Tag Archives: life

The thin red thread. 

16 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by in Friends, love, Relationships

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I went to my ex partners wedding last weekend. J invited me months ago and immediately I knew that I would go. It was 600 miles away, no problem, I’d drive, pick up his son on the way, it wasn’t even a consideration really, he invited me, I was totally honoured, of course I was going to go. Nevermind that I’d never met his wife to be (luckily she didn’t mind) nevermind that I hadn’t seen him for months and before that years. 

 J is someone who I’ve known for all of my adult life, we first met when we were in different relationships, both drug users with other drug users. We lived in the same house for a while, him with his partner, me with mine. Then our partners fell out and do we moved on, our paths crossing occasionally. 

Roll forward a few years and I was in hiding from my new partner, the father of my son, I was living in a refuge and I was desperately unhappy. I was alone, and withdrawing from heroin and I needed some kind of human connection and there, when I was most desperate, I bumped into J, walking down the street. It was as if I was drowning and someone had thrown me a lifeline. I believe that he saved my life. Not in a literal, physical way, but emotionally. I had spent a considerable time in emotional hell and he appeared and he put no pressure on me and he was there when I was alone and lonely and desperate. He was exactly what I needed at that point in my life. 

Life rolled on, we stayed together, we made bad choices, we took a lot of drugs but throughout this time he was the rock that I hung my life upon. He was gentle and in truth he soothed my soul. He treated and lived my son as his own. We weren’t the best parents but we tried our best in difficult circumstances. 

I’m sure that during this relationship, my family thought that we were making each other worse. But what they didn’t realise is that J was the one rooting me, stopping me from going over the edge. I like to think I did they same to him. I have to admit that without his undoubtable love my son wouldn’t be the child he is now. 

After few years life changed for us. J went to prison for a significant time and my life just kind of escalated off the scale of chaoticness. J tried his best from behind the prison walls to get my life back on track, he arranged for people to take me to NA meetings, he wrote to me about change about how life could be different. I never truly believed it. I ended up in prison myself. Somehow, even in there J managed to convince the authorities to let him call me. He spoke to me from his prison to mine, told me that this was an opportunity, that it was the best thing to happen. I didn’t believe a word of it. 

I got out of prison and moved in with my Dad. I realised that I needed to move forward and I cut J out of my life. Looking back, I was vicious to the one person who had been there for me. At the time it was survival. 

As I was getting better, J was left alone. His life continued in a spiral of drugs and crazy women. Occasionally I’d bump into him, or actively seek him out to make sure that he was alive, ok. I felt guilty that my life was getting better whilst his stayed the same. 

So it was fantastic to hear that he had finally managed to extricate himself from our old lifestyle. That he had met an amazing woman and planned to marry her. And most of all that she was sure enough in their relationship to want me to join them in their celebration of their marriage. I’d have understood it if she hadn’t but it meant a lot that she did. She understood the link between us and didn’t feel threatened by it. She had no reason to, life was different now to 14 years ago. 

There is an old Chinese proverb that  says an invisible red thread connects those destined to meet, despite the time, the place, despite the circumstances. The thread can be tightened or tangled, but can never be broken.  in life we meet up with people, they might be there for a while, they might go and sometimes they may reappear at times when they either need someone or you do. J has always been one of those people in my life. That is why I drove 600 miles to celebrate his wedding.  I will always consider him one of my closest friends, I wish for him and his new wife all the joy in the world. They both deserve it. 

Piece of my heart

07 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by in Emotions, kids, Motherhood

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There’s something that no one ever warns you about having kids. Or perhaps they do, but it is incomprehensible to you before you have them. I mean, I’m sure people told me, but I just didn’t really get what they were saying to me. Maybe I just didn’t want to hear, maybe we are genetically predisposed to not get it. The thing is, you find out. Pretty damn quick, and then you realise that it’s too late.

I didn’t actually plan my eldest child. That would have been stupid. I was 21, in a violent relationship and had a class A addiction. Ok, so I was obviously pretty stupid, but not that bloody stupid as to plan to bring a baby into my messed up world. Kids were not in my game plan, not that I actually had a game plan, but if I had, having a child would have been at the back, something distant, a target for my mid thirties.

