What sexual direction does one go in?

Before my libido flew out my window like a migrating swan (oh come back! Come back!) this thought is what crossed my mind (both genders for blogging purposes):

I can choose to eat different men/women for breakfast
I can choose to eat the same man/woman for breakfast

Which would you choose?

"Repent! God is Good News!"

The Sunday following my one night stand I woke up feeling positive about life but also very much stuck in mine. So very stuck I consulted my angel cards and was told to "follow the signs".

"Repent!" bellowed the priest an hour later.

I can't believe it. I shake my head inside myself as my childhood God forces me to my knees to beg forgiveness, sinner that I am.

"Repent!" he bellows again. "Repent means change! God is Good News!"

My inner head stops shaking and I listen.

"Doesn't matter if you are good person or a bad person God will not judge you!"

And I think of Hitler and Walsh's Conversations with God and wonder if the priest has read this "blasphemous" text.

"Repent means change! In your heart turn the face of God towards you and make every decision from there!"

Now you reader, may have a problem with the word God. That's fine, I did too once. But imagine for a minute the word means Love.

Turn and face the Love within yourself

It's not easy; it's taken me years

You know, when I say the Hail Mary now, I end it saying "Pray for our souls, now and at the hour of our death." Not, "Pray for us sinners.."

I can do that as a fully paid up member of the School of Doris, God is very much Que Sera Sera. He and She and It does not judge you or me or us.

Facing the Love we have within ourselves will reward us more than facing and making decisions based on fear or anger or envy or resentment.

As promised the One Night label has to end with this post or it could go on and on and I want it to finish with a happy ending.

Love not fear as it began

This is the beginning and how this label ends.

Thanks for reading it, I hope it helps you.

Love

Me xxx

"You are powerful beyond measure" - Mandela

Nelson Mandela's inaugural speech from 1994, given to me by my social worker in 2005, recently taken out of the envelope in which it came and stuck on my wall.

Stick it on yours. Read it everyday. Do not be afraid of your light and accept others may be afraid of yours. Take it from one who knows (that's me, I can't speak for Mandela!)

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant
gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God - Your playing small
doesn't serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us
It is not in just some of us; It is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.

The right person empowers you

"The right person will empower you," I told the man who'd come out of a long relationship and never wanted another again.

I am right.

He accepted I am right.

I know I am right.

It is easier to fear than to love
It is better to love than to fear

Stay...stay stay stay....

I wanted him to stay the weekend. I didn't want him to leave. He couldn't come back, how could he come back = 'I'm free again in two weeks!' - my self esteem wouldn't let me say it, my self esteem wouldn't allow it, but he could stay.

Oh stay. I might have said it, but only once. "Go on, I'll make you breakfast!"
"I need to get my keys," he said. It's how he met me, going back for his keys.

I laughed at his frustration trying to find his things amongst my mess, untangling his jeans from me, from all of me.

"You really are going?" I said as he pulled them on.

As he left he paused at the door, looked at me.

I'd've got out of bed, I'd have kissed his cheek

but my head was nailed to the pillow.

So much for sex curing hangovers I thought, as my head split in two.

I slept for the rest of the day.

"Cougars"

For a moment I let him think I was a pensioner, and from the corner of my eye saw him do a double take, as if realising he'd gone home with QuiteSomething and woken up with Stigmum. I got the giggles.
"How old did you think I was?" I laughed.
"My age," he said.
"And how old is that?"

Oh....!

No Jo, the bunting on the bedroom wall is not coming down, not yet.

Fab. I am Fab.

I am.

I am at home in my body
(Louise L Hay You Can Heal Your Life)

(We really don't like that word 'cougars', me and stigs don't, but an 'older women' title didn't sit too well with us either. I mean, who cares?)

