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.

19th December - Two legs are best, but they are not always that reliable

It was 11pm and my partner, Ness, was due the next day for a two week visit for Christmas, I had to pick her up from the airport and I was so excited I could have pee'd myself. The weather had turned cold, and it's not unusual to have -10C overnight, but this night was -2C. The stars were refracting their blazing light from every inch possible of the sky, and the moon glowed, throwing the most immensely beautiful light, warming the look of the chilly fields, roof tops and lanes around. Other than that, my paltry, inefficient but sentimentally attached to me torch was the only other light source guiding my route.

On my little journey to the caravan, upon entering I realise that Chance, (one of my boys) did not have any water. Due to his newly discovered heart condition he drinks almost as much as I do, but water, not wine. I popped the boys into the caravan with the heater blasting making it so very cosy. My normal trip to the tap is not overly far, is on a slight slope but would appear now that it was fraught with danger.

On the way down I glanced at the pile of logs that I thought I must clear tomorrow, in case it snows. I must have missed seeing the most enormous blade of grass because I tripped over it and slipped down the tiny slope at the highest point, my foot went underneath me and then my whole weight crashed down onto my leg at an angle that made it snap like a dry stick, and the sound of it shot into the darkness like a canon. In fact, I heard three snaps, which presumably was my fibular breaking in three stages. My screams and swearing lit up the skyline in a blue haze. My torch had gone out, and I was alone on the frosted floor, wondering what the bloody hell I was going on. I had hoped that my neighbour had heard my cries, but she did not come. Strange things go through one's head when you are in such immense pain. My thoughts turned to my dogs that were alone in the caravan and Chance would be waiting for his water.

No one heard me scream, and unless I could haul myself up I knew that if I laid there for much longer I would get hypothermia and probably die. I had no idea how long I had been there, so somehow I got myself up. Now, they say when pedestrian victims of car accidents are struck they have been known to act out their last thought and punch their perpetrator before dropping down dead. I suspect before I hit the deck the water bottle and the importance of it was my last thought so I convinced myself that I had only sprained my ankle and carried on with my duty, hopped to the tap, filled the bottle with water and hopped 30 yards up hill to the caravan got up the step put the water in the bowl, got a elasticated bandage from the cupboard and sat on my bed.

I thought that if I just put my leg up overnight in a bandage then it would be alright in the morning and I would probably limp for a while. Then I looked at my leg. The swelling was colossal, and I thought Ness would kill me if I didn't get some ice on it and do the 'proper thing'. I wasn't looking forward to this, my trip was about 150 yards down to the neighbour's house, down the slope, down concrete steps and on the road but I managed and banged fully on the door. She was down the stairs in a flash and had me sitting in the chair and ice around my ankle before I knew where I was.

The most humiliating thing for me was being ferried in a wheel chair through the hospital wards to the emergency reception. Plus, I had my work gear on and was covered in sawdust and mud having chopped a lot of logs that day. The one thing I do when I am nervous is talk a lot, and I can come up with any subject, but when the x-ray was shown to me and I could see the gap where bone should be, it finally hit me what I had done. I was silenced. Then my whole body went into shock and I started to shake uncontrollably.

The following day, after two hours sleep I hopped again, from my neighbour's gite to the cottage to 'phone Ness to tell her that I would not be driving that afternoon to collect her. There was no time to organise anything. She had to get a taxi from the airport, a cost of 150 Euros, but at no time did she complain. It was a surreal situation. My neighbour went to the pharmacy and picked up hundreds of boxes of drugs and a set of crutches. Walking on these bloody things is more impossible than stilts and I fell over about 5 times trying to negotiate simple items, like the rug or a door.

My strict instructions were to rest my leg and put it up to help the swelling, sleeping was a nightmare with cushions balanced on the end of the bed, blankets wrapped around trying to cover all the bits that get freezing overnight when not covered. Difficult to do, with two dogs hogging the covers at the same time. However annoying my dibilitated state was, I was cooked for and waited on, driven around wherever I wanted to go for a whole week, and by week two I was walking on the cast without crutches. Five weeks down the line, cast is off and my Captain Hook impression is over. The French hospital staff were fantastic, the locals; people I hardly knew came from all directions offering assistance, gifting me groceries, organising and taking me to hospital appointments and generally making sure I had everything I needed.