I don’t know really why I took a pregnancy test (there was no real reason to seriously consider pregnancy) but I do know that I was alone, my partner was in prison for not paying a fine from years before that had finally caught up with him. I was driving from my house 100 miles to borrow the money to pay to get him out and I stopped and in the toilets of a service station, I pissed on a stick. To my utter terror, two little pink dots appeared. Well, I was utterly terrified when I bothered to read what that meant! I was pregnant. I was having a baby. Within minutes the terror turned to a strong feeling of protection and amazement. I had a baby inside of me. The ferociousness of that feeling was breathtaking. I remember going to pay for the fuel and telling the cashier; I just found out I’m pregnant, and her look of bewilderment at my random imparting of this news.

Within minutes I acknowledged this sudden turn of my life and now my life was completely changed. I knew without a doubt I loved this baby and wanted it, even though I knew that my partner would be furious and a terrible father.

And really, in that life changing moment, I should, in hindsight have realised what it was that I had never been able to realise before, but I didn’t. I focussed on getting through pregnancy, where I would end up with my beautiful baby and my life would be amazing. All I had to do was to bring this baby into the world safely. I still didn’t know the truth.

I was induced into labour many many weeks early due to complications, and then I couldn’t wait to give birth; to meet this baby who was a part of me, as much a part of me as my hand or face of nose.

And then he was born, after an excruciating labour, a long and torturous night, this tiny perfect baby. He was no longer in the cocooned protection of my abdomen. I cuddled him to me and held him and kissed him and stared in awe at his gorgeousness, and then it happened; for the first time. They said that he needed to go to special care. He was too small and unable to maintain his temperature, but it was ok, they were going to sort him out in special care and I could go see him later. The midwife, took him from my arms and as she turned away I realised, I realised this terrible thing that no one had told me about: it was agony. The baby that I had been in sole charge of, that I had nurtured and caressed and been fully responsible for, who was part of me, I was no longer able to protect. I still loved him as much, maybe more, however whereas before he was part of me, now he was separate. I wasn’t solely able to account for his safety and wellbeing. It was like a little piece of my heart was out there alone. Anything could happen to it. Even if I was there next to him, I was no longer able to have the illusion of being able to completely ensure he was safe.

As he got older, it got worse. There is a piece of me out there, every minute of every day, that I can’t live without, and yet over which I have limited control. If anything happened to him I would surely die. My natural instinct is to keep him close, keep him safe. And yet, to be a good parent, I’ve had to try to ignore the flutters in my heart when he walks out of the front door. I’ve had to stem the flow of my own veins and tears when he has been injured or upset. He is a part of me but I’ve had to accept that he is also fully his own self, with his own ways of crossing the road or dietary tastes. He could, one day make a decision that breaks my heart. If anything happens to him it will surely kill me too. It’s like walking around blind, deaf and dumb: at any moment your entire world could come crashing down around you. Your heart ripped away and there is nothing you can do to stop it. You can’t even see or hear when it is coming.

The stupid thing is, that even after finding this out, after watching a piece of me walking around unprotected, I didn’t ever think that having another child would mean another little piece of my heart walking around, jeopardising my life, as I know it. Or with the third. It just didn’t register, until the very moment that I had to let them go for that first time, and then it would hit me, a part of me was out in the big wide world without me to protect it. And that is huge. That is scary. And so I suppose it is no wonder that no one tells you, or if they do, that you might hear it, but you can’t understand. Because if anyone asked you, at any time, whether you’d like to live with your heart open and vulnerable, the very thing that keeps you alive, unprotected and uncontrollable, you would never ever agree.

Friends reunited.

04 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by in Friends

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I went out last night with two friends who, in total, I have seen 4 times in the past 18 years. The last time we met up over 18 months ago, the time before that was 18 years ago. We were sitting there having a drink and it was like we’d only seen each other the week before. It was easy, casual and comfortable. I wondered how we had let this friendship drift for so long.

