You play with fire...

All the crises are over. I have played with fire, been burnt and since I cannot make amends, all that is left is for me to see if I can learn something from this experience.

First, it is not a bad thing to be single. Single does not mean alone, nor does it necessarily mean "looking for someone to make life complete"; it just means single. Responsible for oneself, and, if one can or must, those around oneself.

Second, if you have a desperately difficult choice to make, then either make it or walk away. If that choice involves hurting other people, then make it quickly with as much information as possible, then have no regrets about it: this applies also and specifically to implicit choices too. If that choice involves hurting yourself, then make it in the acceptance that you are responsible for your own life and you created the paths that led to that choice needing to be made. If you're responsible, you accept consequences. Period.

Third, love comes in many forms at many times in your life. And an overwhelming passion can be just that; something that pushes aside all the quieter loves that you both receive and should give. I have not spent enough time with my friends or my family, not acknowledged the support that they offered or the advice that they quietly tried to give. Although I'm not sure how many of them said "go to Philadelphia" knowing that this would bring everything to a head and into focus, I suspect some of them knew (and I might thank them later. Much later).

And fourth, you never really know someone 'til you've been through the mill with them. And even then you don't. We are the sum of our actions not our gestures, and bluff threat tease promise have no validity on their own except to change the mindstates of others and be played out over time.

And last, I do have moral boundaries. I'm too blind or stupid to see them sometimes, but when pushed, they're there. I have reset my moral compass; I am not proud of my recent behaviour but it has happened, I have learnt from it and the onus on me now is not to forget. That, and to repair whatever damage I can and then never ever forget who I am again.

Test words for a Google AdSearch

Not that I'm silly first thing in the morning, but... well... just typing in "green tea" as suggested seemed a little, well, lame...

The purple pheasant is a hesitant beast.
It stutters and mutters and thinks on its feet.
Be sure when you see it, it's running away.
And no purple prose will entice it to stay.

The standard AdWords keyword set wasn't too sure what to make of this, although "it's running away" did trigger a little bit of response. Astoundingly, the "additional keywords" set did pick up that this was supposed to be funny with "funny thinks" and "funny prose"; the word 'prose' in the above was probably a bit of a clue. I'm not sure where the suggestions "who is", "see out", "my you" and "see up" came from though.

Anniversary

I never wrote for you. Too shy perhaps, or busy living before death. Then after. No words, then too many, all about you not for. Every day telling you that I loved you; nights crying because you could not hear. And no surprises left, no exaggerations, no wild wild stories save those I could raise myself. Your spirit lived; in me, in others, sometimes fainter than soft rain on lilies, sometimes exuberant with colour and life. And now I make my own stories. Live, remember, let go, hold truth and see its own rainbows. I hear you laugh at me, my predicaments, you who lived so much in so little, whose years were forever and only time was now. I have years, decades, choices that last longer than we could dream, but I won't forget. Happy anniversary darling; rest in the wildest afterlife you can find.

Wife or Girlfriend?

I've been asked to make a choice. Well, we all make choices every day; what to eat for supper, what to wear, which point to cross the road at, what colour pen to use. But this is a choice with a capital C; one of those points in my life at which, though recoverable with much effort, the path in my life can split in several different directions.

And so the choice. Do I become at last, possibly, the girlfriend of the other most amazing man I've ever met (reader, I married the first) and become all I can be to match him, or become the wife of the man who could finally bring my restless heart to peace ('girlfriend', 'wife'; these are shorthand not literal at the moment). These are high stakes; do I potentially sacrifice my creativity for my sanity, or potentially sacrifice my sanity for my creativity; it's not quite that stark a choice, but these are the poles involved. Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking oeuvre, or live long and leave a happy microworld. Canapes or fairycakes, smart or wise, intellectually or physically active, totally independent or totally rooted; women have faced these choices since long before ladies in frilly crinolines started writing about them, and sexual independence has done nothing to make them any more rare or less difficult. This is of course my head talking; my heart has an entirely different take on the matter, composed mainly of past hurts and current passions with a small side-order of hope. Wife or girlfriend? Either might work, either might fail, either might give a few months or a lifetime of happiness and unhappiness for a pair of people, either might slowly become the other. All I know now is that I don't know enough about myself to know which one I really am, but I'd better sort it out soon before I cause too much damage, even if I have to say 'neither'.

On complaining...

