Screens are all around me
in front of my very eyes.
My life is full of seeing them
and it makes me want to cry
I’m typing this little ditty
on the screen in front of me
and it makes me really wonder
how life would be if all screen free
I switch on my little microwave
there is another one on there
and then I pick my cellphone up,
the one on there is a small square
There is a tiny one on my camera
and on my bread maker as well.
To say nothing of all the radios
and the alarm clock when it yells.
The kids turn on the television
and stare blankly at the screen
then they play their gameboys
as surreal as the weirdest dream
At the airport departure terminal
and in the taxi out of town.
They tell me what to do and when
and where to take my frown
There are one’s to adjust the temperature
and others to keep out the sun.
I bet there’s one on my fridge door
Just to make my life more fun
I apply for a job position
they are screening all the applicants
I go to get an x-ray
this ones angled on a slant
In the insurance brokers office
there are cubicles all round
to keep the workers privacy
screened from other noisy sounds
There are screens to keep the bugs out
and to keep the sun off of the car.
There are ones that tell you where you are
and just when you’ve gone to far.
It used to be just in the cinema
where we would go to get a dose
and stare off like a zombie
squinting to bring words up real close
Now my eyes are seeing rectangles
but I know its from the screen
on the optic glasses that I wear
which allow it to be “ob”seen
Words and numbers flash at me
they are everywhere I look
screens regulate my lifestyle
once upon a time it was a book
But the biggest screen of them all
is a hidden one indeed
it’s the one that people hide behind
that they really seem to need
I broke my screen long ago
what you see is what you get.
The person deep inside of me
is the same person you just met
Wars, gang fights, school yard bullying, assaults, pub brawls and Internet fights evenare all conflicts between groups of people.
A conflicting world we live in..
offline and on…..
We are taught conflict from Birth. Our lives are modeled on conflict.
From our very system of Government..
We have One Government leader and Team… One OPPOSITION Leader and team
Conflict .. two sides.. teams ….war .. fight….
always an opposition .. while I am on that point.. why have an Opposition.. why not just have one government all sit around and nut things out together..
united for the greater good…
Why do you think the LEGENDS talk of King Arthurs Round Table ?
There was no opposition created…
When does it become Sport to
“take down the opposition”
To Destroy them at all costs
Through our very system of sport we are taught conflict….
we have people and teams COMPETING …
in conflict……
Sport emulates the age old system of warriors .. and once again..
WAR
Sport can be a great thing… but the negative side of the coin of sport is the effect it has on a person’s psyche in reagards to RESOLVING CONFLICT .. whatever conflict….our system has ingrained that need to compete…To get one up.. to score one blow harder..
Humans hero worship the winners … cheering and egg on the participants to get the self in a state of excitement and the competitive adrenalin going. Humans get off on that conflict… To the victor the spoils
and then turn away from the losing team with a complete lack of empathy..
after all its just fun.???
But really… Ya Know !!!!
nothing will ever be solved with conflict or opposition…
Have you ever found yourself saying something to someone only to have it twisted and misrepresented at a later date?
Have you ever played Chinese Whispers? Have you ever been the victim of Chinese Whispers? Silly question because I think we have all been the victim of whispered rumors and twisted words before.
“That is not what I said”
When dealing with rumors or complaints, do you speak out loudly and orally correct the mistakes made?
uh uh bad bad.
That is Not What you Said
Ok how can you prove what I said then?
ahh that is the point. Unless we have proof of the conversation contents via a stenographer or a taped recording then we can’t prove what we said.
Even someone taking notes of a conversation can make errors.
Words transcribed, translated, orated or dictated can be taken out of context and changed. Just like Chinese Whispers too.
“That is not what I said”
I found myself screaming that statement many times lately.
In dealing with everything I am dealing with offline at the moment I have learned one valuable lesson. Well many but the biggest lesson I learned is to
Write it the fuck down!!
Because
“That is what I said”
I think I have become the most prolific letter writer in Australia. After hearing statements from people I am dealing with such as “We have never been told that before” “you never told us that before” and “That is not what you said” I decided that the only way I could back myself up and to prove it indeed is exactly “That was what I said” is by writing it down and sending it off in print..
