Sweet Dreams are made of this

Here I am again in the 6 by 10 square room, its been five days. I haven’t slept a wink in 48 hours and I have had one meal in that time. I still get that horrible roller coaster feeling every time I feel compelled to force myself to breathe. Love, heartbreak, loneliness and disappointment are the staples and my plate is full, I should be thankful. Her txts and calls are down to one a day now, usually of a similar theme. I miss you and I’m sorry for treating you the way that I have. I’m trapped now though, because I don’t have the will to see her because of the pain it would cause me and I don’t want to talk with her because I’m scared I will fall for it all again as soon as I look into her eyes. All the same I want to be laid in bed with her and saying nothing and feeling everything warm.

I picked up an old diary today and thumbed through it. I noticed a couple of pages that I had written two years ago, almost to the day. I was sat in this same room but heartbroken over another girl Jo. I found it fascinating to read and it raised big questions for me. They were both really similar personality types, shockingly so. They both have had childhood trauma’s at about the same age, that have left them emotionally crippled  similarly,  and unable to express their love in a healthy way. Both hard, cold and stubborn and I suspect they both cheated on me at some time. Both Leo’s, not that lions are bad!! They both perused me aggressively, as well as the fact that they were both highly manipulative and could lie with ease. They both had a cold vindictive streak and used seduction and sex as a tool to stimulate intimidation, manipulation and jealousy.

I thought to myself, is this coincidence, or is this something else? Have I just had bad luck, or am I somehow repeating some sort of subconscious cycle  of self sabotage? Then it crossed my mind that I would need some form of counselling in order to get to the bottom of this. I do know I am naturally very affectionate and I’m a pleaser sometimes.I am always sensitive to people and hate to see someone “suffer” and I like to see the good in people. I also know that my father turned out to be a similar character to these women. I’m I over compensating for the way my farther was to my mother and us? Have I somehow been conditioned myself? Dose that mean I am as damaged as they are? Only the polar opposite? Do I enjoy emotional trauma? Dose my intuition play a part too? I mean I’m pretty placid and easy-going, in fact too much sometimes. It seems to me that I would benefit from a little dip in lake me!

Ballance is the key to the elusive lock that is within me. That much I know. The thing is you never seek something like therapy when you’re happy, which on the whole I am, that is unless I’m having my heart ripped out by an attractive sociopath, no that’s unfair! See there I go again being nice. My point is I have to seek some support when I do feel strong. I’m not sure what It will do for me though, the very fact that I am sensitive would mean that I will be sure to be as open and receptive as possible. I would  probably end up with the therapist on the couch telling me all about her last client, or get thrown out for been too nice about it!

Pissed off.

And I miss her.

My broken heart

It’s over and all I have to show for it is insomnia mixed with waking dreams of narcolepsy. The reality is starting to sink in now and the heartache is physically vibrating with each breath. I tell myself head first from now on. Or I will be taking another fall and this is the second in a row, can’t do it again anytime soon. The flowers have wilted and died and leaves drop from the trees as the wind steals my peace.

Saying that I don’t feel too bad, well at least when I walk, I miss her though, the texts are getting less frequent, due to the fact that I haven’t responded to any. It’s been very difficult, especially when her friends are texting and turning screws on her behalf. I’m going to stick to my guns this time, everyone has their breaking point and mine is clearly here. I miss her though and I wish I could make it better for us both, but the relationship was just over 8 month, and to be fair I went through two years worth of insanity. I can feel that it’s all got to me and I feel cheated and alone.

A mutual friend contacted me last night, asking me to make contact with her as she was in pieces, she was saying that I was the only person that she would listen to. I thought to myself ‘well you got that wrong’ then I wrote…

C,

I totally understand why you’re making contact and I don’t mind at all.

It’s really difficult to articulate to what extent I have tried to work things through with G. I am not writing back to you to defend myself or paint some horrible picture of her, let it be known i love her to bits, I adore her and that’s probably why I have taken everything she has had to throw at me, but it’s important you know a little of what has been going on and how things have got to this.

C, this is not some whim, we have broken apart more than a few times. I have really been put through the mill with her, I have tried absolutely everything to make this relationship work, I have talked and talked to her to try to make her understand what it is she is doing to the relationship, I have been desperate to hear something real from her but to no avail.