I complained about something last night. Not just grumbled a bit to myself and people round me, but went back and complained to the place in question. It was a small but annoying thing; I'd bought two packets of the same cereal (the dreaded special K) on a two-for-£4 deal but I'd been charged separately (£2+) for each of them. I always keep a mental tally whilst shopping and had that niggling feeling whilst I was walking out the store, checked the receipt but kept on going in a 'bloody people I don't want to come here again' sort of way across the carpark. Then stopped. And thought 'I can get annoyed about this, or I can ask someone to fix it. And if they don't fix it, then I can get annoyed, but not til then'.

And that was quite an enlightening moment; the act of complaining moved from seeing myself as a petty pain for complaining to being someone who had a small problem but was making that small problem into a bigger problem (i.e. not wanting to go to the store again) for both myself and someone else (said store). Now Sainsburys will survive without my occasional visits, people will continue to shop, I will continue to buy my groceries and the world will continue on, but there seemed to be something bigger than that going on. I had an emotional response to a problem. But instead of feeding that response, I bundled up my natural shyness and did the one instant thing I could to either abate or justify it. I've always thought of complaining as a rather juvenile activity, but now it seems that the grown-up thing is to acknowledge and address a complaint rather than shelve it with the other niggles of life. Although I doubt whether I'll go the whole American hog of shouting loudly and insisting that I'm the most important person in the place right now right here.

The upshot was that I'd accidentally bought two different sizes of cereal (375g and 500g packets: why bother with such a small difference?), and with no fuss and a fair bit of till effort, it all got sorted out by the day's duty manager. And strangely, I walked away feeling faintly guilty that I had considered not giving the store the chance to fix this problem (especially since it turned out to be my bad after all). And I thought: maybe this applies to the rest of my life as well. Maybe if instead of getting upset and feeling powerless, I give people a chance to fix problems, then the choice is not to walk or not walk away but to be helped or justifiably annoyed. I think I may try this. Starting with work...

Oh yeah? Enough with the depression already...

Interesting article about depression in the Grauniad today... two things in it sparked thought. Now most stuff about depression should be taken with a large pich of salt; until we can do real hard experiments, it's all theories and observations, but the idea that the brain is triggered to grieve, then learns to grieve on its own without any triggers is an interesting one. Which leads into the second idea that it's possible to be continuously depressed ('low-level depressed' is my own phrase for it) with occasional bad episodes providing enough contrast to hide the underlying depression. It's also possible to over-self-diagnose (hence the title of this post), but there is a real sense of 'how the heck do I get out of this one' going on at Maus Villas today.

Actually, I feel pretty okay this morning. Although I may be worse when I get vertical. The aspartame doesn't seem to have completely wiped me out, my brain is... well, it's not supercharged, but it is at least here. And last week's gloom seems to have finally lifted. What I really need is a day off to sort out all the small things that have gone awry of late. My ironing pile seems to contain more clothes than I thought I owned, which is slightly worrying, especially since I'm not sure what the Schwartzchild radius of ironing is and may inadvertantly get stuck in the middle of it sometime (it's mainly black, so the hole analogy is holding up well today). My washing-up is nothing that can't be fixed with the dishwasher, and... erm, that's it. well, if that's all that's holding up my day, then to the ironing-board! Allez!

Le Moyen Morte

I feel like death today. The day started well enough; relaxed, refreshed, positive. Continued in the same vein. But something went a bit wrong this afternoon (I've identified it now; it's a food problem again) and the black thoughts started closing in, taking my active working brain and making it immobile again. So it's been hurting. My heart; my soul, both deathly sore, and me sitting on my hands, going through the motions, trying to survive long enough to sleep and feel better in the morning. I ate aspartame today; the big baddy... normally I check everything that goes near me, but my bf bought me a drink and I was partway through before the alarmbells started ringing. So that's it for a while; I already feel chemically down, and I'll just have to wait and see if my body can cope with it physically yet without shutting itself down.

And the heart? Part of something else. Self-reliance is a sometimes forgotten activity; it's too easy to look for external answers, external support when what you really need is to girn your loins, set your face, gather up your heart and work it all out for yourself. It's not a bad thing to have someone there, especially if they're that person in the world that you really want to share it with, but first you need to find the strength inside before sharing. As I also keep saying, you can't help anyone else if you can't look after yourself first. So onwards...