So either way,
to prove my point or to prove their point I could easily reference and refer to exactly
“What I Said”
“well sir if you refer to my letter dated 16th of October, page 2 line 16 then you can see THAT IT IS EXACTLY WHAT I SAID“.
I have become silent.
My voice is no longer heard. I no longer spend an hour on the phone to customer complaints. Instead I spend five minutes on hold and find out a fax number, email address or snail mail address of the person I really need to be talking to and can help me.
Speaking of which, don’t you get tired of the rigamarole of phone departments you talk to about any sort of complaint. First you orate your issue to the receptionist and then shes says “hold on please transferring you now”. You wait on hold another fifteen minutes and then relate your tale again to a new dude who sounds like he just got out of high school only to find out that it is not dudes department that you need and he needs to transfer you again. In one phone conversation to Telstra regarding a mistake on my phone bill I usually talk to people In India, Perth, Melbourne, Sydney Brisbane and the person that usually eventually helps me is in downtown Dunedoo, in outback New South Wales with a total population 26.
Time of phone call = One hour forty minutes.
Result of Phone call= Was told to put it in writing and was given an address to send it to.
So yeah..don’t worry or bother about using your voice..
some people just don’t listen hear or comprehend
just write it down..
preserve it for posterity..
keep the records..
The room is sterile. In the centre of the room stands the cold steel mechanical outline of a bed, surrounded by three uncomfortable hard seats and four stark white walls. The aroma of disinfectant and bleach hangs heavy in the room, cloying the senses with the chemical smells.
You are lying in the bed, unconscious, with pads and tubes all over your pale fragile form, hooked up to various machines with beeping noises and bright colored lights flashing intermittently. I stroke your hand gently as you stir and groan, setting off yet another endless light flashing on the machine closest to your head. The tears pour down my face unchecked as melancholy memories of the two of us flood through my senses.
We were four, it had been raining and it was the first time in days we had been allowed outside. We were in the yard playing and I was running towards you trying my best to control the soccer ball I was kicking between my legs. You moved towards me, I skipped sideways and lifted my boot to kick. Suddenly I slipped and lost my balance and I ended up face planted in the sloppy dirty mud at your feet. You laughed
We were five and you got into big trouble at school for chasing that stuck up girl with the golden pigtails. You caught her and then tossed her unceremoniously into the sandpit. I laughed
We were six and we got our first bikes for Christmas off Santa Claus. We went outside to ride them along the street and proudly show them off to the neighboring kids. We both laughed.
We were seven and we were riding those bikes to school. You were just ahead of me when a car came screeching around the corner on two wheels, drove up onto the gutter and straight into you. Nobody laughed. We never laughed again.
Pain floods my senses as my mind travels through time to another place. I couldn’t look at you lying there broken on the grey cement or at the bright red liquid stain slowly spreading about your crushed body. Even now today I still can’t open the box in my mind that contains those pictures. It is still too raw, still too graphic and still too real for me to view. Your life stopped there that day as mine was just beginning.
I was eight and I was chosen for the state soccer team. You had the first of many surgeries to repair your broken body. Your pelvis was rebuilt and jaw wired, with bone taken from your hips to replace the shattered shards of cheekbones. Your broken back was set in traction and the doctors finally persuaded the family to remove what was left of your left leg.
I was nine and won “dux” of the school. That was the year when they found out the blood they had given you was contaminated and your liver began to fail. Your organs shut down and you had swelling on the brain. That year was the beginning of the psychosis and torment that dogged you forever more and that was the year you begged me to help you to die.
I sat by your bedside back then in a room not unlike the one I was now seated in. The same cold, white and sterile feeling permeated every fibre of my being then as it does now. I told you I loved you. I pleaded with you to live. I cried for you to keep going. I encouraged you to have the strength to continue. I asked you to make the best of what you had and keep living. You still begged me to help you die. I remember my anger as I told you never to speak of it again. You didn’t, those words never passed your lips again. Instead yet another light faded from your eyes.
