A Gentle Awakening.....

Ladies & Gentlemen, fizzy loveliness & cakes are to your right, please do go help yourselves whilst I get a little serious for a moment......

I was looking at our wedding & new baby photos last night: I just came across a big pile of them so had a flick through.......I had a bit of an epiphany.

Looking at the photos, there are just young, happy faces & lots of smiles: full of hope & love & fun and I realised that the Ex and I DID love each other: we were in love and we had a fine old time of it. The faces staring back at me clearly show me they were happy & full of the future.

For some reason, knowing that it had been beautiful & wonderful once has somehow made the ending of it, I don't know, kind of OK & natural, pure & proper. It was beautiful once and now it's broken but that's OK. I really do believe things have a finite time to them.

I was also trying to really work out when things started to break apart; instead of trying to peer into a fog of misguided misery. I think it really began to get rocky in '07 when I had lifesaving surgery: the cracks began to show: I wasn't important enough. They really started to bug me when, on arriving back in England half cut open & ever so fragile, my Beau told me to go walk round The Green by myself, he was far too busy, but not to worry he could see me out of the window and would come get me if I collapsed. I clearly remember crossing a road and a car being some 20 feet away and thinking 'I cannot make it to the other side of the road in time'. I just did not figure. Not yet invisible but a pest all the same.

Looking at more photos I can pretty safely say by Easter 09 the rot was well & truly set in &, come June of this year, the final coup was but a dull blow: I was beyond surprised & too tired to care anymore.

But I know now that I have tried - for many, many years I have tried and it simply is not what I want to do anymore. I cannot live my life whilst trying to become a non entity (in my view) for someone else.

Finally I can release the butterfly of all the happy memories, shimmering in dazzling hues. Watch it catch the light of the sun & stay there for a while before it lifts away forever. My relationship. Over.

But my heart truly is OK - I can now honour our good times but know it is absolutely OK for me to have got off that road now. It's OK to say 'no more'. It's OK to want to find my own way. And I really do: OK, with some trepidation but mainly with a heart full of excitement. The future plans & moves are made, just the wait now to launch.

Am I coming out of my own cocoon? Perhaps not fully yet: there's been a torrent of water under the bridge keeping my new wings damp & heavy but all I have to do is to wait for the next ray of sun..........

I hate Mondays.

Actually, I'm not best pleased at most mornings, but I hate Mondays especially. There's another one coming up. But happy, happy, joy, joy it is prefixed by two fantastic words: Bank and Holiday.

Somebody dig out the ice bucket.........

Nom!

At which point in your adult life are you meant to grow up properly? I mean, I know it's not at all sophisticated to blow champagne out of your nose after a giggling fit (God forbid); & no one's going to love you for coming out of the loo with your dress hitched in your knickers (a friend of mine really did do that): those are silly, silly things. But does there come a point where someone is going to bollock you for still wolfing down Nutella on toast or for curling up in bed with a hot water bottle just coz you fancy it? When is it no longer sophisticated to deposit half a bottle of bubble bath in your bath just to get that kick of watching the bubbles go WILD? Can you air guitar when no one's looking? What about pulling stupid faces at the back of someones cross, retreating head? Can you still roll your eyes at your mum when she lectures you?

All I'm wondering is at what point do the Adult Police threaten to come and take you away?

Do You Want Ice In That?

There are so many things wrong with this tale but it has to be shared: it is a perfect, blindingly brilliant observation of just how fecking stupid & brain dead people can be.

Whilst I was out on the weekend (yes, doing that smiling thing), The Ex (as he shall henceforth be called) took my SIX year old son out on a pub crawl. I did not make that up. He did. See? Wrong on so many levels already.

Well, supposedly they had a fine old time - visiting the least skanky of Newcastle's beer gardens (consult The Burglar's Dog if you are in any way unsure of a particular beer garden's virtue: it'll save a lot of shit on your shoe, mark my words) & chatting about, oh I don't know, the virtue of one Monster Truck over another.

Their final port of call (wrong, wrong wrong!!!!) was a certain pub that happens to have a big arch you can sit under. Being the responsible adult that he is, The Ex decided that he couldn't leave small son alone in the beer garden, what with it being a Saturday night and time ticking away towards Pumpkin Hour. So, he took son into the bar. Son climbed up straight away onto a bar stool and played with his Monster Trucks on the bar (the age giveaway is there somewhere, I feel). Dopey, dopey, DIPSTICK of a barmaid came and asked The Ex what his drinking pleasure would be, to which he replied "a pint of Grolsch". Nothing to get excited about there, you're thinking?:

SHE BROUGHT TWO PINTS AND SET THEM DOWN.

To add screaming insult to injury she lent down to my son and said, I KID YOU NOT "Would you like a straw with that?".

Words. Just. Fail. Me.

No, really, it is.

I know, I know - it really is astounding. Confusing. Completely wtf?? But your eyes are not deceiving you; that really is me. Look. Out! SMILING.

Hiatuses have a point: they are not a thing of bone idle laziness & inertia. They are transformative; kind of hitting that crossroad & saying "feck it, I'm going this way". It's about realising when Enough is, frankly, ENOUGH. It's when life doesn't have to be such a big deal; when what another person thinks or doesn't think doesn't actually matter that much anymore. When someone else's actions shriek a hell of a lot more about them than they ever did you.

It's about realising that people DO change; that you can, actually grow tired of being the scapegoat. It's about refusing to be put in that box anymore.

It's about making the leap, standing up and saying "enough, enough, enough".

And it does hurt: it turns a bikini wax into a walk in the park. But ladies, and this is truly the BEST bit, it gets better. Infact it gets fecking brilliant. Best bit? Looking yourself in the mirror and thinking "woohoo, it all starts here".

So, the hiatus is done - okay there's still lots of i's to be dotted et cetera (& that's a brave move in itself) but I am laughing now and you can bet your bottom dollar there's plenty more catch up to come! So, girls, make mine a large one & yes, Friday is fecking excellent!