Friday 14 September 2012

My life at the moment....

Got an interview with the WI in October to speak in front of 100 women about my new book and women's lives in the English Civil War.Tried to buy a house but as I don't have a permanent job the mortgage companies wouldn't lend to me.

My son is still not speaking to me, having broken yet another olive branch held in his direction.
Makes me sad this, as he led us a hell of a time during his teenage years, I saved his life twice, once when he drank so much he stopped breathing in his sleep, and the second time when he was into drugs at uni and we dragged his skeletal body from a stinky mattress in a run down part of town and brought him home and looked after him. He would have lost an eye from a tooth abcess if I hadn't forced him into the dentists chair and paid for it to be fixed for him.

We helped him move 3 times, paid deposits on his flats, helped him out with thousands of pounds, paid for him and his girlfriend's degree celebration, and her mum's flights from Japan, supported him mentally, physically, and financially. I held him in my arms many times while he cried - most recently - and I think this is the real problem, when he phoned us at one in the morning just before he got married and told us that he didn't want to go through with it. His on off relationship with this woman led to me having a heart attack from stress.

I know I shouldn't write this sort of thing on a public blog, but it breaks my heart that he told me I broke up our loving family, just because I stood up for myself against his cool auntie, who has done nothing for him, but get him drunk and let him sleep on her sofa.  There is no forgiveness in him.  Loving family?  When I was being stalked and needed help where were they then?  When I had a heart attack my friend dropped everything and drove from Stoke to Cornwall to be with me - where was my sister then? He has always forgot my birthday - only sends mothers day cards when pestered to do so, in the past only visited to borrow money or have problems solved - when I needed my money back, he ignored me, when I asked to visit more than twice a year, this loving son of mine's now wife said they were too busy. When we needed help to move he never offered.

Where was the love from him?  I can only remember three presents that they gave me - a pot of flowers which was nice, with lollipops. I don't eat sweets.  A tin of Japanese sweets - I don't eat sweets, and a set of plastic bowls that stack.   As for my sister his auntie with whom he now sides, she wrote to my husband trying to break us up, telling him my life was all lies. I have all the paperwork to prove her wrong.  She was ten and a half when I left home so what does she know about my life? My father had died when she was about eight. My mother died when my sister was 15 and I had to adopt her to stop her going into a home.
If it wasn't for me she wouldn't be where she is today, I was the one taking time off work to drive her to all the nursing colleges, I was the one hugging her in the middle of the night when she was screaming in fright.
At 25 and newly married I had no money - but a teenager and all that comes with it.

I miss my family, I forgive my sister for being so horrible to me, she's lost her memory twice, and this damages the brain, so I'm told. My other sister I don't even know if she's dead or alive, but I'm sure she's travelling the world looking for somewhere to live that has English tea and no geckos. But my neices who earn more than me, to whom I gave expensive perfumes or gift vouchers and holidays in my Cornish cottages for Xmas and birthdays what do I get from them?  cheap plastic scrunchies that their mum borrowed back and never returned.

So I have no family not a jot - no-one - nada - nothing.  For all the horrible and destructive things they have done, I forgive them.  I'm not going to my grave holding grudges. 

But I would like to see my son before I go, the son who made me laugh so much I couldn't breathe, the witty clever chatty boy interested in geology and the Spice Girls, the son who loved to dance at parties, to see his beautiful strawberry blond hair blowing in the breeze of a Cornish summer while he let me take a photo of him in his wetsuit with his surfboard in our garden with the rolling Atlantic ocean over his shoulder in the view.

I would like another chance with him.

Tuesday 11 September 2012

Strange Tides

I've been thinking a lot about the past and the future, something my Shaman told me not to do, and I was feeling better when I didn't do it. It's like addiction for me though and I want to solve the problems of the past and the present and the future. But it overwhelms me and I feel like I'm drowning.

The book is frustrating as I'm between contracts at the moment so don't really have much of an income, but the pictures I want to use all cost a fortune, so I'm a bit stymied and I'm having to illustrate the book myself with the front cover being done by Andy Evans who has done many book covers before.

I always think money is like the tide, it comes in and goes out with amazing regularity, and for me at the moment the tide is way out!

I have spent the whole morning paying bills, well, at least I can still do that!  I just wish the tide would come in again and sweep me off my feet with it's great abundance.

Monday 3 September 2012

Time to move on

Clearing out rubbish and selling everything to allow us to shed the past and move on.