Not In Love. Not Successful. Not Young, but hey, Less is More!

"God loves everybody, don't remind me." The National, Graceless. November 1st, 2013.

 A year ago this month I was falling in love and having one of the best birthdays of my life. Today I feel down, but on the upside I've learnt to meditate properly and the greatest love in my life would now be a child.

I saw The Child this week and he asked me what the would be the "best thing of my entire life". I asked what he meant - the best thing that I've done, or the thing that others would think of as success, or just what feels good to me? He said "just what feels good to you". So I said it was to love and have loved. To know that sometimes I have talked to people and it's made them feel better. Sometimes people are very sad and I know that at least once I've made a difference to someone who was so sad that they wanted to die. The Child is nine and when we hang out we usually talk about which super powers we want the most, but every now and then it gets pretty deep.

 So, "what about you?" I asked.

"Well," he said, serious and sweet, "this is my best feeling thing. When I'm with you. And when I'm with the dogs ..."

This is high praise. He loves those dogs, so for me to get in with the dogs ... well that broke my heart open. I knew what he meant too - that he feels safe and happy and full of playfulness when we get together. I'm an extra safety net for the heart of a child, so even though I'm struggling with feelings of sadness today I know that my life is worthwhile. Yes, I know it's worthwhile anyway, but it's useful for me to think of something beautiful or good, something that reminds me of why we bother playing out this whole thing (life) at all.

I did a short Vipassana course about a week ago. Three days. It was 'good', but when Goenka's recorded voice told us that to be a serious practitioner of Vipassana it was best to be celibate I found myself slowing shaking my head from side to side. I wondered how many other people were doing the same.

I get it of course. The advice may have made a lot of sense for the men it was first designed for, especially when the first bit says "no raping". I tend to think this kind of thing would be great for the many men in jails who have been taught the Vipassana method of meditation. It's unlikely many men would be jailed for rape in India unless it was extreme and resulted in the woman's death as happened in the New Dehli bus attack in December 2012. I know that there are female molesters and rapists, but they are relatively rare compared to the numbers of men.  

In the same breath, Goenka warns against taking mind altering substances including 'the alcohol'. Beware the alcohol as before you know it you'll be stealing a small Yak from a beautiful woman's neighbour, killing it (fucking it first perhaps, depends what you're into), eating it, fucking the woman, then waking up and sorrowfully blaming that temptress for leading you down the path of passion. Dunno about you, but I'm a bit sick of all the stories in which women are leading men off the path of good (Christian stories are particularly rich with it).

I have my limits firmly in place when it comes to substances, so if a hot farmer beckons me as I'm leaving Kaukapakapa I'm pretty sure I won't steal his neighbours livestock so that he can roast me a lamb. I also can't imagine I would immediately leap into his bed after a few glasses of wine (I was celibate for an entire year whilst living in Korea, I do have standards).

Imagine this little scenario:

"Well love, you look a bit tired, all that hippy shit worn you out has it? Maybe you'd like to join me in my king sized manly bed for a bit of rest?"

"Oh what are you thinking?! I'm practically a nun for the love of meditating and bringing peace to the world! I can't jump into your incredibly comfortable bed and allow you to pleasure me!"

"Ah ha ha, okay then, long as you're sure ... but you must be hungry ... just grab a little lamb from Wally Ditherall from next door and I'll make us a beauty of a roast ..."

"Oh, but I can't steal, that would be breaking my precepts, what are you man, mad?"

"Ha ha ha," he slaps a meaty farm worked thigh, "just kidding love, I know you take that shit seriously. Hey, tell you what, you'll sleep a lot better on the floor of my cow shed after you've had a wine. My mum left some here after she visited yesterday."

"Ohh, actually, a glass of wine would be good ..." and before I knew it there was blood on my hands and a farmer in my dell.

I'm meant to go for a day's meditation tomorrow but don't know if I can handle it. Perhaps this wave of sadness is just the debris coming loose after doing the retreat? It's a purification process, so a bit of crying is probably in order. 

When it gets too much I just think "I'm one of the best feeling things in the life of a child, so it must be okay". 

Tomorrow I'm going to the beach with Handsome Rob and right now The Sexy ex just called and wants to see me. Hmm. Time to mediate.

Just Quickly ....

Sometimes you just have to get your plastic ray gun. Even when you're a grown woman.

Hey there kittens,

I'm sitting with Toscat and have just had a couple of very nice gin and tonics accompanied by chocolate biscuits (macaroons if you must know).

It's been a good day.

I listened to some of these audio CD's by Joe Vitale (hypnotherapist) this morning and felt like I got a clear reminder of how to deal with any 'obstacles'.

Vitale talks about a Hawaiian method of healing (which sounds basic) called Oponopono. What isn't basic is the level of responsibility one can decide to take regarding any 'obstacles' in life. 
http://www.mrfire.com/article-archives/new-articles/worlds-most-unusual-therapist.html

You will notice in all my blogs over the last six months how I have struggled with the pain of heartbreak, how I would forgive and then seem to be knocked back yet again. Well I've decided that those obstacles will be my pathway to deeper levels of love. 

