How to mend a broken heart.

I know - I'm supposedly 'gone' but my other blog (yes, there is one) is just too 'themed' for this kind of entry. So I'm just going to shout my story into the ether and listen for an echo...

I've had a hard week. The hardest.

I've been rejected (and for some peculiar reason, that L kind of hit on, I have it in my head that this has never happened before) by somebody I'd... invested my hopes in.

Rich... untrammeled, as this tongue is, I can't find the words to describe the nuances of this particular strain of agony. For hours at a time, I'd be OK... and then I'd remember... and that horrible, sick, shocked, empty feeling would hit me with the force of a train. Monday, I successfully navigated through a day at work, only to suddenly, irreparably break down as I pulled onto the M67. Thursday, I made it to 4pm, where upon my mind started to wander...and I sat facing my computer screen in perfect silence while a pool of mute tears collected on the desk. Who knows what happened on Tuesday and Wednesday... my robotic alter ego and I switched places. Where was I? Oh, asleep upstairs, I guess.

I read the self help books (from the specific 'mend your broken heart' to the abstract 'ancient art of stoic joy'), I went to the gym and ran until my veins pumped battery acid. I couldn't reason through the pain... and I couldn't distract from it. By Friday I felt number than ever... like a largely empty shell... terrified to engage with the world lest the memories of my loss flood back. Oh and they did, as ever. What a hopeless place this is.

At days end, Friday... I left work and headed for the mall. As I was hurtling along the freeway, I noticed a car up ahead... a Scirocco. Oh, here we go... It was like that moment when you stub your toe... when you know you've done it, you know it will hurt, but there's that split second before it actually does. He always said I should get a Scirocco. And the wave of freshly remembered pain is coming.... He doesn't love me! He doesn't want me! It hurts no less than ever.

Without even realising it, I have craned a little to look at the driver of this vehicle as I draw level. He feels my eyes and cranes back. Argh. I look quickly away and speed up.

As for what happened next, I'm hardly sure of the sequence. I drove on for several miles, with the Scirocco speeding up, slowing down, changing lanes, overtaking, undertaking, pulling in front, dropping behind... all the while trying to catch my eye. Oh no, I thought... he thinks I was checking him out. This is embarrassing... and like I often do when embarrassed, I giggled... whilst making happy exclamations of weirdo and perv to myself.

And then... a traffic jam. His lane moved faster than mine... I watched him be carried reluctantly away... and I didn't think weirdo, perv anymore. I thought love, come back to me.

I forced my way across lanes and back again, edging closer, irritating en masse. The jam eased and I sped up and up. Where are you?

And there he was... he'd been waiting for me (as much as one can, in a moving vehicle).

This tale doesn't end with us pulling off the highway together and falling into each other's arms. I turned off... and he didn't follow. That's OK. I'll never see Scirocco man again... but I owe him the greatest debt of gratitude. He changed something in me. He reminded me that I'm not a plain, insipid creature who's last chance at love just tanked. I'm the girl you spot across two lanes of traffic, who can spark something, anywhere.

And the wave of perfect love I felt for this nameless man eclipsed all others.

Bye

This is my last ever post.

I'm someone else now.

A Grief Observed.

"Did you ever know, dear, how much you took away with you when you left? You have stripped me even of my past, even of the things we never shared."

Atoms & Stars (things I've been thinking about:)

1. Goodnight Irene by The Weavers, 1950.
Sometimes I live in the country
Sometimes I live in town
Sometimes I take a great notion
To jump into the river and drown.

2. Fosco Maraini's musing on K2;
"It is atoms and stars. It has the nakedness of the world before the first man - or of the cindered planet after the last."

3. Zhi Feng's commentary on the Chinese professor jailed for running a sex club:
"They confounded right and wrong and poisoned the social atmosphere. How dare you say they did no harm to others?"

Paradigm shifts

How am I supposed to face my own mortality without faith? I've been circling the idea for years, in a quasi-danse macabre. I spoke of reconciliation, of acceptance and anticipation... and how naive that was... because these conversations and flirtations were nothing more than a further, final denial. I haven't faced my own mortality... I've erected great bastions of distraction. It's like Winny Carr saying Flora, "Let me show you your wonderful death!"... and then flicking to page 62. It isn't the same thing at all.

When love isn't enough.

It occurred to me that sometimes being loved isn't enough. We have to be loved the way we want... or we may as well not be loved at all.

Last year, two different men told me they loved me within the space of a week. It didn't feel empowering or electric. I certainly didn't feel loved. And you know what, I wasn't loved. We have to be our own benchmarks. If you don't love me the way I love you then your love is nothing. I'm the only constant in this series of equations... and if I don't find my equal then what are you making of me? Nothing, nonsense, a scholars' smudged scribble.

A loved me... but A also ordered my food for me, chastised my flighty nature and gave long speeches on Homeric idioms. He loved me the most when I was mute; a blank and magical whitewashed wall that he could project his own character upon... magnified. He bought me things, he protected me, he was as proud of me as I was embarrassed by him. He loved me like a possession. When I received a phone call, he would demand to know who from, in his rages he would cast wide nets of aspersion on my sexual morality. He had carved a niche for me and I had better slot into it.

