The Lemonade I've Made

  I began writing this blog from a nicely sized apartment in Seville around two and a half years ago, I’d just moved there and I was very much getting to grips with the cultural change and stresses and strains of my first full time, proper teaching job. At the time I was quite unbeknownst to myself really struggling and on the brink of a breakdown that would leave me exhausted for months to come. I remember posting an entry during that time about being unable to find love and acceptance and it made my mother feel very distressed. It really is no wonder that I struggled to find love and acceptance, I have come to believe that this is because I used to spend all of my time focussing on butterfly-feeling-invoking whirlwind romances that were great for a sum total of five minutes and would then end abruptly and leave me wondering what I had done wrong this time… there were many times. I recently described myself to a friend as ‘the worst fisherman ever’ when recounting my days spent at the side of murky waters hoping to catch an honest and reliable man. The truth is that I’m not really sure what I was looking for during those days of semi-permanent depression and loneliness. I watched my sister get married and begin her new life whilst I just ate saturated fat from Burger King and gained weight, I saw a beautiful cousin turn 18 and get even more beautiful overnight while I went to the local shop for yet another tub of Ben & Jerry’s. I noted with grim pride that another cousin was turning 21 and appeared to have 2 cars and enough money for a mortgage deposit whilst I spent most of my cash on large gin and tonics and would only take up work which was abroad and therefore temporary and not to be relied upon. I was making some dastardly decisions.

  Whilst making dastardly decisions and subsequently making myself thoroughly miserable; one day the idea came to me that I should perhaps change things and make my life a bit more permanent and less chaotic. It was after being thrown to the side of the road in July 2015, by another of my whirlwind romances, that I decided enough was enough and it was time to start taking myself seriously and so it was on that day that I opted to give myself a fighting chance of lasting happiness. I came home from Seville and moved back in with my parents (joyous for all concerned for a few minutes) and started looking for teaching jobs in Liverpool and it was to my delight that I got one. I also went to stand by the side of the murky waters again and gazed back into the Plenty of Fish pond, but it must have been a different pond because it didn’t look so gloomy or hopeless this time – in actual fact it was clear and turned out to be a fruitful exercise. Exercise too, I started doing more of it and getting up earlier as well as going to bed earlier. I knocked the saturated fat on the head and stopped thinking of myself as ‘poor me’, who had no control over her own life, and started thinking of myself as capable and realised how willing I was to make changes.

 Next we come to the changes, the changes I made have changed my life. That’s right you heard me, ME, I, MY. I made the changes to MY outlook, I had a good look at MYSELF and decided not to be a disaster anymore and once I made these wonderful decisions everything changed. Firstly, I met a new man and after eight months he is still refreshing my days – I may not have gone for this man before because I didn’t make good decisions in the past. I made very bad decisions and I wouldn’t go for anyone unless it was clear that they would expect nothing from me, of course this meant that I could expect nothing from them, an unhappy set of circumstances. I got a new job from which I have gone from strength to strength within and feel positive about a future living alongside. I’ve cut down on alcohol to a huge extent and lost plenty of weight over a couple of months and anticipate to lose more of it in the months to come.

 In short, I wasn’t incapable of making changes as I had previously thought and as soon as I made the changes the control was handed back to me and happy outcomes were mine once more. Not everything in life can be solved by making changes, this I fully accept. However, many things can be solved by a change of mind set so if anything about my words rings true with you then I urge you to make the changes and ride the waves that come with them. Experience has taught me that making changes is the act of pressing lemons and the result is the sweetened, liquid gold that looks and tastes just like bubbly, refreshing lemonade.

Confident Happiness

  Anyone who has had a good scroll through my blog entries will know that they have been placed here on this website as a means of self therapy and also because I have always hoped that they will reach someone, anyone who needs to hear the words I have written and posted back out into the world. I have generally found myself to be at my most writey when I have been feeling low and needing to make sense of my emotions and thought processes; I have heard it said that artists do their best work when they're feeling tortured and very possibly hysterical and I agree with that. The more hard hitting pieces of my writings have generally been written when I haven't been feeling quite 'myself'. It has been hard to judge which bits of me are myself and which aren't over the last few years, as people we tend to say that we aren't 'ourselves' when we aren't feeling our best but I tend to wonder if this is the correct way to describe the self. I feel as though I have always been myself whether I've been feeling sad, alright or fabulous because there have been elements of my self in every phase of my recovery over the last ten years of ups and downs.

  So where am I now then? Well I'm feeling very stable these days and I have done for quite some time now. I consider it to be a little miracle that I am living in England again (amongst the blustery winds and dark winter, constantly be-speckled by never ending rain, which sometimes feels as though it might turn into a torrent, which could cascade from the above regions for ever and ever) and not feeling like I'm going to go nuts and jump on the next plane back to Sunny Spain. I have historically not done very well with filthy cold weather, it's pretty much always driven me out of my tree and into the concocting of a plan of action designed to remove me from the British meteorological conditions. Not this year though.

  This winter is progressing nicely. I had already decided that I would need to do things differently, perhaps I would bake my own bread to keep myself feeling cosy I thought; or perhaps I should engage in the doing of a tango class and whilst both are wonderful... it is neither of these things that is making the British winter more tolerable. I have found myself a different kind of sunshine and for once it isn't sunshine of my own making because I, yes I, after five and a half years since my last relationship ended have found myself a man and he more than makes up for the extended summer I haven't had. The interesting thing about my current state of happiness is that I can go on and on and on about how miserable I have felt and how relatable my emotions have been to Adele songs in the past but I very much struggle to discuss it when I am just genuinely delighted with someone else's affection gracing my days. I can only imagine that this is because I have become almost totally dependent on myself and it's true that I don't want to lose me after it took so long to learn to like me.

  The years leading up to this one have been tumultuous, enriching, difficult, meandering, depressing, magical and generally lively with plenty of happenings in occurrence and have given me much to do and to think about. I have lived in one of the most beautiful places that I believe I will ever visit and in doing somade a dream come true, become the person I always hoped to be and I have also been able to share my experiences via eBlogger. I have grown and developed as a person, I'm not the woman I was when I wrote the first entry two years ago. I was haunted by the past then and shortly afterwards my own demons found me and hunted me down until I learned to communicate with them and have a good old chat. We spent some time cohabiting in awareness eventually (like all of the best house-mates) they morphed from devils on my right shoulder to angels on the left; the remnants of a past life and an internal struggle, which is now largely settled. My Angelly-Demons give me encouragement now. They say things like 'well there's no reason for you not to proceed with this', they show me how delightful my new boyfriend is and they remind me that I am not a finished product because I will always have 'stuff', everybody has 'stuff' but my 'stuff' is far less heavy since it was dried out by the sun in Seville and is able to cloud my vision no more. I can see in front of me now and it looks just like home, with some significant alterations to the world it was before.

Live Like No One's Watching

I have made no secret of the fact that I found the years leading up to now to be both difficult, testing and all the while glowing in glorious technicolour. The time period before this one has played a central role in the development of the freer and much calmer person that I have become. Consecutive rainy days no longer see the onset of an inner turmoil, a relationship over before its time isn't cause for total devastation and my binge eating days in moments of stress don't occur anymore. Why has this happened?

This has happened because I fell down more times than I can count, but I got back up again. I allowed other people in and I listened to their words, I began to accept view points other than my own and by taking in advice that I perhaps would have otherwise ignored I was able to open my eyes much wider than they had been in a long time and by doing this I discovered that the answers were all around me. The answers lay in opening the back door and looking out at the blossoming garden while the kettle boiled for the first time at the start of each new day, in purchasing a yoga mat and giving myself 40 minutes to exercise my body and to allow my mind to run free, in accepting that bad things happen sometimes and Baz Lurhman was very right when he stated that the 'real worries in our life blind side us on some idle Tuesday', confidence is key to healthy social relationships, a healthy relationship with food relies on a healthy relationship with ourselves and all of these things together will allow strength of mind and physicality. The most important thing I learned is that we are responsible for ourselves and the actions of other person are beside the point, I'll talk more about this later.

