01.19.07
Posted in Work at 4:18 pm by TheShire
I’m applying for a job. There’s a lot of ambivalence about this move. It’s scary to think of us working full time, but at the same time we do feel ready for this move. The job is with the Disability Services at the University. It’s basically an entry level position, that of Note Taker Assistant. The money therefore isn’t high, but considering its about two and a half times what I am getting on the benefit I am not complaining much about that. The biggest issue is the woman that runs the Disability Services we have issues with. We have never challenged her directly so I don’t think that would go against us in interviews, but we do believe she has little respect or interest in the challenges that face people with non-visible disabilities. Basically if you have a physical or sensory disability then she will campaign for you, but other sorts, including as in my case, psychological disabilities, she really doesn’t put a lot of effort into things. I also know there’s a pretty high turnabout in the department, I don’t know if that’s because of her, or just that some sectors are like that. Regardless of this we are going to apply and see what happens. One thing we have always said is we need more experience. All our working experience is in fields that no longer appeal or are healthy for us to pursue. Well, except for the research assistant job we had in 2005.
So I have worked on the CV and application forms are filled out. Over the weekend I need to write a good covering letter and post it all away on Monday. I don’t know what my chances are. I know I can do the job, I know I can handle the tasks. I am not sure how I will go with the stress of working permanently but we do believe it is time for us to try to get back into the work force. There is also some concern over whether we will be moving this year to be with David. If we do, well we could always resign. The trouble is the places he is virtually guaranteed of work there would be little opportunities for us. We talked briefly on the phone about that last night (his computer died *pout*). And he did say if I had a job here he would focus his attentions on getting something here as well. I am not going to not apply just because of him and if I get it, well it would be 3 or 4 months before he would have to make that sort of decision and in the meantime I could be working. Earning money, beginning my career, yes there is as much excitement as there is trepidation about this move.
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01.18.07
Posted in Just Stuff at 7:32 pm by TheShire
So today was going to be the day I had the conversation with my mother. We have been stressing about it for two weeks. Although when she rang a couple of days ago to organise the time she mentioned something about Joyce coming down, or not coming down, which set off a little warning bell in my head that she had resorted to her old ways of dealing with things. Basically, this is to just pretend it didn’t happen, to never look at the stuff and hope everything will just continue on like “normal”. That’s how things are suppose to be handled in our family, no one rocks the boat, no one says this isn’t acceptable, and no one does anything to change. It’s what caused the problem at Christmas, I didn’t just sit and take it, I didn’t just bite down all the anger and hurt, and because of that I was the problem. So yesterday when I went to therapy I wasn’t sure the “talk” would happen. Sean and I discussed outcomes, and they were all bad. We said that there was a strong likelihood that if we talked to Mum about the changes we are putting in place she would see it as a confrontation and go on the attack. We said we hoped we had it in us to just walk away from her if it happened. We did say though that if she decided to play dumb about it all we would go along with her. This didn’t mean we were backing down, all the rules we set up would still be in place, how we would interact with her would still be changing. We just would avoid the confrontation, avoid the attacks and recriminations. No matter how well we handled it it was never going to be a good outcome a good event, so we took the easy way out.
Yes when she came it was all friendly and easy going, at least on the surface. I could feel my own tension and could sense Mum’s busyness to keep things normal. I did take the cheat’s way out. I decided for all our sakes Mum didn’t need a list of the changes, especially since most of them were more about our emotional standing. At some stage she mentioned she had seen a counsellor about her grief and he seemed to think she was on track. Ok, I thought, I doubt you pulled the suicide threat with him, but I thought it best not to challenge her on that. The rest of the time went ok, and she took me home before going off to her doctor’s appointment. Time was short so she said she would just drop me off and take off. Driving home we avoided talking about school, we don’t want her to know what we are doing, and although she pushed I decided being trapped in the car with her wasn’t the best time to tell her what was going on with us and school was none of her business. Pulling into our street she took her stab. I do believe she planned it, but I could just be being paranoid. Anyway, she said she told the counsellor about throwing the glass at me, and according to her, the counsellor told her she should have done it a lot earlier. Now I don’t know if she told the counsellor the full story, or if the counsellor said that, but in my mother’s mind she now feels justified. I am the bad daughter, the uncaring, ungrateful selfish bitch. She now has all the justification she needs and I am pissed at myself for letting her away with it. I wish I hadn’t taken the easy way out.