One Night

This new label, One Night, refers to last Thursday night when I bought my son home from school and I really needed a wee. I went, barely anything, but pain, then five minutes later, the need to go again and within half an hour, not wanting to go, for fear of that pain and then

fear

of all kinds of things

and anger

at all kinds of things

but most of all

the cruel coincidence

that I'd had sex for the first time in fucking ages (don't forgive the pun) and it couldn't be just the good, clean, positive, fun that it was could it?? No.

It's going to be a big label. I think. I don't know.
I was so scared that Thursday night, I felt I had no-one to talk to, felt I had no-one to call and of course, things just rush rush rush into your head that makes you THANK GOD for TRASH TV (Sorry 'benders, you're not trash)

I thought I had cystitus...maybe I do...never had anything like anything before so no idea. Anyway, this thought made me think of sex and the past of course, LOVES to rear it's head. Pissed off are you Rape label that I won't put anything about me on you again? This post definitely the last, definitely, where rape associates with my experience OK?

See, the search for blame...you look everywhere...and the search got really dark after I saw my water was pink and my paper was clotted and it wasn't my period.

My one night stand was just a night, and a morning too. THIS LABEL IS NOT ABOUT THAT, though I will write about it (Hey, ye Who Said I Was Hot, you could be anyone, just like me, so don't sweat it, I just regret writing that I told you I wrote a blog but you didn't ask for the link so guessed you were alright with me writing about you. I wasn't going to write about you anymore than I did. I wasn't. Now who knows when I'll stop. Your fault for being a positive experience.)

This label is about being alone. Being alone with thoughts you can't share with anyone. It's all retrospective of course now, but not really. As I write this, nothing is clear, so writing some things will be really difficult. It's out there. Are they self fulfilling prophecies? What am I creating? I've got to turn that fear which is beneath everything at the moment, into something positive.

This label is about Thursday night which led to Friday morning, where I went to the doctor, which I have to post about, which I don't want to, but what you resist persists God said in those Conversations.

The label has to end on a good note. I've too much blogging experience now to know that it's dangerous to take people on a journey with you... be it to a council flat or to the dentist, although I did take you on my stop smoking journey and it's a year tomorrow that I stopped - Yippee!! Shall I celebrate with you Nico Teen? Awfully hard writing all this...NO! No I shan't! Al Cohol....?

Can't. I'm on antibiotics for a week, my pee sample's been sent to the lab. I will know the result, but you won't, reader. It's an opportunity for me

An opportunity for me to do what stigs?

Well we don't know, do we, self elected leaders of the party that we are.

We just know that things we wanted to write that aren't part of the label will come under the label and that you will know it's over when I write REPENT.

Sunday after the Friday before...The day I asked the angel cards what I can do and the card I got back was from Angel Gabriel, saying he was with me, and to follow the signs... I did that and was told to REPENT.

You lead Gabes, I'll follow...

(and look out for signs!)

Sex in the 21st Century

Last Friday night I had a one night stand.

I'm telling you this because as I accepted the experience for what it was and felt no guilt or shame or anything I thought I might feel, yet nonetheless wondered how should I feel, because, well, I'm two hundred years old and I don't know, there happened to be quite a bit about sex in our mainstream media.

First, Nicola from Big Brother, who used to be a page three girl, told us all, while in the Diary Room with Twins who used to be Playboy Playmates, that she'd only ever slept with three people.
Why are you telling me that? I thought, as the playmates said nothing, which why would they?

Then, in the Daily Mirror, a woman who works on Loose Women, told us how she'd only ever slept with two men and married them both and now was a single mother who was "ashamed" her marriage had failed and had written a book: "Confessions of a Good Girl."

Eh? Good because you've only slept with two people and married them? Good is being a page three girl who has to justify a low number of shags for..what reason?

On Sunday I phone my mum who tells me the priest had given a sermon on sex a couple of sundays back! You have to know my mum to understand why it took her two weeks to tell me that and understand our relationship to understand why I didn't say "Really mum! Do you know I had sex just yesterday morning! With someone I didn't know! What a coincidence!" She couldn't really remember what he'd said however. Darn!