It has taken me at least five years to really get my head together on all of this and two of them were spent in self imposed isolation in Spain, I think that these two years were perhaps the most vigorous in terms of my personal journey of self development. I learned how to do something useful for myself, like going to get the weekly shop, when I didn't want to and I would have preferred to put it off until tomorrow. It dawned on me at some point that doing things when we don't want to do them are the actions which lead to greater pride in ourselves and we're more likely to stop putting things off and as a result of this new thought process we're more capable of breaking other habits - along the lines of binge eating and drinking. I was quite the binge drinker in my day and it was something that stopped with the aid of a very effective Cognitive Behavioural Therapist. My CBT lady helped me to see the benefits of making long term goals and using mantras to stay within the limits I needed to set myself to achieve those goals. Learning that it's absolutely fine to get things wrong sometimes was a wondrous day as well, learning not to give myself a really hard time over it was similarly fantastic.

I've been thinking a lot about my own 'journey', - how I loathe the newly coined usage for the word 'journey', whilst watching snippets of the 2015 Celebrity Big Brother. I try to avoid CBB as much as possible but it can be really rather difficult when your mother is permanently fascinated by the antics of the housemates. The snippets of CBB I've seen seem to focus heavily on the musings of the individuals' involved feelings about themselves. They regularly talk about their 'journey' and all of the 'mother f***ing s**t' they've been through and then happily use their own personal experiences to justify the rather disgusting way in which they choose to interact with other people. I want to reach through the TV and tell them to just walk out of the house, forget about their fee and make friends with their personal demons away from the manipulative machine that is CBB. I cannot abide this kind of TV and I struggle to abide the people who make their way through the door in order to use their own personal selves as entertainment. The whole thing appears to be mass manipulation to me, the housemates try to manipulate the public by presenting a reality TV friendly persona, Big Brother manipulates the housemates by giving them various inane tasks and engineering situations which they know will cause trouble - all the while seeking to tickle the funny bone of the general public, Big Brother then manipulates the public by showing heavily edited hour long versions of each day and when it's all over one person walks out of a house alone, smiles, waves, shouts 'I Love You' and says it's all good and they had a great 'journey' whilst a large swell of people boo and shout very intelligent things like 'sl*t' at the person who is standing alone in the middle of it all. This person may have been irritating, they may have been mean and they probably displayed some disgraceful behaviour in order to be on the receiving end of such an unpleasant reception, but I think it would be very decent if the audience were to practise what they preach about being 'nice' and not adopt the woolpack mentality that seems to have become acceptably mainstream in modern day media. Aside from that rant, I want to make a point about accepting responsibility for ourselves, focussing on healthy attitudes and forging a mind set which can allow other people room for getting things wrong, lowering our judgementalometre and ultimately saying 'well this is what they are doing, I don't agree with it but they aren't living by my set of standards, they are living by their own standards and we don't agree about this, so I will dust myself off, put out the fire raging in my head about it and do something calming and relaxing.'

I decided some time ago to give myself a moral code which I would use to live by, but I had to accept that other people would live by a different one and sometimes I would feel like I was being taken for granted or under appreciated. I came to the conclusion that it didn't matter because feeling calm, listening without interrupting (never saying 'let me stop you there'), allowing someone else to have the last word and living my life with a river of integrity and acceptance running through it was far superfluous to getting one over on someone else by doing something sneaky or holding a grudge. I'm sure you've heard it said before but life really isn’t a rehearsal it is the big performance and it's more priceless than anything we could ever own or look at it in a shop window and it needs to be nourished to survive so give your life every colour of the rainbow, embrace every moment as a learning opportunity and don't waste your time on grudges. People will come and they will go, each one is special, each one will show you one or two of their many faces, each one will get something wrong at some point - it might be on your watch, it mightn't be, but try not to get too caught up in it. You'll wake up with yourself each morning regardless of how other people behave, so what will you do to ensure you get out of bed with a spring in your step and something to look forward to?  

Are You Ready To Listen?

  Somewhere out there today, someone is making strong statements about something, maybe that person is you. Are you the one who's walking down the street getting all worked up about very small things? Is it you who's waking up every day and wondering why in the world you're making all of this effort when everything feels so thankless? Could it be you who wants to change everything around you and hope that in some way the changes in scenery will seep inside your brain and your bones and change the way you feel? Well, if you're hearing YES bells ringing out inside your head at this present moment I suggest you continue reading because this particular blog post is for you. I want to help you, but first you must agree to help yourself or we will continue walking around in circles for all eternity and no one really wants to spend their one precious life in such a conundrum do they? (However, if you're not ready to help yourself yet then I think you should leave this entry for another day. DO remember that it's here though and I invite you to come back to it.)

  So I see it like this. I used to be you. I was you ten years ago when I was eighteen and my first boyfriend announced he wanted to tour around the world with his band and I didn't really fit in with his plans. Same boyfriend went precisely nowhere… but I sure as hell did. I announced to my mother that I was going to go backpacking around the world on Father's Day 2005 as we were driving home from a visit to my maternal grandparents in St Helens. I remember the inner turmoil well, I needed something to focus on, something to aim for but more than anything something to drown out the upset that was raging inside me. I'd seen round-the-world -trips broadcast on the TV so naturally I was all up for the braided hair, walk along the shoreline, eat rice in Goa experience. My mother wasn't so keen and she pretty much said no to that idea but she did say that if I did want to have a gap year she'd accept proposals which were well thought out and researched, so I went to New Zealand a year later and worked at a high school and its boarding house facility. I found sleeping difficult in New Zealand and I was often homesick and sad. A few years after that another relationship ended and I took myself to the delights of Smithdown Road because a) Smithdown Road is closer to the city centre than my family's Crosby home, and the city centre is where I was working and studying at the time and b) I didn't want to run into my now ex boyfriend in our domiciliary hometown, nor did I want to regularly see 'our' places. I went off to Smithdown Road and promptly broke down after a few months. During this particular breakdown I announced to my mother during a car journey home from The Trafford Centre in Manchester that I was going to go and work at a café in Australia just as soon as my degree was finished with. She just issued a flat out no this time and it was at this point that she delivered some well thought out words of wisdom, this is what she said, "Helen you can't just keep running away when things don't feel good. You have to look at yourself from within and examine why this keeps happening to you." Or words to similar effect, I was in the middle of a breakdown you see so I can't remember her exact words; I just wanted to go to my terraced sanctuary on Smithdown Road, eat fried eggs and plan my next great escape. Things went from bad to worse and my father found himself in the GPs office with me hunting down some Prozac. Good times. Years went by and I got a little stronger and then I fell down and guess what I did when I fell down? You've got it! I went to Greece. Now that was a pretty good experience. I couldn't communicate with anyone in Greece very well and I didn't get along with my boss who spoke the best English so you can see how that worked out for me, but I did exercise a lot, I ate well and I lost a lot of weight. I got back to England in a good place on that occasion but I'd only taped over the damage, I hadn't actually confronted it so when unexpected things showed up I didn't cope well but generally speaking I was alright. A few months went by and I decided I'd go to live in Spain, I wasn't fed up, I wasn't depressed. I was fine; I just wanted to teach English as a foreign language again. I arrived and all was good for a few weeks but then the rot started to set in and I went well and truly off my trolley at Christmas time. I decided that enough was enough and I was going to address the matter. I visited my GP and she prescribed me with some anti depressants, I found an online cogitative behavioural therapy course and I don't mind telling you that it was the best money I've ever spent. It's been a tough old eighteen months life wise after the CBT. I lost a close relative and had a little go at grief, I met a man who had some interesting ideas about the best way to treat a woman and I had a rough time of it at work. Read on, the positive bit is coming up.

