1000 Pieces

When you’re sitting on a rollercoaster, you hold on tight. The last thing you feel like doing is jumping off it; you think that the landing will kill you, and you might be right – then again, you could be wrong. It will hurt, but you might just survive it. That’s what happened to me. I jumped because I was left with no choice. I came to realise that if I stayed on this rollercoaster that I would die, both emotionally and spiritually. So I jumped, knowing that I had a better chance of living, than if I stayed. The landing was painful, but I am recovering from the injuries I sustained, and I am able to get up and walk away from it.

Living with an alcoholic is bizarre and painful. It’s an existence based on hope and not a lot else. I had hoped to retrieve the man I fell in love with, but he had long gone into some sort of dark pit of his own making. Not only that, he was doing his very best to drag me into it with him. Luckily there was something in me that refused to take the final leap into that dark place…..

To get out of a relationship like this takes some doing. It isn’t easy. In my case, I was in a very difficult situation. We were living in a house which I had bought with my own money. He never paid anything towards the cost of keeping the house – I paid the mortgage, the rates, insurance, the whole lot. He kidded himself that he was working from home as a web designer. I was the one going out to work. All he did was drink. He had assured me in an email that he would be happy to sign a contract to enable me to protect my assets before I had bought the house, and foolishly I believed him. Of course, once we were in the house, he refused. He’d got what he wanted. From the time we moved into that house, he used to use his entitlement to half of it as a way to keep me quiet. He had some serious leverage. I had put a lot of money into the place when I bought it so I stood to lose many thousands of dollars. He seemed to get a lot of pleasure in the power that this gave him. The verbal abuse became more and more hurtful; the verbal abuse eventually, and inevitably, became physical. He had me over a barrel and he knew it. This was a bumpy rollercoaster ride.

This is a fragmented version of the story that I sent to someone who was supposed to be writing a book about living with alcoholics. She seems to have had some set backs, so I guess it’s either never going to happen or it’s going to be some time before it gets published, and since it’s my story, I’ll put it on here. The first fragment is the quote which I have changed slightly, as acknowledged below.

Do not try to out manipulate an alcoholic

Always pay attention to what the alcoholic does, not what s/he says

Do not ask why this person is behaving in a particular way and expect to get a useful or truthful answer

You cannot and will not change an alcoholic by pointing out his/her shortcomings

The only effective way to change an alcoholic is to make his/her tactics ineffective by changing yourself. When you stop rewarding the tactics, you will alter the nature and dynamics of the relationship.

Instead of trying to make the alcoholic more aware of your feelings, put your energy into raising the level of your own awareness and into altering your behaviour so that you will no longer be a victim

http://www.ptypes.com/manipulators.html. The word Alcoholic has replaced the word Manipulator which is in the original quote by Harriet Braiker. This was done by me as an experiment. It’s so interesting that the replacement was so successful!

That is what we are living. We are lucky, the two of us, and I think we know it. Taranaki rose above us like a sentinel, and we climbed it.  The sea spread before us like a slowly undulating mystery, and we swam it. And we love each other. Call it the honeymoon period, call it what you like, it’s a dream, and to live a dream when you’re over 40 is a wonderful thing. It may not last forever, but who cares. I think it’ll last a long, long time yet.

There are people in your life who leave indelible, soft footprints on the sand of your soul. Ann is one, and she has left my life today to move on. Her support throughout my ordeal with Greg was invaluable and I could not imagine being without her wise words in the early mornings here at the library. She’d be there when I got to work at 7:30am, the light in her office the only one shining in the whole building.

I could vent, I could ponder aloud, I could share my thoughts, my stress, my angst and my fear with her and she would understand it all, because she’d been there before. And despite her own illness, she’d sit and listen quietly and encourage and support me.

I think it’s kind of reassuring in a way that she’s gone. It means that a part of my life’s lesson plan has been completed, and I passed. She can move on and be a light in someone else’s life now. Maybe I can be a light for someone too. I feel that a time is coming that I will be able to put my experiences to good use. When that’ll happen is anyone’s guess, but it’s going to be soon.

I have been blessed to have known Ann, and can only hope that I can pass some of her peace on to someone else.

It had to be done. And it was mindblowing. The walk was hard, especially up the saddle with a heavy pack. We didn’t know if we’d make it, but eventually we got to the top of Tongariro then dipped into a valley between the summit and the North Crater. We set up home,we had reconstituted roast chicken and veg then apricot crumble, and saw the most stunning sunset of all time, then at around 8:30pm we went to sleep!

And boy, did I sleep. I must’ve been out for 10 hours. I don’t think M slept as well, but I really, really slept. Oh my goodness. It was gorgeous. Then in the morning, we got up to the best, most beautiful morning ever known to man, walked up to the North Crater, packed up and made our way reluctantly back to reality.

So. Reality. Ah yes, well one good has happened; Mt Albert has contacted J and so at least I know they’re interested. Fingers crossed. If I get this job it’ll give me the perfect opportunity to work out where I’m going for the next phase of my life, which I think will bring many good changes.