Nothing has really changed, I am still going to change how I interact with her, still going to stand my ground. I tell myself her not knowing, not having that discussion with her hasn’t really changed that plan, and that’s true. Doesn’t mean I am still not pissed at myself, it doesn’t mean I don’t feel I let us all down. I try to remind myself she wouldn’t have heard me anyway. Hell, even after all the time we have told her that we aren’t going to go up without transport, she still refuses to hear that. She said, if David wanted to come over then I could come up for a couple of days and he could take me Queenstown. Having transport means constantly, not in a couple of days. I think no matter what it would have been bad result. But I do feel like I have let us all down, that I fucked up and nothing is going to change. And yeah, I am so pissed at her.
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01.08.07
Posted in Recovery, Relationships at 3:42 pm by TheShire
Ok I stopped the previous entry because I started talking with Sassy on AIM and I didn’t want to have the words deleted. It was easier and safer to just post the half finished thing than have to keep an eye on those that felt we shouldn’t be writing this stuff.
We have to work out what we want from our relationship with our mother. Although I think what we need to work out is what things would be unacceptable, what things we won’t put up with. It would be ideal to say to my mother that we demand to be treated with respect, and if she doesn’t do that then we will walk away. However that isn’t going to work. I really believe my mother wouldn’t have a clue that she isn’t being respectful, I don’t think she would understand what I meant, and would probably get all defensive over it anyway. I think over the years the disrespect (abuse you might call it) has become more insidious, and the fact that for years we never said anything, perhaps she wasn’t even aware of it. And yet as I write this I see myself falling into that same trap we seem to always be battling with. Our journey, our recovery, our pain gets lost as we focus on our mother. We make excuses for her, we worry about hurting her, about being too judgemental, too demanding, too selfish. Maybe Mum doesn’t mean to hurt us, this may be true, but we need to now think that mum’s intentions can’t be the issue, we have to be selfish, we have to say regardless of whether my mother is intentionally hurting us or not, the result is we are getting hurt and we need to do something to stop that happening. You know, with the exceptions that come from being a whole group of people together, we are actually quite a stroppy group of people. In the past, those messages we carry around with us, those messages that said we were unacceptable, unlovable, wrong and bad had made us try to hide our stroppiness, we won’t speak our opinions, we won’t hold people to treating us with respect and tolerance. But that is changing, slowly sure, but steady and with growing power. Hell I have lost friends from my life because they wouldn’t treat me with respect, I have also developed some good and healthy relationships with people that there is mutual respect and tolerance. Our relationship with David, sometimes we disagree on some major issues, actually not major as in relationship threatening, but big differences in our views. We can do that though, we can do that because he is respectful of me, of my opinions without necessarily changing his. It can be frustrating, sometimes I want to bang my head against the wall, but there is always a feeling of being respected and accepted running through everything. (Man I have gotten sidetracked… what was I saying)
I am going to therapy on Wednesday and we will have to sit down and work out some sort of list, what we want and what we don’t want from this relationship with my mother. These have to be concrete specific things, not only so mum can tell what we are wanting but they will also make it easier for us to enforce. There will have to be an understanding though, which is going to be hard to get her to understand, that if at some point we feel picked on, insulted, or disrespected that we will hang up the phone or walk away. We are not willing to sit through it and argue about whether or not she is being disrespectful, simply put if we feel that way then that is how we feel. I write all this and it sounds so calm and in control. I know I am sounding all healthy and assured about it, but that isn’t how things really are. The fact is we don’t know if we are really going to be able to do this. We don’t know if we are strong enough to stand our ground, we don’t know if we can face her and not feel like a bad person and back down just wanting everything to be ok.