  BUT, I'm still here. I came back to Seville for a second year running when I really wanted to go and live on the beach, I returned to the same school and I came back to the same flat despite the fact it's outside of the city centre and a little bit on the pricey side. I wanted everything to stay exactly the same because I wanted to prove to myself that I could properly cope with life and all of things it throws at us without living in a constant state of change and I'm mighty glad I did because I believe that I've learned some valuable lessons in the art of Life Livement. Nah, things don't always go my way but I'm here and I'm living and breathing and I'm enjoying myself and I'm making sensible decisions. I'm not papering over the cracks anymore and choosing to  focus on a new horizon in the hope that it will solve any current problems I'm experiencing. I'm doing yoga instead, I've been doing CBT for weight loss for 6 weeks or so, I'm writing in a diary, I'm planning my days and my nights and I'm using anti anxiety techniques when I find myself getting unnecessarily worked up and tempted to reach for the Hagen Daz. I've lost 9lbs, but what's more important than that is that I'm stronger now in both mind and body than I have ever been before. How did I get here? I made peace with myself and I decided to allow the world in rather than just live in all four corners of it. I take each day one at a time and I relish the fabulous moments when they come my way. I don't make rash decisions, I don't allow myself to get in the driving seat and drive to unpleasant and frightening places and I don’t blame Spain and the cultural differences I've encountered here for any inner turmoil I might be experiencing. It's not Spain's fault that it does things differently to England, it is Spain's fault that customer service in banks is a disgrace but it's not Spain's fault that I struggled to cope with myself once upon a time. That was on me and it was on me to fix it.

  So if any of this does resonate with you and you do think you might need a little help but you're too proud to take it (maybe you've had help before and you think it's like taking a step back, I assure you - ignoring the problem is the step back. What did you learn last time? Is ignoring these things a good idea?) or too nervous to take the first step then you should remember that I personally think about people just like you each day and although you can't see me I'm still here, quietly celebrating each step you take towards being a happier and healthier you. But I'm not into papering over the cracks, using others as an emotional crutch or ignoring the real problem, what I'm very into and I very much respect are those people who take responsibility for their own mental health and keep working on it each day until they wake up again and think, 'my oh my. It's raining, my washing machine is broken, I can't get access to a cash machine because the one nearest me is out of order and someone nicked my bike again butttttt…. never mind, I'm going to make myself a lovely coffee and take a little walk to the next available cash machine and maybe I'll stop buying bikes.' Life doesn't need to feel so tricky, it's simply simple once you get the hang of it, and like I said, one day at a time. Make small decisions, encourage small changes, address and work through the actual problems and you'll feel the foundations underneath you strengthen and you also might notice light returning to your eyes and a smile starting to broaden again across your heart. Who knows, maybe you'll even be able to see the fantastic person other people see you as through your own eyes and believe the genuine things they say to you with your own ears. I think that would be very nice, don't you?

Hey Sister

N   I have written extensively about my own history but I haven't really commented on the history I have shared with others. I have a large extended family on both my maternal and paternal side and a small immediate family. I come from your standard mum, dad and two kids affair. I'm older than my sister by two years and she's called Our Lucy, but is often known as Luce.

 

   We all came out in celebration of Lucy a few months ago when she got wed to her now husband Jake and finally flew the nest lovingly crafted and maintained by our parents Ange and Gegsy. I don't have any other intimate examples of what it means to have a sibling other than the one set for me by Lucy and I think she's set a high standard of love and care over the 26 years we've been together, often separated by land and sea but always, always a pair. To me having a sister is all about the easy friendship you simply can't duplicate with anyone else other than a very, very close friend or cousin. Lucy and I are the only sisters in a family where everyone else has a brother and I've seen that the brother/sister relationships of my cousins are also strong and precious. I think a very large part of the reason for this closeness between siblings is because we come from a family of which all of our parents are one of seven - meaning that family is important and it has a stronghold within our identities, we were taught to look after each other and on occasion I've felt just as protected by my cousins as I have always felt by Lucy. I remember when a not so comradey comrade gave me a hard time on an idle Tuesday at high school and one of my female cousins, also in the same school and older than me by a year, took much umbridge at this treatment of me and proceeded to put the not so comradey comrade into a position of interrogation and saw to it that the uncomradey one didn't pull a stroke like that again. The cousin in question continues to be a close friend to this day and someone I've put into something resembling a 'big sister' column in my mind.

 

   I don't wish to represent my sister Lucy as being a little saint. A little saint she is not and our dad took great delight in revealing her past misdemeanours in the speech he gave with excellent delivery and aplomb at her wedding. It was of course all said in jest but everything that escaped his vocal box was the truth. We know so much about our sisters; we know why they're a little bit defensive, we know when they started paying a lot of attention to their hair and makeup. We know when they took off from us emotionally to 'find themselves' and we remember when they came back with a greater impression in their mind's eye of who they had become. A sister who is close in age is likely to have been our first friend, competition for parental attention, a yard stick to measure ourselves against and in my case someone who is always, always there, ready to take me in, dust off the day and say something which is unique to her, highly likely to make me laugh and cause me to feel grateful for the 30th April 1989, which is the day three became four and Little Luce began to make her first impressions on the world.

 I have a great deal of respect for and interest in the sanctity of sisterhood. My sister used to be a mucky little thing in the garden who was forever consuming mud pies and leaves, she still knows where they tastiest leaves are… she used to have tasting sessions during her morning constitution as she headed towards school and then inevitably diverted her route and went somewhere else instead. Lucy isn't a mucky little thing or truant anymore, she's just little now and I'm so glad that I've seen and been part of her journey from mummy and daddy's tiny baby to toddler, to my friend, to school, to high school, to A LOT of college courses, (one of which resulted in expulsion) and now to marriage. I'm expecting her with our mum and dad in three and a half weeks time for a week long visit… at the end of which we'll put on our red shoes, click three times and go back to our little town just outside of Liverpool city centre. As Dorothy always says, there's no place like home and it's all the better when you've got a full memory bank waiting to be woken up when you get back. You can stroll along the beach there with your sister who always walks a pace ahead and talks nineteen to the dozen but continually looks back to check you're still there as she mosies with her back straight, senses tuned in and serves to dazzle the world around.

Heart Healthy

 

 

It dawned on me yesterday that we're all living on the same planet but experiencing it completely differently. I was thinking about this and relating it specifically to languages, my flatmate and I have very different ideas about who the Friends characters are. How is this relevant?

  It starts with the fact that my flatmate and I are of different nationalities. I'm English and he's Spanish. I walked into the living room the other day to find myself looking at David Schwimmer's face, now I recognised his physical portrayal of the loveable oaf Ross Geller but I didn't identify with the voice coming out of his mouth at all. What have they done with my Ross? Is what I was thinking. I almost said, 'this is a lot more enjoyable in English yanno,' to my ensconced in his own version of Friends flatmate but then I stopped myself just in time. I stopped because I remembered a conversation I had with a different individual of Spain about how Friends only feels like Friends to him when he watches the American actors running about on the screen with their mouths open and closing but with their real voices hidden behind a Latino voice over actor. If you’re a Friends fan then you'll know that the six principal characters feel as familiar to you as your own friends do and the language you know them in is who they are to you. It seemed a bit mean to tell my flatmate that he was having a second rate Friends experience, he was having a nice time.

  My point here is that we're all watching the same things but from varying angles. I step onto my yoga mat and look forward to thirty minutes of peace and calm, someone else steps onto a yoga mat and looks forward to thirty minutes of boring poses. We then meet in the pub and have a heated discussion which results in someone being called 'snotty.' I feel that as groups of populations we have become very aware of what we think and how we feel but are not very aware of the person sitting next to us at work, we're all on the same planet, we're in the same office but they're in their universe and I'm in mine and we won't meet in the middle until we accept that we must travel to a middle ground and talk things out. It is of my entirely insignificant mind that we often forget to communicate and to empathise, we forget to do the right thing because we're so focussed on what's happening in our individual universes and more often than not in today's cut and thrust world we're forgetting to live, we're also forgetting that other people are capable of enhancing our lives, not everyone is out to hinder things for us.  