This means that no matter what comes into my life I will use it to look at what's IN ME, not as a judgement of a person, event or object. Sure, I will make stupid judgements every day. I am human. Yet I would like to minimise the poison I might unwittingly spread when I fall into a victim mindset, when I churn over pain or problems and find I can't let go, or that I'm becoming cynical.

Yes, I've been feeling cynical lately, and I don't like it. I've always been resilient. I've always taken the knocks and climbed back up, again and again. This last 'romance knock' really did make me wonder if I could ever love again. 

Fortunately, I listened to the right thing today and I realise that this 'knock' was just another chance to love, not as a little egoistic entity, but as the presence behind all that Is. Yeah, I know. Sounds a bit weird, possibly pompous, but that's the best way I can put it.

What I've learned (or 'unlearned') through Vipassana meditation is how to hone in on that 'stillness within' quite quickly. What I needed and got today was that I can still also direct that stillness into pure love and forgiveness - of myself and therefore of anything or anyone that appears to be 'outside' of me.

That's all I shall say for now. I'm back in that saddle babies. I'm getting back up. I shall Love again. And again. And again. And again .... xxx

Love My New Place, and Gaslighting ...

Tuesday 23rd July 2013

As I type this, I can look straight out into ‘the bush’ (overseas visitors call it rainforest). Even in winter it’s a lush green comfort. The clock ticks lazily. My room is small and perfect, the cream walls and curtains bringing a sense of calm. In recent weeks I had the dreaded ‘strep throat’. It dragged on for two weeks before I finally went to the doctor, got antibiotics, and has taken more than another week to finally feel well. As a result, progress unpacking has been slow, but it’s been a joy to have a bigger space to work with.

I’m flatting with one woman, she’s older than me, has a fine sense of humour and is also into meditating. She owns this amazing three level A Frame house nestled into the trees in Titirangi. We share the kitchen and bathroom on the middle floor, but both have our own living room area. On the bottom level there’s an old fireplace which works well, and it’s been a great pleasure to light it and stare at the fire on these cold nights.

Ex lovers’ have been keen to keep my fires stoked in recent months, but that’s something I have to be a bit wary of. When I say ex lovers’, I don’t mean The Rooster. That’s one bird that I just can’t fantasise about. I suppose that was a sign anyway, that all those months of his anger, coldness, twisting of truth, left me unable to think of him with much passion. Even when I was at Vipassana Meditation for 10 days and burned with lust, it wasn’t the thought of him that created that excitement. When I did think of him, I would always see that strange fixed look on his face, as if I wasn’t really there at all.

To re-cap, that had shifted when I saw him on his birthday and still felt so much love. Yet surely I had to notice how it was me that moved towards him, that it was me who tried so hard to win back the love I had been promised ‘forever’. Surely I have since learnt that promises of forever seem to be a seal of doom.

 I think to a time when he once texted some outlandishly gothic sentiment when we were still in the thick of our romance. It left me cold. It was something like ‘even if I were dead to you I would still go on loving you forever with my wasted heart’. That isn’t exact, but it’s pretty close. I remember wondering whether to write it down at the time, because it was so full on. It’s the kind of thing I might have quite liked and believed when I was a teenager. For some reason I reminded him about it when we last spoke, and he denied it. Denied it in that very slow and cold way.

Today I read about a form of abuse employed by narcissists’ that’s been dubbed ‘gaslighting’. I don’t know if The Rooster was deliberately  trying to destroy me (cos some people do enjoy that) but I’d prefer to think that he simply wasn’t aware of his own mind or feelings well enough to be honest with himself or anyone else. I still think our relationship was wonderful and I still think there was a great deal of value in it. It was 'meant to be' and then 'meant to be over'. I can see that.

He did employ some ‘gaslighting’ techniques though, those things that made me second guess myself, things where I was going to have to apologize to him even though he was the one who was nasty to me. Even when he did finally apologize and admit that he had been a dick (not me as it turns out) he was hiding the trump card under his sleeve.  I remember asking him if there was anything I needed to know at least a week before I went away to meditate. That might have been a good time to mention that German Mother was back on the scene.

How defensive he was when I cried in disbelief. How cold and calculating he sounded as he informed me that it was a choice based on where he wanted to go ‘sexually’. He ignored my comments that pulled him up on lies he must have told me, and denied it when I reminded him of his ‘forever’ text.

Our love, once the thing of dreams come true, was reduced to that disgusting phone call. But he’s right in the end. He did choose the ‘right path’, because I can’t be with someone who doesn’t know his truth (at best) or who might be dangerously narcissistic (at worst).

So What Really Happened?