I am a great believer that with every negative, it is possible to draw a positive. I had to look hard to find why I had been incapacitated in such a harsh environment, where it was necessary for me to be active and fit to manage just to stay warm at the least. It didn't take me long to find it. And what I found is that for two people who had drifted slightly apart found that they could again work together as a team and discover hidden treasures about each other that had been buried deep, coated in the armour created by a life not being richly lived and not following that heart path. I feel if you have a sound foundation it is better to work with what you have than to look elsewhere thinking that life will be more rewarding, because it won't.

I am glad I broke my leg, and you have to be me to understand why on earth I would say that.

17th December - Are any of us ready to live our dream?

Why the country indeed?

This morning I took a leisurely drive to an old Brocante, the French equivalent of the good old fashioned junk shop. A fool's pleasure, but sometimes an Aladdin's cave of handy stuff. The morning proved to be fruitful. On my drive home however, I had to stop in the the quiet road as I had disturbed a kestrel just having made a kill and she was feasting whilst resting on a fence post. I wish I had been on foot, as I would have proved less intrusive. She put up with my diesel engine and moved to a different post to feed and with one eye on me and another on her brunch she carried on. I had to move, but wish I could have stayed until she had finished. She insulted my clumsy carriage with an exit that would make the most colourful of aviators drool. She was lost to the acres of newly ploughed field and I offered a weak apology for my interuption. I hope she understood.


As always, my drive down the long winding hill towards home is a beautiful site and if done respectfully, one can take in the breadth of the beauty the valley has to offer. A few polite stone buildings set amongst a wealth of fields intermingled with forest, woods and a lake. It all lends itself to a site that never disappoints, and should be arrived upon slowly as the view is incredible. This trip took on a slightly new dimension, as 2 young fawns jumped out of the forest on my right into the trees on my left and disappeared. The boys (my dogs) thought I had taken on a new standard of communication as my voice reached a pitch only dolphins could understand, and I shouted to them that there were deer in the road and that they should both take a look. Of course they couldn't understand what I was saying with their paws over their ears, but the deer were away so quickly, the explanation was lost in a second. So, I revelled in the the site, and had not the slightest care of any 'traffic' behind me, the moment was too precious.

In this blog, I have written many times about the fight with the falling temperatures and the elements general, but to survive here you have to dig deep.

I might make it sound that I am suffering, but really it's all comparative. Yes, I could be in a modern house with modern facilities like central heating wandering around in t-shirt and jeans in mid winter complaining that the dustmen had left a margarine container lid in the road, or that there were cracks in the rendering of the wall opposite me. Instead I wear 8 layers every day, a hat, a scarf, thick walking socks and a padded gillet and am thrilled when I see the temperature gauge above 6 degrees when I get into the lounge in the morning.

As I look across the valley, the sunlight tickles the grass reflecting the dew and bouncing back a breath taking colour, the trees are beckoned by the incandescent setting ball of fire to stand proud and show off the jagged shapes that are leafless branches waiting silently and solemnly for Spring, and yet they don't understand the splendour of the long shadows shown on the ground so far beneath.

I ask myself, do I need a 29ft wide television, and a little silver box holding 4,000 channels, a £100 hair cut and colour or an item of stitched cotton and polyester mix with a minuscule particular badge which denotes I must pay 400 times what it cost to produce? No, I certainly don't. Each day is a brush with the very core of what each field and hedge and tree embellishes. The space in the sky is filled with great splendour. Those that surround me, have given me permission to be witness to their survival. The processed act of sleeping, waking and spending each day making sure that enough food is gathered, that procreation takes place and then after some sleep they get up the next day and do the same thing again.