 

  I sometimes find myself feeling tied to a career clock, must do this, must do that, mustn't swan off to another country, must start saving for a pension by the time I hit my 30th birthday. The only tick-tock-tick-tock I'm really tied to is the one beating inside my chest and that clock likes action, it likes movement. It likes to be understood and cared for too. My heart, like hearts everywhere in all of the billions of universes millennia wide has on occasion forgotten to empathise and to understand its heartly counterparts, but, but, but, but I am making a pledge to carry about an understanding and forgiving heart. This heart of mine will not screech out 'eeeeeeee ya snotty you' when it doesn't understand another heart beating all alone in another chestly confinement. My heart will opt to communicate instead and by doing so will allow its best friend and close neighbour, the brain, to release nice heart healthy doses of dopamine and serotonin whilst it's support network, the arms and legs, walk around showing the eyes all of the magical sights along the way as the ears take in tinkling, pretty music signalling a story that is just about to begin - with the most colourful and stunning set of lights guiding the way.

 

 

Conscience and Confidence

  My name is Helen Edwards (totally know that you already know what my name is but I'm about to make a declaration and I've heard that announcing oneself is the correct protocol in such situations) and since I learned how to think I've been having unhealthy relationships. I've experienced unhealthy relationships with food, alcohol, men, women, my body and also my mind. I shall outline them forthwith so hold onto your seatbelts…. white knuckle ride coming up.

  When I was a child I was afraid of the other children at my school, they were all a bit rough and ready and I was undoubtedly the studious type so I got rather used to my own company and I befriended a cat called Simba. Best friend a cat aged 11? Yes, I can hear the alarm bells ringing in your head. Primary School finished and on I moved to High School, well that was a joy, NOT. I cried every day for approximately three years of my high school schooling, the fact I didn't dry out altogether was a small miracle. I had pencil sharpenings tipped into my hair, I was always the last to be picked for anything, people would try nice and hard not to invite me to things but always be very careful of making sure that I knew all about the social activities of my peers and one very pleasant girl passed a note around the class with the question Who Hates Helen? written on it and asked all of the yes voters to sign accordingly. My crime? I was quiet, unassuming, unconfident and my face was as miserable looking then as it remains to be to this day when in a resting position. It was an unfortunate sequence of events and I was glad when I was 16 and could walk out without looking back.

  Should have all ended there shouldn't it? Theoretically, yes, and that would have been ideal, but theories don't always work in practice and this theory didn't work in my case. The rot had set in early, damage had been done, rusty nail was already well in place and it was contaminating everything around it. I would walk into a room and expect people not to like me, I had come to expect to fight  my corner before anyone had gotten to know me. I was defensive, I expected the worst of everything and I was incredibly negative. I developed anxiety, OCD (no I'm not a little bit OCD - how I loathe that phrase. I suffered with fully blown, crippling OCD for a rather long time), depressive episodes, I drank too much, I ate too much and I didn't believe there was a happy future out there for me. This up and down fiasco carried on for years and years and it plagued me. I gained weight and I didn't want to go out, I'd feel so uncomfortable when I was out that I'd get too drunk, then I'd feel uncomfortable about being so drunk when I was in the same company again but in a more sober condition. I'd lose weight, I'd gain weight, I'd feel good and then I'd feel bad. It's been the most sickening roller coaster you can possibly imagine but with the added effect of being not one bit imaginary and very, very real. So real that I can remember it because I've lived it.

  I've had some relationships, all of which have failed. I believe these failed relationships can be divided into two camps. My inability to function in a rational way when the chips were down and because I made some bad decisions regarding the other partners in the relationships. My weight has been a massive factor, I just haven't felt very confident for large parts of the last 10 years since my first relationship ended.

   This upping and downing has been ruling my confidence and consciousness for far too long and it is going to STOP. It is going to STOP once and for all. I've fought against the urge to swap newly learned healthy behaviours over the last few weeks, I've been keeping a diary and I make lists for myself about what I must do the next day, I've been practising yoga each day and I've become a vegetarian. I've lost 9lbs (yay me - weighed myself this evening) over the last while and I can feel something changing inside me. The lazy, lethargic, soft and comfy casing surrounding me is falling away and revealing someone with the drive and ambition to make things happen. The slim, bright eyed, confident young woman I was in my early 20s is on her way back and when she gets her foot firmly back in the door, she's back to stay. She'll fit her hourglass figure into a pair of size 10 jeans, let her blonde hair fall over her shoulders, pass her bloody driving test and then she'll buy another pair of size 10 jeans to celebrate.

Love never leaves, even if it was only shared for just a moment

It has been quite some time since I last wrote but I felt myself feeling gently urged to enter back into the blogging sphere and so here I am. I have been grieving for a couple of months and perhaps that it why I chose to disappear for a little while for you see the grieving process has taken me quite by surprise. In March of 2014 a lady whose impact and influence on me and onto my general being has far surpassed that of most passed away, her passing had been expected for many years and yet came as quite the surprise because no one truly ever expected her to actually die, it didn't seem like the sort of thing she was going to do having never done it before and she was a creature of habit. Pass away she did and I have been feeling a little strange about it ever since, it's impossible to imagine that she isn't here and sometimes she really isn't but then sometimes she is and it's an odd fact and something I can't explain but I know when she's here and I know when she isn't.

Feeling Fruity

 

 I heard once that it takes 30 days to make a new idea a habit, so I'd like to congratulate myself on my recently developed but now stable habits. I have, after many years, managed to develop a routine that really seems to suit me. My routine is of course centred around food and eating the right food at the right time. I have finally started to really understand the benefits of fruit and have over the last few months begun to eat a lot of varying fruits, not only fruit but I have also invited many different types of vegetables into my daily life by way of balanced and nutritional soups.

 

  Why is she making such a song and dance about this you may be asking yourself. Welllllll dear readers I am making a song and a dance about this because I have spent my life yoyoing from one weight to the next but I haven't yoyo'd anywhere for a few months. I haven't gained weight and I haven't lost weight. I've stayed at the same weight, the heaviest I've ever been but also the healthiest I've ever felt. I've got more energy, I've got more drive, I've got more of lots of things so now that I know how to maintain weight and I also know how to lose it I'm going to get on with the losing it bit. Gone is the toast when I'm hungry, goodbye to the beautiful croquettas, adios to the delicious yet incredibly sugary café con leches that definitely spice up my afternoons a bit. No more vegetables cooked in copious amounts of olive oil and the alcoholic drinking binges are over. Hello to fruit salads during the long break between lunch and supper, fruity herbal teas while I study Spanish during a break at work and a warm welcome to vegetables sautéed in their natural juices. Had I made all of these changes in a day, they wouldn't have lasted and I knew that so I spaced them out and now they feel rather habitual.

  I decided to kick off my new ways by focussing on what I consume. I'm satisfied with that now so I've moved onto exercise. I do some simple stretches before bed, the idea is to improve my muscle strength so that when I purchase a road bike I shall find cycling through rough terrain pleasurable. I've started to think about yoga and just found myself a nice 30 day training course on YouTube. I'm going to start it at the weekend, I shall have to go about finding my centre for this new venture. I'm looking forward to it.

  I had a bit of a moment at Christmas you see, I always have moments over the Christmas period and I've been opting to live a calm life ever since. I thought that it might be nice to start living a very natural life, I've been learning about the health benefits of foods and spices. I really quite fancy being a bit spiritual to be honest with you. I've come to accept myself for who I am you see and who I am is a bit scatty, a bit spontaneous and a bit moody. I'm also a dreamer with a careful side, I'm a worrier, I often compromise my dreams for the sake of feeling safe. I'm a natural risk taker but I've stopped taking risks and I don't think I'll ever be punctual. I watch Coronation Street and do cross stitch patterns 90% of the time when I'm awake at home and I spend the other 10% whatsapping my mother. I really like doing my washing, particularly towels. These are my ingredients, they make me who I am and every now and again I add a new ingredient, sometimes I keep it and sometimes I decide it doesn't flavour my cake properly.

