My heart is dappled in the light of my past...

It wasn’t always like this. It wasn’t always full-to-the-brim with life-changing ideas flowing one after another like a multi-coloured rainbow of potential, and lying together in the early morning watching dappled sunshine on rustic century-old walls or playing each other at long distance scrabble and dancing around the kitchen making lemon tarts that make your mouth pucker up in bitter delight while singing along to the Beach Boys and dancing like your body has taken control and you have no idea how to get it back. It wasn’t all talking by fires into the night and standing on hillsides in the arms of a man with an artist’s soul while the wind whipped wild and cleansing through us.

It has been a long time coming.

There have been other times. Time of dark and misery and desperation when I have struggled to swim through the overwhelming waves of loss, that at times threatened to engulf me. I have found myself at times in the raging darkness that roared so loud that it rendered me nearly immobile until my reaction to getting up, getting out, to doing and being and life was to curl up, foetus-like, reaching for a blanket in the dark and say ‘No more, please God, no’ because the thought of one more weight upon my shoulders would have crushed me.

There have been times of loneliness. There have been nights of sitting one one side of a bed and feeling more painfully alone than I ever have on my own, watching the rhythmic breathing of a man whose idea of love was pathological destruction and how I yearned for something good and solid and real in the light of the chaos of my life that I overlooked the horror until it overtook me and forced me to look it in the eyes and fight for my sanity or break in a way that time wouldn’t be able to heal.

There have been the times since then where the cracked shell of the egg I hatched and ran like crazy away from  look vague and menacing in my memory  and the serrated edges of the seemingly innocuous eggshell seems to hang over me like my own sword of Damocles. The fear of them drives me crazy until I become almost feral in my fight against shadows of memory that cling determinedly to my mind, like barnacles that are only half-real.

There have been times, year after year, of frustration that has risen up, geyser-like at my position: primary colour in a grey landscape until I explode, scattering trails of bold colour after me as I follow the pathways of my life. There has been boredom so ripe that I have been forced to eat my way through the gingerbread walls that held me prisoner.

Perhaps it is all of those things that have brought me to here, to joy and finally to the beginnings of a future. I don’t know but there is one thing in which I find myself steadfast and certain. My outlook, my vision was always my choice. Perhaps it was that that got me here.

But now the shadows are in the past. They dapple my heart but they are only contrast and depth, not pain. But for now, there is art and joy and love and a future that’s winking at me and inviting me to come on in.

Don't let your fire go out

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark. In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to reach. The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
– Ayn Rand

Sometimes words reach inside you and pull out something special, touch a space deep inside you in a way that an author could never have intended, and so it is.

In the same way, far beyond your intentions, you have begun in me a process that is unstoppable and unleashed a force greater than any I have known. What you have unleashed inside me sees itself reflected in the many facets of life as it passes me by, and leaves an indelible footprint in my being as a result. I expect nothing of you as payment and yet I hope that I have done the same in you.

There is a beauty in the way that you recognise the many facets of my mind and do not seek to constrain my mental variety but support me while I find my own way, stumbling in the half-light from one island to another in the hopes of reaching a place where I can settle and be satisfied, where the hunger inside me will not yearn for travel, freedom and discovery because all will be held within.

The places that you have opened inside me shows me clearly where my imbalances lie, you bring my weakness to light so that they can heal. With you bolstering my heart I can find a future that fits me and lets what is inside me trickle out in a steady stream of joy rather than burst out of me erratically in a whirlwind I cannot cope with or constrain.

I have spent years as a chameleon, being all things to all people: one by carefully orchestrated one. To each I have shown a facet or perhaps two, carefully reflecting their own interests back at them, and cautious always to be less than I am so as not to intimidate or overwhelm. I am a square peg that fits firmly into round holes and forgets how to extricate itself. You show me a way to be free to be myself; to shed my chameleon’s skin and wear my glittering, shimmering multi-coloured skin with pride. It is through the holes you have opened in my heart that I can begin to see an opening, a future and an answer to the greatest question of all.

In the time between now and then, I shall hold those words close to me and remind myself not to let my fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark.  I have a world to set alight with the tales of my dreams and I cannot forge ahead with my light extinguished.

You've Got A Secret Smile

If you asked me to tell you a secret, it would be this: love makes you beautiful.

I fell into love by accident, in an attic room behind a yellow door, many years ago. It overtook me like a wave and left me shattered in its wake. Nothing has been the same since that one moment under the eaves where blue met green in a heated stare. My skin flashed hot, and I wondered when I opened my eyes again if the world had melted and reformed because it seemed a little bit different. It has never been the same since.

It took less than a second for my heart to swell and my insides to lurch as I recognised you, heart-to-heart. You were not what I expected. You were what I prayed for. You fit, sliding into place in my heart, with a resounding echo that resonated through my body and left me shuddering and gasping for breath. I found your art, locked away under layers of words and heard your pleas, pain and promises in the words you said and those you didn’t. All we had were half-stolen moments: twilight in an urban landscape. You were the man I climbed trees with to play photographic peekaboo, the man who sang me songs as we overlooked the river. Together we recklessly left behind boredom and jumped gleefully into the unknown. We chased each other all over a sleeping city until we collapsed laughing on crooked stairs. You took my words and crafted them into something beautiful. You took my insecurities and gently smoothed them out under your hands. It was quite impossible not to love you.