My teen years were full of achievements while your teen years were full of hospitals, doctors and more agonizing pain. I met a pretty girl, fell in love and we got married. You met with many specialists and psychiatrists. I got promoted to manager of my division and you got another assortment of pills to keep you quiet and relatively pain free.
We had our first baby as you had your first breakdown. My little girl took her first steps and stumbled into my arms as you began new therapies on your damaged brain. Our second baby was born around the same time the doctors told you that you had a tumor. I watched him laugh and coo and run around on his stumpy legs. I watched the tears pour from your eyes and I watched you wipe them away. I watched you grimace in pain and I watched you turn away in solitude.
Your broken back had never mended and your only mode of transportation was a motorized wheelchair but even that now is castaway back deep in the dark dusty shed at home gathering cobwebs. You haven’t been out of bed for nearly a year now. The tumor was found to be inoperable, growing insidiously and evilly inside your already damaged head.
Tomorrow is the big day though. A new medical procedure is to be trialed. It requires the implanting of tiny electrodes into your brain that will send electrical impulses into the tumor. According to the new team of specialists, combined with a weekly course of intense radiotherapy it should shrink the tumor. They haven’t said too much about the side affects, although they tell me that it will be “uncomfortable” for you. I vividly remember your last course of radiotherapy, which if anything had made the tumor grow. I remember how your face was burnt with the skin peeling off in strips and I remember how the inside of your mouth and throat were raw with weeping blisters. I remember how you ended up being tube fed directly into your stomach when you could not longer swallow food or water.
Suddenly the loud incessant beeping of one of the machines pervades my senses, bringing me back to the stark reality of now. Your breathing has slowed, each breath seemingly requiring a great effort from your heaving weakened body. The machine sounds louder now as more lights flash. Medical staff come running into the room and I am pushed away to the corner shadows.
I stand stricken as I watch them work on your withered shape. For a few minutes there is frantic activity and people yelling instructions. The voices take on a panicked tone and then everything falls silent. A nurse turns to me and looks sadly into my eyes. Nothing needs to be said as she turns back and slowly pulls a sheet over your head. The machines are switched off one by one and the medical staff quietly leave the room.
I am left alone with you but you are no more. I am alone. For the first time in my life I am truly alone. I kneel down by your side and I am stone faced as I gently touch the sheet that covers you one last time. I stand up and then walk into the tiny bathroom that is attached to the hospital ward. Leaning over the bowl I try to gather my thoughts. It is hopeless. I am blank. I cannot think. I cannot feel. I am numb.
My hand mechanically reaches onto my jacket pocket and pulls out a plastic wrapper. I barely glance at the label with “Morphine” written across the front in bold black letters as I drop it in the toilet bowl. I press the button, staring into nothingness as the wrapper is flushed away through the sewage system.
I look up into the mirror. It is your face that staring back at me. I step back into the room for the final time. It seems dark and still, an emptiness within an emptiness. The cloying smells and aromas appear to have vanished as I walk slowly out of the room and head off up the corridor towards the nurses station.
Goodbye my brother. Goodbye my twin. Goodbye to half of me.
You see Bro, when I was a little kid, I kinda had this problem… I loved you too much to let you go. Now that I am older, I kinda have a problem… I love you too much to make you stay.
- You wake up in the morning to the sound of beer bottles being kicked around the front yard by your kids after they were tossed the previous night by people walking by on the common area path and grass out the front.
- You have a constant buzzing in your ears which is not tinnitus but can be attributed to the ten or so unregistered wrecks of motorbikes your neighbours kids ride up and down the common area 24/7.
- Instead of checking out the neighbours gardens you check out the graffiti tags sprayed on the front of their houses and fences. Of course it doesn’t match up to your own red black sprayed combination above your own front door…now to figure out what it says…
- Your son comes in during the afternoon in great excitement commenting the cat fight out the front. You call the other kids out the front to check out the cute pussycats only to see that its a bunch of teen girls trading blows and yelling teen insults and half of them have knives
- The swearing that wafts through your front windows manages to make even you blush and you have learned at least five new insults and expressions this week.
- You take all your valuables with you when you go out rather than come home to find them missing.