  I think I'll stick with fruit salads, fruit teas (I'm even going to get myself a nice tea glass) and stretching. I think I'll carry on watching Coronation Street while I make nice soups and whatsapp my mother. I daresay that I'll enjoy yoga and I'm looking forward to getting myself a decent pushbike. I can let the towels dry whilst I go out for a nice bike ride. To be quite honest with you, my focus is to remain nice and calm and fill myself up with good stuff. Katy Perry made a relevant point when she put her Roar video out there. Katy doesn't go storming board rooms or making herself well known in her Roar video, she doesn't make a fuss. Katy just gets very good at living in the jungle, she enjoys it, she makes friends with an elephant. It struck me while I was watching Katy Perry be fabulous in the video to Roar that she dedicates her time to living in her environment and with such dedication to embracing life and all of the things in it comes contentment and with this contentment the ability to say goodbye to the past habits that once repeatedly brought you down and a happy reunion with the supple, flexible size 10 that was hiding inside all along.



One's Own Company

  I have heard it said as I suppose many others have heard it said that you can't be happy with another person until you really like yourself. I think a very good test of this theory is to live on your own, that is without family and without flat mates. I have lived in various accommodations in my time by myself but never in a fully fledged and functioning home had I truly lived alone until August of 2014.

 I live in the same flat now as I lived in last year but this year I live in it without company. Last year I had the pleasure of two of Ireland's finest to share my living space with and when I returned to Spain after the summer holiday to the large, empty space I did find myself feeling a little bit lonely. Musings such as:

 What will I do with all of these rooms?

It's very quiet.
I haven't spoken to a soul all day.

Quickly turned into other musings along the lines of:

 I have a lot of fridge space now.

 I can have guests galore from home.

 It doesn't matter how loud I have my music.

  I will admit to finding myself quite pleased with the notion of living alone. Granted, it comes with a price. The bills are higher which leaves me with a little less cash and sole responsibility of the wi-fi, but I get over this when I realise that I have not one but two dining tables to choose from, a large TV at my disposal and a spare desk that I don't use often but do occasionally find use for. I also have 2 bathrooms. This means one bathroom for my own personal use and the other bathroom for flushing away cockroaches and dirty water from the mop bucket. It's really quite amazing how I have been able to utilise all of the space in a place where I only used to have 1 cupboard shelf, 1 fridge shelf, half a bathroom and 1 bedroom. I would now find myself feeling quite deprived if I didn't have an entire room which has one use and that is to dry the laundry because I don't want to have to look at it in the living room when I'm watching Coronation Street (now minus Deidre Barlow).

  Living alone has helped me to change my mind about my own company. I don’t need a person in a room down the corridor anymore because I do just fine by myself. I don't need to know someone else is coming and going around me because not having someone else coming and going around me makes me want to come and go myself. I am significantly busier now that I live alone than I was before. I also enjoy taking responsibility for doing all of the cleaning and I feel happy in the knowledge that the floors will sparkle until I do something to make them unsparkle and then I don't have to wait for someone else to sparkle them up again because I am entirely responsibility for the sparkliness of my own floor. There's no tension as regards to the cleaning of my environment because I'm the only one who's going to be doing it anyway and I find myself feeling quite proud of that. Almost like a proper grown up!

  It's nice to live in your own company, it's nice to have space you can call your own and it's a relief to embrace and enjoy the peace and tranquillity which once made you nervous. It's as lovely to open the door to your own place after a long day and stick the kettle on as it is to open the door to friends after languishing in the bath on a rainy Saturday whilst reading something witty. Today, or indeed this week in actual fact is just one of those weeks when my world feels right. Everything is all slotted into its rightful place. There are portions of homemade soup and Bolognese in the fridge, the dishes are all tidy in the cupboards, the washing is done and put away, Mr Muscle has done his best on the work surfaces, the mirrors are shiny, the admin for work was completed and forgotten about last week and alls I need to do is to sit back, relax and enjoy the equilibrium I have created for myself with a nice cup of coffee and nutrition filled strawberry. I'm not saying I have such an organised life every week, but this week I do and I'm making the most of it.

My Tale of 2 Cities

  I am currently sitting in the airport coffee shop I always sit in having the coffee and breakfast roll that I always have when it's time to return back to my not-so-native-yet- most-of-the-year-residing-place of Seville. I generally always fly from my actual native Liverpool between 6 and 7am depending on the season. It is January now so the flight is later but experience tells me that this will change to 6am soon enough and will be the service I use in subsequent journeys, otherwise known as 'viajes.' I will still have the coffee and the breakfast roll, it'll just be a little bit earlier.

   The journey or 'viaje' from Seville to Liverpool is something I have become rather accustomed to over the 17 months I have been travelling to and from the two cities or 'ciudades'. Various friends and family members have also partaken in it and they pretty much always arrive at Seville's Santa Justa train station suitably exhausted but very much always relieved to see the dazzlingly blue sky that awaits them as they leave the confines of the interior of the building.

   I never fail to feel proud as I push my guests into the front door of my nice, big, airy flat which will serve as their new home for the next couple of days. I feel even prouder when we emerge from the Puerta Jerez metro station into the bustling city of Seville itself after something tasty to eat and cold to drink. My heart practically bursts when we walk towards the 'magnificent gothic cathedral' and venture behind it into the enchanting streets of Santa Cruz. I tell them about all of the different places we will be visiting, just you wait for the Alcazar I say… just behind that wall it is. I point out my favourite square which is permanently situated and unlikely to move from outside of said Alcazar. I always take visitors to Las Setas/Parasols/The Mushrooms when the sun has gone down and I like to go to Plaza de España in the sunshine, followed by María Luísa Park. I recount the stories of when two friends and I had to go to Plaza de España nearly every day for a week in order to get a little green card displaying a very special number which seems to open up the door to Narnia for those who live in Spain. Plaza de España somewhat lost its charms after the first visit and bureaucratic week which followed but it has regained the magic factor since.

   Seville is chockablock with things to see, watch, smell, eat, drink, listen to, enjoy, walk to, bike to, drive to or simply just enjoy. Orange trees literally do line most of the streets and they're as fabulous as you've been led to believe they are; you can't eat them though. They're not very nice so don't decide to up your Vitamin C intake and collect a few, you would be greeted with a very bitter taste in your mouth. Seville however, has not left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. I am coming round to the fact that I am at something of a life juxtaposition and my ambitions and dreams will probably take me away from Seville for some time, maybe not forever but some time at least.

   I went to Seville as a fairly knackered young woman. I was tired and I was drained, but somehow the city of orange blossom worked her magic on me and I slowly came back to life. I didn't realise how full of promise the world is until Seville showed me what I had been missing and I think I will remain forever grateful to her for just being there and shining her lovely sun on me. I know the streets of a different city to Liverpool now and I have a local pub outside of my hometown. My eyes are open so much wider than they were before to the possibilities that the world I live in holds.