The great tit, blue tit, black cap, coal tit, warblers, and more all now come and feast at my feeders. My selfish set up to encourage their company, hear their twitters and marvel in their actions. The crows still call in the dead of night and by day they fight off the several pairs of buzzards perusing their territory.

It's simple and yet I feel defined being part of it. Would I turn down a huge Domino's pizza if it were delivered at dinner time to my door? No, probably not, but I don't crave it. My life is now driven not by satiating a desire, it's driven by adopting a simple need and meeting it. I have relinquished the idea of surrounding and thus confusing my life full of items not required to sustain life and instead have worked to produce a balanced and happy individual.

Nature surrounds me, and nurtures me at the same time. I have deep respect for her prescence, and the affect she has on me and my surroundings. It is this which moves me to verbosity. If I cannot comprehend what is happening to my psyche, and live each day without this understanding passed onto me by my Mother, would I be just dead wood?

Though I suppose we are all simply dead wood. Eventually and simply compost, disappearing unnoticed and unmissed into the ground to feed another entity, to enable life in whatever form to commence again existing on what is left behind.

I'm OK with all of that, and long may she continue to take my breath away as she does every day.

9th December - Of mice and mackeral

Last night I didn't wash up my dinner plate. My damp sheets beckoned and I just had to go to bed, casting aspersions to the idea of doing any household chores.

I should have learnt by now, I have already had an episode that I don't want repeated, but do I listen? No. It's not about being house proud, it's more about not providing and watering hole for the entire population of local mice to come and visit, chat a while with their friends about the day. Find out if the recession has affected the neighbours, all two million of them. Maybe even have a drink and bite to eat, compare who can flatten their skull to fit through the eye of a sewing needle the fastest. And, who hadn't turned up tonight because they had been invited out to a special lunch with the new Kestral family in town.

But provide a watering hole I did. The biggest mistake was to leave a 30mm long piece of bone from the mackerel which I had devoured earlier, on the plate. It must have caused a frenzy. It would appear that when mice get excited they leave a concentration of miniature brown tic tak like deposits. But these little critters aren't going to improve your breath if you ingest them, they are going to kill you.

The bones left on my plate were abandoned, 3ft from the original scene of the crime. My mind wandered onto the conversion that took place between the assailants. "Oi, look Terry, that looks like Mackeral bones, think we'll have some of that, geese us an 'and will you?" Heave, heave, heave. "Bloody 'ell, didn't think these would be this slippery, pull ya weight will you? Oh shit, QUICK, SCARPER someone's coming!"

And shit they did.

I have never been a fan of bleach, indeed the bottle that I owned in my last house would have probably fetched a fortune on that well known auction site, being a collector's piece and all. But now, I use it like a woman possessed.

I never really liked tic taks much.

8th December - Ice is nice, but I prefer it with a gin and tonic

WTF? Loosely translated WTF means, what on earth? This little micro climate that is
La Chapelle Janson has me baffled. One minute you are sheltering from the rain the next, you are falling arse over tit on the ice on the path. I have gone to bed in horizontal rain to wake up to ice as far as I can see, then gone to bed freezing and wishing I had never been born being awoken by those little pebbles on top of the caravan. You know the ones where the rain drops carry small stones in their back packs.

Last night it was fairly cold, nothing more than you would expect. But as the night pushed itself up the hill of the next day, I could feel La Chapelle work its magic. The pillows start to become ice sheets and then someone starts to tighten the vice on my head, the cold bites and I contemplate suffocating under my quilt rather than be frozen to death with a pointless expression on my face. In the morning, after my taser shot, I enabled myself out of bed to what could only be described as an ice curtain. My work clothes where were I had left them, stood up by themselves in my shape. Whilst I pulled on my attire, I noticed that the door handle was glistening. Upon closer inspection I realised that the enitre door frame was covered in ice.

When one lives their dream, I always thought that one would prance around as if you had just won a contract with Colgate, just because you have a permanent smile on your face. Not so. You take what the univserse throws at you and you laugh, it's the only approriate response. One makes their bed and they had better lie in it. Though I challenge anyone to try my bed, I think you would rather sleep in the trees.