At the end of January his adoration suddenly caved in and appeared to turn into hatred. Literally overnight this happened. I forgave him for shouting and screaming at me. I forgave him for ignoring me as I cried all night. I forgave him for ignoring me and making a full breakfast for himself, and not for me, the following morning. I kept waiting for the apology. Instead, when I tentatively asked if what was going on, he was cold. The cold gave way to terrible anger again, as he told me I was a dick to have asked for his attention when he was tired

Since that day I emailed him countless times, being as fair as I possibly could be, continuing to say I loved him. He kept on and on insisting that I ‘just admit’ I’d been a dick. I wouldn’t. I would admit that my need for communication, affection and attention was ill-timed, but I would not collude in my own abuse. Many times I wondered if I had ‘just admitted’ I was a dick, that he could then have ‘forgiven me’ and we would have been ‘on track’.

All I could think of was how much I loved him and that he’d had a terrible breakdown. If someone has a break down, you stand by them.

 So I did.

Even as he continually denied the severity of his behaviour, I thought that surely we would work things out. The fact that he wouldn’t see me face to face didn’t help matters. The only time we did, he softened. Perhaps German Mother had already moved back into his bed, the smell of her skin replacing mine, her desire to please him without question too intoxicating to deny?

The smell of skin, of baking, of a routine they had established over a period of years. How convenient that she’d never moved her things into storage. It was her oversized, yellow 1980’s style couch I’d cried on all night. How nice it will be for them to slip back into each other, into old habits and new found appreciation of each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

As much as I loved him, a thread of wisdom has pulled me clear of the mess. For so long I have missed his languid voice, the strange sense of humour we shared, our love of music, our slightly obsessive desire to watch music documentaries together. He was a soul mate. I do think that still. But we all have more than one soul mate, and this was yet another learning experience.

He says he has followed his heart, but the heart is a most unreliable organ to rely on in an overly romantic sense. People will do anything in the name of ‘love’. Kill. Steal. Lie. Cheat. Stab you in the back as soon as it’s turned. It’s all so ephemeral, the wanting of the heart.  Besides, he had his heart in one hand and his cock in the other. All that beating must have been confusing.

The part I identified with most strongly in the gaslighting article (link posted below) was regarding disbelief. I really found it absolutely bizarre that someone could love me on a Friday and hate me by Saturday! Ha ha!

What is “Gaslighting”?

Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse used by narcissists in order to instill in their victim’s an extreme sense of anxiety and confusion to the point where they no longer trust their own memory, perception or judgment. 

(There are different phases described, and the one I’ve copied from the article is exactly what happened with The Rooster):

The Devaluation Phase:

The relationship has now shifted into the “devaluation phase”, and it is as if a lethal freak fog has descended over the relationship. Almost overnight the narcissist becomes decisively cold and uncaring. The victim’s falls from grace is a hard one, they cannot seem to do anything right anymore; the narcissists loving words turn to criticism, everything the victim tries ends in a negative effect, and they find themselves devalued at every turn. Totally confused, the victim has no idea what is happening, and they become increasingly stressed, unhappy and depressed with the situation. The roller-coaster relationship leaves the victim in a state of constant chaos, as if always “walking on eggshells”. All their energy is directed at defending themselves, so the narcissist is not getting the positive attention that they crave; this is likely to be the time when the narcissist starts to look for a fresh provider of narcissistic supply.

The narcissist gaslighting is now at its peak, and there is no reasoning with them. Confused by the narcissist’s bizarre behaviour, the victim works harder and harder to please their abuser in the hopes of getting the relationship back to where it was in the start, when it felt safe. Deprived of their “narcissistic drug”, the victim is suddenly thrown into strong withdrawal symptoms.

http://narcissisticbehavior.net/

http://narcissisticbehavior.net/category/the-effects-of-gaslighting-in-narcissistic-victim-syndrome

As interesting as all the labels are, what matters most for me is continuing to meditate. I have not talked about how he treated me in January as I was ‘protecting him’ (and therefore any criticism of the fact that I still loved him). Bitching alone isn’t interesting or helpful, so my aim here is to share my experience with the hope of saving someone else from needless suffering.

The Rooster’s original abusive tantrum was such a shock. I thought it was a short term ‘spaz’ and that he would ‘wake up’ and get some help.

I now share this with the understanding that there wasn’t anything I could do for The Rooster, nothing I could have ‘done right’.

If someone is in denial and thinks it’s ok to call you a dick, to scream at you that they “don’t care” when you ask for a hug, then move on. Do not imagine that they are simply in need of more love. They may have already taken your love and used of it what they wished. You have outgrown your use. Don’t waste time feeling sorry for them. Don’t hang around hoping for that big high you had for the first four months (or however long it’s been). Yes, you are part of them, they are part of you, consider projection and all the rest if you must, but be wise. Go towards peace and kindness. If a man holding a knife was walking towards you and screaming with rage, you wouldn’t smile and keep walking towards him with open arms, thinking that with just enough understanding he might not kill you. You would fucking run!