I have had a lot of abuse over the last few months, this whole thing is tearing me apart and I have watched her systematically alienate me and deliberately poison what could have been something special. It’s been tearing me apart for months. Her issues and insecurities have always been there but things have got progressively worse lately. She is doing to me what she has had done to her, whether it be in a past relationship, or because of the pain she feels with her mother, I don’t know, all I do know is it’s been getting worse and worse.

Her Constant accusations, jealousy and paranoia have made it impossible to communicate with her or to allow any trust to grow between us. I have been attacked at any given opportunity and some of the things she has said and done have really shocked me not once or twice but on a regular basis, It’s clear to me that she has some very deep-seated issues, and she is bringing them into this relationship unresolved, and taking them out on me.

Despite my attempts to try to talk things through with her and re-assure her that she is safe, she is not willing, or able, to do anything other than deny the facts or cloud issues by being defensive and antagonistic. She is pouring energy into manipulative tactics rather than working with me to find constructive and peaceful ways forward. She is more in the habit of using emotional blackmail to get what she wants than taking the risk and opening up to me about why she is doing the things she is doing. Her unbreakable habit of seeing things as a battle of ‘will’ as opposed to looking at problems openly and attempting to resolve them has meant I can’t get anywhere near the real issues we face.  All I have been doing is exhausting myself by constantly trying to save this relationship from collapse, and working against her need to sabotage us with childish games and point scoring.

It’s as if she is blind to what she is doing to us. Her stubbornness to ‘win’ some sort of power has pushed me away, and no sooner do I forgive her and come back to her, she instigates more conflict. Her need to ‘live out’ past hurts means she has a need to manufacture drama and turmoil at any given opportunity, and when I try to make her see what she is doing, she refuses to discuss our problems once the heat has died and there is a potential for open and honest dialogue. It’s a cycle that I couldn’t break, the reason for that is because she has not been willing to try in any real way to work through her personal problems, or realise that she had a loving, caring and loyal guy in the palm of her hands. The sad thing is, I think she knows it deep down and still doesn’t want to stem her need to ‘control’ and manipulate her way around things instead of just talking and sharing and showing a little honesty about what’s going on inside.

All this has taken so much from me, I am felling depressed due to the stress and frustration of banging my head against the walls she has put up. I am losing weight, and my enthusiasm for life has not been what it used to be, this has dragged me down and has been hell, not to put too finer point on it. The horrible thing is, her phobias are not real. None of this needed to happen and I am starting to hate her for it doing the things she is doing to me. I don’t know if she is being given bad advice from people around her, or if she is just unable to see the clear sign posts that things have been going desperately wrong for a long time, I don’t know. All I see is her hurting me and when get fed up and walk she tries to pull me back again, and so the destructive cycle has gone for too long.

Her desperation and her cries for help and ‘another chance’ won’t change what is happening. G needs something that it’s clear that I can’t give her, and that’s time to heal and workout why she is doing the things she is doing.

It breaks my heart to know how much distress she is in, it really does and she will never know that because for some reason she has convinced herself that I have never cared and can’t be trusted. She doesn’t want to lose what we have but she doesn’t understand that what she is doing is an attack on me.

What am I to do? I talk with her, she gets hysterical and cries, then I weaken and give in to her and within a few hours she falls back into the same patterns, which inevitably mean me being hurt over and over again.

I’m tired and defeated; I can’t do it anymore. We have been together 8 months and it should be moving forward and it’s not. I am angry that I have been taken advantage of, and her treatment of me has stolen my trust in her ability to care for my heart as much as I have tried to nurture and love hers.

What G needs is to heal without having an emotional punch bag to take her past frustrations out on. She has to look at herself with far more honesty than she has been willing to.  She needs to listen to her own heart and not her misguided friends (C i hope you know I’m not talking about you guys).Most importantly, she needs time.

If I had a wish it would be that we could continue with the potential we had, If I had the power to change things and make her see that she could have always trusted me I would have done that by now, believe me I have tried, perhaps too hard. If I could be with her, without compromising my mental health and emotional safety, I would be calling her to comfort her again, or driving down to London to hold her like I have time and again. But I have learned that it will be me that will pay the price in the end, and that she will not have come to terms with the reasons for why it’s all gone wrong.  I can’t because it won’t help her in the long-term or even in the short-term. She needs to do the work now, not me.

