what i need

- my mom asked a couple of weeks ago what I would like for a birthday present. I said that there was nothing I really need, and that a donation to the rehab centre or to CLAW would be good. We spoke earlier this evening, and she said again that she wants a present idea, that they donate to charity and people often anyway.

I couldn't think of anything, but promised that I would try. It came to me just now, as I reread Pat Conroy's book 'Beach Music', and the characters are talking about the nature of love. Jack is so scared that his own inabilities will come back to haunt his child as she grows. I have none of that in my life; my family and friends have always loved openly. I have always known what love is. My failures are mine alone.

Forgiveness, mommy-bear. Think that is what I will need as a gift this year. God knows that I can't forgive myself for loving someone the way I love the dude. Not wisely, not well, but overwhelmingly.

A life without love is not a life that is worth enduring.....

not yet

have so far failed completely at my not-likely-anyway wish that I would die of swine flu, and failed equally at dying of shame and pain over the dude's behaviour.

But! Not too late! Still another chance! Yes..worlds dumbest ugliest loser chick is somehow still seeing the dude. And worst of all, still loving the dude. So when the next hurting discovery comes, it could be the one where I just lay down and stop breathing. If only I pray hard enough in the meantime....

I have always felt sympathy for people tied to toxic relationships by economics, or lack of awareness, or even by their own stupidity. I have never seen myself becoming part of that group, but for the past year it seems that I am. In this case, I am trapped by love, and it seems that cheating, lying, spoiling most of my semi-celebrations, the aloneness for nights and holidays... none of it stops me from loving him anyway. Every day of those marks a new level of internal degredation and hatred for myself.

And I still can't walk away...

zombie time

- as if the whole dude-crisis wasn't enough to nail me this week, I started coughing yesterday, and woke up every hour or so last night. Chills and fever, coughing and blocked sinuses...

God if I am lucky it will be swine flu and it will be fatal :-(

and she does it again!

- another stunning performance from Susan Boyle in the weekend's semifinal, sees her through to the final. Go, Susan, go!

Memories - Susan Boyle

bush weekend

- going away with the rehab centre admin lady, for a 3-day weekend in the bush. She is an honorary ranger at one of the medium-sized reserves, which basically means her job is to drive around and steer visitors in the right directions, keep them out of trouble and make sure they leave at closing time. Plus other fun bits like counting animals, monitoring them and anything exciting that happens. She is 69, and my greatest worry is that I won't be able to keep up with her! Her holiday last year was climbing volcano slopes in the Congo to see the gorillas. I'm really looking forward to it though, as she is great fun to be with, and it also means we go to all the closed areas of the reserve that the public is not alllowed in.

- the downside is that it means no dude for 3 days, and he has been sick this week as well, with flu. We met for coffee today, and I suggested to him that he take up some bad habits. I smoke, drink, don't eat properly, don't exercise enough, am fat - and am generally in amazingly good physical health. And he, who does all the right things has been sick numerous times in the last year - flu, colds, sinus, major gastric problems.... maybe there are merits to being a bad person! And, my friend Duckling is having a major psych meltdown at the moment, and is back in hospital on strict suicide watch, and feeling very unloved at the moment. I haven't helped much by being so chaotically busy this week that - although we have chatted lots on Facebook, I haven't been able to visit her in the 3 or 4 hours of the day that she is awake enough to register a visitor.

- great news though, is that my long-distance buddy Aqua, who I've been worrying about for the past month is OK, and is posting again. Her life is undergoing huge changes at the moment, so mention her in any prayers you might make, but I believe she is strong enough and smart enough to make good choices for herself. But it would be nice to be close enough to give her a big hug....

the end of the world......

....is surely coming. Or at least that's what it feels like. I am worrying about special friends in crisis and don't seem to be able to reach them or help. And I feel like I'm in terminal meltdown as well, with the dude. There are only two facts there; 1. he doesn't love me, even if he loves being with me and all sorts of other crap, and 2. I love him, absolutely, completely, without reservation. I know he has faults, and I am very aware of many of them, but it doesn't change things - I love him anyway.

I can't sort myself out, I can't help my friends, I don't seem to have any control over anything anymore. And I don't see any of it ending well either....

sweet wedding

- spent most of the day at/travelling/returning....a wedding between two of my fellow rehab volunteers. They are one of those lovely couples that proves the saying about every pot having a lid. Completely different in almost all ways, but wonderfully happy together, and a lovely example of how a relationship is built on mutual respect, mutual caring and mutual support.

Even the wedding was perfect for the two of them - it was held outside, next to a river, about an hour out of town. She designed stunning and unique invitations, he did most of the catering. They came up with a number of lovely touches that will make their wedding memorable for eveyone who attended.

