Yesterday you asked me about three times how I was doing and I didn’t answer once. I didn’t want to, because I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think it was important. At the moment I have more important shit to deal with. I need to take care of you, I need to take care of my family, my business, my clients, be a good person, not forget…. But I woke up knowing that it was an important tell – the fact that I couldn’t answer.

If I think about it, I guess I’m sad, perpetually sad, generally sad…and empty. Each day I forget a bit more about who I was, who I wanted to be. I told you that it feels like I’m slowly losing parts of me…turns out it wasn’t happening that slowly and I’m now at a place, emotionally, where I’ve lost most of me. I’ll have to find me again, but I’m struggling to remember why that is important.

Each day here I remember a bit more about how to murder myself inside myself for the good of everyone else. I am learning, again, to live without boundaries, and to ignore my own needs. Self compassion has become a foreign concept. I can’t read myself, never mind others, but it’s like I instinctively feel their needs and react, without even realizing it, to fulfil it.

I am struggling to find space for myself,even when I (rarely) do I am not sure what to say to myself. I am not sure what I want, who I am and why I wanted to go back? I guess if I’m honest right now it’s easier to just…disappear…stop existing as a person on my own and just become an extension of my family.

But this can’t be good for me. Can it? I’ve lost a lot of the will to fight it. I’m not sure why I should. I’m naturally good at performing for conditional love…why mess with a recipe that works… kind of?

It’s like I know that I’m going through a divorce and I can remember some good times, some bad times and some neutral times about my 10 odd years in Cape Town, but I cannot sense it with my heart. This terrifies and numbs me at the same time. Is that weird?

I feel weird. It’s like I’m not me and I honestly can’t remember who I even am, was or was supposed to be. It’s frustrating. It’s like you said – I’m a Koala without a tree to cling onto. What will become of me? There are so many holes in my soul, so many scars on my personality, I’m not sure if I’m even truly functional. I know that I was fighting with all my heart and soul for something, but what was it for? Everything is becoming hazy.

On top of this…again if I’m honest about my shadow self…it’s getting worse…and I’m not proud of it. I judge myself for it constantly, but the passive aggressive side of my personality is rearing its ugly head – the desire to hurt like I have been hurt or maybe the desire to hurt like I am hurting? I am not sure I can’t feel my own pain.

Also, the desire to hurt (myself) like I have been hurt before…just so I can feel something, one thing, that I understand and can deal with just for a few moments. That is back too. And I am shocked. I’m not a little girl anymore. I was supposed to leave that behaviour in my childhood and early adulthood. I won’t do it, but the desire is there. Just like the desire to smoke is still there, even though I’m not smoking for now.

Also, the desire for reckless behaviour, which I also thought that I had left behind at some point… I want to leave the house, forget all responsibilities, drink until I pass out, dance wildly, kiss random people, pass out…and do it again…until I can be sure that there’s nothing left of me. That’s also weird. It doesn’t fit in with who I am supposed to be I don’t think.

I’m scared that I will destroy myself. I am scared that I will let down all the very people that I want to and NEED TO look after, take care of, and keep alive. Maybe that is it? Maybe I should actively practice taking less responsibility for those around me, but its so difficult when I NEED to care so much about everyone and everything around me.

So I’m confused as fuck. That’s my short answer. Sorry for dumping ALL of this on you, but hey…you asked…three times.

Growth (real growth) is uncomfortable and love hurts. My need for other humans, to be seen, to be accepted, trusted, looked up to, embraced, taken care of, and perhaps, even loved, is something I have never understood, always been afraid of and battled against many a midnight hour. How is it that we can self improve, live, breathe, make our own decisions, suffer, fall down, get up and find strength somewhere to carry on, and yet…. Be left with this constant need of others… A need for a loving voice, a need for hugs, even kisses maybe, or just the strong but true voice of a friend guiding you like a lighthouse in the dark over many miles of uncharted phone signals? I am afraid of this need. I am afraid to need what I (possibly, likely, maybe, perhaps) can’t have. Food sources can be secured, wealth may be built, even education and wisdom can be stashed, but a constant supply of human affection… No… That will always be the choice of the other human to give. And that I’d what I am so desperately afraid of. In my black and white mind things are either all good or all bad, all yours or not yours at all. I am only now starting to will my eyes to see the greys and force my heart to accept the color as, not confusing, but comforting. Yesterday I listened to a webinar by a very successful entrepreneur and client of mine who was preaching that resilience comes from not only being comfortable with, but embracing duality. Bad things in moderation may be good, and too much of the good things may be bad, even lethal. There can be no yin without yang and the chariot card in the tarot teaches us that a vehicle only accomplishes movement by having a light horse pulling it with a dark horse whilst the independent conscious steers them both. The strength card teaches us that in order to build our strength and capacity we need to embrace our beast, stop fearing it, but tame it with kindness and love and then grow in capacity, being comfortable with growing both our capacity for good and bad at the same time. The presenter that people who focus too much on the light often end up doing a lot of bad to themselves and others unintentionally, whilst people who embrace their shadow selves too vehemently may end up doing some good after all. I am only sure of one thing: my need for humanity and my resistance towards acknowledging and feeding this need… That is my beast.