So if you gotta run, run!

And as for me, well, I’m not going short of anything darlings. I have the perfect place to live and I’m enjoying being primarily vegetarian. I have reduced my Ritalin (for ADHD) since doing Vipassana, and on Saturday I’m going to an all day mediation course in Onehunga. I did the one day course last month too, it felt quietly supportive to meditate with others who have been through the10 day experience.

The benefits of doing Vipassana are so numerous that it just blows my little mind. I can’t recommend it enough. I thought hypnotherapy was amazing (and it is), but meditating in this particular fashion is deeper than I could have imagined possible.

Meditating is a form of hypnosis, and when you are aware of that, then you are the scientist of your own experiences. You can watch pain come and go. You can feel pleasure burn and pass through you like a wave. One thing is certain. It’s always changing. Love appears to come and go. Hatred can flare up where desire reigned.  For me, the only way out is through. To sit and observe. To be bored. To be thrilled. To think I know it all. To know nothing. To feel it All!

May All Beings Be happy!

Love and Now

The Love Ruler! February 7th 2013.

In Love. Out of Love. In Love. Same same.

It is possible that I should be inventing an ‘app’ (for phones etc) called ‘The Love Ruler’. Instead of measuring dicks it would measure meaning assigned to words based on the context of such words. The measurement might go from 1 to 20, 1 meaning there is very little love to be had in the situation, no matter what words were spoken. 20 might be the kind of love that was completely in service of others, the Mother Theresa’s of the world.

 If you had a relative or friend who chose not to see or communicate with you, but who sent you a birthday text saying “Happy birthday, luv you!”, you could then enter these factors into the app which would draw the conclusion that this is probably Love Factor 2. There’s enough love for her to have thought of you, and she would probably cry at your funeral if you died tomorrow. But there aint enough love for her to have a coffee with you in ‘real life’ because that involves time and effort. At this point you then can indulge in self pity and anger that this person doesn’t Love to your standard. You can then get all cry baby about it and turn it into a drama.

Another example might be when you’re falling ‘in love’  with someone and they say things that lead you to believe this is the person you will grow old with. You key in the phrase/s along with how long you've been seeing them and the app might say “Love Factor 4: this could be love, or infatuation. Beware excessive claims of love that come too quickly. Let actions show you what this person is really feeling.”

This is the kind of shit I think of without even meaning to.

Fortunately I’m continuing to enjoy my re-reading of Eckhart Tolle, and when you’re practising being in the Now and allowing love to flow through you, 'measuring' Love takes a back seat.

I used to think of love as the vehicle to carry me through a hard time, but I get it now: love doesn’t carry you, it must move through you.

There’s this really popular little story called ‘footsteps’ that Christians cream themselves over. I can say that because I used to be a Christian.  In it the person is having a rough time and she looks back to see one set of footprints on the beach  (can’t be that rough, she’s on a nice beach). She gets all cry baby about it and asks god why he has forsaken her (cos god's footprints should be there too!).  Jesus pops up and says  “my child, when you saw only one set of footprints, it is then that I carried you”. Cue the sigh of relief. If you want to make this funnier, imagine Jesus as played by Cartman from Southpark.

I am beloved spider.

I think  ‘Jesus’ is symbolic in this story, but it isn’t necessarily that helpful if you want to get closer to enlightenment. Perhaps it sounded too sexy for Jesus to say “when you saw one set of footprints I was moving inside you like electricity moves through cable”. Even then, that wouldn't be entirely true, because the person is still attributing all the power and love to something else.

‘He’ may have gone on to explain:

“I am not a separate being to be worshipped, I am a symbol of the Love you sought externally and has now been transformed into a core of peace that springs from the eternal. Love moves through you. It is never outside you. It's only when you sat still on the beach feeling sorry for yourself that you eventually took notice of your own connection to 'source' or 'god'."

And now to quote dear Eckie once more on the topic of relationships (could be any relationship, but I’m thinking of my ‘romantic one’).

“So whenever your relationship is not working, whenever it brings out the “madness” in you and in your partner, be glad. What was unconscious is being brought up to the light. It is an opportunity for salvation. Every moment, hold the knowing of that moment, particularly of your inner state. If there is anger, know that there is anger. If there is jealousy, defensiveness, the urge to argue, the need to be right, an inner child demanding love and attention, or emotional pain of any kind – whatever is is, know the reality of that moment and hold the knowing. The relationship then becomes your sadhana, your spiritual practice”.

Page 158, The Power of Now.

Most of us are way too dependent on the idea of Love rather than the actual practice of Love. Babies, no one on earth has a perfect relationship, and we are all going to die. That’s just how it is. And I’m okay with that. For Now.

