This is for you

This is for you.  In the beginning I wrote this blog for me.  And after a short while I wrote it for me and the lovely people that read it.  But now, this last post, is for you.

This post is to say sorry.  This post is to tell you that you were missed and loved when I wrote all of this.  There is a line in a White Stripes song which goes "you think that not saying is the same as not lying, don't you?"  Well we both know its not. I was lying by not telling our story from before the start of this blog. And for that I am sorry.

If I can ask anything of you, which without a doubt I have no right to, I would like you to believe that what I felt for you was real. All of the love and warmth and laughter and care that I gave you was real.  I loved the way we laughed together.  I loved the way you relished my food.  I loved the ways in which you cared for me.  I loved all the stupid conversations and the serious ones.  I loved our doomed attempts to watch a film together.  I loved riding pillion behind you even when we ran out of petrol.  I loved the evenings at the pub and the barbeques in your garden.  I loved how you loved that crappy old car (forgive me for calling the car crappy).  I loved the fact that you could fix stuff and explain to me how stuff worked.  I loved your dedication to your child and I loved how you took my own children to your heart.  I loved it all.  I loved you.  You are always in my heart.

And yet I lied and cheated on you.  Its feeble to say but I never wanted to hurt you.  Of course that is exactly what I did and what I was always going to do by the course of action I took.  And for that I am deeply sorry.

In Wuthering Heights Cathy says of Heathcliffe "He is more myself than I am".  I always used to shiver when I read that.  In your case you are more the person that I was and that I would like to be again than I am.  You are kind and truthful and moral and decent.  I can only promise that I will learn and grow from this.

This is for you.  It is a present you cannot give back.  Please take it.  Look after yourself my Racer Boy.  Try to have little belief in our past even as you deal with the pain of it.

Unattributed quotes in times of need

Today I read this:

" Strength doesn't mean being able to stand up to anything, but being able to crawl on your belly a long, long time before you can stand up again."

And it did that thing that happens when you read something with personal resonance, when that chord in your brain starts to quiver.  The Prince of Darkness left for the first time a little under three years ago.  And when he left I crawled for a long long time.  The resonance of that statement for me is that when you are crawling I now realise that just getting through the day takes real strength.  To get the kids to school, to turn up to work and confine the tears to the toilet, to put food on the table, read bedtime stories, to cry, ever so quietly, so that you don't wake the children  and then to get up in the morning and do the same all over again. 

Whats more: I'm ok.  I've lived through this before but it was worse back then.  In a week I feel like I've travelled the same distance I came in six months last time.  I know that there will be ups and downs but its really going to be ok.  This weekend I've laughed with my kids and sat in the sun and played with the puppy.  And I've thought about what I've lost but much more about what I gained.   

This is the quote that had resonance last time he left:

"When one door closes another opens; its just that sometimes its hell waiting in the hallway."

And then the hallway was hell.  But now I realise that the hallway is an alright place to be; just a bit of down time till a new door opens.

P.S. julochka has suggested that the Prince of Darkness should be downgraded and this idea has thoroughly amused me all weekend.  Suggested titles for the new Duke/Earl/Count gratefully received...

Surfacing

Its been a rather trying couple of weeks. [Editors note: that is the infamous British stiff upper lip speaking] Not to put too fine a point on it I have been immersed in a sea of pain.

Physical..... turns out when the osteopath said serious injury she really meant it. I got into work once and looked so awful I got sent home again which was gratifying as I felt awful too. Plus I had to type kneeling in front of the desk because I couldn't sit down. Haven't been to work since. Have been drugged up to the eyeballs, talking absolute nonsense when awake (my vocabulary has leaked out of my brain) and sleeping for most of the rest of the day. I half heard the girls saying at the weekend "look mummy is asleep .....AGAIN" Have roused myself occasionally to go to get the back seen to and eldest has now become expert at making sandwiches for dinner for all of us. We have used up all the dubious tins of food lurking in the back of the cupboard. In fact I have become a bit of a celebratory at youngest's school. I have strange children pointing at me and saying "there is the lady with with bad back mum" as I hobble pitifully to the school gate looking for all the world as if I was a cross between a woman who had peed her pants and a distant ancestor of the homo sapien who is not entirely able to walk upright.