   I know that I can stand up in front of a classroom of people and teach them something they didn't know before. I've taught some people how to speak English and they in turn have given me the pleasure of their city. I don’t know if the people I've taught would find my city quite as charming as theirs… for Liverpool is neither tree lined nor sundrenched. The pavements are not windy and the coffee is not as good as it could be. Liverpool does do a decent bowl of Scouse and red cabbage though and you might struggle to see them through the drizzle but there'll always be someone there saying, 'come on in love/lad/girl/Queen and get those wet socks off, you'll catch your death out there you know.' It's a different sort of culture, it's gritty and it doesn't make allowances but it's rich and it's kind. Liverpool is somewhere I have traditionally run from but always feel a huge sense of relief when returning to. Let's not turn Liverpool into something she isn't though. Upon entering my delightful place of origin you are likely to see women who have eyebrows like caterpillars, they just might be wearing their pyjamas and if it's a Saturday daytime they could even be sporting a headfull of rollers. Yes, you will be very surprised but I urge you to look beyond the fake tan and alarming eye related foliage and remember that they are a product of their time. Fifty years ago these women would have been the ones who were dancing about in the cavern club alongside John, Paul, Ringo and George but the changing times and over use of media in every facet of life has them parading about like peacocks instead. You will also see many 'goths' in Liverpool. I had a brief stint as a 'goth'/'skater' type. I was never decked out soley in black, it was more about the people I found myself hanging around skate parks and a lovely arrangement of shops called Quiggins with. I liked the alternative genre of my peers… I'm afraid the 'eeeeeeeeeeee ya dirty skank' ones didn’t do it for me. They still don’t do it for me, I like hanging around Seville with a young lady who wears tent like attire and the majority of my friends are of the guitary/bandy/writery variety. Nice and acceptable both in Spain and in England.

  I am passionate about Seville and I love Liverpool. Seville offers sun, warmth, culture and low taxes. Liverpool offers familiarity, personal history and the roots of my family tree. Both of the cities provide things I need and both are of considerable value to me. Quite honestly I’d like to go to work in Seville during the day and then go home to Liverpool at night because I'd get the best of both worlds but I'm not Bono and I don't believe in excessive air travel so that won't be happening. I just really like both places and feel attached to them both, for some time things have been definitely swaying towards Liverpool and England in general. I sometimes feel like a yellow fish in a pond full of green fish in Spain. I feel like a yellow fish in a pond full of blue fish in England as well to be perfectly honest with you but it's my pond and that makes all of the difference. It's not pretty, it's not perfect and it's definitely not quaint. It's big, it's loud, it's in your face, it takes no prisoners or mercy, the cold will bite through your skin and attack your bones but once it's got you it won't let go and you probably won't want it to. Having said that (the bit about not letting you go and you not wanting it to), I could say exactly the same about Seville.

Feeling The Fear

  Well it's NYD of 2015. NYE hasn't traditionally been my favourite day of the year and I don't really love its following day counterpart. I do like the twinkling, heady lights of Christmas and all of the different things there are to do during Christmas Week but then once we arrive at NYE I wonder what will be any different about NYE of the next year. When I look back at the year just gone I see it as important but nothing really changed with regard to work and my lifestyle. It was a mirror year of the one before it, but without a spell in the mental health facility of a hospital and I learned about loss in the March when a special relative died and I learned to adjust to life without her. I spent 2014 taking little steps towards bigger steps and I've entered 2015 thinking about bigger steps and I can see myself striding at some point in the not too distant future.

  I think to truly make the best of a new year or indeed a new day it's very important to look back and see what we can and can't do differently in the future. Over the last few years I have had a weight problem, I lose it and then I gain it. I eat chocolate and ice cream, I go to Burger King and then I feel much worse about myself. I do these things when I am fed up, I don't have the energy to cook or get up so I eat rubbish and ultimately turn the inner sanctum of my body into a rubbish heap. 2015 is the year that this dangerous and destructive pattern stops and it must stop for good. Quite frankly, I've had enough of it and it's just a silly way to live. Yoyo eating habits and myself separated our partnership in 2014 and I very much hope that we don't meet again.

   I've also spent a long time living in fear and I've made my home in the shadows. I made myself afraid of the world around me and the different things it offers but during the transitional moments of 2014/15 I decided that I just don't want to live like this anymore. I watched a programme called Marvellous and it was all about a man called Neil Baldwin who states he's never been scared of anything and as such has made friends with premiership footballers, high end members of the clergy and he's also received a fellowship degree from Keele University after spending some time pretending to be the local vicar. I watched Neil's story with a keen interest and realised that nothing has ever held him back, he simply wasn't born with the fear factor and as a result he's achieved so much and well and truly lived his life to the full.

  I think that my life could be so much more marvellous if I wasn't so scared so I thought I'd start doing new things. I did something new today and I'm feeling quite pleased with myself about it. I often thought I might like to have my eyebrows shaped but I'd already reached the conclusion that I would be lost in such an environment. I was letting my fears about stepping into the unknown take over me again and I was being silly. I won't fit in I thought to myself but today I stepped into a 'brow bar' and went through the excruciating process of having my eyebrows shaped with a thread thing for the first time. I've got the red eyebrow area and the headache to prove it but eyebrow threading is now something I feel capable of having done to myself.

  I'm heading back to Seville soon after Christmas at home here in the UK and I'm going to rejoin the gym when I return to my Big Square sanctum. I'm going to join the expensive gym close to where I live because there's a pool there and I plan to step into a swimming costume and allow myself to be seen by others in a public place because I really like swimming and it's a type of exercise I'm happy to dedicate myself to. I'm also going to finally force myself to learn Spanish in a proper classroom because I don't understand anything in the country I live in and that's really, really thick of me and I shouldn't have allowed it to go on for so long. Spain is an excellent place and best experienced long term with a knowledge of Spanish in one's arsenal. I want to really know and understand another language regardless of whether or not I live there.

  I'm eager to make my dreams come true in 2015, I want to learn how to make my writings sellable in the commercial market and teach others how to speak English. I'm going to tie up loose ends in 2015, GCSE maths and driving licenses must finally be obtained and a path into the future must be cleared. I'm not planning to change the world in the next couple of months but I'd really like to make my world a better place to live in. Starting these new habits isn't the tricky bit, the beginning is easy, it is the keeping up of the healthier habits that are more difficult. It's time to fly, fly, fly away from fear and into the unknown land of optimism and maybe a little bit of adrenaline rush skydiving. 

 

Femme Fatale

 The date is December 24th 2014 and it is undoubtedly Christmas Week. I've been thinking about the ladies in my life today because it is my mum's birthday, sister's hen night in three days time, annual Christmas Eve drinks with two cousins and a sister and also the first time we're experiencing Christmas without our Aunty Eileen and for another branch of our family a lady called Grandma Mattie. My aunties, neighbours and my mum's friends traditionally come in for a mince pie and a cup of tea today so it really is all about the señoritas.

   I've been blessed with the women around me. I was brought up with a sister and my mum has 3 sisters of her own, my nana had several sisters and one of them is now but an urn behind the chair in our dining room now but until March she was a larger than life teeny tiny little old lady who helped to make several of my dreams come true. I also have several cousins, one of the youngest who is now experiencing her first Christmas as an eighteen year old and is joining her older female counterparts for the usual dance around the Christmas tee, aka Stamps Bar & Bistro this evening.

   I will begin with the subject of mothers. My mother is as quirky as she is strong, batty as she is generous and hot tempered as she is sweet natured. My mother, or Ange as I usually call her has behaved like a lioness for the last 27.9 years, she protects her girls with a fierceness only mother's possess and woe betide anyone who tries to stand in her way. Over the years Ange has fought for my dyslexic sister's right to learn in a suitable environment, fought with my sister over her refusal to learn, stood by me through thick and thin (literally, currently thick but I'm working on it …ish) and supported me through all of my little adventures. She had a great example you see, through several different women she watched as she grew and I like to think she took the best of what she witnessed.