On a completely different note, I am going through a Slade phase. Yes. That’s correct. The 1970’s glam-pop sensation. This involves playing ‘Coz I Luv You’ and watching all these different live versions of it on Youtoob. I really like the electric violin, and Noddy Holder’s voice is even more amazing than the guitarist’s hair (and that’s really saying something). I realise this comment might appear random after talking Love and Now, but I suppose music really does help me connect into the moment (or it can help indulge in any range of emotions).

So smile. Noddy Holder is.

Hoarding, Hypnosis and seeing Rose.

On Waiheke, December 2012.

Hoarding, Hypnosis and Happy.

December 23^rd 2012

I’m exhausted in that way that makes me wonder if a giant Octopus Man enslaved me for the night for purposes of labour. I feel I have been dragging stones under the sea to build his castle. He then convinced me that I was dreaming (like a strange Derren Brown hypnosis experiment with a somnambulist) and quickly dried my hair with one of his many tentacled hands before returning me to the land lubbing world. I awaken feeling annoyed and bloaty faced, limbs aching.

The best thing to do is whack on one of my hypnosis tracks (I’ve made up quite a few) and shift some of the weight from my shoulders and mind. Even a minimal shift can have such an incredible impact on the rest of the day. What hypnosis really comes down to is changing your mental and physical state enough that you’re able to access the subconscious more easily. It’s outside of belief systems and yet can easily include them.

My work has finished up for the year, and now I’m going to divide much of the next four or five weeks between visiting mum and my beloved on Waiheke. I’ve been helping mum to do some cleaning and sorting as she’s a hoarder and it’s been a bit out of hand for about 15 years. I realise it’s an issue of on-going loss, unresolved issues, of grief, so it’s not as simple as barking “have a garage sale”. I am also of the hoarding tendency but am doing my best to ‘break the cycle’, ha ha!

When I lived in Korea I downloaded the ‘Hoarders’ series from America and studied the way the psychologist and cleaning specialist would tackle the problem with each person. These Hoarders were of a different order. They make my mum’s piles of boxes, clothes, magazines and avalanches of mail look quite manageable. These were the Hoarders of America whose homes were often more like dumping grounds, sedimentary layers of rotting pumpkin and dead cat amidst the valuables. I would watch it and notice how the severe hoarders who succeeded in cleaning and maintaining the environment were the ones who admitted they needed help on the mental and emotional levels. They got this help and it had to be on-going.

Those who said things like “I need a bigger house”, or “my husband/sister/daughter/whoever is storing things here too you know!” were the ones who could have lived in a ten bedroom mansion and still filled it with an assortment of treasure and trash by the end of a year. The ones filled with bitterness and self pity, who blamed others and claimed that expired food was ‘absolutely fine’ were unlikely to change. They were the ones losing their health, their families, their minds. Denial only seems to lead to a living death.

 Most hoarders have a form of obsessive compulsive disorder or some other issue stemming from anxiety or depression.  Watching those shows fills me with a mixture of sadness, hope and horrified excitement. There’s a strange car crash feeling to seeing someone living like that, especially when they are often intelligent, articulate and attractive.

Mum and I watched the one about a British man, Richard Wallace. There’s a clip on Youtube showing how out of control the hoarding had become. He lived like a mole, burrowing furtively under the small gaps left under the tops of doorways, sliding over the newspapers he hoped to one day archive. The only thing that really helped was the kindness and patience of the local landscaper. The psychologist wouldn’t help because Richard said it wasn’t a mental problem, it was a storage problem.

The gardener offered to do a big clean up in the garden and asked locals to help out. They cleaned up tonnes (literally) of rubbish and in the process Richard’s heart was softened. He felt cared for and connected to the community instead of judged and picked on. Even though he was still in denial, the gardener persisted. As they looked at the paper and rubbish piled high on the inside of the front door, Richard wept to think of how horrified his mother would be if she were still alive. It was then he could admit he had a mental problem.

I would like to watch more of those Hoarder programmes again; I get really inspired regarding the right approach to take when someone is not well mentally and finding it impossible to order their environment. Although hypnosis may not be ideal for severe mental disorders and addictions, it can be a very effective tool, and I’m going to experiment with myself in terms of increasing order and clarity in my environment.

In fact, you could now say my life is going to be one big hypnosis and healing experiment!

Things are going well with my Love. When I say ‘going well’, I mean that it is perfectly imperfect. If you are truly falling in love, honestly seeing the person in front of you rather than some projected fantasy, then discussing whatever fears or hopes arise is incredibly empowering. I am still quite amazed that we've finally found each other. I'm spending Christmas with mum, then I'm going to My Love's place a day or so after that for a lovely catch up.

When I last visited him, I knew I was going to bump into Rose that weekend. You may recall that I had a friendship come to it's completion at the end of last year. 'Rose'  lives on Waiheke, and it's a small place so I knew that I'd see her soon enough.  I'd seen her twice in traffic, two days in a row the week prior and realised that the angels were lining things up in order to be dealt with.

At Enclosure Bay, processing a complicated situation inside my head.