Everything I now know came as a result of that one moment. Everything I have seen since has had a depth I never knew myself to be capable of. Every moment was a gift. Love is a secret door in your heart. It’s not being loved that makes you beautiful, it’s the knowing in the depths of your soul that YOU HAVE THE POWER to open yourself up and say “Screw the fear, I want the beauty”. To love takes courage. You can’t shield yourself in love, it lays you bare. There is no way to protect your heart. Whether you know it or not, you make a choice to hold back or to let go. To love, or to not. It’s a leap of faith, and it’s one that you do not take for Your Love, it’s a risk you take for yourself. It’s respecting a need inside you to grow and evolve and daring your heart to risk everything to go and get it.

These are the things that make you beautiful, because it shows in your eyes, in your smile, in your walk that you know, you dared and you won.

May I be frank? … I’ll take that as a yes. If you are muttering ‘no’ at the computer right now, knowing what’s coming you’d better turn away now. You’re probably right.

Dating as your approach your thirties is a hazardous experience. Let’s be honest, dating as a fresh-faced, dewy-eyed youngster was no bundle of joy either – akin to swimming with ravenous sharks wih a sign around your neck saying ‘My heart’s fair game’. As you get that bit older, you find that suddenly, while you were out of the dating game, the universe subtly altered the rules and forgot to tell you. (Can you see God sitting up there having a right old laugh at your expense? Can you??)

Life as a single woman – well Bridget Jones has that well and truly wrapped up. Almost every one of my friends and family is in a long term relationship and you up for one of the twice yearly visits and conversation invariably turns, if not to your appearance and career, to your relationship status (just a quick aside: WHEN did it become acceptable to pry into somebody’s very personal life like this?) …

“So, have you found the right chap yet?”
“Still single eh, old girl? Not to worry, he’ll turn up” (and variations of)
“Well my dear, looking like that it’s little surprise you haven’t hooked yourself a fella.”
and the universal favourite, “tick, tock eh? Mustn’t forget the old biological clock”

All infused with eau-de-smug. You can almost see it oozing out of their pores, that air of I-have-a-lovely-fella-look-how-perfect-my-life-is-I-feel-so-sorry-for-you-being-unwanted. The ever-so-subtle hints that if you are still single as the big 30 approches you are either an emotionally stunted freak or so unlucky in life and love that you might as well weigh your coat down with stones and hurl yourself into the river.

Personally, I like being single. I find it easier to know myself and, to be unashamedly selfish, I enjoy being able to indulge my own tastes without constantly taking into account the likes and dislikes of another person. I find that my actions and choices are my own. I have grown to appreciate my views, choices and tastes and I enjoy the lack of compromise. I find relationships a LOT of work, the compromise, the understanding, the working to try and maintaince your independence and individuality and not just become X&Y. Perhaps that is a little selfish, but I don’t see it as something to apologise for. If we don’t understand, love and appreciate ourselves and be true to that, how can anyone else?

Those of us who have escaped the shackles of spectacularly unsuccessful relationships, or if you’d rather, suffered the indignity of spectacularly successful breakups as an adult in our late twenties and early thirties perhaps begin to contemplate dipping a toe into the water. Just to see if it’s anything like we remember.

Naturally, it’s not.

If we thought dating in our rose tinted youth was a hair raising experience, doing it as an adult is a whole new ball game. The youthful idealism and hopeful looks to the future that seemed to make much of the conversation when we were younger seem to be replaced by more cynical observations on life, we seem slightly more defeated, slightly less willing to hold up our lofty ideals and say ‘to hell with reality, this is what I want’. There is less of a sense of the moment and the air seems more dense with unasked questions about previous loves, children and emotional baggage. People seem more desperate, to grab hold of anyone just to avoid being left on the cart. Personally, I don’t get it. Entering your thirties (I have a few months yet) it seems to me that you’re finally hitting your stride (or so it seems to me). You know yourself, you know what you want out of life and are in a perfect place to make it happen. Hang loose, let it happen.

Guys you would have crossed the road to avoid are now the men that you find yourself being sent on blind dates with. Oh yes.

I found myself on one such blind date a few months ago. He wasn’t much of a talker, but I’m counting that as a point in his favour, because when he decided to have a go, it made me want to stick forks in my ears to try and perforate my eardrums. An example of a funny story he told me, was how one of his colleagues taunted a Muslim colleague with food during Ramadan and then pranced round the office saying ‘nar-ne-nar-ne-nar-nar you can’t have any, you’re fasting’ and he thought this was FUNNY??!! It was tempting to castrate him then and there and save the gene pool yet another idiot, but being the class act that I am, I shot him a withering look, gathered my things and left before things could take a grimmer turn.

There was the landscape gardner who threw me in the sea fully clothed for a laugh and then left me to walk 5 miles home at 12.30 in the morning on my own, because apparently asking for a lift made me high maintenance and not the sort of girl he could date.

There was the serial boyfriend, who was morbidly phobic about being single and charted the ratio of time he had spent being single vs being in a relationship since he was 18. The results weren’t good.

There was the Moroccan tour guide who recited poetry to me all the way up a mountain and when I resisted his advances and suggestion that we live up the mountain, have a million kids and a few goats, abandoned me at the top of the mountain to find my own way down. What a lucky escape THAT was.

There are definitely worse things in life and love than being single. I’m cool with that.