My life isn’t a movie of the week. I am not coming out of this confrontation feeling all better, stronger and happy. I am not about to walk off into the sunset knowing everything will now be good in my life. Right now there are a whole bunch of people that have plunged deep into the odd comfort of denial, maybe mum never abused us, maybe we are just a bad ungrateful bitch. Those thoughts bring such pain, but yet at the same time such comfort to them. I don’t really get it myself, and dealing with them, hearing their doubts, their fears about being liars only makes me upset. I remember what I remember… and when I wrote that their voices became strong, the what if its not true, and we get all switchy and I have to take a moment to ground so I am not lost in the turmoil that is Shire at the moment. We didn’t plan this confrontation, we didn’t sit around and say, ok we want a different relationship with our family, this is how we are going to do it. We virtually walked into it blind. Some of us me included, decided we weren’t going to be as silent as they (the family) were use to, but confrontation and changes in relationships weren’t really planned for. We didn’t know what we wanted to happen, what changes we required, we still don’t. But more importantly we also didn’t work out how to handle the fallout, we weren’t planning on having fallout to handle. We talked to Sassy for awhile this afternoon, getting some grounding, some reassurance and we are grateful for that. Now, we don’t know, we are adrift and crumbling under the weight (great mixed metaphors there).
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Posted in Recovery, Relationships at 2:29 pm by TheShire
Mum rang this morning. I knew it was coming, I knew she would ring when my brother left. I thought he was going to be there a few more days though. Nevermind. I also learnt my brother lied to my mother about things I said to him when he decided to interfere in the argument we had with my mother. So we are now glad we made a decision to shut him out of our life. That’s how it is, that’s how it will be, and we don’t even feel that sad about it. But back to Mum. She asked if we had shut her out of our life as well. I had to deal with that right at that moment. It wasn’t fair, but she doesn’t know we are multiple, didn’t know that we as a community hadn’t come to a decision about that yet. So I ended up saying no, I hadn’t cut her out. Although we are still very ambivalent about this decision and have been since Christmas, I think for the meantime that this is the best decision. We will try to establish a different type of relationship with her, one with new rules and new boundaries, and if that doesn’t work then the other option, the walking away option is always there to go back to. We haven’t taken it off the table, we are just going to try this other approach first. Am I hopeful that the new relationship will work? I don’t know, right now I doubt it will, but I feel I owe it to everyone to at least try.
Mum seems to think the whole problem was about her losing her temper and throwing the glass. I tired to explain to her that wasn’t the issue. The fact is everyone loses their temper, and in a way it was one of the first honesty and truthful responses from my mother, sure she was angry, and that anger got close to being violent, but it was out there, it wasn’t sneaky it was some attempt to destroy me. It’s hard to explain, but it seemed real and honest. What upset me the most was what happened later. I talked it over with her, I thought we worked through the episode. If we had been a healthy family, as adults that is how things should go I would have thought. A problem, an explosion, calm down and work through it then move on. But no, that’s not how it happens in our family. For the rest of that day and all of the next, well my mother and brother and his wife, they decided to punish me. Their silent treatment, their lack of acknowledgement of me was meant to be a punishment for me speaking up for myself, for me demanding that I was treated with respect. That was the part that I decided was unacceptable, that was the part that I decided I wasn’t going to stand for. That is also the part my mother doesn’t understand, she is focused only on her angry outburst, she said, but haven’t you exploded with anger before, done things you regret later. Of course I have, but it wasn’t about that. She refuses to even acknowledge the punishment happened, she won’t see it for what it was. Of course that makes us wonder if we are being too sensitive about it, too emotional, too confused. Too many times people have told us things we remember didn’t really happen, it is so hard to hold onto our truth.