- The house next door has a permanent string of various vehicles and riff raff pulling up at your joint back gate.. but you never have to wait too long to get out if they block you in cos strangely each only stays five mins and drives off furtively.
- The same said house next door seems to party all night and have a constant cloud of sweet smelling herbal smoke hanging over the roof.
- You drive into the street of an afternoon and crane your neck to read the new graffiti writing on the tar road.
- You’d rather turn off the tv at night around 11pm and sit out the front smoking a cigarette in the cool breeze and listen to the various domestic disputes yelled out by drunken drug fucked up units as clear as a bell.
- You then shake your head in amazement as the young neighbour rides up on a sick sounding deatbeat ex postie bike as drunk and loudly uncouth as a wombat with indigestion along with two mates hanging off the back end each carrying a slab (24 bottle case of beer)
- You drive around the “hood” and play spot the broken windows with the kids for points.
- The cars in yards are all on blocks with panels and motors missing
- You see your drunken female neighbour from two doors up being carried home over the shoulders of the local football team after a heavy night at the local pub.
- The neighbour boy comes to visit at 8am and leaves when you finally send him home at 9pm after his mother hasn’t enquired on his whereabouts or hunger factor all day.
- learn to let the sounds of sirens and burglar alarms lull you to sleep.
- You realize why everyone in the ghetto has a dog when your yard and the neighbours next door is used as a shortcut thoroughfare by some drunken knob and every canine within 5 kilometres starts yelping loudly sending you shivering under your bed covers in fear.
- You spend more time triple checking that each window and door is doubled locked and deadbolted when leaving to go out than putting the kids seatbelts on and settling their “who is sitting where fights in the car”
- At lunchtime you play “spot the person without a beer bottle in their hands walking past the house” and give up after two hours without a score.
- The kids learn inside a week how to tell the difference between fireworks exploding, a letter box or car bomb igniting and a gunshot.. amazing feat when all are banned in this country..
- On Australia day even the dogs and garbage bins are adorned by cheap ass “Made in China” Australian Flags
and finally.. you know you are living in a ghetto when….
- The pest and cockroach inspector gets to know you so well and sees you so often that he asks you out on a date after a week.
Happy Australia Day Peoples.. I love my country.. a land of contrasts…..
and hopefully Tom will allow me to answer comments this blog.. Love to you all……….
Sometimes I just have to laugh at the hypocrisy of hoomans….
If I wore a fur coat.. I would be looked down upon and criticized. I would have PETA on my ass for wearing a dead animal. If I wore fur and I was photographed by the paparazzi for wearing such said fur, I would suffer public shame and Naked PETA protests outside my abode. I might even make national news headlines.
Many celebrities have joined the PETA cause over the years including Pamela Anderson “Oh No I could never wear fur”. Celebrities hold news conferences, Charity doo’s and are at the forefront of animal rights marches and protests in their effort to stop people wearing dead animals……
No celebrity who wants to keep their career and public popularity would be caught dead in a fox fur coat or a mink stole and most are vocal in their anti fur stance.
Can you say “Joining causes because it is trendy”.
Even Anne Wintour the editor of Vogue magazine wears fake fur instead of the real Mc Coy…. It is considered a huge blunder for stars to wear real fur…..
So Ok we know from all this that wearing fur is bad. Wearing dead animals is bad.
That is where I laugh at the hypocrisy.
Because at the same time this “Anti Fur” celebrity stance is on the rise, so is another trend…..
The good Old Aussie Ugg Boot.
Ugg boots are not new to us Aussies. I remember having them as a kid. Most Australians wear them happily around during the colder months and some even in summer.
Just lately over the past couple of years UGG Boots have grown into a multinational rage across the world. Stores specializing in UGG boot sales are springing up everywhere from Hollywood to London’s trendier suburbs.
Everyone who is anyone is now wearing UGG Boots and attending store opening of UGG boot shops across the world..
So how is that hypocritical
Well I don’t know what rock all these hypocritical people were born under.. because UGG Boots are made of Sheepskin.. yup a poor ole sheep had to die a nasty death to get those boots that are so comfy and warm….You are still wearing a dead animal……
So I personally can’t see the difference between killing a fox for his fur or a sheep for his skin…. can you?