My Love had to work on one of the days I was visiting, and so I went to Enclosure Bay for a swim. I'd intended to go to Little Palm (Nudey) beach originally, but this inner voice kept whispering that it would be better to go to Enclosure Bay. As I approached I saw that the only people there were a family, all looking out to sea, languid. I recognised Rose's sister and thought "oh shit, what do I do?". Then I  decided this must be the right time to say hello. Instead of turning around and going to another beach, I boldly approached, smiling and saying hello. Her mum, sisters, nephews were all friendly. From behind our sunglasses Rose and I could not reach each others eyes, and so safely we smiled and conducted around two minutes of small talk.  Lying next to her was a large man. "Is this your partner?" I asked rather nosily, blurting it out in true ADD style.

"Oh yeah," she said, as he sat up groggily in the heat to shake my hand,

and introduced us. He had a really nice face, a good hand shake.

They wished me merry Christmas, I commented on how much her nephews had grown. I walked away, around the bay, feeling strange. 

I couldn't help but go over the whole scenario from the end of last year. I was severely depressed and begged to stay one night with her on Waiheke to lift my spirits. I felt so sad and fragile, but she refused and told me she would be busy 'right up till next year'. Fortunately Lisa of the North welcomed me with open arms, and the difference was glaring.

A few weeks after this, there was a misunderstanding about when we were meeting for dinner, and even when I apologised repeatedly, she ignored emails and texts and then deliberately stood me up for dinner. She texted me five minutes before we were supposed to meet to say she was not meeting me. That was the night I reunited with Lou and Becky from schooldays. When I told them what happened they shook their heads with a grim smile and said I was better off without her. 

I walked around the rocks, swam, fell asleep on a vintage table cloth I'd scored at the Waiheke Markets for $1. I realised something. I thought I was always helping Rose. Sometimes I really was. Yet in all the years of allowing her to treat me in ways that were thoughtlessly unkind, I was not actually helping her at all. I was behaving as if it were okay for her to demand more of me than was actually possible. Whenever there were misunderstandings, I had to apologise enough for all the hurts ever incurred, hurts that were not my responsibility. She even told me I was lying once, when I told her how I was feeling. If someone can't allow you to have your own feelings, then I guess it's because they're afraid of their own. My Christmas wish for her is that she will face her feelings and take responsiblity for them so that she's able to have loving and trusting relationships. 

Such a different Christmas this year! Hope you celebrate in a way that is enjoyable, creates more peace, more love and more yumminess! Love, Candice. x

Thank you Angels, for the love in my life.

On Waiheke, evening falls.

Falling In Love, Healing/Counselling, Freedom.

There's cloud hanging over the native bush that I look into everyday from inside this little box I live in. Actually, hang isn't the right word. It's more like I am living on the edge of a world about to sink or break off into a nothing sky. Like the 'nothing' in 'Never Ending Story'.

Taken when the sun decided to come out.

Shall I tell you how I fell in love on Saturday? I could tease you about it. It's someone I've known for a long time, someone funny and kind. I realised that when  I started saying 'she' you'd think I might have taken up residence on the island of Lesbos. In one sense that would be true, for the great Love I've found is indeed a woman. Yes folks. I found the Love of my Life. I found The One. And it's Me. 


Sounds Narcissistic? Well, I guess that depends on how you're treating those around you, it will give you a clue as to weather your self love is massively Ego or not. If you're running around trampling people in the name of self love, then it might be time to review the kind of self love one indulges in. 


I have always wanted to 'love myself' as we are ALL advised to do. We have heard this so often that it's almost meaningless. It's like 'being yourself'. Sure, it's a lovely sentiment, but truly being there for, and loving, yourself ... well fuck, that's a big call.


I interviewed myself about this sudden change of heart. Why now? What had 'she' done to suddenly 'deserve' this love?
The reply was that it was just a feeling. That there 'she' (Me) was ... helping her mum clean up the courtyard in the pouring rain on Saturday, and I knew I'd been overlooking the person I'd searched for all my life. It's a useful tool, this 'self interview'. I'll call the interviewer aspect 'the Watcher'. The 'me' being interviewed is the part that has not been terribly engaged with my life up till this point. Perhaps it's the male energy that Tracey Burns of Beyond The Veil helped me to integrate. We'll call him Horsey.


Watcher: So, it was a feeling. Tell me about that feeling.
Horsey: Well, it was a thought first. I thought 'that's the kind of person I want to be with. Someone who helps their mum. Someone patient. Someone kind.'
Watcher: And what was it like, compared to falling in love with someone else?
Horsey: It was the same. I was suddenly infatuated and liked everything about her. Even annoying things became cute. I suddenly found the things I wasn't sure about didn't matter.
Watcher: How did you feel about her before?
Horsey: I thought she was really nice. Good to talk to. Funny and kind. But I wasn't in love with her. It was a bit like how people describe a marriage with someone they care for but are no longer in love with. I wouldn't have left her, but I didn't want her with great passion, and I was reluctant to support her dreams. I felt she was a bit behind the eight ball when it came to a career and societies' ideas of success. I liked hanging out with her, but it's not like I was hanging out to be with her.
Watcher: Okay, so what do you think about her being 'behind the eight ball' now?
Horsey: Oh, I know I can help her with that. I'm really excited about supporting her. 