As my mind began to boggle, I fell upon Mariella Fostrups column in the Observer magazine where a 19 year old girl asks her if it's ok to shag the friend she does drama with, if she doesn't want a relationship with him, will he respect her ( 19! Shit, I'm 200 and feel younger than her! shit, I've got to go a lobbying, where's my mag for Mariella's quote??)

"I'm quite concerned this remains a concern for women 50 years after "free love" and the pill radically altered our sexual mores....In a society where sex is regarded as another currency, women should have the same right to squander it as men. If the female of the species still can't enjoy their lives without being judged by such Victorian values, then just what has changed in terms of gender equality?"

Hear Hear Mariella! She then goes on to say what we all know, that sex is much better, more enhanced with someone you love, but it's up to our own "personal predilection" (p52, Observer mag, 22/01)

What I find interesting from ALL of this and what I've been thinking is women are perceived as an anomaly, we are somehow, unknown and therefore dangerous. Is that why we have to say we haven't had sex/only had one partner/two/three don't think bad of me?

Single women are dangerous, single mothers are the most dangerous of all.

Are we really surprised therefore that the government has directed it's fiercest cuts to our children?

The Man Who Said I Was Hot was a Tory
"I bet you vote Labour," he said.
"I don't as it happens," I replied, "I am the leader of my own party. The I Don't Know Party!"
"What?" he laughs. "How can you have policies with I Don't Know?! ha ha ha!"
"I don't know, we don't have policies, just a manifesto, with questions like..."

The Tory party hates me. Hates Stigmums. Well, Lord Freud did say, didn't he, if there weren't children, there wouldn't be the need for cuts...

Fortunately not all Tories are the same, mustn't generalise too much; some are on our side.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jan/24/welfare-reform-revolt-tory-peers

As for me, I've always said, always

Good?
Don't call me Good

No chance of that now though is there?

"You have no self esteem"

On Friday night I had a one night stand.

I'm telling you this because the man I had the one night stand with told me, in three different ways, that I had no self esteem.

"You told me last night that you thought the men inside the club were being paid to talk to you."

"Yeah..heh heh, not just me, other women too."

"Wow, you must have really low self esteem."

"What? No I don't. Do I?

"You seriously think that club has men on their payroll to go out and sleep with women?"

"Er..."

"Why would they do that? You must have no self esteem."

"Er, well, why wouldn't a club, er..."

"Men have to be paid to talk to you? You're fucked, you have no self esteem."

"You know, I think you might be right (say I, thinking of my life, of battles lost, job applications rejected), but I have something..."

"You're really untidy." he says looking around, as if to get his bearings.

"Well, I wasn't exactly expecting you. However, you see I have nothing to hide..."

You know the most extraordinary thing about this quite extraordinary experience (because it was an extraordinary experience)?

He knew my friend Jo. Finding out where I used to work, he said he worked there too and there we made the connection. "She's a legend!" he said. "Yes, she is!" I replied.

Had lunch with Jo yesterday. Fancy that! He said to her, but not to me.

"You're moving forward," said Jo.

"Yeah I know. I may not have self esteem, but I've got some self worth."

Thank you my one night stand. I shall throw away the fags you left behind (instead of smoking them myself/giving them to someone else) becuase, well, because I wish you well.

And you reader, if I talk about this experience again, I will refer to him simply as The Man Who Said I Was Hot.
He didn't exactly say I was hot, he said I was "the hottest woman in the bar."

Me!

I don't know how to label this, reluctant to file it under Rape (to indicate how far I've come) I wish I'd never set up that label but it has to exist I guess.
This can be the last ever post under it.
I draw a line.
My thoughts on men now will file under relationships or men and women, I don't know.
I just know my thoughts, on anything, aren't over.