Some of you who know me really well will know what this song and the one at the bottom mean to me, everyone else can guess
I damn well hope so as I have waited a long time to get there..
42 years to be precise.
Apparently Tom missed my birthday on the 21st of November so many of my friends also missed my huge event….
I finally made it .. 42 years old…. the meaning of life.. and truly I can say the meaning of life is closer than it ever has been for me.
Mt Keira taken from my favourite Mountain the world. Mt Nebo-
I grew up on the foothills of Mt Keira and Nebo. Keira is one of the twin sentinel mountains of Wollongong.
This years going to be the year of changes for me. Plans are in the making for me to leave the farm and to travel many more miles back home. It is easy said than done and there is quite a few walls and obstacles put in front of me. Ultimately I want to be home with my family. I want to be near my parents so they can spend more time with their grand-kids. I want to be near my daughter.
I want to be near my children’s families so that they can spend time with their cousins and aunties and uncles. I want to be near to my friends, the friends who have been there for me for many many years. I want to be near the sea again. I want the sea breeze in my face and the mountain at my back. I want to feel the sand between my toes at the “magic beach” I want to be able to go and buy milk at 3am. I want to drive to the beach. I want to sit by the harbour and eat ice Cream or fish and Chips with my kids. I want to go swimming iwth them in the rock pools. I want to go fishing off the jetties and rocks, alone with my thoughts. I want Shayla to start Opera lessons and take steps towards her dreams of being an Opera singer. I want Kalean to find his niche in life. I want Brodie to get his help to get through life a little less alien for him. I want to go out to dinner at a Mexican Restaurant. I want to be a part of the city but still retain the country. I want my children to share the magic that I experienced. I want my children to learn and see the beauty of this land.
I want to visit my sister’s grave and sit in the peace and quiet of the lush green hills surrounding it. I want to ride on the back of a Harley again *grins* and possibly buy my own Harley. I want to explore. I want to have fun. I want to enjoy my family and friends. I want to be free from hate and hurt and sadness. I want to be free from tears of terror.
The city of Wollongong and the ocean from Mt Nebo
My mother’s recent crisis slapped me in the face. I do not want to dwell on regrets so the best chance I have is to make my life what I want to make it. It is my life, the only one I have got. I can’t get another chance at it all and I figure that a happy life is much better than being sad and down all the time. Or even dragged down.
Mt Kembla From mt Nebo. Mt Kembla is the other twin sentinel. The two mountains with Mt Nebo in the middle overlook Wollongong
I can’t ever go back to that crisis point where I made the choice that I did that polarized me through the gates of hell but I do now have the chance to move forward with some special people back in my life. I can’t take back the last 16 years but I can certainly make the next 16 years happy and content.
Wollongong Harbour and Lighthouse with fishing fleet.
Mum is out of hospital. She has two blocked arteries to her heart and her blood pressure still goes up and down like a yo yo. She is too weak to operate so the heart specialist is hoping that medication can help unclog the arteries. Mum’s kidney are damaged but still working.. to an extent..
My Sister’s Grave – It was 20 years this month since she died. it feels like yesterday. I took that photo of her that is on her grave. Krystal was in her arms
The doctors couldn’t understand why mum didn’t have a stroke last week. They said she had the highest blood pressure that they have seen 300 over 160. Mum is still weak and finds it exhausting to carry out the simplest tasks.
Swan Lake – An hour south of Wollongong
So yeah.. I want to be closer to mum….
I want I want I want.. selfish ain’t I ……
There is so much I still want to see and do.
42 is the point where I look back and reflect and use everything I have learned to move forward into sunshine.
Wollongong Harbour with Mt Keira visible in Background
It’s funny. I am such an optimist. My motto in life is “the sun willl always shine tomorrow. Even if it is cloudy and stormy now, the sun is still up there shining and sooner or later those clouds are going to rain out and a big wind come and clear up the skies”.
I really live by that motto.
But after picking up one of my diaries today that was written in 1982 I see now that it wasn’t always sunshine and puppies for me.