I have so much to deal with in the short-term future and to have this progressive situation pulling and destroying me would be unacceptable. I love her and I know she loves me but that’s no reason for me to accept abuse.

C, it’s come to the time where I need to protect myself and not allow someone to continue doing what she has been and she knows what she has been doing, no matter what she tells people around her.

I don’t love G blindly, I love her for the special person she is but she has a side that if left unchecked will be her downfall. I hope she will be able to digest the fact that things have gone too far and learn from it.

I don’t want to talk to her because I don’t have anything left to say.

Sorry

I put my laptop down and dry my eyes.

You made your bed twice

As I write there is drama unfolding around me, raised voices, no, shouts, bouts of sinking silence, they take a rest then the dawning of realisations give rise to the next wave of confrontation. Old painful pasts blasting through to the now, right now, wow. I’ve never written in the middle of a family crisis before, I must be getting jaded. How sour it is, home sweet home, wouldn’t have minded if I hadn’t known, no that’s just not true at all. My brother who is angry and confused, now he knows the truth. Now he has proof read the past. Present and future mutated filled with anger, stomach’s churning, all trying our best to digest my fathers tragic last laugh. Mother, oh mum, having to pick up the pieces and do her best to manage the damage. And me? Well, I guess I have dealt with the shock of it, it was weeks ago when I found out and I think I’m a little pleased that not everyone was deceiving me. Reminds me of a repetitive dream I had when I was young, of dark green figures without faces rattling bars, trapped in a cages, It all seems like a fearful mess, time to tell the rest of my story, I digress…

If you want to read the whole story, you should read yesterdays post first ‘You made your bed’

Silence now, just the sound of my keys tapping…

“It was 30 year ago…” mum announces out of the blue, in an apologetic tone, my brother upstairs licking his wounds.

I try to reassure. “Look I don’t want to talk about it right now, I’ve known for some weeks..It’s still fresh in my brothers mind, try not to worry, he will come round in his own time. Non of this is your fault.”

I come back to my post. Now where was I?

Oh yes, Three weeks back, Two hands and One black bag…

I put them both back into the black bag and I took them to my room, like an animal bolting to a safe place to satisfy its hunger without being disturbed. Ha, who was I kidding, I was already disturbed. I took the two white wads out from the black so that they, and I, could see the light after years in the dark. They were letters, a lot of them, in two big bundles packed like bank notes with broad, hand sewn, white elastic wrapped round them. My mother’s hand writing was unmistakable to me and the name of the prison was also clear to see. I snapped the elastic back and pulled free the letters and opened the top one. I felt that for my eyes they were never meant, but I didn’t care and pulled out the contents.

Oh my god! They were letters to my father some 32 years ago, I had no idea, wasn’t told, didn’t know. He did time?Although there were deep subconscious clues, without the proof of knowing how could I let them through??  The words on the pages were so sad to read. My mother was much younger in the letters than me. Then my mind snapped back into the now and I wanted to know why, where, who and how! They were under my brothers bed, did he know? Why wasn’t I told? Is everyone keeping secrets after everything that happened last year? These lies are getting old! Why couldn’t they tell me? I couldn’t think, I felt like pink singing “Why was I the last to know?”

The discoveries within my family last year were nothing short of  a conscious, blue, supernova, it changed my reality more than once, and as a result my father had been alienated, from this family at least, he will spend his days wishing, missing, reminiscing, fishing for a chance to change, to make things fit, but it’s his bed and now he has to lie in it. He lost a devoted wife, a life with grandchildren and kids. For the whole of our lives he kept a lid on it, and now these letters. Will it ever end? Like a double heartbreak with too much crying, never have time for the tissue to mend.  It seems that every time I come back to this family home I make a range of grizzly discoveries, my intuition keeps pulling me from pillow to post. Am I in control? Or am I just the host to a time share in this pre planned, and packaged life path. I just didn’t know what to feel, I ask myself am I dreaming or did my dream make this real? One, then two, then three, then four, letters and conclusion’s all over the floor, but stop!