(Oh and I told The Man Who Said I Was Hot that I wrote a blog. He said "What's that," and I said "a kind of online diary," and he said "oh" without asking more, so I guess he's cool with me using our experience if I want to)

Lessons in Love

At Monday's Lorna Byrne seminar I wanted to ask her about her marriage to her husband Joe.
When Lorna was about 10 years old angels appeared to her, showed her her future husband and told her they wouldn't grow old together.

I remember reading that and being really shocked. How cruel!! Why tell somebody that? At the time I thought that's why angels don't appear to me and tell me things because I would think about it too much. Every day of my marriage I'd think "you're going to die." That's if I had the courage to go through the marriage in the first place.

Pain. Lorna has felt gigantic enormous pain at losing her husband but she'd have felt enormous gigantic pain if she'd done a me and turned away from him for fear of feeling the pain in the first place.

We can never know if our relationships will last but that's no reason is it, not to give them a chance. Not to give yourself a chance. Or the other person a chance.

It is a question isn't it, of living each day as it comes, and if that's quite hard, to live each moment and to thank those moments for they are full of hope.

Full of love
Full of hope
Full of love
Full of hope

Fear is not a friend.

Full of hope
Full of love

My son gets a valentine card!

Oh he was so excited bless him. "I don't recognise the writing, I have to find clues! Who do you think it's from mummy? Who do you think it's from?!"

"How do you think you'll feel when you find out?" I smiled.
"Ooh, it's scary!" his little grin!

Bashful as he walked to school, making me promise not to tell anyone. (Oops)

That is the point of Valentine's isn't it? For single people to let the people they like know that they like them?

I didn't have the balls to send a card or note to the boy I like. Well, man actually, not boy! It does take an enormous amount of courage doesn't it? It is terrifying isn't it?
Man I like doesn't have a clue I like him, not an inkling.
If he found out I think I'd just want to go and hide in a dark hole!
I think he'd think like my son: "scary!"
Yes, not very confident me!
Quite shy!
Women's emancipation?
I haven't caught up yet!

Happy Valentine's to all of you out there. I hope Cupid works his magic on all of you who want romantic magic in your lives!

Relationship struggles - a song

Try to blog it my way
What have I to keep on writing so I can go on?
While you see it your way,
Run the risk of knowing that our blog may soon be gone.

We can work it out,
We can work it out.

Think of what you're saying.
You can get it wrong and still you think that it's all right.
Think of what I'm saying,
We can work it out and get it straight, or say good night.

We can work it out
We can work it out

Life is very short, and there's no time
For fussing and fighting, my friend.
I have always thought that it's a crime,
So I will ask you once again.

Try to blog it my way,
Only time will tell if I am right or I am wrong.
While you see it your way
There's a chance that we might fall apart before too long.

We can work it out,
We can work it out.

Life is very short, and there's no time
For fussing and fighting, my friend.
I have always thought that it's a crime,
So I will ask you once again.

Try to blog it my way,
Only time will tell if I am right or I am wrong.
While you see it your way
There's a chance that we might fall apart before too long.
We can work it out,
We can work it out.

(Beatles featuring me and Stigmum, barely tweaked and also can't tell who's who between me and stigs, we want different things but hopefully we'll erm, sort ourselves out in no time! Also, still haven't figured out how to put the Youtube vid of the original on the post, which means you could sing along if you wanted to!)

Relationship struggles - blokes and blogs!

I had brunch with two girlfriends earlier. We inevitably got talking about men. Well, not inevitably maybe but talking anyway. One of us is having relationship struggles, the guy saying he wants more 'me time'. It's not me having this relationship struggle, mores the pity, but I am having a relationship struggle though I couldn't tell these girls about it. They might think I am mad! They already know I am mad, can't have them thinking it too!

Seriously, a real pain. I wanted to blog yesterday and couldn't. I was editing everything in my head, all light and nice, but I couldn't write it. Before I set out to meet my lovely mates earlier I was thinking that I just can't anymore.

