I get knocked down, but I get up again

I know I have been a bad blogger, ok a sorry excuse of a blogger.

I don't have much of a reader base due to my bad blogging habits, so I guess A will really enjoy READING everything I have already TOLD her in person.

In the past few weeks I have been left in awe of how quickly things can change, and how you could be looking a future completely different to the one you actually envisioned for yourself.

To me right now it feels as if my life is crashing down on me, but, and the but is a big one, the past 4 weeks has unleashed a drive in me that I had forgotten I have. I had become so comfortable in my comfort that I ended up wearing blinkers and refused to see what was glaring directly at me.

You see 4 weeks ago, a week before my annivesary, my husband thought it may be appropriate to accuse me of having an affair. It was an online affair with a man John Smith, and a sordid one at that. As much as I would like to have admitted that YES, I was in fact having an exciting rendezvous with a man with such an abrituary name. I in fact was not.

I don't think I will ever get over the way I was spoken to by my husband and I will never forget the things he called me, but mostly I will never be able to get over the fact that he told his mom and I will never see her in the same light after she told me to prove it.

I was guilty before proven innoccent. Hell our court of law gives people more benefit of doubt.

I endured this for a full week...It broke me, but I can fix me because I am strong.

I stood my ground and I still do....but inside something was screaming, IT's him, he is having an affair. My family and friends told me too, I didnt want to believe it. Simple because I love him.

In the end my gut reigned supreme and he buckled and admitted. He had been seeing HER, IT , THAT for 6 weeks. I did not react as he expect, I went for a walk , and decided I WAS NOT going to give up my future for some TART. No , I will fight.

Here comes the catch, one only has so much fight in them, and there are contenders that you can never win against, no matter how hard you fight or how well prepared you are for it. The stronger one will knock you down.

My blow come to me on Monday when he said he no longer loves me. I have been knocked down and out. I can't make him love me but I do deserve better, a hellva lot better in fact.

So here I go , I am going to start a new fight, I am going to fight for me, And I am going to rebuild who I really am and not what he wanted me to be.

Like I said in January.. this year it's all about ME.

Not Looking Back

The best thing about my shaky past, is that I can look forward to my stable future. Yes I had a crap childhood, but so what, I won’t let that dictate how the rest of my life should be.

I will also not allow my children to experience what I had too. When I turned 18 I made a conscious decision that I will break the mould and not stoop to my mother’s level and I WILL NOT be like her. You won’t believe how many people stereotyped me, how many times I heard you will be just like your mother when you are older, I still hear it today. And there is nothing that gets to me more than my family saying” you are just like your MOTHER”.

Being the person I am today, I know that people only make those comments to get me down are use it as a tool to hurt me. HA, I have been through a hell of a lot worse…don’t they realize that?

But anyway, I think my greatest achievement to date is that I am nothing like her and the reason I feel it’s such a big thing is because admittedly, I am so much like her it scares me. BUT I have learnt to take the goods bits and leave the rest behind.

I have a happy life, I have a fantastic husband, that supports me in everything and 2 gorgeous children, who have no clue what it was like for me as a child and that is how I intend to keep it. The goal is for my son to say, I don’t understand how it must have felt mom, and when that day comes I will know I have done a good job.

Hear No Evil, See No evil

I was 8 years old when I got my first black eye. It was the right one.

I wasn’t a rough and tumble time of girl, but I was tough, I had to be with 2 older brothers, a foul tempered father and an abusive alcoholic mother. But I didn’t get my black eye from playing “Wrestle mania” with my brothers, but from my mother.

I was visiting her one holiday and she had once again, with out much effort gone and gotten herself drunk, and by lunch time had passed out on the couch, but not before fighting with me for some or other thing I had or had not done.

I was starving because when you are drunk you usually forget to give your kids breakfast, let alone lunch. In my mothers usual fashion she failed to buy bread and bought a half jack instead. So I proceeded to make myself the only thing I knew how, POPCORN.

I had managed to find a pot, I put oil in and just poured the popcorn in when she staggered in DEMANDING to know in her own words: “what the Fuck do you think you are doing” Me not sensing the danger YET, said I was making popcorn, My words exactly: “don’t worry Mommy I know how to do it by myself” Goodness I was so proud of my accomplishment.

