And what have you done to my beautiful self?

Diablo the crow in Malificent, quite loved himself as he was, it's one of my favourite quotes from a movie.

My other favorite is "Never give in, never surrender." From Galaxy Quest.

Both of them are difficult to do, how many of us really think we're beautiful ? Diablo as a human, has skin scarred from his life as crow. But he knows he is beautiful.  He loves who he is.

Never give in, never surrender, is I think the most difficult to do.  Many times in my life I have felt like giving up. The worst time of all was after my first husband and I split up. I was left with my little boy to care for.  

I'd had a hard day at work, I'd been working as a camera operator all day with a giggling actress in a bonnet, not the main lead I might add. Getting two lines wrong until midnight.
I'd also taken tape typing - transcription from radio programmes - home to do to earn extra
money to pay the mortgage. I was going to start that early next day.

I was in the bath, with candles burning and perfumed bubbles, my son was sleeping. His father had left after an argument. He'd called the police to search for me as I was so late home from work.  You have to understand this was the 1980s - nobody really had mobile phones - except people who worked in the City.

So as I left work I ran into my current husband, who was there to pick up his girlfriend, she was a trainee producer, also working late, two policeman and an angry confused security guard.

I drove home in tears, not because the police were horrible, they weren't they were lovely, glad to find me safe. Not because Stan the security guard was confused and angry, he was
okay when I explained everything.  Not even because the baby seat in my battered old car
was loaded with radio tapes to transcribe by 10 am the next day.

It was because I felt worthless. That morning I had grabbed the first jumper off the top of the laundry that morning in a hurry, the studio gallery was always cold because of the air conditioning. So I was wearing a padded shouldered burgundy leopard skin jumper on top of a summery white and red flowered dress. 

I was always doing everything for everybody else except me. Paying the mortgage and the nursery fees,all the other bills left me at break even point. There was no spare money at all. So I worked and worked to give my son little luxuries and outings.

That day I felt I looked like I'd just jumped out of a skip. Then I saw myself with the black rings under my eyes, and the unbrushed hair. Not only that I had CSO blue ankles. I had painted my worn out scuffed white stillettos with CSO blue paint to make myself look a bit smarter. The paint came off.

So  "What had I done to my beautiful self?"

As I lay in the bath, I went under the water, I used to have a thing about being able to hold my breath under water, see how long I could do it. Then I suddenly thought - what if I didn't bother holding my breath, what if I just lay there and let go.  So I did.

Didn't last long, as soon as the water started to do it's work, I suddenly thought about my son. I couldn't leave him on his own, I sat up coughing and spluttering.

So "Never give up never surrender."

Shouldn't look back, people tell me.  But it's history. MY history and it's made me who I am today. I look back, forward and to the present.

I now appreciate my beautiful self, scars and all, like Diablo the Crow.  I will not give up and never surrender, after all I am on another amazing adventure.  That of being an author.

I've been reading various autobiographies recently, they are amazing. I won't write mine yet. Too busy with writing Hilary Long's adventures and promoting my Women of the English Civil War book, I've only just started.



 



 
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