Stigmum was a huge support to me when I was being evicted. Stigmum and blogspot. Massive. I could really off load here.

If I'd got my council flat I wouldn't have come back. I'd have maybe started another blog. I'd have left it so people who found it could believe that if you want something, if you fight for it, you will get it.

How utterly fecking depressing that I'm back therefore. Go after what you want folks, you don't have a flying hope in hell!!! Because it is hellish, eviction.

I'm not being evicted now, I don't need stigmum's support as much but I need to be here. I need to be here incase I do. Does that sound really crap? That sounds really crap doesn't it?

I'm not articulating myself very well. ...

What I said to stiggers this morning is we keep going until April, when the housing legislation goes through. Or we keep going until May and the local elections. Or we stop earlier if we're not enjoying ourselves, or keep going if we are

Oh I don't fucking know. All I do know is it's Valentine's Day tomorrow and I'm having relationship problems with myself.

Well, as we girls were saying. One of our friends 'had a really long honeymoon period with her husband and problems happen with all relationships, at some point. You get closer, it's inevitable. If it's strong it survives and theirs is strong.'

This friend is taking a break from her guy to see if he misses her at all ("They're running that story in Eastenders!" I said, erm, helpfully)

Me and Stigs? Well, we've been together a couple of years now.

We've been listening to the Beatles.

I don't believe in a million years that we are the only bloggers out of millions of bloggers to go through this.

It takes courage to say it! Or maybe stupidity...

Time to end this post methinks...

Good times without Nico Teen

My first party without Nico Teen on Friday night

Wanted to blog about this yesterday but couldn't. Aaargh. Couldn't. Still can't if I'm honest. Aargh.

Such a fab party twas too! Kelly's Big One. Had to dress up as a Tube station. What a laugh! All them Angels, that amazing Bank in her gold figure hugging jumpsuit with notes pinned to her.
Skinner went in school uniform, Grange Hill! Her husband as a clown - Piccadilly Circus! Hornchurch was there and the Seven Sisters. It was a while before I got Maida Vale - doh! Her maid's outfit and veil on her head! Blackfriars, Cockfosters and Greenford; so many stations there!

Me, I went as Bow!

Still can't write about this, so much to say (dancing to Meatloaf with the smokers I met on the way in!)

In this post you are witnessing the struggle between me and Stiggers.

It's not flowing as it usually flowwwwwwws.

Also wanted to tell you about the lovely brunch I just shared with Em and Hus at The York and Albany. Yes! A Monsieur Ramsay restaurant! Passable it was too! (I say passable, I had the full english and well, lovely as it was, I get it all in with tea included down the caf for a quarter of the price) Still, fantastic to be with such fantastic friends in the kind of upmarket restaurant you don't often see me in these days!

I see from what I've just written that I can tell you anything I want to.

Why we struggling stigs?

And, oh, smoking? It's cool. Now and then I think of it with a fond tug to my heart but to be honest, I hardly think of it at all.
Parties are no different without it! (Is that you saying that or me stiggers?)

Nico Teen and Sex

A long time ago, crikey, the last millenium, a friend said to me:
"Do you smoke after sex?"
"Yeah! Do you?!"
"I've never noticed!"
"Oh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

The joke always fell flat when I tried it.
"Do you smoke after sex?!"
"No."
"Damn, there's a joke..."

Oh Jo, I know I said "No, no, NO!" as your eyebrow raised higher and higher when I told you Luke was coming to stay. "That's three no's," you said.

Annie and Issy, I know I told you that there'd be no way! It's over! It is!

It was funny the following morning, you know, our sunday communion (ho ho). "Where? Where?!" we laughed like a couple of teenagers, my son on his computer, oblivious to it all, thank goodness.

Afterwards, with Nico Teen, out on the balcony, he was leaving in a couple of hours.