I have an extra memory, as I'm looking after their pets for the week. One very large and lovable rat, and seven parrotty things, 6 of them being conures of various types. Gotta give them credit...those birds really love the sound of their own screams :-)

brilliant!

- thanks to the Cranky Professor for the link.

News on the swine flu epidemic : link to news report

Me personally, I'm betting that this might just be the promised plague that the avian flu failed miserably at being. Apart from the fact that I reckon the world is due for a good plague on Biblical levels, I'm also so relieved that it is being blamed on things that have nothing to do with me. At the height of the bird flu outbreaks, we had soooooo many phone calls along the lines of this:

Rehab volunteer: hi, how can I help you?
Concerned member of the public : I have a sick bird in my garden!!
RV : ok, can you bring it thru to either me or the centre?
CMP :NO!!!
RV : umm, can't you catch it?
CMP : NO!! And I'm not going to try! It's lying there on my lawn!
RV : could you maybe throw a cloth over it and put it in a box, and I'll come and fetch it?
CMP : NO!! I'm not leaving the house and I won't allow my family out either!
RV : umm, why not?
CMP : it might have bird flu! I want you to come and pick it up RIGHT NOW!!

- concerned RV heads there immediately. Lying on the lawn is a dead sparrow with fairly life-ending injuries of the feline type, and said feline lurking in close proximity......

At least, if any flying pigs are dead in their environs, they are a lot less likely to call a wildlife rehabilitation centre :-)

oh dear, oh dear, oh dear....

... so sunday's amicable parting was followed by tuesday's incredible sex. As well as lots of time just spent sitting next to each other doing separate work. And today's friendly visit, where I was working and he was studying, and nothing "serious" was mentioned. Maybe it's because I'm a girl, and maybe I invest too much emotion in stuff. But I find it hard to understand how we can both enjoy everything together so much, and yet for him it ends there. It's not imagination on my part about the enjoyment - he admits to that much. We can talk about everything, and even if we don't agree entirely, the differences just make for more enjoyable debates - and we pretty much share the same basic beliefs anyway. We laugh at the same things, we find the same things poignant. We have the most amazing sex....

Last week he asked what I would say or do if the circumstances were reversed, and I said that it would probably be much the same as he has. I thought about that one a lot, relating it to previous relationships where I was the one who was loved, but didn't return the love. And I don't really think that I would ever be able to take on the enormous strain of living with someone if I didn't love them completely. So I can't disagree with his actions, but it still leaves me wondering how everything can be so good and yet put us in such varying positions.

On a lighter note, I received a mail just now from a man who is hoping to relocate some dassies from a place with a population explosion to a game farm with a scarcity, and wants some advice on how to go about it. Dassies, also known as hyraxes, or rock rabbits, are a strange little animal about the size of a large domestic cat. Their closest living relative is - amazingly - the elephant. They are wide-spread in South Africa and Africa in general, living mainly in areas with hills or rocky outcrops. They are primarily vegetarian, and spend a lot of time lying around in the sun. They also bite like hell, and can be quite aggressive when cornered, and have a complex social structure of family groups within colonies. The man concerned is hoping to relocated a small number, and is worried about maintaining the family balances. One of his questions was:
"Can a lawyer sex these animals easily or does one need to be a sex expert?"

If I ever meet him I am going to battle with keeping a straight face.......

photo credit wikipedia

same pain, different day......

- we are trying the breakup on friendly terms. It can't hurt worse than last week, but I just don't know if I can handle it. He called earlier just to say hi, and the way my heart leaps when the phone rings in case it is him, and then soars when it is... doessn't exactly make me feel like I am moving on at all.

- words from Les Mis, as per my last weeks awed discovery of Susan Boyle:

"And still I dream he'll come to me
And we will live our lives together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms
We cannot weather..."

i just don't learn from the past mistakes i've made..

...subtitled : confusion runs rampant, again...

- needless to say, it's the dude. We had long text conversations yesterday, which basically boiled down to:
1. me wanting to know what I do wrong
2. him saying that I am an amazing person in a whole bunch of ways
3. me asking why we are in the same position again
4. him saying that it's not my fault
5. me saying it must be, otherwise we'd be together and happy
6. him saying that he wishes he could give me what I need
7. me asking what is wrong with me that he can wish that but not do it
8. him saying that he cares about me a lot, but that he just doesn't love me
9. agreement that it's better that we be completely honest, even tho it hurts...