   I also have a sister who is to be married on Valentines Day to a delightfully handsome and calm young man. So calm he's falling over on occasion, I was expecting him at 10am to drop off some items to the family home, he whatsapped me at 11:45am saying that he was "running a bit late." We've taken to calling this sort of thing Classic Jake. One hopes that he doesn't experience the same tardiness on his matrimonial day. I digress. We're going to celebrate her hen night in a few days time, 27 women all intent on having a party are going to hit Liverpool City Centre and swap stories all about my little sister. I already know that I will beam with pride because my one and only sibling is truly a woman to be proud of. Lucy is a very small person with long dark hair, she's got a tiny frame and a husky voice, it was one of the things people thought was cutest about her as a child. Lucy was mischievous as a little one, known to disappear into lingerie stands in Marks & Spencer's and reappear wearing the garments after our mother had spent a frantic few minutes looking for her amongst the clothes stands. Lucy grew older, not taller or wider but a little more orange for a time and became a naughty teenager, struggling in the classroom to understand the tasks expected of her and frustrated by the slowness of her progress in the middle of a school unable to assist her. She found some solace in the school toilets with cigarettes and every now and again she would skip off only to be caught. My Lucy was a very unsuccessful truant, she was caught by me, our dad and one of our nanas during her escapades away from school. Lucy then grew up a little more and became something akin to responsible over time, now she's an example of someone who's turned out just right after being given time and space to grow into who she really is. Who she really is, is my sister, the same person she always was but now a little more socially acceptable. She's going to become a wife, a daughter and sister-in-law. She'll do a great job, those who have to fight for their place in society often become excellent examples and our little Lucy is an excellent example of what can be done when you work so very hard to realise your aims and goals.

   I have grandmothers, aunties and cousins all of whom have played their part in my journey from 1987 to now. I have been loved, worried about, played with, talked to, discussed and most importantly included in their lives as they go about their own daily chores. They've shown me compassion and given me attention, they've taken me on holiday and out for the day, they've had me as a house guest in London for the weekend with no notice whatsoever, they've included me in their families and said nice things about me to my mum. They've accepted me for who I am and understand that I am anxious, I am panicked, I get depressed and sometimes go missing inside of myself but they are able to look past it and see what lies beneath the frazzled and yet very quiet veneer. They've made me feel cherished for all of my life.

   And finally, this Christmas as I've already said is the first without Aunty Eileen. Eileen won't be in her orangey red armchair this year looking out at the world she could no longer be a part of and she won’t be waiting for me to come and make some kind of warm sandwich for Christmas Day breakfast. She'll be with all of the other people who've been loved and lost this year all over the world. I hope she's up in the sky and twirling about with the man she is having her first Christmas with in 16 years. We talk about her a lot, I think about her all the time, I talk to her when I'm walking about attending to my business in the streets of Seville and I know she's always keeping an eye out and probably wishing she'd been able to visit me there in person. I'm glad she can see it all for herself now.

 
  Christmas always makes us think and this year it's making me think about the women I'm surrounded by. Some are in the here and now and some make up the fabric of the memories I have of the past. Each one is a beautiful stitch in an ever growing work of life and another branch on a family tree that just keeps on growing and growing, always in bloom, never bare and permanently giving hope to those who take shade and stop for a rest under its branches.

 

These blogs act as a sort of writing therapy to me, they help me offload the things which play on my mind. I try to make them useful for myself and also enjoyable reading for others so I would like to  thank you for  taking the time to read my entries and I wish you all a truly happy and 'especial' Christmas Week.

 

The Whirlwind Romance

  I don’t know if any of you have ever experienced a whirlwind romance or had times when you were living in the moment. I have. Around 7 weeks ago I started having a little go at living in the moment and I discovered that it didn't really suit me. Living in the moment is all well and good when you don't find functioning hard work. 7 weeks ago I was equilibriumised and my feelings centred around Emmerdale and Heinz baked beans at the end of a long day… until I found myself in the middle of a whirlwind romance.

  I'm not altogether sure how I, careful as they come, avoiding pavement cracks, would never walk underneath a ladder Helen Edwards came to be in a whirlwind romance. Whirlwind romances go against everything I have taught myself is sensible. The whirlwind romance is quick, it is convincing and then it is over. By the time it is over it has left your hair tangled up and you've quite forgotten that Emmerdale was once so fabulous because you rediscovered butterflies in your stomach and hours spent laughing over absolutely nothing in the company of someone who looks just like sunsine. The whirlwind romance reminds you that there are actual human connections for you out there and Heinz baked beans don't necessarily have to be the best part of a day.

   The best part of your day can be a hug or a smile. It can be breakfast on a sunny morning and you don't even mind staying in on a Saturday night because the company inside is so comfortable and cosy. You have this happy feeling in your chest when you're with your friends, you just feel lighter and you don't have to carry all of your own bags anymore. The whirlwind romance is a special thing because it takes two people who click instantaneously to take part and they can create something truly delightful very quickly. It's like a very sweet film has come on and somehow it's your life, you've got the leading lady part and the soundtrack is wonderful. Whirlwind romances generally have a difficulty of some description though and in the film version the writers know how to fix it but in real life the actors don't have a script to rely on and they can't be sure of what the other person they're starring alongside is thinking. Life isn't a film and humans are riddled with insecurities, upsets and histories that the people in The Holiday or Love Actually aren't in possession of.

  Humans get things wrong when they're trying to get things right. Humans have self preservation to think about and humans who've been hurt very badly are a lot more likely to get these things wrong so we back away from our whirlwind romances. We remember when we just had ourselves to think about and we make the decision to end the romance, lovely as it is because we miss the simpler version of our lives. And then we regret it and realise that we didn't help ourselves at all because we were just biding time with Emmerdale and Heinz baked beans until the really good stuff showed its beautiful face. Emmerdale and Heinz all together along with Coronation Street, Spanish lessons on the couch and long car journeys on Sundays.

  The writers of the film version have the solution but the humans bumble along and eventually one of them gets on a plane and feels a finality that makes a tear slide down her little face as she gets closer to all of the other people who mean the world to her. They're great and she loves them but she will always remember the time in her life when Emmerdale, Heinz Baked Beans and Coronation Street were all happening at the same time in her pretty living room and she'll wonder if she'd not caved in when she did that everything just might have turned out differently if she'd just stayed in the whirlwind.

Changing

  In all of my 27 Christmases I have only ever spent one of them away from home. I was in Australia and it was very hot. Some of Christmas Eve was spent outside in the garden and some of it was spent indoors having a nice roast dinner, the people I was with made a huge effort to welcome me but despite their best efforts I wasn't at home, it just wasn't cold enough and my people of the previous 18 Christmases weren't there. My Christmas traditions are steadfast and strong, they have weathered years of change, loveliness and upheaval. My favourite one is the one in which my dad stresses about the roast dinner for a week before we have it and tries to start cooking it 3 days before Christmas Day and then when it's served at the table my mum whips all of the plates away and puts them in the microwave for 60 seconds apiece. 

  Since I was quite young we've always had someone extra at the dinner table, for some years we had my mum's brother with us but he sadly succumbed to his own demons some years ago and left his chair in our dining room. The most long term of our Christmas Day visitors was Eileen Kelly and my oh my did she let us know she was there. The TV was too loud, the heating was too low, the dinner was too big, the tea had to be clear enough to see the bottom of the dainty mug but strong enough to have the flavour just so and she could have you up and out of your seat in a nanosecond over just about anything. Eileen Kelly was a prolific houseguest, she didn't sit quietly and she always made her feelings known… but her absence this Christmas is already felt and missed and shows that as people we have to be able to adapt to change because nothing is more certain than death and nothing is more secure than the knowledge that Eileen Kelly will not be at a delightful temperature whilst the rest of us might as well be in the oven with the lamb roast this December 25th. 

   Last Christmas was the last one I'll ever know like the ones I always knew before and I didn't realise it at the time; probably for the best. This Christmas marks a Christmas of change too but I know about that already. My Little Lucy, light of my life and other entity of myself is set to marry in February so naturally Christmases afterwards are going to be different. We don’t know how she will go about her Christmases future. Perhaps Lucy and new husband Jake will join us one year and then go to visit Jake's delightfully quirky mother the year after and if that's what they do then I've already decided to join them on Christmas Night. Jake's mother has a 'treats' cupboard and a personality like no one else I've ever met and I'm feeling quite excited about counting her in as one of the family. Christmases future will be different and this will be the last one that Angela and Gerry are mum and dad with dutiful daughters Helen and Lucy making up the numbers. We are 4 you see, soon to be 5 and I very much hope 6 when a niece or a nephew comes along. Those Christmases will be entirely different because they will centre around lots of bright yellow and blue toys and a small face that believes in Father Christmas.