"When you next visit," I said, stalling. "When you next visit or I visit you, we've got to be the friends we were when you arrived yesterday."
"Yeah, we'll always be friends, you know that."
"I don't think.." I saw our future there, played out before me.. "No, I can't, I can't do this, it wouldn't be fair on myself."
"No," he replied. "It wouldn't be fair on you. It wouldn't be fair on me either. We've been here before."

A big draw on Nico Teen, the two of us. Hit me where I'm hurting, hit me hit me hit meeeeeee.

He's not been in touch nor me with him. It means he's feeling the way I do.
Time, distance, silence - great healers.

But you've got a purpose haven't you stiggers. You've always got a purpose....

Carr makes a small reference to post coital smoking triggers in his book. Didn't think I could comment, but I can!

A cigarette isn't always as good as the sex that precedes it!

The knowledge that comes with awareness ey....

C'mon Nico Teen, grateful I've got you for a few more days.

What's to miss ey, what's to miss...

Draw a line, move on, don't look back....

The Foca - my soulmate?

Yesterday I bought a copy of Spirit & Destiny and the man in the shop asked me why I buy such a magazine. "Because it might help me think in more positive ways," I answered.

Yesterday, an article within, was a gift for me: Is he your soulmate or your twin flame?

When I met the Foca, aged 16, I thought he was my soulmate; he hated shit school as much as me.

When I met him again, years later, I resisted that he might be my soulmate but was seduced despite this; we had so much in common, not just our past at school. "You are the one," he said. He did!

I believed our relationship could work, even after he handed us notice. What a muppet! Over the years I've tried to shrug off this idea he was my soulmate, welcomed the fact he was getting married, but this idea that our souls were bound just wouldn't leave me, aaargh, rather like, if you like, my choosing to believe in my late teens that God doesn't exist. Anyone bought up to believe in God, will struggle with the idea of atheism. Well I did anyway. I'm at peace with it all now, I have been for some time. God's existence that is, not the Foca being in my life.

Soulmates! The Foca was my soulmate! The Foca is my soulmate - Nooooooooo!

Take heed, says Spirit and Destiny:

Soulmates will keep on coming into your life until certain lessons have been learned - about fear of rejection or finding security, for instance. Twin flames, on the other hand, enter your life when you've learned these lessons and are ready to experience true, unwavering love and support.

I did the magazine's 'love test'. The timing is great for as you know, I do not like dealing with the Foca. It has helped me to understand and make sense of my relationship with him however. He may have been my soulmate but soulmates aren't the be all and end all; aren't the Holy Grail of happiness, just a step towards it. The Holy Grail is the Twin Flame.

Here goes; their 'love test', you may not buy this magazine and this might help you:

You're soulmates if:
One partner is reluctant to fully commit to the relationship (tick)
The relationship starts on a high, but deteriorates or needs constant work and effort (tick)
One of you tries to force change, or bullies or tries to control the other (tick)
There's competition between you, or resentment of each other's success (did you resent me? Do you? I resent you now, not then)
One partner feels jealous, insecure or abandoned when the other is pursuing their own interests ("I'm not abandoning you," he said when he handed us notice. Why do I feel like you are, I thought)
One of you has to suppress large parts of yourself in order to fit what your partner expects of you ("Mamma, will you leave us?" said my in labour self at partner's request when my in labour self didn't want that at all)
There's a real sense of duty, debt or unfinished business - karma or a hidden agenda, perhaps (I don't know, I wouldn't know)
Physical intimacy between you feels forced or demanded (or denied...)
One of you is dependent on the other, to the point where you couldn't survive alone (didn't feel this; wanted the relationship to work for the baby, believed it could ho ho ho)
One or both partners are so absorbed in the relationship that they can't function in the world, often getting ill (he'd get stomach ache, I'd get skinny)
(Spirt & Destiny - February issue)

You're a Twin Flame if...
You unconditionally love and accept each other
Each partner offers the other respect and recognition
You support each other to be who you are

Old Shit School acquaintance did tick each box (11 in total) but I jumped ship and he's sailed off with someone new... which means therefore that if we weren't Twin Flames, we were, according to S&D, just another soulmate to one another, but a positive experience this time.