The next thing I knew, she threw the pot across the kitchen and I was being dragged to my room by my (short) hair. She flung me across the room and I landed, some what safely on my bed. She was hissing in a slurred voice “that I was nothing but a cheap whore and that I had turn out to be nothing but a BITCH, if you don’t have manners then I will beat them into you” At this point, I had no idea what the hell a whore was or even a bitch, but I made a crazy fearful dash for the phone, I knew if I could actually get hold of my father, he would come and I would be safe. I didn’t make it.

Instead she some how managed to get to me before I could dial and bashed me up against a wall, she then again dragged me to my room, f’ing and blinding, words that made no sense to me. I tried to cower in a corner, and shield myself from the blows that where coming down on me! But I couldn’t anymore so I stood up and faced her with as much courage as an 8 year old could possess.

Apparently being courageous is equal to being cheeky and before I knew it a fist connected my face. I remember the searing pain and then waking up to find her passed out on my bed.

Once again, it was a case of “shut up and pretend nothing happened”. My mother also proudly announce that I must be the clumsiest child she knows to everyone who bothered to ask what happened because apparently I got my shiner from grabbing a puzzle box out of my step father’s hands that ricocheted and hit me in the face…A PUZZLE BOX! The only person that didn’t fall for it was my one brother, but all the adults found it pretty funny. Give her credit, she was pretty creative!

Probably a case of hear no evil. See no evil.

1984

I have an incredible memory, a great talent to have in some cases, but for me mainly it’s a curse.

I can literally remember as far back as my first birthday, actually even before that. I think it’s from trauma. Post traumatic stress or something similar.

MY parents separated when I was 14 months old, I remember the day my mother left so clearly that it feels like yesterday.

Her parting words where “I would take you with, but I can’t, your FATHER won’t let me” She then proceeded to pick up the last box, climb into our orange station wagon and leave. What strikes me most about this memory is that when she came down to my level to speak to me, I hid behind my fathers legs, clinging on for dear life because I was AFRAID….Afraid she would actually take me with her.

I obviously didn’t understand it then, but I do know. I, at 14 months KNEW being with my mother was not safe, I knew that she would probably hurt me, which in the end she actually did. Back then I didn’t know she was an alcoholic, but I soon figured it out. My brothers on the other had where acutely aware of it, especially my eldest brother, he took the greatest care in protecting me from her, that in the end he got the beatings and abuse that was aimed at me. Aimed at me for being hungry or cranky or just simply crying. I was only a baby after all.

His days where filled with rushing back home from school, to make sure I was okay. He was only 7. In the end I had to have all my teeth recapped because all he could actually manage to feed a hungry baby was cordial, made too sweet because he couldn’t reach the taps properly.

Why didn’t my dad do something sooner? He did but the courts took ages and instructed him to leave us with our ALCHOLIC mother until the divorce was finalised, he refused and ended up staying in a marriage that was no good for any one.

In the end it was my mother who admitted defeat and probably realized that life was way better with out kids hindering your drinking binges. So one winters morning in 1984 she left. Making life only a slight bit more bearable for my father, because as we grew older, we didn’t become any wiser and he spent the next 21 years trying to protect us from her, but still allowing us to make our own conclusion to what and who our mother really is.

Lets Build my Puzzle

I have done this “blogging” things a few times, the last time I tried I vowed to be honest. And the truth is, I was not.

I went about it by blogging about everything else besides what I really intended to say. I think it was out of fear of being judged or maybe even pitied.

I initially intended for any one of my previous blogs to be a platform where I can purge myself of issues that are so underlying that I actually feared what it would do to me if I actually verbalized them, let alone lay them out in such a public forum for the world to see. I also think it was more of a fear of what would happen if someone I know came across it, let alone a member of my family.

I guess being brought up in an environment where the unspoken consensus was to “shut up and pretend it never happened” was the norm, doesn’t help much either.

So here I go again, this time with vision and dedication that I have never once possessed.

I will be writing form my heart, so if at any time I make no sense at all, please forgive me, but these are my thoughts, hurts and accomplishments. Please respect that.

Also know that I am not “complaining” about the life I had or have and I in now way wish to make your problems seem and less trivial than mine. But that said they are my problems and to me they are or where huge. In some instances, life changing.