I had a hard adolescence. I was confused and sad and lost. I had no sense of identity and I was always searching for myself. Many of my readers know I was adopted out at birth after being born in a morgue and that struggle and search for identity seemed twice as hard to me than to anyone else.
I drifted from scene to scene, searching and looking for the place I belonged, with others who were like me, with people who could understand how I was thinking and why i was thinking it. They weren’t there. I was alone and lost in a world that was strange and alien to me. I would lie on my roof at night and look up at the stars, wanting to be out there amongst them and waiting for the aliens who dropped me off to realize that they had left me in the wrong place. This wasn’t my place, this wasn’t my life, this wasn’t my time.
Some of you know how much “trouble” I got into as a kid. I’m not going to go into details today about that but I am pretty open on it all. Looking back at my old journals though, I realized something.
I was a fucking emo
Everything was so dark and dire and it was. I grew up too fast. I was a very old and deep thinking head inside a 15 year olds body with heaps of juvenile hormones running around. I was a loner and unable to find that sense of belonging or identity that seemed to slide so easily over the shoulders of those around me. I was very deeply introspective.
Nowadays I have a neat little label for myself. I don’t use it as I don’t feel even that label fits comfortably tagged on me. But having said that I do understand now and can in turn give that gift of understanding to my own children in order for them to make a much smoother transition from child to adult than I ever could of dreamed of.
No one understood me but in my search for understanding myself. I now understand my children.
See Now I know this is my life and I know this is my place and I know this is my time.. and its all good.
Did you have a hard time as a teen? Or was your transition smooth and easy flowing ebb, into the world of an adult.
I bought some eggs last week for the first time in months.
My hens had changed their laying spots and I wanted to make scrambled eggs so I decided to buy a dozen from the shops. So I forked over my five dollars for 12 eggs and tucked them under my arm.
Kaelan and Shayla with some of our own farm’s eggs. Notice the giant egg Kaelan is holding which is twice the size of our normal eggs.. That poor chicken’s bottom bits is all I can say…
Shayla is holding a tiny bantam egg.
When I got home I started breaking them in the bowl and just grimaced.
The first few eggs I broke were so pale in colour and so sloppy as compared to my own hen eggs. I called the children in to watch me and then it started.
For the next four eggs I broke, tiny min twin yolks bounced into the bowl.
Kiralea turned to me and said,
“Mum every time you buy eggs you get double yolkers”.
I thought for a minute and realized she was right. In the last four or five times I have bought shop eggs or “farm fresh eggs” from caged birds, there has been a large proportion of double yolkers in the carton.
I looked down at the eggs in the bowl and I was amazed to see how tiny tiny the two twin yolks were. Normally when I get “double yolkers” the yolks are both as big as the rest of the eggs in the carton. Not this time. I’m not even sure that if you weighed the twin yolks, that they would make up the weight of a stock standard single yolk.
Notice how tiny the double yolks are
Then I got to thinking about odds. I am one single person buying eggs. The last four cartons of eggs I have bought, from different companies, have all had a large amount of double yolks in the cartons. Why? Why these pale anemic tiny miniature double yolks?
Since I have been on the farm, not one of the eggs from my own chooks that I have broken into a bowl or on a grill or in an egg cup, has been a double yolker. Not one.
What the hell hormones are being given to these “battery caged hens” to make them produce such an unbelievable, extraordinary number of double yolk eggs.
Twins in Chickens are extremely rare. Every now and then you will get a hen that lays double yolkers but the odds must be extraodinary in themselves if out of four cartons I have bought, 50 percent of the eggs inside contained double yolks.
A day’s supply from my hens. Notice that huge one that Kaelan was holding up. We couldn’t shut the lid of the box. That is the tiny bantam egg on the far left. One extreme to another
This is a new phenomena. When I bought eggs before over the years, I would never see double yolks inside the eggs. I only ever saw it before in eggs I bought straight off a farmer. So why are all these eggs suddenly appearing with double yolks. If it is hormones… what effect do they have on the person that consumes the eggs.