You get the idea.


I was feeling pretty high on Sunday. Helped mum do more of the courtyard. It continued to pour with rain and we got heaps done. I went home, got ready, went out on a date with a guy who was great to talk to. Didn't fancy him, but he had a good insight about the Sexy Ex.
I'd told him how we would 'try' not to see each other, and his comment was
'well if you're trying, then you're still attached'.


It was just the added zest I required. The last time I wrote my blog I was so very sure of myself, claiming I'd be keeping my legs crossed ... and then didn't the following day (!).
Fortunately I was on my way to see Tracey Burns at Beyond the Veil, and she helped me tremendously. As I drove to see her I questioned myself about sex with the ex.
I realised that it was the motivation/intention behind the thing, not the thing itself. The point isn't even a moral one. It's this ... that if I am emotionally and spiritually too tied into someone, can I make myself truly available to love someone else? The answer is Yes, but paradoxically, as I fall more deeply in love with me, it's likely that keeping TSE  as my lover will not be necessary.


The piece of the puzzle was the dude's comment on Sunday. If I forbid myself, I make it too exciting. It will be what it is. There's no need to put a big red cross on it and call it taboo. That's the sort of thing that leads Japanese business men to buy stained girl's knickers from vending machines. Scratch and sniff.


I do believe I might just have something akin to unconditional love. For myself and for people in my life. Or, I'm getting pretty damn close.


The main issue addressed with Tracey last week was Freedom. What is freedom to you? For me, I imagined running naked on the beach, the sun sinking into the sea. The light was blinding and golden white. I run and run, and I'm a child, and I'm almost flying.


I'm almost flying. I'm already free in so many ways. I rarely mind what others think of me. I usually stand up for myself, I take pleasure in small things. Now I'm ready for bigger things. I need money in order to travel, learn and help others. I'm ready for it. It's on.

Do Your Thing: Falling off Lions, look out for each other.

November 2^nd

I do my thing, and you do your

thing,

I am not in this world to live up to

your expectations

And you are not in this world to live up

to mine

You are you and I am I,

and if by chance we find each other, it’s

beautiful.

If not, it can’t be helped.

Frederick S.Perls

Do Your Thing, you Good Thing!

I get a bit confused about other people, but this simple quote strips it back. Few people have understood what ‘my thing’ is in life, but god, when they do, it’s magic.

Luckily I have some of the best friends in the entire Universe. Thanks to Tamasin, Andrew, Sarah, Lisa and Mum. I also have other friendships that are becoming richer and deeper, such as with my flatmate Tieneke.

We need to be dedicated to the magic, beauty, and sweetness of life. In New Zealand, 2008, there were 497 deaths from suicide and 2465 hospitalisations (exceeding 48 hours) for intentional self harm.

Intentional self harm is quite interesting. I nearly got into that years ago, but somehow pulled back from it. I was 26 and recovering from a pretty bad accident, the infamous fall from the golden lion in the Civic Picture Theatre. At least 20 feet (or was it metres?) into the basement level of the theatre through a hole on stage. Ok, yes, I was drunk, but it was probably just as well. If I’d been less relaxed it’s likely I’d have died. Leighton, who was working as an usher, had to resign from his job thanks to my little drama. He was Sarah's actory flatmate, and he'd asked us to wait while he finished up at work. We didn't wait. We were loose in the Civic. Not a great night for Sarah or her sober sister.

The recovery from a pelvis fractured in three places, a slightly displaced hip and a ‘moderate’ head injury was fucking boring, depressing and excruciatingly painful. I remember only snatched minutes from the whole first week of hospitalisation; I was in intensive care heavily pumped up on morphine. When I started understanding where I was and what was going on, all I could ask about was sitting my exams, and asking if they’d removed my contact lenses.

The morphine induced paranoia and hallucinations, I thought the Japanese doctor who kept taking my blood was keeping it for nefarious purposes; that this was war-time and he was going to find out secrets only traceable through blood. I hallucinated some kind of computer at the end of my hospital bed, one designed for measuring the secrets contained in blood.

As I became more lucid, my mum was always there, reaching over and pressing my self-administering morphine pump when I would groan from the physical agony of splintered bone.

“Why hasn’t anyone come to see me?” I asked

Turns out they had been, but I was either unconscious or couldn’t remember the visits. I’d also been dispensing a lot of wisdom, not that I could remember it.