Did you know that when I was growing up I actually wished on some weird horrible mind fucked level that I would be raped just so that I could feel someone “loving” me? I bet you are shocked, but it’s true. Whilst other 13 year old girls were out being happy and holding hands with school crushes I wasn’t allowed to do much. Also I had no idea how to be normal with normal people. Compassion, boundaries, feeling emotions and dealing with them and working through them is something I knew nothing about… So I didn’t have friends of boyfriends. I didn’t have a mom I could have coffee with and open up to about my feelings. And my dad well get wasn’t available. Emotions were a dirty word and being loved meant being fed, having a roof over your head, clothes in your cupboard and if you were really good… some extra murial activities being paid for and transport for those activities being arranged for. So I had ballet and homework and gat was the sum total of my existence. I was destined to be someone great, but not yet good enough to deserve unconditional love or for that matter any sort of emotional support. Life, in that way, was hard I guess. I was constantly ‘difficult, emotional, sensitive, weird.’ My parents couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just be a good little robot child.

I’ve come a long way from being that nonexistent person… I’ve started to develop a personality, gotten to know and trust myself at least a bit, built the foundations for some very strong amazing friendships… And now I am husband less, homeless, living with my family, in the room that I had my first suicide attempt in… Friendless, not allowed to leave the house. Right back where I started and due to corona I have to stay here for the next 21 days and I’m scared. I think I might be starting to resent my parents aubconsiously, which is really bad because I am grateful so grateful for their financial and physical support during this divorce, but at the same time I think that since they know they can’t give me what I need emotionally to be a healthy human being they should at least have the decency to realise that if they don’t let me go so I can go find and source my own emotional support I will cease to exist and that won’t be fun for any of us.

The shocking truth is life is hard and messy and grey, so grey, not black and white, but I want and deserve a life worth living.

So now that I’m single, thirty, doubting my ability to survive on my own, and yet free for the first time in my life ever, I need to remember that I want to:

-have at least one 1 night stand

-figure out how to use tinder

-go for figure skating lessons at least once!

-earn 30k pm net

-save my first mil

-publish a couple of coloring books

-meet new random people

-have fun

-laugh a lot

-attend a trance party and dance at it!

-embrace my curves & learn how to dress them

-quit smoking

-do an overnight hike

-go rock climbing in nature

-do fun wonderful adventurous activities without a care in the world

-do first belly dance show..

I get it now. You held up a mirror, showed me exactly what I wanted to see.. That’s why you were perfect, that’s why we were soulmates, that’s why we were worth it… We were worth everything, because I needed a fantasy to believe in and you let me believe that it was you.

And what you got was someone so desperate to keep the fairytale from falling apart that she would take whatever you dished out, do whatever you wanted as long as the fairytale never ended…

I feel… Astonished. I feel… Winded. You used all my best qualities against me so skillfully…. Willed naivety will never ever be a choice for me. Ever again. I accept the part I had to play. I forgive myself. It was so hard… I was so desperate. I really feel for me… But you… I feel nothing… You I only feel you in the scars on my soul that I discover more of each day. I only feel you in the bloody wounds that I filled with poppy seeds. The flowers are blooming now but they drip with blood, my blood… It hurts. I feel you in the ice cold hands that try to suffocate me every night… Keep my lungs from filling up with the air I need to live from. I feel you… In the gaping hole that sits where once my shy emerging femininity had been… I feel you inside of me. But as for feeling for you. I feel nothing, because you are nothing aren’t you? You were never a human being, just a mirror of what I wanted to see… A void I could dissapear inside of. But I was not supposed to leave you.. Alive… Was I?

“the desire of a man is for his woman
the desire of a woman is for the desire of her man”
I couldn’t agree more Jack…

https://wp.me/p3FO3w-7it

It’s been about 19 days since I grabbed my Id, my wallet and an Uber and left you… And I’m only now starting to realise how fucked up this situation is… Was. . Is? Time is not reality. Neither am I. Neither were you. You see the cracks were always there, whispering around the corner, visible on a smooth surface. You could taste it in the bitterness of the apples that we kept around the house… But I told you no… No bitterness here. No cracks no whispers… Just dream. Dream. We can live in dreams, live on dreams. Who needs water? I miss you. Or do I miss the though of you? Or do I miss the illusion of you? Or do I miss my slightly skewed perception of you??? See, I needed a prince. And you were it. Without a prince I would never escape the witches castle, never, ever dream of becoming a person…. But you weren’t a prince were you? Or innocent either? You can blame all of this on me and a lot of it is my fault, the fault of my desperation of my unwillingness to see reality, of my need to never ever be alone… But not all of it. It takes a special type of person to see a desperate girl, on the verge of death, needing just one prince… and think… I don’t much like that but I could work with that. I don’t even know what you thought, but how could you? How could you?