  Christmas usually marks the end of a year and NYE the start of a new. We get the chance to reflect on what's happened to us and to the people around us and wonder how we can better improve on it in the year to come. We do all of this wondering surrounded twinkling lights and amongst joy galore, under the watchful gaze of a pretty fairy that was bought at a carboot sale 20 odd years ago for 50pence. Her hair is raggedy and her wings are stuck on the back with sellotape now. We change, our lives change but that Christmas fairy sits on the top of the tree year after year, who knows what she's thinking, she might be wondering if she'll ever be invited out for Easter but we're always happy to see her. I've had some quite intense change this year with the loss of Aunty Eileen and the way I've been trying to rewire my brain so that I can experience life without anxiety, stress and then eventual depression. 2014 has been a lovely old year in the most part. I've lost someone very special to me but I've gained also. As I've learned, things change, sometimes for the best, sometimes for the worst but change can always be counted upon and I plan to spend the next couple of months working very hard on the inner mechanics of my brain so that I am able to accept, deal with and understand change when it comes my way. I don't want to live my life as though I am a bucket of water with no current or flow and I doubt many others want to live that way either. I know that I want to spend some time dedicated to my own mental health and eventually help the mental health of others to become stronger. I know I want to go back to university and I know I want to wake up able to face the day in front of me with the excited and optimistic attitude it deserves. I know that I want to be more organised and a little bit more proactive. I know I want to shift some weight and I want to go to the gym. I know I want to get up earlier and I know I can do all of these things but it will take me some time to get used to them being part of my daily routine. I already have my NY resolutions ready and waiting to go once 2015 kicks in on January 1st but maybe I should start on some of them a little early?

 I was recently told that I've eaten so many eggs that I've built myself an egg shell by a delightfully astute individual and I thought that he was very accurate on both counts. I have indeed been living in the fragile shelter of my own fear for quite a long time. I've improved on some things and not so much on others but gradually I'd really like to break free of all of the things that have been holding me back so I'm starting with stopping feeling sorry for myself. Someone has been and gone and he left a wealth of destruction in his wake but gone he is and coming back to repeat his performance he is not. He didn’t mean to cause such harm either, he's actually very pleasant in personality with a generous nature, a kind spirit and I've been demonising him for far too long. 2015 starts with a blank slate, a mind in recovery, a life to live cautiously and in measured amounts but it must be lived all the same. Everything always feels like a really big deal so I won't be climbing mountains but I'll be stopping for coffee, consuming frozen yoghurt, going for walks and allowing myself to enjoy what's left of 2014 before the year changes and I have to start getting up early.

Not Being A Hermit

As a depressed person… nah not this time. Change of subject?

Okay then, I agree with you.

   This evening I am going to talk about cohabitation. I am cohabiting at the moment and I'm finding it anthropologically fascinating. I am a British English teacher who lives in Seville and being totally honest with you I haven't done anywhere near as much Spanish language learning as I should or could have done. I currently live with a nice young lady, she's Chinese and she doesn't speak English so we've had some interesting moments together when discussing bin bags and washing up liquid. I've lived with the Irish, some British girls, some British boys whilst at university, I've room shared with a Belgian girl when I was working at a summer camp and of course spent most of my communal living with my long suffering mother, father and sister. They've had a grand old time of it with me and my boiled, fried, poached, scrambled and omeletted eggs. My dad actually counts the amount of eggs that are in the house when I arrive home and then averages them out day by day to see how many I have been eating. I similarly find his fascination with bacon equally amusing. "Where is the bacon? I never get to have any bacon.. you girls are always eating the bacon." He never gets any because he forgets it's there until he see's the empty packet in the bin and realises he hasn't had any of the bacon that was once in the packet. My sister has some interesting habits as well, she runs around her bedroom with no clothes on shouting, "I'm nakeeeeeddddd, don't come in!" She says it all in her very best Scouse. My mother is a different kettle of fish altogether, now she really is a conundrum. Ange, (as I like to call her) broke her ankle once and didn’t like the plaster cast much. Ange's method of dealing with it? Well, just remove the plaster cast with a kitchen knife of course. She took on the personality of a lunatic for a little while as she hacked and sawed away at the large lump of plaster surrounding her leg. My dear old dad wasn't best pleased when he came in from work and had to bundle her into the car back to the hospital ready to be casted up again. He was a lot less pleased when she did it again a few days later, this time telling my sister and I not to tell our father she had removed the plaster cast. I remember wondering how she thought he was going to notice all by himself at the time. We've also had some pets. Now, the best one was definitely Charlie. Charlie was the king of felines but sadly joined our other animals in the cat graveyard my dad has been fashioning for a couple of years last May. We miss Charlie, he made us laugh and he was as bizarre as the rest of us. He was a cat who thought he was a cat/rabbit/dog. He'd play fetch with you, try to catch birds in the TV, play with your heels as you walked past him, jump across the garden and chase butterflies. Charlie was a great one to cohabit with, never a dull moment on his watch.  

 

  One of the young ladies I cohabited with at university was a little on the odd side. I'd moved into the house a few months early because I was 'of' the city of Liverpool and feeling desperate to have complete control of the huevos in the kitchen so by the time she arrived I'd made myself a little bit at home. By at home I mean that kitchen things were in the kitchen and a mirror was in the living room. I went to work the first Saturday that she was living with us and came home to find that she had gone quite ballistic and rearranged the entire house having ranted and raved at the much quieter girl we were living with that I had 'taken over' the house. I was a little surprised but I let it lie. I didn’t have the house meeting she wanted though and after going hysterical about 4 rolls of toilet paper not being enough for her general consumption she left our little house and things became altogether calmer. Another housemate went off in a hissy fit because my boyfriend came round whilst she had guests, I was under the impression that if one student is in her bedroom watching a film with her boyfriend then another student should feel more than comfortable to have her friends over and all be in the same house together. I was wrong. I know of people who've had strange dealings with biscuits, the TV and other generally odd things when it comes to housemates.

  I have to ask myself though… what do my ex housemates have to say about me? I think that everything I do is perfectly normal but I bet they don't. I always like to keep pre washed dishes in the sink for example but the people I live with often prefer to keep them by the side of the sink. This simple act baffles me and I find myself thinking… but why don't you put the dishes in the sink? There isn't much room beside the sink you see, so I can't understand why the dishes aren't in it and comfortably out of both sight and mind. I always have a TV with me wherever I go as well. I might be putting on a wash or making the breakfast. You can guarantee that you'll hear the dulcet tones of Phoebe, Joey, Rachel, Monica, Chandler and Ross wherever and whenever I happen to be in the local proximity. They may also find the amount at which I like to sleep a little extreme, I love a good sleep. I've had housemates feel the need to check on me in the past and make sure I'm alright. They were up and out with the lark type people and I was more up with Loose Women and then back to bed after my 12pm breakfast at the time. I was a waster and they were seizers and we all lived together under the one roof.

  As I go through life I often wonder how I am perceived. If I think everyone else is wholeheartedly weird then surely they must think I am also a little strange? Or maybe I'm just really critical and should focus more on my inner wellbeing than the eccentricities of others. Either way, whichever way you throw the dice and whatever number it lands on you can't get away from other people unless you want to become a hermit can you? I don't want to be a hermit so I shall accept that my new housemate likes to turn the kitchen into a swimming pool every time she cooks and literally drenches every tea towel at least once a day because she's very nice and she made me churros earlier on.

 

Other people… can’t live with them and can't live without them so I'll just embrace and accept as I find and hope that they're feeling willing to do the same.