It was November, I think 1996 . I turned 26 lying in bed, catheter trailing, my finger permanently positioned over the morphine pump. The balloons around curtain rail were doctors and nurses heads; they appeared to have hung themselves on the rail and looked at me with blank, dead eyes.

They decided not to operate, that I was ‘young enough’ to heal if I kept still. The television didn’t work on my side of the building, and I was extremely restricted in movement. I wasn’t even allowed to sit up or put any weight on my left hip (the displaced one) and constipation was my constant companion.

After about two weeks they took away the morphine drip, and the catheter was also removed. I was shifted to another bed, and the compression tights I wore to prevent blood clotting looked like some kind of kinky punishment. They itched and drove me crazy. My muscles and fat melted away. All toiletry and bathing needs were compliments of a bed pan and bed bath, usually administered by an evil nurse exhausted by excessive hours, seething resentments and shit covered shoes.

My scalp ached from not being able to take it off the pillow, my thick hair was hellishly hot and unwashed for three weeks. I begged the only kind nurse to wash it for me, I think her name was Jo. It was really hard for her to fit it into her schedule, but she wheeled my bed over to a sink. It was such a relief to feel water on my head, tears leaked from my eyes the whole time.

The real star was a nurse who gave me the injections each night to prevent blood clotting. She was a big girl and commented that if I’d had some fat on my body, this wouldn’t hurt as much. I think she quite enjoyed jabbing the needle into the remnants of muscle of my stomach and seeing the tears spring up in my eyes. God does love a Sadist! One day I rang the bell to go to the toilet. She came in and said “you’re not the only person in this hospital you know” and left me for more than half an hour. I couldn’t hold on and was left lying in the urine soaked bed for another hour or so. Fun times!

I think of this now, and it’s really like looking at someone else. I have many little stories about those seemingly endless weeks in hospital, nearly six weeks I think it was. The first time I got to sit up in bed I passed out, my eyes rolling back in my head. Mum thought I was dying, the poor thing.

One of the most delightful things about having even a ‘moderate’ head injury is that your ability to control your emotions is severely limited, and you suffer from excess exhaustion. I slept, read words in the dictionary, cried and raged. I took pleasure in underlining specific words in a Mills and Boon novel. How many times did the sadistic, handsome love interest smile ‘sardonically’? How often were his eyes described as being like flint or ice? This was emotional pornography, and one of the few things simple enough for me to read.

I couldn’t move around properly, so mum had to come and look after me in the flat. I was on crutches for three months, but I looked completely ‘normal’. At a poetry performance someone thought I was using crutches as a ‘prop’.

The best thing about it all was that my poetry improved. I couldn’t finish my degree that year, but went back and did so the year after. I was horribly out of sync with people doing Journalism, many of them were really straight sorts who’d already done a degree in law, not the crazy crew I’d grown to love in the previous two years study.

The self harm aspect came up through sheer frustration and excess of feeling. I didn’t want to die. I just wanted to get the feelings out of my body. Fortunately something in me stopped, just stepped back and went “really?”.

I would toy with it, pressing the edge of a knife into my skin but just enough for it to bite. One day knew I wanted to take it a bit further, that I wanted to slice. I rang a friend. She came over. She told me I must never do it again, and I didn’t.

But that doesn’t happen for a lot of people. Something in them takes them over the edge.

I had some lovely young flatmates a few years back, a couple from London. He was English, she was Polish. She sported the most amazing scars up the insides of her arms, neat and clean looking, all perfectly aligned. They went across rather than vertically, and they were far enough up the arms to affirm that these were not suicide attempts.

“Oh,” I said

“Scarification or self harm?”

“Oh, self harm” she said lightly, as if we were discussing shoes or tattoos. She’d gone through a rough patch in her late teens. Looked like a very long patch judging by the slices. Yet here she was, happy, travelling with her love, milking life and laughing. There was still an undercurrent of darkness that would occasionally surface, but I have that too, so it never bothered me. I hear they’ve had a baby now.

A Safety Net

I’ve been talking with Lisa who may as well be an angel, her insights and energy are that good. Mellow, leaning back in your chair, honey slow and kind, she’ll say things that just fit.

“You need a safety net for your heart” she said.

Yes. That sounds good. But there you have it; I don’t know how to make one, or how others do it. It mystifies me. I’ll see if I can work it out, and if I do, I’ll let you know.

I should have been hurt a million times more than I have been, but to be honest, most of the time it’s worked out pretty well. I take pretty big risks, but the rewards are amazing. I have loved and been loved so well.

We’re all just ‘doing our thing’. So you see, my thing has to be love. It has to be pleasure (not hedonism) and finding joy in pretty simple things. Happiness wavers, but joy runs deep.

...I refuse to be

intimidated by

reality anymore.

After all, what is reality anyway?

Nothin’ but a collective hunch ...

I made some studies , and reality

Is the leading cause of stress

amongst those in

touch with it.

I can take it in small doses, but as a lifestyle

I found it too confining.

Jane Wagner.