I am free! Kind of....I'm limited only by my own boundaries, but that's ok, they are mine.

Shall I tell the Foca we were soulmates? For a laugh? For a big, clown off Big Brother laugh?

He won't get it. Perhaps he doesn't want to; perhaps he wants to hang on to me like a Nit. He enjoys bugging me. Should I start bugging him back? Give him a taste of his own medicine? It might be just what I need to do to finally wash him out of my hair... Make him think.

Perhaps it's better that he remains ignorant or discovers what we were in his own time. Perhaps it's better that I let it all go, once and for all like I've been trying to these past years. I know the truth now! At last!

I have my own life to lead, this I know; I need to "work on loving [my]self and becoming spiritually awake by living [my] life with integrity and authenticity." (S&D p.9) I really need to do this, for my son's sake as well as my own. (No, he has not yet replied to the email I sent this morning but the school has...strength stigmum, work on your own strength)

On a brighter note, I have yet to meet my Twin Flame! Will we meet this decade? Will we meet at all? Who knows!

When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother
What will I be?
Will I be pretty?
Will I be rich?
Here's what she said to me....
(Doris!)

Putting the Foca in the picture

The Foca brings back our son two and a half hours late. My son gives me a shell he picked up on the Brighton beach for me and runs in to get his Beaver top to proudly show his father.

"We've been handed notice," I say. "I was thinking, when you handed us notice, you should have gone to live with your sister and I should have stayed to let this process legally evict me from your brother's house."

He stares at the ground as I say this saying nothing, which I expected. "[Our son] says you're moving upstairs."

"No," I smile that manic smile of having had only a piece of toast to eat all day. "This is a process, the same nasty process we've been stuck in for years. Look how skinny I'm getting," pulling the sides of my skinny jeans as I say this.

We start discussing our son's birthday party but I want a reaction to what I said earlier. "I plan his parties every year but I can't this year. I feel bad as his birthday is the most important day in the year, but I can't take care of it right now. If you hadn't evicted..."

"I never evicted you," he shouts and doing the motions of carrying something heavy continued: "I moved you out, I physically carried your stuff!"
"To assuage your guilt!" I say.
"Oh fuck off."
"Don't speak to me like that." And off he stormed.

Back then, what feels like a hundred years ago now, I did ask him to go and live with his sister and let me stay there and claim benefits for the flat but he said no.

One day, after the Council came round to see if it was actually true that a father had handed notice to his son and son's mother, we had an argument.

"You're such a victim," he said.
"If I'm a victim you're a bully." I replied.
"Victim," he shot back.
"Bully."
"Victim."
"Bully."
"Victim."
"Bully." On and on until he left the room.

I was a victim back then, I'm sorry to say, but I had just been made redundant for the second time since my son's birth. My son was a year old. Following that row the Foca said he'd go to his sister's, pay off his debts, come and get us. So I moved out, he moved in with her and the flat went to estate agents to take care of.

Notice from him, notice from the Church, now notice from a Housing Association in accordance to its lease with the Council, my keeper, and the owner of this flat who bought it from previous owners two years ago.

Just giving you a bit of history.

Dates

Old Shit School acquaintance emailed me about a month ago asking if I wanted to do something with him while my son was away. I replied as honestly as I could: "I really want to see you but I'm very confused about how I feel." This I was, I am. He asked me to marry him. I didn't reply in case it wasn't a joke.

I've not heard from him since but I know this is because he is waiting to hear from me. If I call, he will answer. He's that kind of guy.