I like to think that if a friend needs me they know that I’m there for them. I know that in the past I have gone out of my way to be supportive and available when a friend is having a crisis, or just needs to talk. Which is why I can never really understand how some of the people in my life have just somehow, somewhere fallen through the cracks in my life.

In the past few years I have made and lost some really good friends. The reasons that I have lost some are absolutely clear, I am someone who is fiercely opinionated and I “may” sometimes tell them things that they don’t want to hear. Other friends have just either completely cut me off or just drifted away, one month we were together all the time, the next it appeared that something, I’m not sure what, just changed. Other priorities may have got in the way, maybe I said or did something wrong. I don’t know, but last night I realised that that’s ok.

Connecting with people is what is important. Everyone that we associate with becomes inexplicably woven into the fabric of our being. I imagine it very much like a patchwork quilt, with the seams being the constants, in my case my family, running through all of it, then there are colourful patches dotted about in a seemingly random pattern. Sometimes a friend, rather like a patch will come into your life only appear in the quilt once, another patch might appear throughout. They may vanish for a while, then reappear in a different place, at a later stage.

When this happens you will recognise them, maybe you will pick up where you left off, or maybe you will meet up for drinks once in a blue moon and it will feel like you’ve never been apart, and then it may take another year until you meet again. Others it might just feel awkward. You may wonder how you were ever friends at all. Either way, these people have formed your past and may form part of your future.

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Through the looking glass.

20 Saturday Dec 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

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Anyone who knows me knows that I am rubbish at looking in the mirror. It’s not that I can’t do it, it’s just not something that really enters my head on a day to day basis. A lot of my colleagues can vouch for that from all the times I’ve turned up with my hair not brushed, or pen on my face (You don’t know shame until you have delivered a presentation to over a 100 people still proudly displaying bed head!).

I’ve not always been this way, as a young teenager I was pretty obsessed with my reflection. I’d spend ages in front of the mirror, often in tears, wishing my nose was smaller, my lips were bigger and that I was skinnier. I’d carefully apply makeup and fret about my hair looking just right. I was never happy with how I looked. I was not skinny enough or attractive enough neither did I feel I looked old enough.

As I got older I started to take drugs, got a heroin addiction weighed only 5.5 stone and I avoided looking in the mirror. You see every time that I looked in the mirror, it never really felt that the person looking back at me was me. It didn’t quite tally with the person that I thought I was. Or of my self image in my head.

I moved forward in life, I got clean and put on weight. Had two babies, put on 7.5 stone, lost 5 stone. I’ve had blonde hair and dark hair, long hair and short hair. Never has the reflection in the mirror looked right. Never have I thought it reflected the real me.

I’m currently the skinniest I’ve been for years, I know that I look ok, on the outside. I’m not the best looking, I’m not the worst. I’m actually fairly comfortable in my skin. If I was given a gift voucher for a cosmetic surgeon I’d not really know what to do with it. No part of me bothers me that much, unless I focus on it. Which by avoiding mirrors I don’t.

The thing is, the reflection in the mirror isn’t me. I look at the person staring back and she seems ok. Not perfect but she doesn’t look like the self conscious and self doubting woman I know myself to be. She looks normal and in control and carefree. And that isn’t a reflection of how I feel that I am. It’s not how I see myself in my head.

A friend of a friend recently told me that I was the cool kid at school. The one people were in awe of because I was a rebel and knew what I wanted and where I was going (straight into an abyss by all accounts). Today people seem to think I am competent and know what I am doing. obviously they are seeing the same person as I see reflected in the mirror in my bedroom, I wonder how many of them know that they are not seeing the real me?

Because externally anyone can look ok. It’s inside us that counts. The most beautiful person can be evil and the ugliest and fattest can be a generous and amazing person. I wonderhow others see themselves, compared to how I see their reflection. I think that’s more important than beauty, because looks can be deceiving.

There are a lot of reasons that I don’t bother looking in the mirror and none of them are to do with me not caring how I look.

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