20th May - Change personified

The human psyche breaks new boundaries for me all the time. But this time, it has gone way beyond what I thought was possible. Only a few days ago my head was in such turmoil, where for the first time in my life I wanted to be medicated to numb my pain. In the process of working this through myself I feel more dense, in that my defences are stronger and my understanding of myself has reached new heights.

When I say I have been through this completely on my own I mean that my complete distress was in solitude, the time when I was coming out the other side was when my counselling stepped in. The offer was there for myself to be held when I felt at my worst but sometimes talking about it at the time doesn't help. You have to go through it and then talk about it.

Monday was the first morning for three days where I had not woken up crying. I felt like I had some air to breath and I almost didn't want to start the session. But then I did. I opened myself up and laid myself bare in front of someone I hardly knew. It was one of the most powerful, and empowering meetings I have had in my life. Counselling is not foreign to me, I wouldn't be here without the thousands of hours I have reeled through the shit in my life with people I hardly know. But this one, felt like a liberation, I saw the light above me and swam towards it. Everything spilled from my mouth, all the hurt, the trauma, the abuse, all of it. Most of which I have never told anyone. I burned off the old flesh with a blow torch and laid new seed for which I must grow. My mind, the newly ploughed field was prepared, and two and a half hours later, the reek of the betrayal I was still holding just left. The pain that had deafened me for 96 hours fell silent and I could once again hear.

150 minutes in exchange for 38 years of dense fog and stab wounds that would never heal. All gone.

Incredibly, desire set in. I started to desire. In the course of my mental revolution, brought on the onset of a sexual revolution. I began to desire and felt I actually could be desired. A person came to my attention, an interest picked up, shown. I was not expecting that. I felt uplifted being in contact with them. Excited, accelerated, youthful. I am inquisitive, and in a relentless pursuit of what I see to be an incredibly desirable individual, in every way. My thoughts have not left this person in 5 days, I cannot think of anything else, or anyone else. I have needed exactly this. I feel alive and hopeful. Almost invincible.

The painful lesson is that I have had to be broken in order to mend. I have tried to keep myself complete, knowing that I was only holding onto broken pieces when I just needed to let go, and part of this process is to be completely hopeless, utterly vulnerable, and now I think I can build a person of stature.

And that's the whole point isn't it? None of us know how long we have, what a waste to think that we have never been totally exposed, completely dismantled, in a way that when we claw our way back up we can truly be, truly see and truly be seen.

17th May - Sunday. No worship left

Yesterday I tried to climb the wall. Don't do it. It doesn't work. I slid ungracefully to the bottom to join my heart. I tried to scrape with my fingers at the cold stone, so I could climb out of myself and reach safety.

The incandescent feelings I had just a while ago have been blackened, and now I am naked. There is nothing left of me, I don’t know my name, where I am, when I am. I have no identity. My flesh has been stripped from my bones and only my skeleton is left. My heart still beats, but the pain and sickness that I feel is unbearable I want to gut myself with a spoon.

I have to pace from the end of the house to the other, crouching and crying, sobbing uncontrolled, rocking, wanting, needing comfort, but there is no one here. I am alone with the betrayal and it is rotting me from the inside like acid. I try to grab onto furniture to help me stay upright, to stop me falling into the pit below my feet, from where I may not return. The ground is not solid beneath me, I am so frightened, the air is thick and chokes me, my lungs are filled with poison, I want to cough and spit, and get the taste out of my mouth. My mouth is wide open, straining, bellowing the pain through the fog.

I want the stench of this decomposing deceit to leave me in peace but it is here, lingering, laughing while I wail. I normally don't cry, don't use tears to mend my hurt, I didn't even cry when my mother died in front of me, but now I cannot stop. It’s not conscious; it’s a tidal wave, caused by the cataclysmic words uttered by the one I love, wrecking my credence. I put my feeble hands out to stop the bank of water but it cuts through me, humiliating me with how pathetic and vulnerable I am. It takes me clean off my feet, doesn't put me out of my misery, instead keeps me hanging, waiting for me to be conscious again so it can have another bash. All seats feel electrified to me, I cannot sit, I have to pace, as if exercise will rush the blood through and cleanse me of this feeling. I have to get the lies out of my system, I have to; I urge them, beg them, but they are immovable.

I feel I am being haunted, everywhere I turn the ghost of deception is clanking his chains and terrifying me, I am at the cliff’s edge, he taunts me, and says to me, ‘shall I push you?’ I want him to, so I can become unconscious, where my images of her with another man will fade. Block out please, the exchanges of dripping sweat and moans of pleasure that I am not a party to, pumping blood, tightened stomach muscles wet lips, dirtied sheets. How did it start? Where did they go? His place or hers? What is his name? Does he know hers? Does he call it out, like I used to? How did they start? Did she start kissing first, or did he start it? How did she feel while his was pumping all his filth into her, did she think of me at all, or did she just enjoy it, with me so far out of her mind that I am invisible? What did they do afterwards? Did she stay and be held by him like I used to hold her? Did he brush her skin and take pleasure in the tightness of her stomach, and kiss her neck like I used to? Did she orgasm like she used to with me, did she tell him it was the best one she had had? Like she used to with me.