The penny does drop as I read on. My poor mother was pregnant with my brother while my father was inside, how the hell did she survive? My mother held onto the bars by the side of the bed giving birth to my brother alone, while my father held onto the bars of his cell frustrated, unable to roam!? I was four years old, tired and yawning, I’d be told silly nursery rhymes of daddy at work, coming back in the morning. My dreams all came true. I was angry, I didn’t know who knew, I found the letters under my brothers bed, has he kept all these secrets locked up in his head? Did he think to sleep on it and never really awoke to the need to tell me, kept it in his stomachs pit? Is he avoiding telling me the truth, is that the reason for him being aloof? I put the letters back in the bag and under the bed, keeping these feelings inside my head.

For three weeks a watched and waited, feeling frustrated and hated the fact that it was now me who felt alienated.

That was until last night…

My brother came to me eye’s wide and angry with a letter in hand, one that I had already seen. It acted as a token that told me the last silence was broken. Now the dust has settled and dinner is ready we, all three sit at the table, silence the category, my brother asks me how I had found them. I said “It’s a long story.”

Funny how things affect us subconsciously, think it was February when I auditioned for my new job, for which I move to start at the back-end of November. I’ll be working with inmates. Talk about fate. I’m just glad the flood gates have been opened and I can move forward now.

You made your bed

This is my time now, I have to close the doors of the internet and pause. My Story tonight is a story of paranoia, intrigue and family deception, not to mention is unresolved, in need of correction. My life seems the norm to me but to others, I can see, could seem as less than surrounded by a white picket fence.

Now I don’t at all want Jay’s Yard to be full of bones from the closet, I want it to help me shine, and I’m not the kind of guy to dwell for too long, to drag my bags round until the setting of the sun, I’m strong. But needs must, in order for me to move on, and learn, and burn with a brighter light that radiates and exacerbates a fate filled with the fruits of my endeavours, time to unpack the bags on my back.

My story tonight starts with a dream I had…

I don’t remember them unless they want me to and when they do they sometimes offer a clue or even come true and I know not why, but this time they didn’t disappoint, or hide, or lie. Two dreams in fact are attached here and as I write my mind makes that clear…

I awoke from my bed with a glistening forehead, I had a dream without warning, sat up that morning with a vision in my mind about letters and letters all over the floor. The sun was lazy but peeped through my blinds with caution as if to know what a day it did hide…

Shrugged it off until I walked past my brothers room, this was only a few weeks removed. I was fresh back from the hot and heady heights of Madrid, my bag unpacked and back at my mothers amidst old memories of family life as a kid, didn’t need to straighten my covers as I opened my brother’s door. He was at work and I did something odd, why I cannot be too sure.  His life is his, and I’m not the type to pry but on this morning I had my eye open and walked right in. I looked at his bed, made and aired, I got scared when I noticed a draw nestled in his bed frame with no handle to pull it open. I took a look in and saw some very old bits and bobs covered in dust, was I disturbing trust? An old trinket box I knew belonged to my mother, not my brother, it once was her bed. I reached inside not knowing quite why and I pulled out and old dusty bag that was black, I unwrapped and slid my hands inside to see what this bag did hide…

I pulled them out and almost cried, but I couldn’t because the skin around my eye’s was too tight, as they opened wide to stem the tide…Beside’s that wasn’t my plan as I was no longer a boy, I’m a man…

Tomorrow I’ll tell the rest of my story that’s if you’re not trick or treating and out getting gory.

Flowers in the rain

After her friend txt me last night saying how upset she was, I thought it best to force myself out of my inertia. To engage again with my girlfriend and attempt  to brave the storm with nothing but a comb over for protection. I feel so fearful and vulnerable as the Expresssss train of unresolved issues penetrates the rain and hurtles towards me…

I decide to reply to her email, nails scratching the keys, there must be the answer at the tip of my fingers, please…

The letter reads…

Dear G,

I’ve just woken up after about three hours sleep, my head is spinning and my heart is heavy and I feel sick again. “This just won’t do” I tell myself, and then I ask myself how it all got like this? How do two people who love one and other end up at war like this? Then I feel sorry for myself and ask “why me?”  How come it never runs smooth for me, I mean, I’m a loving honest bloke, I’m not out to cause pain for anyone or create drama, so why? Then I think of you. The first thing I feel is anger. “Why has it got like this?” Then I feel my love for you and the anger turns to pain. I want to ask you but I know where it will lead. I know that if I talk to you we will go to a place filled with fear and frustration. The pain of disagreeing and arguing has become stronger than the pain of not communicating. I feel like a little snail that tries to pop out of it’s shell only to encounter a sea of salt which makes it zip back in again. If only someone would clear the path of eggshells so I could get to heart’s desire.