I didn't tell him I was going on a date with a Trumpet Player though. I met him a couple of weeks ago at the Squatters Family Gathering Festival. The Trumpet Player's jazz punk band were performing. I got talking to him afterwards, bought him a drink, chatted to him by the bonfire while my son shouted 'look mummy look!' while writing his name with a stick dipped in fire. The Trumpet Player asked for my number, I said "OK". He said "You're not married are you?" and I said "No."

On our date he asked if I'd had a relationship since the foca left. I said "Yes." He didn't ask more than that, which was lucky, as I wouldn't know what to say.

Will I see him again? Maybe. He's interesting company. He's younger than me though, not much younger but he is. And I am old, I am very old. I am 200 years old.

Online Dating

I've posted my details on a free dating site.
I haven't uploaded a photo, I've said all I want to do is email, I haven't responded to two messages that have since popped into my inbox.
I'm not looking for a 'mate' so why have I done this?
I'm an old hand at online dating. I've done it on and off for years. I was afraid of men after the Foca left, couldn't even look at them, so it was good therapy for me.
"Why are you on here if you don't want to meet anyone?" asked one.
"Why not?" I replied. I'd reply to every message I received back then, regardless of who it was from.
The beauty of online dating for me was that I was cyberdumped constantly. I was cyberdumped all the time! Rejection didn't matter in cyberspace. I didn't know who they were and they didn't know me. Sometimes it was quite gutting but you get over it remarkably quickly.
This medium for meeting people separated the wheat from the chaff.
Many were put off by my child.
If this didn't deter them I told them I was on benefits.
If they accepted this I told them I was on the homeless register.
If this didn't bother them then I would meet them.
The most enlightening thing to come out of it all was that who I was attracted to didn't tally at all with who was attracted to me.
I sent messages to countless handsome photographs and witty profiles. Only a handful ever responded always saying my child would render the relationship too difficult. Ho hum.
I did meet quite alot of men in the end. I was always slightly disappointed when I clapped eyes on them because they looked nothing like their photos, but they never were when they saw me, which was a boost to say the least.
"Can I see you again?" asked the illustrator.
"Are you asking me or the table?"
I enjoyed long email friendships with men who were often as wary as me. I had a couple of really quite intense cybercrushes. One man said he wanted to meet someone 'slim and attractive' and I'd sent him a message asking "What will you do if you fall for a woman who grows fat on your love?" He was a bee keeper. He'd been stung by a mother. He'd grown very fond of the children and missed them a great deal when the relationship ended. We'd chat for hours on Instant Messenger, way into the night. I eventually suggested meeting for coffee and didn't hear from him for months until one day he popped up on facebook. "I was afraid," he said. He's happy with a childless woman now.

You can get to know yourself on these things. You can start believing in people again. I learnt to become less shallow. I was becoming jaded though. It was time to call it a day.

So I don't know why I've re subscribed to a new site. I am not interested in meeting any of the men there.

Perhaps it's a form of resistance. I'll take myself off.

When hearts are lonely hunters

Something happened between Shit School Acquaintance and I when I went to Barcelona last month. Something so indefinable that I shan't trouble you with definitions.
All I'll say is that it wasn't what I expected, it wasn't what I wanted. As I'd said to friends before I went: "Foca went to that school. What? I didn't shag the boys in the 6th form so I could start to shag them now? No way."
As we said goodbye at the airport, I told him, with my head upon his shoulder: "We should end it here. You live here, I live there, you want to live here, I want to live there, let's just remember it as something positive."

Two weeks ago he flew to London. "I'm coming to see you," he said.

When I saw him off at Victoria I said, with my head upon his shoulder: "This has to end here. The space is good now but it won't always be."

He's been asking me to visit him in Barcelona ever since. "I can't afford to," I say. "And even if I could, I have priorities here."

Yesterday he emailed me. "Come to Barcelona, I'll pay your flight."

A risk is a risk is a risk.
My heart is not lonely, it lives with the most beautiful soul on the planet.
My heart is vast though, do I free it from its shackles?