Emotional.... and just as I start to come off the drugs and walk a little more like a human being the Prince of Darkness delivers his verdict following Ultimatum Friday. Seems he is leaving me for another again. I am sure that he would argue with that statement but essentially that is the case. It has just floored me. For all the heartbreak he put me through, and if I must be fair I put him through, I thought we might just have a future. I've cried those unglamorous loud snotty without control sobs. I've screamed at him. I've thought about telling the girlfriend the truth about him. I've taken off the jewellery he bought me and thrown it around the house [Editors note: there is a ring behind the tv and a watch on the roof terrace]

Now I just wait. For my back and my heart to heal. I know that one day I will be able to pick things up from the floor. And one day he won't be my first thought in the morning and last thought in the evening. I will try to remember its all for the best. I am going to learn some exercises to strengthen my back but which will also apparently make my stomach flater. Really the Prince of Darkness is just a sad middle-aged man who won't confront his problems and has difficulty distinguishing the truth from a lie. He may well be the Prince of Darkness but he is not the Prince of my dreams. I really am better off without him.

I have done all this before. I know some days that I will feel like I am drowning in the pain again. But just for now I am surfacing for a while and that means that one day I will swim with the current again.

Flat on my back with frozen brussel sprouts

Its been quite some weekend. I've driven along the coast, been to three different UK airports, hired a car, driven over the Yorkshire moors, attempted a 26 mile walk (failed) and acquired a puppy. All in 48 hours. The net result of all this activity is that my back has ceased to work. I am flat on my back with a number of prescription painkillers coursing through my veins and a bag of frozen brussel sprouts pressed against my lower spine. Oh and a large glass of pinot grigio by my side - I figure it can only help at this stage. I felt strangely proud when the osteopath told me that I had a "serious injury" as all the sighing/moaning/yelping/whinging I have done over the last two days seems totally justified.

Oh and the daughters have been so totally wound round my little finger (cos I arrived home with a puppy and mother adoration is running at an all time high). They have been happily picking things up from the floor (an area which is currently unreachable), fetching things (including the pinto grigio) and generally looking after me.

As for the puppy; he is just adorable. He is going to fit right in being just as bonkers as the rest of the family. We bought him a big, comfy, expensive bed and he chooses to sleep here:

Yup. That's the bin and the glass recycling that he is crashed out next to. Which I think only goes to prove that his spiritual name and henceforth his blog name is CHAR-DON-NAY. I shall soon be checking the puppy manuals as to how to train him to open the wine.

What did blog camp ever do for me in the style of Monty Pythons Life of Brian "what did the Romans ever do for us"?

 So what did blog camp ever do for me?  Well knowing how we all love a list here goes:

• I learnt lots of blogging stuff that a newbie like me is too afraid to ask; like about sitemeter and how to cross out because I had a carefully prepared list that I went through item by item Polly remembered to ask.
• I remembered what it was like go away sans children, sans partner, sans friends; an experience I will defintely be repeating.
• I said yes to an opportunity that presented itself and my life became richer for it.
• I got to laugh till it really really hurt and then just a little bit more.
• I learnt a whole bunch of random stuff - how to sip tequila under instruction from extranjera; that I always have my mouth open in a photo; and I am rubbish at throwing sticks at other sticks or whatever that Danish game that I suck at is called.
• I got to feel like this about a whole bunch of people I had never met:

Connected

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

• And not just about those I met.  There are real people behind each and every blog to paraphrase Polly.
• I started to get really excited about taking photos and now need (NEED I TELL YOU) a decent camera.
• I learnt that sometimes when you are having an amazing time the days can stretch out so that you feel as if you have been away from your real life for a gloriously long time.

So yeah, what did blog camp ever do for me I ask you?

(Clearly not how to write a short and snappy title for a post....)

A blogging journey

Sometimes its weird where life takes you. How seemingly small decisions can take you off in a completely unexpected direction.

On 21st April I started blogging. Exactly two months later I was waking up in Denmark on the final day of blog camp. The bloggers who I had met less than 48 hours before were real. Not only that but they were just like the voices I had read in their blogs; creative, talented, funny, intellecutal, interesting.... and did I mention funny?

I started to blog just for me. I didn't expect anyone to read what I had written. Even when I started to discover other blogs and found moments of perfect clarity I didn't expect julochka to first joke about blog camp and then to make it a real offer. I didn't expect that there would be room for me when I surprised myself by saying that I could go. And then I ended up in Denmark and the rest is history.

So I hear that Blog Camp 1.5 UK is in the offing.... so I will be grabbing

the camera

the converse

and the wine

and I will be turning up. I wonder what is going to happen next.....?

Blog camp words

I am sitting at home in my blog camp t-shirt, which typically arrived whilst I was away, so that I can preserve the blog camp feeling a little longer.  My brain is a jumble of images and a riot of thoughts and I am much too tired to sort it all out following the tequila several late night intellectual discussions.  All I have at the moments is words and phrases and some photos.

Copenhagen in the sun and rain

Sunset on the lake

Axes were present but not used.

Colour everywhere.

Creativity.

Tequila and tiaras.

Its been a real blast.  Keep checking the blog camp blog over the next few days for more....