It was easy for you to hit me. It was easy for you to yell and scream and belittle me. You enjoyed breaking me down and controlling me in every single imaginable way possible. You had to restrain yourself from hurting me sometimes because it felt so good. Is that the real story? Why were you so nice to me way back when? Why did you take such good care of me? Was it really just to lure me in? Or were you desperate just like me, in pain just like me in need of a person to rescue who would rescue you? What happened? What really happened? Please tell me because I don’t know.

It was a glorious day in March 2020. My marriage was well and truly on the rocks. Actually it was more already past the rocks, broken down by rough tides and violent winds, thrown against the sharp edges of rocky reefs, drowned my copious amount of unending tears and was now laying at the bottom of the ocean, decaying, everyday becoming a more painful more dangerous more distant memory.

It had been two weeks since my husband had called my dad to inform him of my (in his mind) fragile state of mental health and his suspicion that all that was left to do with me was to have me locked up in an institution and throw away the key… Like Alice in Wonderland without the Wonderland and without the happy ending…

It had been more than a year since he first layed hands on me. More than a year since I’ve discovered that he wouldn’t hesitate to beat and physically hurt me when and if he needed to. It had been about 6 years since the very bad shouting, intimidation, psychological and emotional abuse had started, but only about 4 weeks since I had opened my eyes to it.

It had been 1 day since I had visited the police station to hand in a 6 page affidavit detailing the statement of the mental, psychological and emotional trauma this man has caused me. One day since I’ve expressed my wishes to the police that I would like them to open a case of harassment, Intimidation, invasion of privacy and common assault (common because I did not end up in hospital). It was also 13 years since that man had taken me outside, held me close beneath the full moon and asked me if I would be his forever. 4 years since I had reaffirmed my commitment to him at a small picnic wedding ceremony in a public nature reserve and 8 hours since the last time I had cried about him…

That day I had attended a business meeting with a remarkable outcome. I had celebrated our business success with my business partners over coffee and croissants (the same business partners that had watched me close the last business meeting the precious day just before midnight in tears, broken down to a whisper.. .

It had been 4 hours since my dad, who since becoming aware of the incident had been following me everywhere himself to make sure I am safe, had dropped me at the golf club where the business meetings were held.

And at that moment I wanted nothing more than just a taste of freedom. He had promised me he would destroy me and everything and everyone I loved… And at that moment it definitely felt like he was in more ways than one succeeding… I hadn’t tasted any freedom since the in incident. And when I thought of it just then I remembered a place and a person.

The place was a nature reserve with a hill and picnic area that overlooked the whole of the city, the ocean and the mountains. It was a place where one could become whole again..

The person was a man who had come into my life by accident and at the time I had needed it the most. He had been so nice to me… Never judging, criticizing, hurting, or wanting anything from me. He was a person that I could be myself with without fear….

I took an Uber to the place and invited the person to meet me there.

The place was as I had remembered it but even more breathtaking. The person was as I had remembered his but even more beautiful, even less judgemental…

We had sex I the park, underneath the blue sky whilst the wind was playing with our skins. We were just two consenting adults looking for something and nothing from each other all at the same time in a beautiful park under a very blue sky. I lost myself in him, in his loveliness, in his closeness. For those moments all I focused on was him and the park and the sensations his touches caused in my body.

When we were done I kissed him and thanked him, put on my pants, had one last smoke, studied the bruises I had accidentally caused myself where my skin had come into contact with the rough terrain around us… And expressed that I had fun.

It was such a fun this to do. It was such a free and beautiful thing to do. I shouldve felt guilty towards my ex-husband, but I didn’t. I shouldve felt head over heels in love with the person I was with but I didn’t. I just felt immensely calm, exceedingly grateful and ready to proceed with life.

I thought I would always love you. I never thought you could hurt like this. The house… It’s empty, full of broken promises… Your scars on my skin they burn me like fire. At the same time I hate you and I’m thankful for having met you. You said you would destroy me and everything I love. Is that true? Only time will tell how much you’d like to hurt me… Kick me when I’m down… I’ll only get up stronger. I’ll make you whish you never left…

First week of divorce…

My sweetheart, you were my first love, my only love. I hate loving you and I love hating you.

My darling I would’ve jumped over the moon for you. I would’ve picked out the stars myself if this would put the sparkles back in your eyes. I would’ve done every single thing under the sun for you.

Why did it have to be like this?

Your love turned to hate so fast. Each breathe I take hurts. Each song is a memory. Each touch is torture. Each memory is painful. I loved sweetheart. I love you still. My heart aches for you. I want to hold you and tell you everything is going to be okay. I want to love and have you forever and always. The truth is everything will never be okay again. Goodbye darling. I wish you well. All the best for you. Just by the way I really did love you.