- ok, so I'm bipolar, and more on the depressive side of that. But there are very few people in RL who know that, or who ever see any of it. And in the time that I've known him - and also because of him - it's been really well managed. He doesn't see the miserable bits, because mostly they happen when/because he isn't here, and I go to a lot of effort to hide it. This blog is the raw bits, the bits my tdoc knows - apart from that, the most that people generally know is that I have had major depressive episodes, and am OK now. Some people know that I still get seriously down, but none of them ever see anything of it, apart from not seeing me for a short while - and I always have enough reasons that everyone thinks I am hectically busy with everyone else.

- but there is something worse that is wrong with me. There has to be. He says that he loves spending time with me, that he loves chatting to me because we can talk about absolutely everything and it is always interesting to him, that he still finds me very attractive physically (which is one thing that amazes me but that I know is true. He knew exactly how fat I was before we ever had sex, as in, he'd measured every damn inch of me, and he still wanted to do it. Even now, after 14 months of making love, when I'd have figured that the newness was well gone, his body still makes it obvious that he really wants me) and it is still always good for both of us. But with all that in favour, he doesn't love me. Not even enough to want to try anything more serious. There has to be something so awfully wrong with me...

- he wanted to visit today. I agreed, because I'd rather we part on good terms. The whole day was surreal, because it was just so good and so comfortable, for both of us. We even got round to a bit of bedroom action in spite of the fact that he'd pulled a muscle running sprints and was in obvious pain. And now I'm wondering whether I should just settle for what there is between us, even knowing that that is all there will ever be. If I keep seeing him, I am never going to stop loving him, I am never going to be able to look at anyone else, and (it's already borderline) the longer I see him the less chance there is of being with someone long enough and soon enough to think about a child. And I really want to parent one, with him.

- how does one know when not enough is more than one will ever have otherwise?

election day

happy fucking democracy...

Yeah, I did vote, although there isn't much point in a one party state. At least we do still have opposition parties unlike our neighbours to the north. Two hours in the queue, but I did it.

Thats all I really did today apart from cry and miss the dude.

over. i think. again...........

so on saturday night someone anon sent the dude's wife an sms, saying, apparently (seeing as he didn't get to read the whole thing before she deleted it, and neither did I) a whole lot of stuff about she should grow up and get a job etc, as well as that he had been having an affair for two years with someone who fetched him at the local shop in (my car type).

I was really taken aback by that, not only that someone would send a half-assed message like that, but also by the thought that someone I don't know has been watching him, and therefore me. All he was worried bout was poor little wife, and how untrue it is because she has a job. Yeah right. She works in some kind of pretend thing for her mother, and doesn't earn enough to pay any of their bills. And that I know, because I have been paying most of them, including doing the grocery shopping with him for the last 5 months.

We sat in my car for an hour or so talking, instead of the normal sunday morning in bed bit, then he wanted to go look at TVs. His is broken, and I gather wifey can't survive without being able to watch the kids cartoons. Seeing as he hasn't returned the last money that was distinctly a loan not a gift because I really don't have it spare this month, and seeing as I paid the rent, health insurance, groceries, fuel and car stuff already, I've been kind of deaf to the TV stuff.

And then I came home, alone, for a change. And thought about all sorts of things, including that he really didn't seem to give a damn about how I might feel about any of the crap that could result from what happened. And sent him an email that is about as nasty as I can ever get to him. Like, not very much, compared to what I should probably be saying.

Only sensible thing in it was telling him not to contact me at all unless he has his suitcases and some intent to commit along with him. Haven't heard anything since, not that I really expected to. Guess he is at home telling wifey that I changed overnight from being Santa fucking Claus with an excess of gifts to the dragon. And that he has no idea on earth why......

And me? I lie on the couch with my eyes closed and count backwards from 1000 in the hope that it will stop me from missing the part of me that I just ripped out without anaesthetic, and that I will sleep for a few hours to stop me from thinking of him all day. When that doesn't work, I get up, drink my allowed (by me) 1/2 bottle of vodka, cry a lot, take 3x the amount of sleeping pill that I have taken in the last 3years, cry for another hour or two, and then the combo finally knocks me out for a couple of hours.

I wake up crying in the dark of midnight

give yourself a real treat....

....and watch the most unexpected and unlikely new hero. It's a lady called Susan Boyle, on a British talent show, and she will absolutely blow you away. Kind of solid, middle-aged, plain, strong regional accent....and then she opens her mouth and sings. Wow. She should be famous, make millions, have men throwing their underwear at her on stage, sing for the Pope. All of it, and I hope she gets it.

Here's a Youtube link to the show excerpt:Susan Boyle

long weekends

It seems as if everyone else is having a great month in April, which in SA is full of public holidays and long weekends. I hate them, because it means that I get to see very little of the dude, if at all. And to add to it, he has been sick with flu for the last few days, so apart from a croaky phone call today, I've had even less contact with him.

Makes for a very grumpy and miserable cat :-(....