B loved me... but B was also jobless, broke and high most of the time. B didn't really know me... he thought I awesome and super cool. He also fell out of love with me pretty quickly when I showed him how fearsome and super callous I could be. From the moment he said "I love you" I needed to show him that he didn't. He desired me, he knew I was a good prospect on paper, he saw the way his friends looked at me and he was carried away on waves of infatuation, lost in his own moment. He sensed the spinning possibilities for adventure and chose to call it love.

M says she loves D... D says she's never loved him. To my outside eye I think she does... in her own convicted, particular way.. but that's the not way he wants to be loved... so is he loved? No. He isn't. Love is not what you think you give. There is no reality here; reality itself being that rare word that should never exist outside inverted commas. Love is what you are perceived to give. My interpretation of your love is the only thing that can validate it... and if I feel like you do not love me, if your 'love' is outside of my criterion then I cannot call it such. You do not love me.

Tragic Deaths

Just a little something to cheer you up on a Tuesday night. Ladies and gentlemen I present to you the sad tale of David Allen Kirwan.

It was July 20, 1981 and 24 year old David Allen Kirwan from La Canada, California and his friend Ronald Ratliff were driving through Yellowstone National Parks' Fountain Paint Pot area. Also on board was Ratliffe's dog Moosie. Round about 1pm they decided to pull over and get a better look at the hotsprings. Moosie escaped from the truck, ran toward Celestine Pool (a thermal hotspring whose temperature was measured at over 200F - that's 0ver 93C, practically boiling), jumped in and began yelping.
Kirwan and Ratliff rushed over to the pools edge to try and help. Bystanders later reported that Kirwans attitude indicated he was about to go into the pool. Several people yelled, warning him not to.. but he shouted "Like Hell I won't!" and dived head first into the boiling pool.
He swam out to the dog, attempting to take it to shore, but then disappeared underwater, let go of the dog and attempted to climb out of the pool. Ratliff helped pull him out (resulting in 2nd degree burns to his own feet) and another visitor led Kirwan to the sidewalk as he reportedly muttered "That was stupid. How bad am I? That was a stupid thing I did."
He wasn't wrong. He was blind, and when another park visitor tried to remove his one of his shoes, his skin (already peeling everywhere) came off with it. He sustained 3rd degree burns to 100% of his body and died the next morning at a Salt Lake City hospital.

And if you want to read about more disarming deaths, look at this.

Closing time.

I missed you since the place got wrecked

By the winds of change and the weeds of sex

Looks like freedom but it feels like death

It's something in between, I guess.

I loved you when our love was blessed

I love you now there's nothing left.

Doing it with Betty; Making an exit bag.

Because Betty, you're adorable x

Ana - A decade on.

I guess it's about time I gave Ana a nod. My old web page redirects here and I expect 90% of my visitors are looking for writings on the subject. Or tips, probably tips.

I don't have anything new to bring to the table. You wouldn't swallow it if I did (chew! spit!). I had my experience, you'll have yours. If you're here you came because you're following the pro-ana trail. I'd like to tell you please don't. You're sick... and I think you know it. I think you're positively howling for help.. but that you have to get thin...really thin, before anyone will take you seriously, before anyone will even try to help you. Oh it makes me wild angry that girls (and for all you know, fat ones) are propagating this pro-ana junkto you. A lifestyle choice??? Yeah right.

But what do I know? I'm just jealous because I lacked the willpower, the discipline and the drive to get.. to STAY skinny. I want you to be fat so I can feel better about myself. I mean, that's how your mind's working right now. Thats how it works whenever you read anything that takes an anti-ana stance.

So forget me even trying to offer you an insight... What you have here is my letter to my fifteen year old self. Here's what me now would tell me, then.

"Nobody really cares how thin you are. I know that half of what you're doing is a kind of passive revenge. Look! you're screaming, I am slowly disappearing and you'll be very sorry when I'm gone. But sweetheart, nobody will miss a self-involved, shrivelled shell of a person. Be a good daughter, mother, friend, teacher. Channel your discipline into being all you can be (not all you can't). Life is short and you're shortening it. Right now you're young and your body can take it. It won't be like this for long. Make it to 25 and you'll see.
Being skinny isn't the answer to your problems. That's a delusion of the disease. You'll be thin and lonely, thin and broke, thin and ignored. Sure, you'll experience all these things from the fat end of the spectrum too... life sucks, it's hard, it hurts. You feel out of control (you are out of control) but ana isn't the answer. She isn't even your friend. She's weakening your bones, screwing up your chances of ever having children, she's robbing you of your rites of passage, severing the bonds between you and your family, your friends. She's making an island of you... and noone can live like that. Say goodbye to your dreams of a career, of a family, of scholastic achievement, of fame and fortune. You're giving up everything for this bitch."