It seems that no matter how hard I try, you choose to look over your shoulder at what’s behind you, at what has passed and can’t be changed. You press play and look at things that have happened to me in another life, a photo, a four-year old blog, whatever… Things that are nothing but faded memories in my mind, but you bring them forward and re master them, then edit them to suit your need to feel frightened, your very own scary movie using me as the monster, and you play it over and over and as you do that I try to get you to press pause for a second and look away from the screen, to just look at me, the real me, not the actor that plays me in your movie, not the person in your nightmares but the guy by your side, but the room is dark and your blinded by the bright lights of the movie screen and you don’t see the real me, just shadows then you get frightened and go into fight mode, I go into flight mode and communication breaks down and fear pulls our stings like a sadistic puppet master.

I’m exhausted, frustrated and angry with you for doing this, even thought I know you can’t always help it. I’ll say it again, I Love you, I love you more than my past, I love you more than my friends! We share something so special when its right, if you just let me be there for you on my own, without so many conditions, unreasonable expectations, inquisitions and suspicions, you would be able to see the truth which is that I really do love you to bits!! I want to trust you won’t keep going to those dark corners in your mind. Fear spreads like a rash and your fear is now mine. I want to make things right but I’m losing my will to hang in here, I need your help. You said in a txt how you thought we were getting somewhere…but how could you think that when you pulled up some 3-year-old photo from my past and created a nightmare out of it and demanded that I delete it just out of the blue. To me that’s not getting somewhere, that’s going nowhere but back to Donnie Darko time.

Don’t you see that going over all that negativity just brings us back to negativity? Can’t we just get on with loving each other? You only seem to want things to workout when it gets to breaking point. Thing is it takes seconds to sweep away a house of cards but it takes longer to bet them all back up again, I’m scared to death that what we build up will just get trashed again. That’s why we have to go slow because the trust isn’t there and that has to happen before we can really enjoy this love.

I want to try but I don’t want to go backwards

All my love

J

That’s when there is a knock on the door…

It’s a guy at the door with a delivery for me. She sent me flowers and a note that says “I love you.”

My biggest fear is that the end is near, and I love her…

I put my heart on the railway line and I pick up the phone…

Predictable Panic

“I mean we’re not made of china are we?”

That’s alright for you to say, you’ve had the worst year ever! A marriage break up and a whole life shake up with a sprinkling of disillusionment and a negative paradigm shift! You came close to a breakdown and pulled through and now you can see the sun rising in the distance as the mists of fear thin just a little. So no, you’re not really made of china, more of an urban-ware jaded a little so as not to attract the crows.

Me on the other hand, well I’m a man, full of fear sitting at the potter’s wheel trying to shape and see the form before the clay hardens… manipulating with thought, finger and thumb losing the feeling growing numb as the water dries from my eyes and world turns faster on the wheel of life… Well done mum, we aren’t made of china your right.

There is a lot changing in my life at the moment, not least me. I’m 36 now and blogs have grown up a lot since their humble beginnings. I haven’t written like this for some years and it feels fantastic! Just got back from the chip shop round the corner, which is next door to the corner shop, where once I was employed as a paper boy, 3 rounds, 7 days a week, 22 years ago. Life can be heavier on the shoulders than the News of the world ever got on Sunday’s.

The phone’s are smaller and have no wires, and ringing again and again and again. Don’t want to answer, don’t know what to say. I feel I have said everything too many times, only thing missing is to say it in rhymes, backwards. She is a lovely girl but she’s addicted to drama and fear. She tells me im cheating every time that I see her, just wish she could see how wrong she is. Then I would be able to open my heart to her and see where things went but when you’re treated like a tea leaf  in the night it kinda makes a dent. She’s like a bailiff demanding the love rent, I try to keep her in cheque but I end up spent. Doors locked, lights out, hiding under the bed, frightened of the next long distance war games via text. Bird’s who’d ave em?

Along side that I move real soon, start a new job, turn a new page and that should be exciting and a little scary at the same time. Sublime! It will be the first time in about 5 years that I’ll actually be able to sort of settle and not be living out of a bag. My world is about to change in every way and I want to share that. Knowing my life, it will be full of twists and turns, need more water to avoid friction burns as the potter’s wheel turns some more…