How this all happened was my mother said she wanted to talk to me about this new person I am. I had told her when I was up there that the daughter she thought we were wasn’t there anymore (not entirely true however…) We said trying to be that person was killing us and we weren’t willing to do it anymore. This was during the conversation that was suppose to deal with the angry outburst. So anyway, she rings saying she would have to learn about this new person so as not to have it all explode again. I took over at that point. I knew no one else was willing and probably able to deal with it. I said, rather sarcastically I suppose, that not punishing me with Coventry was probably a good start. Ok not the best way to deal with the conversation, but I was and am still pissed at what happened. I tried to calmly talk to her about how we feel when we are around her, trying to make sure it was all those healthy I statements rather than the attacking you ones. But it seldom worked. When she asked why I didn’t visit her much I worked hard to find the right way to answer that truthfully, I didn’t want to make excuses, to lie about it, so I ended up saying “I always ended up feeling like a mess when I got home”. I thought that was a good way to put it, I felt it was an honest answer without it being attacking and derogatory, it didn’t work. In response I got a defensive “well I’m sorry we made you feel like crap”. The thing is I don’t think she will ever change, I don’t think she will ever acknowledge having any part in us feeling bad. It is like the relationship between me and my brother, to her that is solely our doing, that we were determined to hate each other. She can’t see any role she might have had in that, actually at one point saying she treated us equally. The whole conversation I found myself again and again biting my tongue, trying to choose my battles appropriately. This has never been about getting my mother to change. That is a war we will never win a battle that would be pointless to fight. She won’t see what she has done, she won’t acknowledge any wrongdoing on her part. My mother would probably need some sort of lengthy therapy or counselling to get to that point, but that would also require her to see there was something about her that needed worked on in the first place.
So that now leaves us with redesigning our relationship. It is what Mum said she wanted to come down and talk about. Again I will say I am suspicious and cynical about that working, but we shall see. The trouble is we aren’t entirely sure what new rules and boundaries we want in place. We only worked out one, and that is not ever visiting unless we have total access to transport, a way to leave at any time we can.
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01.04.07
Posted in Relationships at 10:46 pm by TheShire
What is it with people who profess such great friendship to total strangers?
I accept that friendship has always been something we struggle with. Making and maintaining friendships are skills we are still trying to learn. As children and teenagers we weren’t really allowed the opportunities to investigate friendship. People outside of the family were dangerous therefore those who had worked so hard to keep us isolated from the ways of the real world worked hard to prevent and destroy any relationships we might form with outsiders. People were a danger to them and their activities and therefore we also encoded ourselves with the same fear of others. It’s how it worked. Sometimes I think abuse recovery would be so much easier if we never took on board those messages of our abusers and made them our own. So as our family and other abusers in our life feared the influence of others, feared discovery and interference we learnt to fear them as well. Some of it was about a protective need to avoid harm coming to others but I do think I wasn’t that altruistic. I think a lot of it boiled down to a belief that people were dangerous and would bring harm and we were trying to avoid that as much as possible. Therefore we never reached out to others and ignored those that reached out to us. So the time of development when friendships were explored and developed we hid from the world in isolation.
This may have resulted in an erroneous belief system around friendships but to us friendship is something that grows over time. When you meet someone initially there might be a spark of something, be that common interests, shared worldview or sense of humour or just an interest in getting to know them better. This isn’t instantaneous true love or deep friendship; usually it’s the vague possibility that there might be something there. This spark, this impression is enough to put effort into things, to do the work that is getting to know another person. I say work not because it is some tedious arduous job but it does take time and effort. Sometimes the result is great relationships with other people. We have some wonderful friends out in the world. People we can talk to about almost anything, people we can not see for ages but always know that our friendship, the connection between us exists. Friendships that we have taken the time to build that are now strong and solid. Sometimes the spark of possible friendship doesn’t lead anywhere. Sometimes there is nothing more to build on, sometimes under that initial spark are differences too significant or too annoying for anything to grow, and sometimes you just find you don’t like the other person all that much.