You can’t climb walls, they are cold and un-obliging. They don't take away the pain. They laugh at you and bounce back your screaming until it deafens you, so you are so far inside your head you feel you might implode.

15th May - An ending defined

I have been dismembered today, the kind of force that sweeps through you, leaving nothing but a skeleton. I don’t know why I am breathing, I only think it is breathing as my lungs are filled up with poison, and my abdomen wound so tightly that a chisel could not break through it.

It’s the kind of feeling brought about by those fateful words relating to a death. Grieving takes on many forms, it can be the death of a family member, a friend, or just an acquaintance but sometime we forget that this rocket hits you also when you end a relationship. In my case, I was doing relatively OK until my former partner told me that she had slept with other people in the course of our break up, one liaison as recently as last week.

To dismantle a soul like mine needs a tough stance. I have seen so much horror in my days that I could say that I had experienced most, and on some occasions more than others. But today, my displacement comes from the thought of a person who I still love being touched intimately by another human. One of them was even a man, and to a lesbian, sometimes that can be abhorrent.

Wouldn’t it be easier to hate, and want to destroy this enemy in the clutches of my heart? To wreak havoc upon them and try to make them experience the numbness and insipid taste in my mouth, and make their heart beat so hard that it seems as it’s on the table in front of her. I am so diluted, weakened by my love that I feel compassion and longing. I want back those good feelings I had just a few weeks ago, when everything around me was dancing in a pale light, it seemed only we could see. Now there is only betrayal and a foul stench where my trust and respect has quickly decomposed.

The woman mainly touches with her heart and when you have an intimate moment with a her, it comes from a place that is usually deeply buried and so you feel enamoured when it is exposed to you. This I believe is the connection between lesbians, that men can never taint. I am still connected, but in pulling back the line, I have found a tether, shredded and released in haste without care, almost callous in its conception. I may bleed to death, unnoticed. And when the blood is gone, all that will be left is a question drizzling from my heart: Why?

I believe a great release would be to cry, to provide an oasis for my grief but I am dried up and spent and feel nothing that is clear.

I want nothing more than to bathe in the warm rays of an unconditional love and attraction, to be settled in my emotional boat and drift purposefully and calmly across a inviting sea filled with invited but unknown creatures to sooth and comfort my journey.

But, instead, I am in a black desert, scraping around alone and unsupported, trying to escape the hurt I feel and make this sickness cease, just so I can feel conscious again.

25th April - Who's playing whom?

What a week. Ness has just visited and we have had a fantastic time. We talked and talked and it has felt like we have gelled again. I have said that I want to start again and put the past behind us. I feel so different now, so completely calm. I haven't seen her for 3 months, and what a change. I still feel incredibly attracted to her.

I am going to move house and try to get away from the life here which is so hard. I am so sick of not being able to shower in my own house, and even just turn on the tap inside, to make a drink. I feel that the move is absolutely the right thing, and at least I will be so much closer to the port so it is easier for her to visit.

She joked that before she came out she has decided to finish it, and now she has to go back and tell people that we are still on. I am overjoyed.

As she drives away from me, as she leaves to go home she tells me that she thinks we are going to be OK.

I am skipping along, packing my boxes.

14th April - There's the rub

It is apparent now why my arrangement for no contact with Ness was so well received.

I have heard today that she is finished with me. She wants to move on, have her own life. What I don't understand is why there was no discussion with me about this process. It's as if we have gone from January where she had a near death experience and she suddenly felt like life was so precious and she wanted to be with me, we just had to work out the logistics.

No matter that I had already had my own near death experience in December breaking my leg in the freezing weather and the dark. It's odd that this did not change anything for her!

Well I have told her that I don't want to end it and I want to talk about it. She has agreed and so I look forward to her visit, in a few days.

4th April - Has spring left it behind?

Now.

I haven't spoken to my partner for 17 days.

To me it feels odd. I feel a lack of pressure and disappointment, but at the same time I feel there is a block of my life missing, that nothing else will fill. It's strange, owning this gap. Time fades memories, experiences, recounts of true events, but when I am bludgeoned by the reality of how harsh life can be, it takes up space that in my mind should be filled with pleasantries and pleasure.

This is why, I can only assume, that at times when an ordinary person may feel content in their task I am overtaken with grief. Grieving for the lost intimacy, the secluded touches that penetrate the mind and soul. Words sometimes unspoken that fill the heart with warmth and stature.

I yearn for the tenderness that comes with a relationship borne out of sexual desire, the closeness that beckons when two people share the most intimate space together, an energy and a passing designed for just one person to share with another. A space connected with sounds, smells and knowledge which cannot be explained, the gaps of silence filled with safe wanting and yet a satisfaction which does not need explanation. I have lost this along my journey.

The gap created deafens me every day, shouting and waving like a demented soul drowning in the need. I have, I believe the life now that many would search for if it were possible for them to imagine. I am surrounded by beauty and simplicity that nature provides, a humbleness that needs no justification. It dulls unnecessary desire but drives the needs to share what is seen, which otherwise is almost wasted.

I battle with the solitude in the hope that one day it will flourish, producing a well rounded person with more an echo of morality and self worth than what was present when I first came here.

I live, I dream, I hope.