Meat birds, or chickens that are raised to be eaten, have a small pellet of Estrogen implanted under their skin, to ensure a fast growth and tender meat. That is why too much chicken in a boy’s diet is not good. He is getting too much of the girl hormone from the food. But eggs? What the heck are they doing to the caged “egg Chickens” commercially to produce this “twin” anomaly and what effect will it have on us. Now and in the future. Can it affect our own bodies and those of future generations?
I’d say they use a hormone to bring on egg production and make the hen produce more eggs .. but the side effect is that they are producing twin eggs.. or deformities… Another thing I have noticed about the commercial eggs, is the unusual orange color of the shells, almost as if someone has dyed the eggs for an Easter party. The shell is the color of iodine.
To my mind they are giving the chicken something there to make the yolk a darker color as the commercial ones are so creamy anemic instead of being bright corny yellow. If the commercial egg yolk does have color it is the same weird orangey color as the shell.. not a natural color at all…
So we consume these eggs… what happens to us.. what happens to the person who eats scrambled eggs every day and uses these odd tampered with eggs?
As a footnote today. This is what I came downstairs to see yesterday. If the kids leave the front door open, Snowy bolts inside, usually with her twin kids at her feet.. She knows where I keep the bread as you can see… She had already demolished a quarter of the loaf.
I am sitting and sinking into the luxury of the huge comfy bottle green armchair in my own bedroom in my own home as I write this. I look around and I am proud. I am proud, proud of my family, proud of my new home, proud of my friends, proud of myself and the journey I undertook to get here.
My house is sparsely furnished but it still has a comfortable homely feel. I have made it a home despite my limits. I have landed on my feet despite the step off the abyss and the long fall into an uncertain future. The children are happy.. they laugh and smile. Slowly the anger is leaving their lives to be replaced by joy, happiness, wonderment, learning, friends and family and most importantly.. respect…
My life is once again touched by the sun and cooled by the warm summer rains. My emotions are as calm as a tropical beach in winter with palm trees gently swaying in the soft breeze. The hurricanes and whirlwinds of pain, fear and torment which scream blindly out of nowhere creating devastation and destruction are out of season and gone from this new life.
Last week I stopped at a local store to buy some milk and bread and while there, I had a joke with the Store owner. I walked out of the store and realized I was laughing. I threw my head back and laughed harder at the thought, almost skipping my way to the car. I was laughing… what a sweet alien sound to my ears.
I smile a lot these days. I smile at nature, the beauty that surrounds me and the people who entwine my life. There is some pretty special people there. Some who are walking with me on this journey were always there. I was just too blinded by pain and fear to see them clearly. The support and love I have from those people wraps me in a blanket of warmth that gives me the strength to carry it all forward, throughout whatever life puts before me on my chosen path. Some who are walking with me are newer to my life and their blanket of warmth is just as soft as those who have always known me, the ones who have always accepted me as being me.
I realized something important in those pain years. I think I always knew but the terror years stamped it home for me. You only get one life. Life is change, yet once lived cannot be changed. You owe it to yourself to make it happy and fulfilling. You owe it to nature and all which created you to make it the best it can be. If your house had a piece of furniture that didn’t fit, was ugly and horrid or dangerous, you would take it to the dump and remove it from your home. Life is like that furniture.
When surrounded by the horrid and dangerous, things that make you sad then take them to the dump too and rid your life of them. Surround yourself with love and beauty. Surround yourself with assets not liabilities. Surround yourself in happiness.
I can say that now with no qualms and no guilt. Do I have regrets? I will always have regrets but none are of my own guilty conscience. My soul is clean my heart is whole. My own conscience is clear. I did the best thing. I was faced with the hardest choices of life and the hardest pathways to pick from. The path I chose was not the easiest by far but the journey and the vista along this pathway is the one that gets better with every step forward taken.
I love my life.. it rocks…and everything and everyone surrounding me now in life makes it special ..including you all.. thank you to everyone reading this. Thank you for being there and shining that light in my darkest nights
You glen well you don’t get a thanks.. you just get the bird
The past is gone forever, the future is uncertain but the present is a gift….. treasure it………