So when I get proclamations of deep friendship from strangers I have to wonder about the other person. Perhaps I am being too hard on them but I doubt it. What I see are people living some flowerily fantasy of life not truly involved in the real world, or offering real friendship. This is probably indicative of the fact that these proclamations usually occur in some domain of the online environment. It would seem that those people who write with offers of deep friendship have made little or no effort to discover who we all really are. Generally they might read one post we have made on an online forum or a certain page of our website and have then used that to base their entire version of who we are. These offers of friendship are usually dropped and forgotten as soon as something is presented that doesn’t match their imagined image of who we are. I have also seen this happen for those of us that interact in online forums for the BDSM lifestyle in personal ads and chat rooms we have had total strangers profess the desire to belong to us, without any knowledge of who we are. When they are asked why the result is normally a version of “I’m submissive, you’re dominant”. Just like with friendship these offers aren’t about who we are, its about some created image of who they would want us to be.
There is often an assumption underlying these offers of friendship I think. People assume that one thing will make all people the same, or that one thing will offer an instant connection. I get it a lot from multiples. I get emails from people saying that they are multiple too, or know multiples and therefore assuming I will be a similar “person”. That somehow multiplicity overrides everything else about a person, or all multiples are the same in demeanour, interests and beliefs. Being in a number of multiple communities I can say for certainty that this isn’t the case. Diversity exists everywhere, and this includes multiples. So to assume just because I am multiple I am one way, have one view of the world, hell its even an assumption to think how my multiplicity is, how I view it will match with other multiples. Likewise the fact I am a survivor of abuse. Someone today, actually the person that sparked this rant, called me fragile and tender. I believe she or he assumed those things simply based on the fact I said I was probably a trauma based multiple. Surviving trauma does not necessarily make one fragile and tender, it can do, I know many survivors who I would consider fragile, but it doesn’t automatically equate that trauma will turn someone into a pretty but fragile person.
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01.03.07
Posted in Just Stuff at 2:01 pm by TheShire
So it’s rather amazing how things have changed in the space of 3 days. Christmas with the family, we knew it was going to become an issue, that it was not going to be a happy experience, I think on some levels we knew it was going to be very bad, but I don’t think anyone planned on it going the way it did. We are in Queenstown now, safe, secure with someone’s love and acceptance, but hiding the fragility and pain. We have stepped away from our family, completely severed any residual connection with my brother, and with my mother, I do not know, if it is not completely severed it is completely changed. I stand on the ground that shifts under my feet, I do not know what I feel right now, I do not know what the outcome will be. I know my relationship with my mother, with my family has changed in a way that will mean it never returns to what it was, that it will never be the same, I do not know what this will bring.
