July 4th, 2015

If you try anything, if you try to lose weight, or to improve yourself, or to love, or to make the world a better place, you have already achieved something wonderful, before you even begin. Forget failure. If things don’t work out the way you want, hold your head up high and be proud. And try again. And again. And again.

Trust

Trust, that’s a tricky one, isn’t it? Babies are born with absolute trust that their needs will be met. So at what age do we learn not to trust? No doubt it varies depending on life experiences, but at some point along the way we all learn the hard lesson that trust can be misplaced.

People betray our trust in them it’s a simple fact of life that it will happen to us all at least once. Sometimes it’s an extremely painful lesson. So what do we do? Trust nobody so that we don’t get hurt again? That’s an option. It used to be my only option for many years. However I eventually learned that not trusting anybody means not letting anybody close to you, sure you don’t get hurt but you also don’t get to feel strong emotions and that means you miss out on joy.

So the choice is a life without pain, but also a kind of vanilla life in a world packed full of flavours. No pain, but no intensity of emotion, no close friendships, no rollercoaster ride that comes with letting people close to you. Everyone is different. But for me, I found that letting people – some people, okay a very few people – close to me has enriched my life in ways I didn’t expect. (I should clarify here that letting people close, to me at any rate, means trusting them.) Mainly because I had no experience in letting people close so had no way of knowing what to expect. Most of the time I feel like the world has become drenched with colours instead of being sepia toned. I like it, I feel alive and it’s a good feeling.

Of course when I am in that hole that I still sometimes fall into, the colours are darker and more dangerous, but then when I get myself out, I am in the bright shining light and it’s far more preferable to me.

So I have found the people I have let close to me to be trustworthy, am I going to say to you all go on, trust in your instincts, it’ll be great! Well no, this is life, not a sitcom. I have made a few mistakes, I have trusted people I should not have trusted. Most recently it was a woman I mistakenly believed was a friend. I found out that she was not, she was in fact simply using my friendship in a deceitful and underhand way. That burned, but it only burned my pride. I felt a bit silly afterwards, and angry for a while. But I had no real emotional connection so it was pretty easy to chalk it up to experience and walk away with a lesson learned.

For me, giving trust is difficult, I found that the lessons learned by trust betrayed are ones learned deeply. I spent – as I said – most of my life keeping everyone in my life at arms length. When I finally learned to break down the wall I had built around myself, and let people in, it was really very scary. It still is, sometimes.

Hello Again

A thousand apologies to anyone who has been checking in to see what I’m up to. It’s been all go for me, go and gone really. And I’ve been sick, which is the main reason why I haven’t written before now. When I’m sick all the words in my head throw themselves to the side of my skull and hide there. I guess my words are my strength and when I am sick I am weak and so my words disappear.

I know, I know, it's been AGES since the last post. It really has been ages, I know. So much for my promise to write more frequently here. A lot of things have happened, some to do with my plans, others unconnected and unexpected.

Happy Valentine

My story is similar to yours. I fall in love, and often too hard. But not all relationship is an easy street. If you are lucky, you will have a hand to hold along the way, but in some path you will need to take it alone. It's about taking all the lesson in every failed one. It's about loving yourself above anyone else so in turn you'll be able to give love, the right kind of love. Happy Valentine.

Silence

Sometimes when I look at you, and you’re looking back at me, I can see something. This hint of something more, something you’re feeling but can’t say. When our eyes meet, it’s like we’re instantly connected. And I know no one catches it but me and you, but I like it that way. It’s like our own little secret, a place we go to when everything around us is crazy and we just need some semblance of normal. God, your eyes are gorgeous. There are times when I want nothing more than to look you in the eyes…

‘cause it’s when we’re looking at each other in silence that we end up saying the most.