This is a year of transition for me, but it’s a series of good transitions. And then there’s MM. My love, my man in my life. Not the man of my dreams, but the man in whom I must learn to place my trust and my heart. He will look after it. I can’t think that I can do this life alone anymore. Alone-ness is not necessarily strength. It is more a case of the easy way out. A way to avoid making myself vulnerable. I must open like a flower, it’s got to be done.

Well, I had a job interview today – not the job that was mentioned before, but a job at a public library. It’s a lot less $$$ but you know, I don’t care. I just do not care. I don’t spend much, I don’t want for much, but what I do want is to be at peace and happy. I really hope I get this job, even if it is only for 10 months. M and I have talked about the fact that we’ll end up living together at some stage. We both know it’s going to happen and we’re both perfectly OK with it.

Above is Taranaki, where M comes from. The mountain represents my destination and where I belong and although he still stands before me in the mist, he is clear and he is waiting. M is part of where I belong, and he is my peace. My work is my happiness and M in many ways has helped me to realise where my happiness lies.

The experience of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing is one which will stay with me forever. To stand in the middle of a landscape so foreign and so hostile to man, and to realise that this place is pretty close to what it would have been when the planet was in its infancy is a humbling moment. From what I understand this walk has been voted as the the best 1 day walk in the world. And in many ways it is. It is an opportunity to understand man’s place in the grand scheme of the universe. There is steam, beautiful and poisonous lakes, live volcanoes, and surroundings that birds and trees cannot survive in.

Nearly 20 km of lava strewn, steaming, primeval land presents a stark contrast to the cosmopolitan, urban environment 3 hrs to the north that I had left behind 24 hrs before.  It takes you back to The Beginning and makes you feel small. Every New Zealander should walk this landscape.

No sheep here.

Oh wow, sometimes you make the best decisions! This job has been stressing me out incredibly badly. I haven’t slept well for ages, my IBS is acting up something chronic and my weekends are no longer my own. Yesterday I had something of a meltdown at work and had to come home. I had a cry and thought long and hard about what I was doing. I came up with some important truths that I will take with me wherever I go.

1. I will not try and change my personality to suit my job. I will instead find a job that suits my personality.

2. I am worth planning for.

3. I will no longer live my life by accident. Instead I will live my life by design.

4. Take the risk! It’s worth it as long as you calculate it.

So today I went in to work, talked to my boss and told her that I was not happy and that I would be seeking alternative employment. I have never felt a burden lift so quickly as I did today. I am SO relaxed. I am SO happy with my decision.

So then I came home, all content and at peace, sparked up Babyface, logged onto my email and what did I find but my dream job sitting there like forbidden fruit waiting to be tasted. So I have printed off the PD and I will apply for it in the next couple of days. I just cannot believe it. I may well not get this job, but that’s OK. It’s not Ok, but I can only try my best. I’m not quite perfectly qualified for it, but I’ve got all the essentials + some more. I can’t believe it. If that’s not confirmation that I’ve done the right thing, I don’t know what is.

Yeah!

My mother passed away in her sleep 34 years ago today. She left this earth peacefully after being in hospital for around 6 weeks. This is why I don’t like Christmas very much. She wrote her final letter to her mother on December 24th 1975. Her mother kept all the letters that she received from her very sick eldest child and I now have them. They give a valuable insight into a woman who treated her own mother with a great deal of respect, and who loved and lived the ideals and reality of what it is to be part of a family. This is something that I have not had the privilege of enjoying, since my father maintained a great deal of distance between himself and his own nuclear family, especially his mother.

The difference between my parents’ relationship with their respective mothers has defined my own sense of loss in a way. The day my mother died was the day I lost my way, although of course I didn’t realise it. It’s only now that I’m finding it again and Michael will play a big part in that rediscovery. I miss her. I miss her every time I think of her, and that’s nearly every day now. The more time that passes, the more I miss her, it seems. I spent years suppressing her memory but now I want to let her in, just like I’m slowly letting her, and my, family in. I never contacted any of those people for years and years and now, they’re emigrating here, they’re visiting, they’re sending photographs of their babies and my fridge is full of these photographs, like my heart is full of feelings that are scary and at the same time, happy.

She is returning to my consciousness through her family, my family and it feels good. But scary

when the world has fallen out from under me
I’ll be found in you, still standing
when the sky rolls up and mountains fall on their knees
when time and space are through
I’ll be found in you

Theres distraction buzzing in my head
saying in the shadows it’s easier to stay
but I’ve heard rumours of true reality
whispers of a well-lit way

You make all things new

Brooke Fraser Shadowfeet

M will be instrumental in showing me where I belong. We have been slowly coming together for a long time now and now that we’re here, we’ll travel together and he will show me where to go. I need to put myself into his hands and I need to have faith and trust, two things that I guess I’m reluctant to give away since they were lost so long ago. Or so I thought – turns out that they were just hiding. He will play the most significant part in my life since BH, who showed me that New Zealand was where I should be.

Now M will show me who my family are.