When I arrived in Oamaru my mother seemed fine, things seemed calm and relaxed. But on arrival to Kurow I became the bad daughter almost instantly, the one that couldn’t do a thing right. I didn’t greet my brother right, I spent too much time focusing on my own stuff, I wasn’t interested enough in the children, I was not being social enough. Basically I was wrong and everyone else was just perfect. I didn’t matter that no one was including me, that I was being excluded as much as I was isolating. I admit I wasn’t making my usual effort of being the “good daughter” I had decided that I was going to be myself more than they are use to. So this wasn’t going down well, my mother kept telling me off, telling me that I was being bad. Finally at lunch on Christmas day I had had enough. I stopped her mid bitch at me and said I wasn’t the only one in this family that was being isolating, that no one else was putting any effort into being with me. I would sit with them because it was easier, when they went inside I wasn’t included, I wasn’t even told most of the time. I told her that I had been excluded from the whole Christmas event and that hurt. That made her even angrier with me, and she threw the wineglass. Now there is some debate if it was thrown at me, or I was just standing in the same area. Regardless the wine glass smashed and we had to get out of the way of flying glass. As I walked away she started screaming out to me to “get the fuck out” by the time I got into the kitchen to tell my brother than mum was upset and I was going for a walk, she was still yelling at me to get the fuck out. I headed out, I didn’t know where I was going to go, what I was going to do. I couldn’t just leave, I didn’t have any transport, I didn’t have anywhere to go. I ended up at my mother’s friend’s house, to use her phone to find out if I could afford a night at the motor camp, which I ended up being able to afford, so the plan was hatched that I go back and pack up, spending the night at the camp ground and hopefully my mother would be polite enough to send David that way. But when I arrived back at the house, well it only just continued. I went down to the bedroom to pack and my brother came down. Of course he had to put his two cents in, he had to take over, he had to be all in control, he had to be “the one”. I told him I wasn’t putting up with it anymore, I wasn’t going to allow my mother to get away with treating me like shit, that I was an adult now, not that pathetic child that was scared of her. He didn’t like hearing that, he said Dad only died 6 months ago, and told me I wasn’t being an adult I was being a selfish bitch. He left and Mum came in, she pulled her crap about not being here for much longer, the not so subtle manipulative attempts to claim suicide. We wanted to walk away but at that time one of our peacekeepers took over and tried to make everything better. In a way I am glad she did, glad we got to experience what happened over the next day. It cemented everything for us. I was basically sent to coventry by them for the rest of the day and the next day. My brother and his wife wouldn’t even acknowledge me when I spoke, I was lucky to get just a mumble out of my mother, usually as to speak a snide remark towards me. I think this was suppose to be some sort of punishment for me not playing the game. I think it was suppose to pull us back into line. But it didn’t work, we experienced that shit and thought, enough, we aren’t playing anymore, we have moved on.
When we left my mother said something about calling her when I get home, but that was the fullness of the goodbye, she was pleased to see us go I think as much as we were to leave. It was cold and distant and hurtful. But driving away from Kurow with David I realised it was also what I needed. I have a lot to talk about, a lot to work though with Sean, but I feel so much freer, still damaged and fragile, but freer, not so much enslaved, bound to that family. In an email I wrote to Sean I said that my family make me sick, that was such a big thing for me. I have always put the responsibility of that onto me, that I wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t strong enough, that I wasn’t doing the right thing, so now to think about it as me reacting to their insanity, to their sickness is a big deal.
Thursday 28th
I ended up crying today, crying terribly, this is the first cry since all this happened. The tears came for 10 minutes and ten were brushed aside. It was so messed up and I don’t know how much I can stand..
Sunday 31st
Happy New Year. A suckful end to a suckful year. I had asked David to do something special tonight, for us to see the new year in together. After some discussion the plan was made for us to go out for dinner to our place and then home for well.. probably lots of kinky sex. He had to work today, which wasn’t a big deal, he would be home just after 6, which left us plenty of time. Well the evening came and no sign of my boyfriend, eventually at 8 I rang the store, still hoping to here that he wasn’t there, but no such luck. I get him on the phone and it seems they needed someone to work to late tonight and he volunteered. Sso New Year’s Eve and I will be alone until just after 11. I suppose that means I can still see the new year in with him, but it’s left me feeling very alone and sad. Christmas was a sad terrible mess that has left me without a family, that probably brought about the ruin of my relationship with my family. I have not had a lot of support from David about this, I get his point, that when I think about it when I try to talk about it it makes me very depressed, morose, lost in my pain. But it left me feeling alone, again, and now this. It makes matters worse that he already has to work the next two days , the last two days I am here. So tonight was going to be our last full night together. And he just threw that away. I am so angry with him tonight. What I had hoped would be a good start to another year, is a continuation of the year that has hurt and dragged us down.
