane in my life. I probably do not deserve such good fortune, but I must say I do feel I am truly blessed...
Watch this space