I am hurt by him tonight, hurt more than I thought I would be. I think this is hurting me now because of Christmas, because of all that happened then, so now I feel abandoned and rejected by my boyfriend, I feel like he would rather work that see the new year in with me. It was to be our last day of this holiday, our last day of the year. It started off so good, actually no. It started off me feeling that his friends, over for a holiday were more important to him than me, although I know that is selfish to say, since it probably wasn’t his fault he didn’t have his car. I just felt abandoned in the depth of the family, and I have this sinking feeling that none of his friends or family know about me. We are talking about living together and I have such a feeling that his family don’t even know he is seeing anyone. But anyway, he picks me up and I start to feel alive again, wanted, god forbid even loved. He seemed passionate for me, he seemed interested in me. Then yesterday I don’t know. He felt distant, He even said he felt that way a little. I put it down to a off day, he has been run raggid, family, trips to Australia, mother and friends coming here, the first time in ages to just sit and that’s what he did. But tonight, tonight was an abandonment, tonight whether he meant it or not was a rejection and I just want to go home. I do, I want to be in my own home right now, away from the people, away from my family, away from all the complications of living in the world. I don’t know how to deal with it when he gets home. I don’t know how to say, you hurt me tonight.
Right now it feels like this has been a year of losses, loss of my education, loss of my father, loss of my family and now, it does feel like it, loss of my boyfriend.
Monday 1st
David arrived home about midnight. I was pissed, he was pissed, not the best start to the new year. But my thoughts about a lost boyfriend were an overreaction (go figure). Work and his bosses basically screwed him over and he was very angry about it. Didn’t help much coming back to me. I was in such a foul mood, morose and angry. The year had sucked so much and the end of it had been such a let down. I don’t blame him, well not that much. I’m kinda disappointed at the lack of time we have had together. But such is life and there are semi-plans for something special in a couple of weeks. So I can’t complain… too much.
I got a text from my mother this morning wishing me a happy new year and telling me she loves me. I wanted to text back and say too little too late. I didn’t, decided I would just leave it, let it sit for awhile. Love may be professed but it wasn’t love that lead them to put me into coventry, that was a punishment for speaking my mind, for not towing the party line. It’s hard though too, it would be so easy to just go back, to forget it all and just smile and play happy families. That’s what always has happened, that’s probably what she expects to happen this time. I do not know what will actually happen this time. When I wrote to people about what happened, they all seem to think I am saying goodbye to my mother. I have never said I will break off all contact with her. I know I will never speak to my brother again, but my mum, I don’t know, maybe I will cut off contact with her, maybe a new relationship will come that is based on something different, something new.
So anyway, it was a lovely day today and David was working all day so we decided to walk down the hill and wander around Queenstown for a while. David lives up a hill, it’s quite steep, I would hate to try to walk up it, but the walk down was rather pleasant, especially when we could take the time. It was warm but there’s been a slight wind most of the day so we didn’t get overly heated. AT the bottom of the hill there’s St Omer’s Park. I have no idea who St Omer is, and the park, it’s basically a strip of grass and trees between the road and the lakeside. It’s a lovely walk though, and there were people all over the grass stretching out into the sun. Town was swarming with people, David says that it gets busier than this, but man there were people everywhere. A lot of very rich people, mostly who also seemed young and pretty, even the not so young still looked gorgeous, I did feel very out of place. But then I suppose those who come to a resort town half way around the world, are either the young and adventurous or the wealthy. Being poor, old and not attractive I felt like I stood out. But the weather was nice and the scenery was gorgeous, so I got a takeout coffee and sat at the lake edge watching people and the boats out in the lake enjoying my day. I think though I sat there too long because I got ill. Not really sick just a step off the norm, I think it was a combination of dehydration and heat exhaustion, so by the time I got home I was wiped out. Luckily when David got home at 10:30 he was exhausted as well. He worked 12 hours without a break but since it was at holiday rates he wasn’t complaining much.
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